26 Best Tools for Web and Graphic Designer
If we talk about graphic and web designers, especially the ones who work on a day-to-day basis to hone their productivity skills, they are looking to get things done fast! Top it off with a predicament very much aligned with freelancing/sole proprietorship business and you are looking at people who don’t have much time to spare. Entrepreneurs can relate to the dilemma.
Therefore, we came up with this write-up where we get to talk about various tools and apps that have been known to help web and graphic designers with their work. That being said, this list is not conclusive. We just handpicked a few popular applications to get the conversation started. If you are looking to suggest something, feel free to use the comments section below after you’re done reading this piece.
Best Tools for Web and Graphics Designers:
If a designer uses a handful of tools, it will give a solid foundation for communicating the ideas and simplifying the work. So, in the journey to move from a good designer to the best one, all you have to do is have a set of tools with you.
Here’s a list of some of the best tools and apps to give you a head start in your online ventures. Some of the applications are not entirely web designing/graphic designing-centric, but they are equally important because of their ability to help users multitask and keep up with their rapid workflow.
Everyone has used Photoshop by now. If you have used the program, at least you have heard of it. How could you not? It is hard to miss the slightest mention of Photoshop when we see celebrity pictures floating around at social media websites, and people commenting underneath, “Oh he/she looks so perfect and blemish-free. It has to be Photoshopped.”
That being said, Photoshop is considered a very efficient graphic designing tool. Here are some of the key highlights of the program that make it worthwhile.
Do you hate it when there is no consistency or transparency in the review process, and everything is spread over different tools and channels?
Without it, you can’t be sure that every file has been through a consistent process of checks and approvals. Filestage enables you to build and manage review processes the way you want to. Collect feedback from all reviewers in one place and ensure all files go through a consistent process.
Projects move faster when you’re not stuck chasing people for feedback or wading through your inbox. But getting stakeholders to review different file types via email is complicated.
Filestage makes it easy for teammates and stakeholders to give feedback on file types, eliminating the need for long email threads.
It is one place for all your projects and team collaboration. ProofHub is useful in the following ways.
DesignBold is designed for the creatives both professional and amateur . It is developed with an eye-catching interface for creating printed or digital images quickly and smoothly. With an intuitive and robust feature-set, even beginners can create graphics, documents, and images of professional quality.
If it is your first time using DesignBold, you can surf through YouTube videos to get a hang of what the program has to offer. It doesn’t matter if you are a graphics designer, a digital artist or a web designer. There is something in there for everyone; that’s how the Devs created DesignBold in the first place.
Illustrator is one of the best tools to date. Especially when you talk about using Vector images over conventional rasterized images, Illustrator takes it all to the next level. And trust me, Vector digital media is the latest trend. No one wants to see their images getting bombarded with pixels when they zoom in.
It has an intuitive user interface. Initially, it is a little hard to get a hang of things, but you will eventually get there with enough practice. Some of the additional features of this application are highlighted below:
Non-relevant functions do – not exist, so you only have buttons for stuff useful for web/app design. That’s what Sketch 3 and its predecessors are all about. They wanted to create something for users that’s not only clutter-free but also easy to use at the same time.
You don’t have the plethora of actions that you’ll have in Illustrator because you don’t need it.
Next up, we got Marvel Prototyping Tool . Of course, just like you, I wish it had something to do with official Marvel Comics Company, or the Avengers to say the least, but this program is something not related to the aforementioned entities.
Marvel Prototyping is an essential tool for web design workflow these days. With Marvel, you can create anything from scratch, sync designs from your cloud storage! Sketch.
Sublime text is the text editor that you are surely going to fall in love with. Sublime Text 2 is a minimalist coding editor that will let you focus completely on your code.
If you are working on websites, this will give your great power providing powerful shortcuts and tools to leap about a document, filter the file, and quickly make edits.
Webflow allows designers to create sites in a relatively short time period. You can design and develop at the same time, with minimal effort with Webflow.
Don’t worry about using coding to execute your work output. You can easily export and change the site’s HTML / CSS tags according to the customer’s needs.
Github is a very handy tool for Web Designers and website developers. That does not mean that GitHub doesn’t have anything for graphic designers. It does, but the abundance of “graphics” is not as much as compared to traditional Web 2.0 and 3.0 properties.
GitHub is a directory. Some people call it a repository. It’s your choice though. The crux of the tool is in its ability to offer a platform to hardcore coding communities where people can ask technical questions related to real-life use case scenarios and other experts answer them in comments format.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
In addition, GitHub can integrate with common platforms such as Amazon and Google Cloud, services such as Code Climate to track your feedback, and can highlight syntax in over 200 different programming languages.
Milanote is a tool for organizing creative projects into beautiful visual boards. By design, it feels a lot like working on the wall in a creative studio – visual, tactile and sometimes a bit messy – Milanote is a great fit for designers who work in teams remotely.
Having a multi-purpose editing app on-hand is key to making the most of any raw photos you use for digital marketing. Instasize is one of the most reliable out there, capable of applying essential post-processing to both photos and videos. It’s available for mobile phones and great for designers on the go.
Placeit is an online platform with all kinds of mockups ready to customize. From t-shirts, digital devices to books, and home decor. Just drag your design or select it from your computer and in seconds your mockup has been customized.
With templates for all kinds of themes, coupled with a drag and drop editor, PosterMyWall makes designing accessible to everyone, including anyone who’s just starting out. PosterMyWall also offers tools to streamline social media marketing.
Ziflow is an online proofing system that allows designers to centralize the review and approval of designs at all stages. Instead of wading through email chains, managing WeTransfer shares, Google Drive folders, and the many other ways clients and stakeholders send feedback or versions, Ziflow gives an all-in-one environment for reviewing, annotating, discussing, comparing, and approving design elements in many mediums, through many rounds of edits, to completion.
With Ziflow, designers can manage a structured series of design stages using workflow automation and clearly delineate the internal review process from client feedback. Plus, the ability to lock designs from modifications and change requests after decisions have been made is a huge plus. No more final hour feedback to throw a wrench in the design process.
PicsArt is an incredible online photo-editing software that creative professionals can use to create some beautiful imagery for the whole world to see. The best thing about the software is that you don’t even have to be an expert in the field of design and photography to make effective use of this software.
If you are a no-nonsense professional that just wants the best graphic designing tool in the market, then you need the tool Bannersnack . The application has an incredibly intuitive interface that you can use to create your content by just dragging and dropping things.
The design just got easy! With Design Wizard you can create impressive videos and image designs in minutes. Its library holds over one million premium images, thousands of high-quality videos, illustrations, graphics, and more. Every video and image has also been licensed for commercial use.
The Pro plan, starting at $9.99 per month, gives you 60 image design downloads, image uploads, font uploads, free previews, and 1GB storage. On the Business plan, which starts at $49.99 per month, you get unlimited standard video downloads, 1 premium video per month, unlimited image design downloads, video uploads, add text and images to video, and 10GB storage.
Designmodo offers three essential apps for designers to create an online presence and maintain the connection with their customers or clients. First of all, here, you will find two website builders (Slides and Startup) that will help you create a website in time and use it on your hosting without limitation.
Second, you will find an email newsletter builder called Postcards, a no-code tool that helps you create email communication and engage your clients or customers. You don’t need to be a web developer to create websites and emails with Designmodo apps. The main advantage of these tools is generating templates and using them later for unlimited time in your projects.
Key Features
Colorcinch helps hobbyists, photographers, and professional designers produce stunning designs and enhanced photos with just a few clicks! An intuitive web-based software, Colorcinch is a perfect alternative to popular offline/online photo editors. But unlike most other editors, it requires no sign-ups, could be used for free and needs no series of intensive tutorials to get started. Thanks to the tool’s simple & clean UI, everyone—including non-techies—can effortlessly create premium-level graphics and photo designs without getting stuck at any point. It’s that simple to use!
Colorcinch features all the essential built-in editing tools needed for basic image modifications (cropping, color/tone adjustments, resizing, etc.). But beyond that, it also offers users access to a generously robust collection of vector icons & graphics, overlays, masks, and filters. Additionally, with Colorcinch, you can easily choose from a range of top-notch artistic effects and accurately transform your photos into cartoons, digital sketches, and other artworks.
If you are a graphic designer/web developer or maybe for any stance you have a little bit of connection to the design world, there’s the slightest chance of missing out on Iconscout . Previously they only had a website that helped thousands of users to get a neat collection of over 2.2millions of SVGs, Vector Icons, Illustrations, 3D graphics, and Lottie Animations.
And Now they have already launched their Application for both Mac and Windows. This is a quick, convenient way to get their millions of design assets directly from your Toolbar.
With a stunning library of design assets contributed by designers and artists from all over the world they also provide integrated tools, plugins, and editors. This application helps you with varieties of assets with enough functionality for necessary modifications.
The BrandCrowd logo maker enables brands to create a design in minutes. This will help you say goodbye to long turnaround times and difficulty sourcing freelance graphic designers.
It does this by giving them access to an expansive library of business logo designs that they can customize. It has one of the biggest design collections ranging from fashion logos to tech logos. Personalize its color, fonts, and other elements for a unique design.
Mockplus is a web-based product design platform for prototyping, collaboration and handoff. It brings UI/UX designers, product managers and developers on to the same page, prototype, collaborate and hand off together at least 2x faster.
With Mockplus, designers can co-design on the same page and collect feedback by sharing a single link. Product managers can write PRDs online and create clear user flows with drag-and-drop. Developers can easily get a link to join a project, click and hover to view design specs and code snippets, and download assets in one click. Brand design systems can also be gathered and shared across teams with ease. Your entire product design workflow is connected in one place.
Desygner is “a graphic design tool for non-designers,” they offer features like drag & drop elements; the ability to change images, fonts, colors, and text; capability to work with layers, effects, and multi-page files; plus access to thousands of professionally designed templates and millions of free and paid subscription stock images.
The tool also lets you share designs via email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks; automatically resize images into the correct sizes for social posts on different platforms; and present slides professionally with the Desygner viewer.
The free graphic design software by VistaCreate is what you need when you are looking for a user-friendly experience of creating any type of content, from detailed infographics to designing Facebook ads.
It will save you so much time thanks to 50K+ design templates optimized for different formats, 1M+ creative assets, and numerous productivity tools. What’s really cool, VistaCreate is very feature-rich even within a free version so that it can suit professional designers as well as marketers who need to create studio-level designs.
The graphic design editor is super intuitive, allowing you to pick a template and tweak it further by adding numerous design objects, playing with typography, changing backgrounds, applying animation effects and music.
DocHipo is free graphic design software for marketers and content creators.
Choose from a massive collection of beautifully designed templates for infographics, flyers, posters, web banners, social graphics, and various other document types. The templates are segregated by industry, occasion, and so on.
Select the template you like the most and customize it using DocHipo’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor. Change the color, tailor the message, use beautiful illustrations, stickers, animations, and other design assets to create a stunning design.
You can download the design in JPG, PNG, PDF, MP4, or GIF format and use them off-line or publish them on your favorite social channels right from DocHipo itself!
