One of the most beneficial aspects to working with a full-scale marketing agency like Fahrenheit (shameless plug ;-)) is that you get access to professional designers, developers, strategists, content writers and more to help with anything from your website design and development to branding exercises.
Today, we wanted to give you a little peek behind the curtain and share the tools that design professionals use every day. We sat down with Hanna and Ana, our Senior UX Designers and asked what their favorite design tools and resources are in 2019.
Check them out:
Muzli
What is it?
Muzli, a tool by InVision, is a browser extension for design inspiration, news, and trends. Muzli scans over 150 sources on the web to identify and share ideas and thoughts on everything design.
What’s it good for?
Muzli is a tool our team uses for inspiration and information on everything from web design to logos to the latest industry trends and more.
Behance
What is it?
If there was ever a trophy case for creative work, Behance is it. It’s a place where individuals can share their projects (whether that’s images, videos or any other digital creations) with others to inspire, educate, or simply share for the sake of sharing.
What’s it good for?
At Fahrenheit, we mostly use Behance for inspiration, although it does come with tutorials for those looking to improve their design skills. You can see Hanna’s favorite profile, Ramotion, here.
Dribble
What is it?
Dribble is a platform for designers to share their work, develop their skills, and even get hired. It is one of the largest design platforms on the web, generating millions of visitors each month.
What’s it good for?
Dribble provides inspiration and education for our design team. And since our designers do everything from graphic design to UX/UI design to branding and more, Dribble is a one-stop-shop of ideas for our team.
What is it?
Pinterest is a website for people to save and sort images (or other media like videos and articles) into their own personal catalogs (known as “pinboards”). It allows users to save media found on either the web or within Pinterest itself, so you can revisit your boards for ideas, inspiration and more.
What’s it good for?
This is a great tool for anyone looking to get some inspiration for designing anything (packaging, websites, apps, logos, and more). Ana was willing to share a few of her boards that she uses for inspiration. Check out her boards on Design Trends, UX Patterns, and Websites.
Awwwards
What is it?
Awwwards is, wait for it… yep, an awards website (didn’t see that coming, did you? ;-)) for design and creativity across the web. It aims to highlight and promote innovation in digital design. Each day, there is a “site of the day” award for you to comb through to see who is doing it best.
What’s it good for?
Awwwards is another website our design team loves for inspiration. The site shares the best of the best in the industry and provides resources like professional talks, case studies, and sample sites.
Pixabay
What is it?
Put simply, Pixabay is a community of generosity. It’s a website where individuals share their incredible copyright-free images and videos. All media is released under the Pixabay License, which means you can use these images for your blog, website or even commercial use without needing to ask for permission or give credit to the artist. Unbelievable!
What’s it good for?
Images. Images. Images. Use Pixabay worry-free for wherever you need images, whether it’s a blog post, social media, or even a sales page.
Lstore Graphics
What is it?
Lstore Graphics provides both free and premium tools for designers. Here you can find tools for everything design-related (UI/UX Tools, Devices & Branding Mockups, and Illustrations)
What’s it good for?
Design materials that you can download. Lstore is a great place to get you started on your design projects by providing mockups and templates you can download and work from.
Adobe Color
What is it?
Adobe Color is a free Adobe tool to help find color palettes based on keywords.
What’s it good for?
Color is such an amazing free tool, and according to Ana, we’re “not sure why more people don’t take advantage of it.” We use Color to help clients to identify brand colors based on a particular audience they are trying to reach or to provide inspirational palettes for our design team.
WhatFont
What is it?
WhatFont is a Google Chrome extension that helps identify any live font on a website and its color hex code.
What’s it good for?
Say you stumble across a website, and you love their fonts. How do you know what they’re using? For live text (text that you can highlight) WhatFont will Identify the font (from the type to the size to the spacing) and the hex code for the color of the font. Crazy, right?
Bonus: YouTube
YouTube is always a great go-to resource for anything “How To” for design, development, and marketing. Our favorite design channels are: AJ&Smart, The Futur, & Flux
Check us out on WebDesignCompanies where we were featured on the blog about Mobile-First Design approach!
https://www.webdesigncompanies.com/mobile-first-design