“You are nothing without your tools”. Although this sentence is a bit rough, it also bears some truth. Nobody can do good work, if she hasn’t proper tools to aid the creation process. Like at every other profession, there are also tools that aid us web designers at our work. Through the course of my career I have used many of them, some of them longer, some shorter. But recently I really contracted a passion for a few tools I use.
First and foremost I couldn’t live anymore without Chrome. It’s sort of a homebase for me, without it I don’t feel comfy. It is not only the most progressive browser out there, but also has some great developer tools, built in synchronize functionality and is lightning-fast to use and load. Great to see, that more and more people adapt this browser for their everyday surfing.
Although I don’t exactly love it, but I also couldn’t live without Photoshop. A kind of love-hate relationship connects me with this behemoth of an application. Adobe’s bestseller is so buggy and so laggy and bloated, but at the same time it is also so powerful, helpful and essential for my profession. Probably it will lose momentum in the future and the design process of a website will more and more move directly into the browser, but for certain task, especially “non-flat” website, it will forever be an essential tool.
One of the “apps” I use that I truly and dearly love is Sublime Text 2. It totally changed the way I write code and simplified this task so incredibly. I’ve first seen it in a Tuts+ tutorial where Jeffrey Way used it and the desire to try it out grew with every minute. I didn’t regret it to date. Of course it has a very steep learning curve and takes some time and sweat until you have tailored it to your needs. But as soon as this point is passed, it’s so incredibly helpful, easy to use and essential for your job. You can read my “love letter” to it here.
The newest addition to my favorites is Typecast App. Although I participated in the beta test, I didn’t exactly know how it could fit into my design process. Luckily I changed my job and so I finally have a reason to integrate it employ it regularely. Gone are the days when you need to fiddle about with different font files to test out which font works best for a design or a combination with another one. The best thing is that Typecast App features almost every font out there available at a font service and therefore the possibilities are endless. It’s fast, it’s easy to use and lately it also includes a Pro plan for fonts.com. Which directly leads me to my next tool.
fonts.com Web fonts is another “classic” for me. If you are interested in fonts and foremost in some of the best fonts invented to date, you won’t come around this service. Although the website is a bit clunky and sometimes buggy, the range of available fonts is incredible. Frutiger, Helvetica, Futura, Avenir, Trade Gothic, Univers, ITC Avant Garde, Gill Sans, Optima, just to name a few. If these fonts make you feel cosy just like me, you definitely need an account at fonts.com. Unfortunately I won’t have to do that much with fonts anymore at my new job.
Besides Sublime Text another tool that absolutely changed the way how I develop websites is SASS. First I thought that it’s just a cheap mask to hide the real problems of CSS, but now I know that it’s the one true way to write CSS. Although I don’t use it in the least, the few features I actually employ – like nesting, variables, mix-ins, extends, media query bubbling – make my life so much easier. Nesting alone is a huge time-saver and a reason to try out the pre-processor. Luckily there are tools like Compass.app which protect me from the nightmares of the command line.
The next tool is probably the one where the most people would agree that it is one of the best innovations to date: Dropbox. The ability to access your data at any time, at any place and on any device is a little bit like magic. The bonus of a “free” backup and the possibility to restore any state of your files if you wish to make it my absolute number one. So small but so powerful.
Lately I have also discoved a new favorite: Inkscape. I didn’t know that there is a free alternative to Illustrator and Corel Draw, that’s actually so powerful and easy to use – and, like I said before, free. Especially with the rise of icon fonts and their preferred file format SVG it’s often essential to change some details of them or simply transfer them to a PNG. Inkscape is “your man” for such occasions. A strong bonus point is that you also can save SVG files as an EPS so that they re ready to use within Photoshop and don’t lose details.
Speaking of icon fonts: The one App you will ever need if you have to deal with icon fonts is icomoon. The library of different icons is huge, it lets you add your own icons and you can also download them for other usage. And if you invest a little bit of money and buy a paid plan it’s also incredibly easy to use. Whenever I open the App in my browser I’m again astonished what websites (respectively web apps) are capable of meanwhile.
Lastly there is a programme which almost is a substitute for my brain and lets me easily collect things: Evernote. It’s also an App which I totally underestimated before. Whenever I see an interesting website, I add it to Evernote, whenver I learn something new, I add it to Evernote, whenever I want to make sure that I don’t forget something, right, I add it to Evernote.
So, which are the tools you couldn’t live without? Please share them at the comments.
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