What are the Design tools you use in your daily work flow?

Question

To all designers out there, what are the tools you use? I am talking about the tools you use every day, the tools that are absolutely vital to your work!

Niklaus Gerber · Accepted Answer

Replaces Illustrator and Photoshop for my workflow

Jonathan Simcoe · Answer

I implemented this tool @meetcircle and the team still uses it. I also use it to power all my personal digital design work for screens and web. Figma is the best interface design tool on the market, bar none. Components allow you to build living design systems on your own or with a team of people.

jnlws · Answer

Maintaining a collaborative design ecosystem is a large undertaking. Wake provides a no-bullshit environment where my team can mind-meld and I can constantly have a high level view of how design projects are taking shape. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Answer

Reduce lets you compress huge Sketch files. I'm currently working on a Design System and Reduce comes in very handy in compressing the final size, as it will be pretty large. Asides, the Flawless App team are really great product owners!

Thomas Kjellberg · Answer

The most natural way of sharing and improving your design with your teammates or client. Give feedback and be updated. Cannot really understand how people are getting things done without.

Alex Kukharenko · Answer

Love this tool and here is why: as a product designer, I worry about making a design perfect, but after passing a design process, UI often gets worse by weak collaboration with developers and the final app design just doesn't look the same with what I've designed: distances, colors, fonts, positions might be WRONG. 
But hopefully, there is a solution -  Flawless App which allows to magically compare Sketch design and final design in Xcode. I am confident that a Sketch design will be delivered with the exact look.

David Baruchel · Answer

Add icons from Font Awesome, Material Design, and other icon fonts libraries directly in Sketch. Faster than any drag and drop from Noun-Project. And it behaves like a font, not SVG.

Ahmed Sulaiman · Answer

Lingo is really great for assets management. 
And it has cloud sync so you can distribute same design language across the team.

Bauke van Gameren · Answer

The sketch plug-in allows us to drop in sketch components that are in our styleguide. The webapp enable us to organise our styleguide and add context (where is what component used and why).
We love it as a design team because we are always working with an up to date styleguide, and as a result our design work is more consistent across the team.

Stefan Theofilos · Answer

I transferred my team over to Figma from Sketch and I love it!.  The real-time collaboration is key.

Scott Frank Sithu · Answer

Extremely fast prototype tool with simple auto-animation feature. I don't even install and use "sketch" app I won at luckydraw.

Dan Vineyard · Answer

It is a great place for design inspiration.

Anand Soni · Answer

Have great collection of Icons. One stop for all type of Icons. All icons are available in all formats and its free* also. 
*Till you are mentioning the Creator name .

Kunal Bhatia · Answer

Despite not prototyping every day, I pull up the Atomic site every day to collaborate with devs, explain a product to users, and test prototypes of new features with research participants. After you build up a library of prototypes, you understand how powerful this practice can be, whether or not you use Atomic or some other prototyping tool.

Abhijith · Answer

Best tool out there to design. Right from quick flowcharts & wireframes to detailed pixel perfect designs.

Anya Shpilman · Answer

Like Evernote, but for designers

Answer

Very efficient to put in a visual way your user research. It's also a good way to manage workshop with people remotely.

Olga Vakulenko · Answer

This one helps to build an effective seed deck easy :)

Answer

One software I use almost daily, mainly for creating short animations, is Animation Desk. What I like most about this application is the usability and responsiveness - I'm able to complete my tasks quickly throughout the day and by using this software on my Surface Book, I basically have no issues, I can pick up on the project whenever and wherever I am, so I'm not bogged down by a slow product. I recommend Animation Desk to those who want to accomplish their animations efficiently and on several devices.

Brian Sheridan · Answer

Fluid UI is a great tool for any designer who wants to get all of their work done in one platform. Design from scratch with Fluid. Import existing assets with Fluid. create wirefames, mockups, and high fidelity prototypes with Fluid. Want to chat with your remote team, or even if they are next door, try Fluid UI's video chat and while you are chatting try some real time collaboration. Got your prototype up and running, share it with anyone and watch them click through it or set them tasks as you can chat with them and watch the session. All in one tool Fluid UI.

Aaron Ng · Answer

The definitive design tool right now. Many other great contenders, but Sketch really kills it.

Camp Olivia · Answer

This one is quite easy to use, and you can draw a wide range of categories from floor plan to business diagram based on many preset templates, symbols, marks, and examples!

Ali R. Tariq · Answer

I have a passing fascination for typography (and, admittedly, I have an unhealthy fixation on knowing more than I need to) so whenever I come across interesting type online, I use this handy Chrome plugin to tell me what fonts I'm looking at. It's especially invaluable for when I'm putting together web-based mockups.

Abhijith · Answer

Not sure how your design looks when in the hands of a consumer, invison is the best way to prototype. I use it to build quick prototypes and also to get feedback from team members. It helps devs to understand the flows as well.

David Tiong · Answer

Quick and easy way to share design previews and proposed changes with clients, either with screenshots or quick gifs or videos

J. Mark Bangerter · Answer

Great for quickly designing a sales funnel or lead generation funnel.

David Baruchel · Answer

Great for icons and for inspiration (how could one simply represent a difficult concept ?...)

paula · Answer

Extremely useful and endless!

Sergio Ghibellini · Answer

Awesome!

Jonathan Simcoe · Answer

Dropbox Paper is a great space for collaborative documents that help inform the creative process.

Michael Lee · Answer

Along with Framer I use Flinto for Mac daily. Great tool to create comprehensive prototypes.

Kevin Bravo · Answer

Amazing product to build cool animations and transitions between screens

yarri · Answer

For ReactJS web development, I use Storybook in parallel to my development flow to quickly prototype design choices with production CSS / JS / Components, etc.

Aaron Ng · Answer

iA Writer (and Google Docs for the final shared document). Perfect place for throwing ideas down and solidifying them. I use iA writer along with Sketch as the first part of any project and as the screens become more and more fleshed out start moving more and more of the notes into the Sketch file itself.

MuratOdr · Answer

Iconjar is really a great app where you can save all your icons in one place and drag & drop them to any design app you want.

Ryan Stephen · Answer

This is a great all-around pick for a vector based application that offers a ton of tools to get design work done.

Slava Kim · Answer

Huge amount of icons, all beautifully crafted. Multiple sizes, styles.
Very convenient Mac App where you can quickly find right icon, edit style (outline, colored, glyph), edit stroke and download.

Juan Diego Polo · Answer

Easy, fast and cheap

Julihan · Answer

A very simple tool to create interactive prototypes

Answer

I use Marvel for prototyping, it's lightweight and fast to use and can also be hooked up with Lookback that can record users when testing your prototypes.

Jonas Bučinskas · Answer

Great tool for collecting client feedback right on design mockups or live websites.

Julihan · Answer

Lookback is a really helpful tool to record user tests (either in person or remotely)

Andrey Protasevich · Answer

Sometimes for fast paper prototyping. ✏️

Victoriia Svyrydiuk · Answer

I guess you know the Infographic tool. Now, all similar tools are not free or offer too limited temples collection. This one is a very good for Data visualization ;)

Earnest Tao · Answer

I just use it for everyday life, simple put powerful vector design, for beginners (like me), people who are coming from AI, or people who are important designers (not me).

ktamas · Answer

An all around great tool for vector based graphics and designing anything from website, apps to logos, posters, etc. Drop in replacement for Illustrator and sketch.

Answer

Very easy to adapt to and great for vector art and ui / ux as well

Glenn Schnieders · Answer

Easy to make quickly prototypes and also implement some basic design to your project.

Matt Galligan · Answer

Just began using this to sync colors, type styles, and components across Sketch docs and it's working well! Can't wait to use its features that bring the styles right into Swift code, LESS, etc.

Nikolay Barakov · Answer

Very convenient to use. And also just to learn, everything is intuitively located.

Trevor Young · Answer

Origami can work well for quick prototypes, but you can also build extremely complex prototypes. No joke, if you wanted to, you could almost build the entire front end of your app with Origami. The community is also really strong. Ask a question on the fb page and you'll probably get a response from one of the people working on in it in less than an hour. Amazing for something they give away for free.

William Hu · Answer

1. I go on Dribbble everyday.
2. See some good designs.
3. I drag and drop designs to the Ember app.

For saving and organising inspiring designs.

Samia Saleem · Answer

Allows you to use your sketch file with version control so it's easy to work on your own stuff or along side your time with no more v01, v02...v33 along with a bunch of useful things so everyone is working off the same damn thing :)

Anya Shpilman · Answer

Largest pack of icons. Over 40000 icons created by a single team so you know the icons will match through your website/app

Anya Shpilman · Answer

Free sketch viewer for Windows

Raymond Aditya Pradhana · Answer

Curated list of websites containing free resources. Stock photos, videos, audios, icons, mockups, etc.

Jason Swetzoff · Answer

I just started using UX Pin and so far it does everything and it does it well. Having one product that can do it all can save you a lot of time and money. So far I've found that UX Pin is great for making wireframes, prototypes, and animations. I still need to dive deeper into how it does creating components and organizing design systems but it looks like it's well thought out.

Olga Vakulenko · Answer

It's new, but soon hopefully will be used by majority. It helps to apply design in seconds.

Shamit Khemka · Answer

It empowers you while working on complex documents with hundreds of Symbols.

Brett Hellman · Answer

I love never needing to ask "Where is the latest file?"

Brett Hellman · Answer

I love never needing to ask "Where is the latest file?"

Leah Mitchell · Answer

An amazing product that has pushed me away from Sketch. So many features including in app prototypes, auto-save and you can access Figma via the web so it can be used by both Mac and PC users.

Sandesh Subedi · Answer

This tool have made file management, version control and collaboration a breeze!! Cannot live without this app.

Alexander Hanson-Smith · Answer

We love using Abstract alongside Sketch! It's great if you've got a team of designers all working together.

Andy Dent · Answer

I'm using it to:
- import Sketch designs and prototype animations
- show translated screens on different devices so I can refine the design
- generate native code and screen resources I'm using directly in my app.

Ivan Burban · Answer

Great for email design

Bianca Nieves · Answer

The UI is super easy to learn and get started with. Botsociety propels conversation based projects to the next level.

Eric Martin · Answer

I use Sketchup for a lot of things that have a 3D element because of its high ROI of time.

Robin Nagpal · Answer

For offline we use photoshop and Canva is the best for online work but paid version.

Ramakrishna Anand · Answer

Helps you quickly prototype and build web pages based on Bootstrap framework and get clean HTML/CSS. 
Saves plenty of your front-end development time with ready-made components.

Following are top features

1) Visual Design a Page without touching CSS.
2) Inbuilt Code Editor - You can also modify the layout by coding HTML/CSS.
3) Block Editor - You can customize the code of the each individual blocks / components.
4) Full Workflow - Share real working HTML Pages with your clients. 
5) Readymade Components - Use readymade components to quickly generate a layout or forms in seconds.

Ramakrishna Anand · Answer

Helps you quickly prototype and build web pages based on Bootstrap framework and get clean HTML/CSS. 
Saves plenty of your front-end development time with ready-made components.

Following are top features

1) Visual Design a Page without touching CSS.
2) Inbuilt Code Editor - You can also modify the layout by coding HTML/CSS.
3) Block Editor - You can customize the code of the each individual blocks / components.
4) Full Workflow - Share real working HTML Pages with your clients. 
5) Readymade Components - Use readymade components to quickly generate a layout or forms in seconds.

Jonah Rogers · Answer

Animation Desk is a good software to use daily, which I do, since you're able to do a variety of things with it (animation, story boards, prototyping), so I use it daily for all kinds of projects, both for work and for fun.

Veronica Wilkerson · Answer

I began using Animation Desk recently and it has become one of the few applications I use almost daily. It's quite great for animation projects and storyboards. I get a kick out of using it both for fun and for work-related stuff.

Dorthy Hines · Answer

I use Animation Desk for short animations and prototyping, so basically daily. It's a nice software to use for doing something fun and on the go, since it's available for tablets and phones as well. Easy to use as well.

Lullaby Tom · Answer

An incredible tool for a designer.

MuratOdr · Answer

That's not a great tool to design, that's THE tool to design !

francesco ciotola · Answer

Must usefull tool

Basil Abbas · Answer

Super easy to use and has replaced every other design tool that we have been using.

Kuldeep Singh · Answer

Superfast & light weight.

Praty · Answer

Excellent tool for UI designs and quick wireframes. The Craft plugin on top of it just makes it irresistible. 🙌🏼

Abhijith · Answer

Design handover is a breeze with zeplin. Love the commenting feature too. Devs love it coz all the design assets come ready in all sizes and formats at their fingertips.

Basil Abbas · Answer

Design collaboration with engineering at its best!!

Shamit Khemka · Answer

Best tool for leveraging your creative skills as a designer.

Ruslan Hirychau · Answer

When I need to show animations in just a minute. New mirroring with saving prototypes for offline usage is awesome by the way.

Jad Limcaco · Answer

Principle is awesome! Still the fastest and easiest tool out there in my opinion for micro-interactions.

Richard Awoyemi · Answer

Great for prototyping but limited in functionality at points. There are simple features missing.

Answer

I am a software developer who also does UX and I love the simplicity of the tool.

Aaron Kazah · Answer

This is pretty much what I use. I find I'd recommend it to any designer who wants to quickly create designs. It's also not bloated like sketch and is lightning fast.

Ayush Mittal · Answer

I use Sketch and Webflow. There is a little learning curve to get around the editor, however, I'm always doing more than I've planned, especially by making use of its powerful interactions.

Anand Soni · Answer

This tool is just fantastic...And its customer support is also damn high. It helped me creating complex HTML pages in less than 15 mins with all interaction and styling.

Answer

I really love Figma! It lets my whole team collaborate live on designs, and it's super flexible and easy to use. I 100% recommend this.

John Kappa · Answer

Game changer!

Colum Donahue · Answer

We transferred from InVision over to Figma for prototyping and have been extremely happy with the results.

guillaume palayer · Answer

The best OS agnostic designer tool.

Niklaus Gerber · Answer

Awesome collaborative UI-Design-Tool

MuratOdr · Answer

I use Dribbble for inspiration, a great place whit great designer.

Niklaus Gerber · Answer

Use it all the time. Annotations, Screensharings etc.