I’m always fascinated to see where and how other people work and I wanted to share my personal set up, focusing on the tools & resources I use every day as a designer. I recently posted part one on hardware I use as a designer and today I am featuring the software and apps I use on a daily basis.
Software
DESIGN / CODE
- Adobe Creative Suite 5 – Mainly Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro & InDesign.
- TextMate – Text editor that I use for coding / writing.
- Linotype FontExplorer – Font management.
- CyberDuck - FTP Client.
- ColorSchemer Studio 2 – Great colour scheme creator & colour tool.
WEB / SOCIAL
- Tweetdeck - Desktop + mobile Twitter client.
- FireFox – My browser of choice. Plugins include Firebug, ScreenGrab & Web Developer Toolbar.
- Jing Pro – Easy sharing of screenshots & videos.
- iChat - Instant Messenger / Chat
MUSIC
- Spotify – My music player of choice. I subscribe to their Premium subscription so I can sync & listen to the music on my iPhone too. I use the iPhone Spotify Remote App to change songs from wherever I am.
- iTunes – For buying music.
BUSINESS / PRODUCTIVITY
- Skype – International phone calls and meetings.
- TextExpander – Saves me from re-writing commonly used phrases & emails. See how to use TextExpander to conquer email.
- Alfred – Launches my software & searches with speed. Super productive. I use the shortcut key Cmd+E.
- Microsoft Office – An evil necessity.
- Apple Time Machine – Backs up my files to external hard drives.
Web Apps
- Google Apps – Handles my email (10 reasons you should try out Gmail), docs & syncs my calendar with my computers and iPhone.
- Google TaskBar – I don’t use any fancy time management software, but rather use the ‘Tasks’ bar in Gmail. I use Harvest to track my hours.
- DropBox - In the cloud file sharing & storing.
- PayPal – Invoicing & advertising payments.
- Shutterstock – My preference in stock imagery.
- MediaTemple – Where I host my websites.
- Delicious – Where I save bookmarks everyday.
Have any other recommended software or apps or designers?
© This article is copyright of Just Creative Design and should not be found elsewhere.
Related Articles: