Five tools to supercharge your designs
I LOVE design!
And it’s a good job too, as I’m lucky enough to spend my day surrounded by designs, mockups, and sketches for global brands like Virgin Atlantic, Tommy Hilfiger and Ikea (I could go on!).
I’m constantly on the look out for inspiration and effective tools to make sure I’m producing fresh and innovative designs for these clients - and I like to share! So here are five tools and resources I use on a daily basis to supercharge my designs (and a couple of bonus tips too).
Think of it this way; remember that time you wanted to search for something important on Google and then you suddenly remember something vague, random and irrelevant and you get side-tracked for 15 minutes?
Well, that's not going to get better with Muzli installed onto your chrome browser, that's for sure. But hear me out! Instead of being distracted by Drake and Meek Mill's beef, now it'll be creative and inspirational articles and designs that fill your days. (Drake won by the way.)
Imagine if there was a platform where you could post your work easily for clients to review and leave comments.
Imagine a platform where you could show your clients multiple visuals of different web pages and have those visuals act like a live site. Imagine (ok, you get it) a platform where you can do all that and more AND is easy to use. Well, inVision is that platform.
Bonus tip! You can integrate your inVision account to other accounts such as Trello for even better organisation.
This one is somewhat controversial within the design community and our very own design team but I'm calling it; get drafted on Dribbble.
It's an exclusive designers show and tell. What makes it special is that you can upload your designs and people can criticize it, I'm not selling this well am I? But let me finish! (I'm sounding desperate now). Getting positive or negative criticism from other designers is a sure fire way to improve as a designer.
If you're adamant that Dribbble isn't for you, like a die-hard Microsoft fan would never buy an Apple product, then fine, you can use similar resources like Behance.
Bonus tip! If you’re part of a design team - don’t forget to canvas their feedback too!
Now I’m getting really old-school!
They're fantastic for getting emails sketched up accurately. Or if you'd prefer get a grid sketchbook. They're just as awesome. Planning before you design means that you’re no longer a cowboy without bullets... and a gun… and a hat! What kind of useless cowboy is that!
Have I missed your favourites?
If there are other tools and resources that supercharge your designs then let me and the design community know in the comments or on twitter with #SuperchargedDesigns to @adelee_design
Ade Adebiyi is a designer at SaleCycle.
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