Whether you’re a designer in an agency, freelancer or entrepreneur, you use a variety of design tools to get the job done.
In the past couple of years, I cofounded a startup, a design magazine and worked with several businesses and individual entrepreneurs. I have tried hundreds of different tools to help me with communication, prototyping, designing, photo editing, copywriting and much more.
Today I’m sharing my ultimate list of 100 useful web design tools for creative entrepreneurs. You’ll find tools to assist you with typography, logo design, collaboration, prototyping and much more.
Typography
Fontface Ninja (Free) – Identify that cool font on the page you are browsing.
Google Fonts (Free) – Find and use high-quality fonts for your projects.
Adobe Typekit (Paid) – Get access to a huge bundle of premium fonts.
Fontstruct (Free) – Online font-building tool, fonts can be shared and downloaded.
Font Squirrel (Free) – One of the biggest database of free fonts.
Type light (Free) – A fully functional, OpenType font editor.
What Font is (Free) – What Font is allows you to identify the font you are looking for.
1001 Fonts (Free) – Database of almost 15.000 different fonts.
Font Flame (Free) – Tinder for font pairing. Hate it or use it.
Typecast (Free) – Create visual and semantic designs that put type first.
Stock Photos
Unsplash (Free) – 10 new photos every 10 days.
FoodiesFeed (Free) – Free food photos.
Free Refe Photos (Free) – Huge list of images. Mostly landscape and nature photos.
Little Visuals (Free) – High-resolution landscape and building photos.
Gratisography (Free) – A massive database of free photos.
Death to the Stock Photo (Free) – Free stock photos to your email every month.
Superfamous (Free) – Huge collection of nature and are wider-angle shots.
The Pattern Library (Free) – A huge number of patterns and textures.
New Old Stock (Free) – Vintage photos from the public archives.
Pexels (Free) – A massive database of stock photos you can use everywhere.
Stock Graphics
Brusheezy (Free) – Free Photoshop brushes, patterns, textures, and much more.
Iconfinder (Free) – Search engine for free icons.
The ispot (Paid) – Premium illustrations from top level artists.
Illustrio (Paid) – Extensive library of images.
Round Icons (Paid) – The biggest icons bundle in the world.
Brushez (Free) – Huge collection of free Photoshop brushes.
Vecteezy (Free) – Huge variety of vector asset including icons and illustrations.
Webalys (Paid) – Premium icons by Vincent le Moign.
Font Bundles (Paid) – Home of premium fonts and font bundles.
GraphickStock (Free) – An unlimited number of high-quality, royalty-free photos, vectors and illustrations.
- Vizualize.me (Free) – Create your infographic or resume.
- Canva (Free) – A simple design tool to create anything you need.
- Easel.ly (Free) – Resume and infographic templates.
- Infogr.am (Free) – Online tool for infographics and interactive charts.
- Visage (Free) – A simple design tool for creating visual content.
- Gliffy (Free) – Online diagramming tool.
- Visme (Free) – Online presentation and infographics tool with 1000′s of templates and graphics.
- Piktochart (Free) – Natural infographic design to create high-quality graphics.
- Draw.io (Free) – Online tool for making flow charts, process diagrams and network diagrams.
- Venngage (Free) – Easy infographic maker.
Collaboration
- GoVisually (Paid) – One of the top tools to collect client feedback for your projects.
- TrackDuck (Paid) – It allows leaving feedback right on a website or image file.
- Lingo (Free) – With Lingo, you can build and share libraries of visual assets.
- Red Pen (Paid) – Drag and drop your design and get the feedback from your friends.
- Bounce (Free) – An easy way to share your ideas on any website.
- Usersnap (Paid) – It lets you take screenshots of web pages and annotate them.
- InVision (Paid) – Prototyping, collaboration and workflow platform.
- Marqueed (Free) – Markup and discuss images online. Pretty useful for Photoshop.
- Zeplin (Free) – Collaboration app for frontend developers and UI designers.
- Cage (Free) – Nice dashboard to collaborate with team and clients.
Colors
- Color Hunt (Free) – A curated collection of beautiful colors.
- TinEye (Free) – Determine your colors and search images with the perfect color combination.
- ColorZilla (Free) – Perfect extension for picking colors from a web page.
- Adobe Color CC (Free) – Generate and save various color schemes.
- Coolors (Free) – Color generator for your designs.
- Colicious (Free) – Just press space bar and generate new color.
- Paletton (Free) – Tool for creating color combinations.
- Pictaculous (Free) – Color palette generate from PNG, JPG and GIF.
- Hex Color Tool (Free) – Color picking tool.
- (Un)clrd (Free) – A browser extension that turns every website into black and white.
Inspiration
- Dribbble – The biggest community of designers and place of their work.
- Muzli – Daily design inspiration.
- Awwwards – The best efforts by developers, designers and web agencies in the world.
- Design You Trust – Design blog and a huge community sharing latest trends, news, portfolios, fashion design, and creative ads.
- Really Good Emails – Huge collection of well-designed emails.
- Fubiz – One of the most popular creative publications covering the latest creative news.
- Designspiration – Pinterest-style board of high-level design inspiration.
- Behance – Discover the latest work from top online portfolios by creative professionals.
- Mobile Patterns – A library of iOS and Android screenshots for your inspiration.
- One Page Love – Gallery showcasing the best single page website designs.
For more inspiration, make sure to check one of my latest article on 100 design websites to jumpstart your creativity.
Prototyping
- Sketch (Paid) – The perfect tool for UI and UX design. But only compatible with Mac.
- Napkin (Free) – App for designing quick mocks on your iPhone.
- Proto.io (Paid) – Mobile app prototyping tool that allows you to create fully interactive mobile app prototypes.
- Axure (Paid) – Quickly design prototypes from your computer and share them.
- Balsamiq (Paid) – Wireframing and mockup tool with a high focus on usability.
- Weld (Free) – Draw your website online, just the way you want it.
- POP (Paid) – Helps you to transfer your pen + paper ideas to a real working prototype.
- Flinto (Paid) – Sketch interactive prototypes from static images.
- HTML5 UP (Free) – Responsive and customizable HTML5 templates.
- Moqups (Paid) – HTML5 based web app for making wireframes, UI designs, prototypes, and mockups.
Graphics Editors
- Photoshop (Paid) – One of the best tools in the industry. Perfect for enhancing photographs, designs, and 3D artwork.
- Illustrator (Paid) – To build beautiful vector arts.
- DAZ 3D (Free) – To create realistic humans and animals in 3D.
- Gimp (Free) – Open source editor for editing and retouching images.
- Blender (Free) – Open source 3D creation.
- Affinity (Paid) – Photo editing tool. For Mac only.
- Aviary (Free) – Photo editing mobile app for Android/iOS and the Web.
- Pixlr (Free) – Online image editor.
- DrawPlus (Paid) – Create amazing logos, drawings and designs, at a reasonable price.
- BeFunky (Free) – Simple online photo editor.
Logo Design
- Squarespace Logo (Paid) – Drag and drop logo creator.
- Free Logo Maker (Free) – Simple logo creator with flat icons materials.
- DesignMantic (Free) – Enter company name, select your industry, and it will generate a logo for you.
- Logogénie (Paid) – Logo Genie makes logo design easy and fun.
- Logotype Maker (Free) – Random generates logotype for your company.
- Logo Garden (Paid) – Online logo creator with hundreds of fonts and icons.
- Logoshi (Paid) – Draw a messy sketch, get a modern logo.
- Logaster (Paid) – Online logo maker and generator.
- Logo Maker (Paid) – Generate hundreds of potential logo and modify them online.
- Tailor Brands (Paid) – Quick and easy custom logo maker tool.
The list could be much bigger than it is now. There are hundreds of great tools and websites. It’s almost impossible to get them all in one list. I’d like you to share your favorite tools in the comment section or ping me on Twitter @tomaslau.
[Source:-Forbes]