6 Design Tools for All Levels

By Kyla Reda

As a graphic designer, you’re always looking to level-up your work, and staying on top of useful softwares and programs is one of the best ways to do so. No matter your skill level, you definitely need to know about these 6 tools.

1. Counter Print: A one stop shop for inspiration

Every great design starts with inspiration. Counter Print is a website that offers a wide range of design books and resources. Their collection includes everything from typography guides to branding manuals, and they're all curated with a keen eye for design. If you're ever feeling stuck for inspiration, a browse through Counter Print's offerings will get your creative juices flowing again.

2. Milanote: The ultimate mood board and visual aid

Once you’ve got your inspiration, set up a mood board to nail down the tone and style for your project. Milanote is a digital mood board that allows you to collect images, text, and other inspiration all in one place. It’s intuitive to use, and easy to share with clients and colleagues for collaboration. Its interactivity goes beyond moodboarding too, and can be used for planning and outlining your processes as well, from social media visuals to timelines.

3. ChatGPT: Creative assistance from AI

ChatGPT is a hot topic right now—and for a good reason! As a language model, it’s trained to understand and generate natural text. For designers, it’s particularly useful for help with content ideas and writing copy such as taglines and slogans, freeing up more time for you to spend on the visual aspects of your design.

4. Typewolf: Font pairing made easy

If you're anything like us, you love playing around with fonts. But sometimes it can feel pretty overwhelming to know which fonts work together and just which typefaces to pick for your design! That's where Typewolf comes in. Typewolf is updated every day with a new beautifully crafted website featuring typefaces that are simply *chef’s kiss*. It doesn't stop there! Every single typeface featured on Typewolf comes with its closest free font match on Adobe Fonts!

Wanting to dig even deeper in the world of typography? They also offer many free and paid comprehensive guides to help you on your design journey!

5. Adobe Color: Finding the perfect palette

Your colour palette can make or break your design, but with Adobe Color, you can create custom colour palettes that complement each other perfectly. Either select your colours manually, or let it extract colours from an image and create a palette based on those colours. You can also create complementary and analogous colour harmonies, and customize hues, saturation, and brightness to meet your specific vision. When you’re finished, make sure to add your colour palette to your Adobe Creative Cloud library, where it will be available across all Adobe software for easy access and use.

6. Adobe Express: Presenting and promoting

Once your design is finalized, use Adobe Express to make it social-media friendly, with a variety of templates and quick editing tools. It’s perfect for creating promotional materials for your work, like flyers, posters, and business cards to get your name out there and showcase your work in the best ways possible. You can even schedule your posts in advance to stay on top of things and save yourself time later!

So whether you’re looking for inspiration, content ideas, or tools for comparing and contrasting, these 6 resources have got you covered and are sure to level up your design game. Get out there and give them a try!

— Kyla Reda