Best Tools A Designer Needs To Get Started | 2022 Expert Edition

There is so much noise when it comes to tools a beginner designer needs to choose from which ultimately causes mess & confusion so I have made a list of just 5 tools you may need to get started as a designer.

After 2+ years of designing, working with brands, and starting my career as a designer in Canva App on my phone to using Figma full time as a Web UI Designer I think I will be able to share what worked for me in this journey after trying out every tool that every blog out there recommends.

1. Figma

Figma website — Hero section

Figma is the best design tool I have used up till now. I can pretty much do anything Figma and that is the reason I am obsessed with this tool.

✅ Wireframing
✅ Design
✅ Prototyping
✅ Logo design — won’t recommend it though (Try Illustrator or Affinity)
✅ Live collaboration with clients and designers
✅ Create a presentation
✅ Create an E-book (I will recommend Canva for it)
✅ Is it free to use? — Get started for free
✅ Community and Support
✅ Templates and Plugins
✅ Resources, Articles & Courses

One can learn the tool from courses/articles/practice and still keep discovering the efficient ways to use the tool by using all the features and plugins from the Figma community.

2. Canva

Canva website — Hero section

I did use Canva for quite some time when I started my design journey. It is quite a powerful tool and I have seen people create some amazing social media designs in it. If you’re new and want to start creating social media content without much hassle of learning a complex design tool, Canva should be your go-to tool.

✅ Free to get started
✅ Easy to learn the tool and get started
✅ Social Media content
✅ Thumbnails/Graphics
✅ Resumes
✅ E-books
✅ Presentation Slides
✅ Digital Design

3. Adobe Suite

Adobe suite has quite the collection of creative tools needed for every endeavor and project. Let’s focus on photoshop and illustrator which are the main focus of a budding graphic designer.

What is adobe photoshop for?
✅ basically anything, creativity is your limit, and the tool expertise ceiling is very high — you will have to spend a good amount of time learning their tools as it has a lot of functionality and features.
✅ Edit, retouch, manipulate, photoshop has it all
✅ Social media graphics — you got it
✅ Create marvel posters- yup it’s done here in photoshop
✅ Logos- people do it here, illustrator is recommended by me
✅ Anything pixel can be edited or manipulated or created from scratch to create something new or a remix in photoshop
✅ Photoshop is basically designed for photo editing but due to creativity and tool expertise being limit of the tool, people can do pretty much anything on photoshop but it’s not recommended by me as if you can achieve the same results in another tool built for a specific purpose and save time, prefer another tool — like a logo design for an illustrator

What is the illustrator for?
✅ Basically anything vector
✅ Logo design, presentation slides, ebooks, etc. — people use it for whatever
✅ I will recommend adobe InDesign for multipage document design

Any alternatives to the adobe suite?
1. Figma
2. Sketch
3. Affinity designer, publisher, photo
4. Canva

What’s the difference between vector and raster though? why should I use illustrator for vector graphics? why not use photoshop for logo design?

A comparison of a vector image versus a raster image. Notice how the vector image on the left is made up of points and lines and appears smooth. Vector graphics are digital art that is rendered by a computer using a mathematical formula. Raster images are made up of tiny pixels, making them resolution-dependent and best used for creating photos. This means that if you scale a vector image, it will maintain a smooth, un-pixelated appearance, whereas a raster image will become pixelated. Photo by DINFOS PAVILION

4. Notion

Notion website — Hero section

Why is the notion here?
It is not a design tool, I know. It’s a super-baby of MS Word, MS Excel & more.

Notion can be anything you want, help you do anything. Here are some things you will do as a designer in notion:

1. Manage contracts and proposals
2. use it as a CRM
3. use it for content management
4. track finances
5. create and share invoices if need be
6. create websites using super.so
7. create mega databases for storing information
8. manage client processes and onboarding
9. project management
10. save design systems and design assets

5. Creativity and Process

It’s not a tool — I know, but these are the main ingredients you will need. Tools and their usage and the results which can be achieved are mainly dependent on these things.

I have created a logo, website, an app, an ebook, a presentation, live workshop using just Figma so when I say creativity and skill are the limits like everyone, I am not joking my friend.

Start creating🚀

Remember creativity doesn’t come whenever you need it,

Creativity comes to you due to your systems and habits which are part of having and developing a process of starting from nowhere to reaching a specific result every time that works for you even when you feel like you’re not creative enough today to do some creative work. Start being consistent and more aware of habits that make you more creative.

Harsh Makwana | theharshmak

About me:

I’m Harsh Makwana, a brand and web designer from India.
To contact me, email: theharshmak@gmail.com
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