Every day I get up, have coffee and breakfast, and sit down at my computer for my day’s work. I’m pretty much glued to my screen, and during that 8 (10…12… depends on the day) hour day, I use a large variety of software. Because a large part of the livelihood of the graphic and/or web designer depends on the quality and reliability of the software he/she uses, I thought it would be useful to outline the software I use and consider to be “must-have”. Some I use daily; others I don’t use quite so often, but they’re still worth outlining. Hopefully you find this useful, and hopefully you share other pieces of software you think might help others too!
Some are free; some are not; all are useful.
Caffeine
Caffeine doesn’t let your Mac go to sleep. All you do is click a little coffee cup icon in your top toolbar. Simple, useful and free.
Backblaze
Backblaze is a cloud-based file backup system. For $5 a month, we have unlimited storage that is constantly backed up. After all, having multiple drives backed up in your workspace isn’t going to do anything if your office burns down.
Hit the jump for more must-have design software!
I use Mac’s native Mail client to manage my work email. Pretty straightforward, but can’t leave it out since I use it more than anything.
Adobe Creative Suite
An obvious selection, but one that can’t be left out. Mainly, we use Photoshop for web design and some print; Illustrator for identity/logo design and some print; Dreamweaver for some web development; and Adobe Acrobat Pro for PDFing client files and the like. While expensive, the Creative Suite is truly a must-have for designers.
iTunes
iTunes isn’t really a necessity for designers, but I use it on a daily basis. I like listening to music while I work; what can I say? Plus, there is a plethora of useful design-related podcasts that can be downloaded through iTunes.
WorkTimer
WorkTimer is a dead-simple timer application I use to keep track of how long I’m working on a client project. There are a ton of timers kicking around out there, but this one is free and easy to use. The icon is just horrendous, but that means you can make your own!
Bento
Bento is an organizational tool that integrates well with Mac OSX. I use it as a super-simple project management tool, although to be honest I don’t use it that much or to its full potential. I think soon I’ll need to switch to a better project management tool. Suggestions?
WordPress
Almost all of our client sites, and ours, run using WordPress as a CMS. It’s intuitive, easy for both web designers and clients, and free. There is a huge community behind WordPress, which means great issue tracking and goodies like plugins.
TextMate
TextMate is a beautiful text-editor/development tool for web designers on Mac. It costs $51 for a license, but you can try it for 30 days. Whenever I’m doing any in-depth development, TextMate is my tool of choice (and the tool of choice of many well-known developers in the web design community).
Transmit
A dead-simple FTP client for Mac, I use Transmit nearly every day. $34 for a license; it’s the best I’ve used for Mac so far.
MAMP
MAMP allows you to set up a local server for web development and testing. I use MAMP every time I’m developing for WordPress; it allows me to install WordPress locally, build & test, and then transfer the site to the live host. A must-have for any developer running WordPress or similar (WAMP is the Windows alternative). Free.
Snippley
Hosted on Google Code, Snippley is “a basic text and code organizational tool”. There a bunch of code snippets I reuse on near every project, whether CSS or PHP or something else. Snippley allows me to save & organize these snippets in one space, as opposed to having a bunch of text files floating all over the place. Free.
There you go! After reading through the software I use on a (near) daily basis, what would you suggest? Any alternatives?
For project (and life) management, a friend just recommended the Action Method to me about a week ago. It’s basic, but kind of cool. The only project I’ve got on the go right now is my move to Victoria, but it’s handy to keep track of all the stuff I need to get done.
http://www.actionmethod.com
Thanks Fiona! I’ll check it out.
Caffeine, backblaze and Transmit are all tools that editors and writers (like me) can get behind.
CS5 is still confusing. I use 3, since I never need to use it too heavily.
Hmmm… I wonder what software combos would work best with designers and writers who need to manage workflows together, especially if they cross source their work? Food for thought.
Glad there were some useful ones in there for you writers, Idris (although I imagine you’re already on board with them). We’re actually still on CS4; CS5 came along REALLY fast, and is tough for us to justify the cost.
Yeah, the combo of writing/design can be a pain. InDesign is the standard for print, but due to its cost and learning curve, not everyone has it. This leads to a lot of “Can you design this in Microsoft Word” requests to us, which is a head-smasher. For project management, I know a few people who use BaseCamp and love it.
I am surprised at the exemption of Coda from this list… it is the best coding tool that I have ever used!?
This list is great though, even found a few surprises! Thanks Jeff.
Hey Kory,
I’ve heard of Coda’s awesomeness; to be honest, I haven’t gotten around to buying a license yet as DW and Textmate do the trick for me, for now. Maybe I should just man up and grab a copy.
I use Time Tracker to keep track of client time. It gets a bad review in macupdate but I haven’t noticed any of the issues they complain about — sabotage perhaps???
Has a nice icon and can be controlled from the menu bar (not from within a menu — like where the clock etc is).
I also recommend iStats menu to see when your hard drive is working (you know if you’ve crashed or if your computer is just “thinking” about something) and when there is network transfers going on, graphic display of hard drive space, (among other things).
[...] Must-Have Software for Designers [...]
http://1daylater.com/
I’d recommend 1daylater for time management because its web based. I’m not on a mac so I can’t compare it to “worktracker”. But what I like about 1daylater is they built in expense and receipts. It dual-purposed for me because I can track my time spent with clients. But I can also expense my mileage and lunches when I meet with clients.
[...] Must-Have Software for Designers [...]
Thanks – I’ll check it out!