Tools and Software I Use Daily

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Ever since I began freelancing in 2009, I have been reading several articles everyday to gain knowledge about the lifestyles of other fellow designers who were doing work on their own. These articles would cover everything from their daily routine to their design process on a given project. Today, I want to discuss the tools and programs that I use on a daily basis. Some of these are quite popular and are industry standards, while others are lesser-known programs that may interest you.

 

Productivity

Mail (Mail program of choice)

Chrome (Browser of choice, although I use other browsers as well for web testing)

Wunderlist (Organizing and managing daily taks)

Google Calendar (General planning on a weekly/monthly basis)

 

Music

iTunes (For listening to my own library)

Pandora (For discovering new music)

Spotify (For listening to new weekly releases)

 

Design

InDesign (Used for layout such as magazines, books, etc)

Illustrator  (For creating vector imagery)

Photoshop (For manipulating photos)

Coda (Web development program of choice)

Bridge (For making contact sheets)

Acrobat (For viewing work, mainly PDF’s)

 

Utility

WordPress (Content Management System of choice)

1Password (Great application for storing all of your passwords and login information)

Billings (For invoicing)

Little Snapper (Application of choice for taking screenshots)

FontDoc (Application for analyzing several fonts at once in a single window)

FileZilla (FTP transfer client of choice)

TextExpander (Great for reusing common strings of code or text)

Little Ipsum (A fantastic text generator)

 

There you have it! It may surprise you how many programs you actually use in a single day without realizing it. These are all great tools and programs that help me successfully get through the day. If there are a few on here that you are unfamiliar with, I encourage you to try them out.