Design Resources

By:

Ann Wood

on 1/16/2019

Thanks to some incredible resources out there, our design team has more time to dedicate to actually designing. There are tons of resources available, from Sketch plugins to entire wireframing programs. Many of these tools have become an invaluable part of our process, and have allowed us to up the quality of our work.

Ann

I’m definitely a fan of Adobe CC Libraries. You can save colors, type styles, graphics, and smaller photos to one place, then share the library with others. The extension pops up in all Adobe programs so they’re immediately accessible. It makes collaboration and consistency so much easier with multiple people.

Adobe Capture is also an incredible resource. You can take photos of anything and the app vectorizes the whole photo, and syncs it with CC Libraries for use throughout Adobe programs. It saves so much time from tracing illustrations and hand lettering in Illustrator. The app can also scan similar fonts on Adobe Fonts from any photo with text, pull color palettes and create patterns and brushes from photos, and it can even pull textures from photos to use in Adobe Dimension for mockups. Everything syncs up through CC Libraries, so it’s accessible everywhere. This app is free on the app store with a CC seat–I highly recommend!

Emily

The biggest design resources for me at the moment come in the form of education. The internet is full of inexpensive or free resources to help you with all of your design challenges. Currently, my top two resources are Udemy and Interaction Design Foundation. Udemy is an online learning platform that provides graphic design courses as well as game design, animation, and UX design (to name a few). They frequently run amazing discounts on their courses, up to 90% off. The courses are available to you anytime and you can take them at your own pace.

IDF is an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide accessible interaction design education to the masses. You can get a membership for $13/month, or you can opt out of that and read their 43-chapter encyclopedia of interaction design for free. These in-depth chapters discuss the theories, processes, and branches of interaction. As a person who is starting her UX design career, these two are must-haves.

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