The Most Useful Tools for Design & Creative Jobs

Whether you're a designer, illustrator, animator, or any other type of creative professional, having the right tools at your fingertips can make all the difference in streamlining your workflow, enabling creativity, and producing amazing results. With so many options out there, it can be tough to determine which apps and services deserve a spot in your creative toolkit.

To help you build the ultimate creative toolbox, we've put together this comprehensive guide to the most useful tools for design and creative jobs. From collaboration and project management to graphics, prototyping and more, we'll cover the must-have apps and web services that will supercharge your creative career.

Project Management & Collaboration

Effective project management and seamless collaborationwith teammates are essential for successfully tackling creative endeavors.These tools help you stay organized, communicate clearly, manage workflow, anddeliver projects on time.

Asana

Asana is one of the most popular project managementplatforms, thanks to its simple and intuitive interface. It's flexible enoughto plan projects large and small and gives you a bird's-eye view of all tasksand deadlines. Robust collaboration features allow you to assign tasks, commentand have discussions.

Trello

For Kanban-style project management, Trello is a topchoice. Its drag-and-drop board makes it easy to visualize workflows and movetasks through different stages. Flexible cards allow you to add descriptions,checklists, attachments, comments and more.

Slack

When it comes to team communication, Slack is a must-have.Integrations with a wide range of apps let you bring project conversations right into Slack. Features like threaded messaging, video calls and screen sharing facilitate collaboration.

InVision

InVision allows teams to collaborate on design projects allin one place. View and annotate prototypes, facilitate design reviews, collect feedback, and monitor development from design to completion.

Dropbox Paper

For collaborative writing and brainstorming, Dropbox Paperis an ideal tool. Work with your team to co-author documents, add images and embeds, leave comments and @mention colleagues to get their attention.

Milanote

Milanote is like a virtual bulletin board for brainstorming and organising creative projects. With customisable boards, notes, images and more, it's a beautifully designed tool for collaborating across teams and disciplines.

Graphic Design

From creating graphics, manipulating images, and designing visual content, these graphic design apps and web services will be your new best friends.

Canva

With its huge library of templates, fonts, images, and illustrations, Canva makes graphic design quick and easy for non-designers and professionals alike. Design social media posts, presentations, infographics, posters, reports and more.

Adobe Creative Cloud

For professional graphic design, Adobe Creative Cloud is an essential investment. It includes flagship apps like Photoshop, Illustrator,InDesign, and Adobe XD. Additional apps expand your creative capabilities for photography, video, animation and more.

Figma

Amazing for collaborating on interface and graphic design projects, Figma allows multiple designers to work within a file in real-time.Quickly create designs with its vector graphics and typography tools.

Vectr

For simple vector graphics and illustrations, Vectr is a great free web and desktop tool. With an intuitive UI, it makes it easy tocreate gradations, layers, cross-platform styles and more.

remove.bg

If you ever need to quickly remove image backgrounds, remove.bg does it with just a couple clicks for free. It works with screenshots, product images, ecommerce photography and more.

Pablo by Buffer

Pablo by Buffer offers easy-to-use design for social media. Customize a wide range of templates for Instagram posts, Twitter headers,YouTube thumbnails, social ads and more.

Visme

For creating infographics, presentations, banners, and other visual content quickly, Visme offers tons of customizable templates and easy drag-and-drop tools.

Prototyping & Wire-framing

Crafting prototypes and wireframes of websites, mobile apps and other digital products is a key part of creating intuitive user experiences. These tools allow you to bring those designs to life.

Figma

In addition to graphic design, Figma doubles as a powerful prototyping tool. Quickly wireframe and create clickable prototypes, preview them on mobile devices, and keep them synced with interactive components.

Adobe XD

Xd is Adobe's UI/UX design platform for designing wireframes as well as interactive prototypes. Easily transition between wire framing and high-fidelity prototyping with its wide range of responsive design tools.

InVision Studio

Transform your static designs into animated, interactive prototypes with InVision Studio. Transition seamlessly between frames and art boards to create the ultimate interactive wireframes and prototypes.

Marvel

For simple mobile app prototyping, Marvel makes it fast and frictionless. Design your screens, connect them together with hotspots, and preview your prototype on mobile. Syncs seamlessly with tools like Sketch.

UXPin

Robust prototyping and wire framing tools for web, mobile and more. Quickly create wireframes, transition to prototypes, preview on mobile and sync to animated components. Collaborate and gather feedback right on the platform.

Proto.io

Interactive prototyping for web and mobile apps. Proto.io makes it easy to communicate your vision. Animate transitions between screens and create elegant prototypes.

Animation

Bringing movement and interactivity to user experiences requires animation tools that empower imagination. These apps and services provide creative animation capabilities.

Adobe After Effects

As the industry standard animation and compositing software, After Effects provides endless creative possibilities. Add motion graphics, visual effects, animated characters and more.

CrazyTalk Animator

CrazyTalk Animator 3 makes 2D character animation accessible to all. Choose facial templates, automatic lip sync, pre-setmotions, and moods to bring characters to life.

Animaker

For quick and easy animated videos and presentations, Animaker provides tons of templates. Select characters, backgrounds, props and more to create customized animations in minutes.

Adobe Animate

Design interactive vector animations for games, apps, cartoons and more with Animate. Animate artwork in real-time with intuitive drawing tools and libraries of content.

Blender

Open-source 3D creation platform with truly impressive animation capabilities. Complex 3D animations and motion graphics are possible with Blender's powerful toolset.

Audio & Video

Video is an incredibly powerful creative medium, and polished audio elevates all types of content. These are the best apps and services for audio and video creators.

Adobe Premiere Pro

As the industry leading video editing software, PremierePro provides professionals with high-end video production capabilities.Expertly edit footage with VFX, color correction and audio tools.

DaVinci Resolve

High-quality video editing, color correction, visual effects, and audio post production all in one software. An excellent pro-level toolset for video production.

Descript

Revolutionise how you edit audio and podcasts with Descriptors powerful tools. Edit audio by editing text transcripts. Distribute your podcast to all major platforms.

Headliner

Headliner makes it easy for anyone to create shareable videos. Automagically turn any audio into animated video content. Great for podcast promotion.

Animatron

Quickly create basic animated videos with Animatron'sexpansive media library and templates. Great for simple video ads, explainers, instructions and more.

Biteable

Make engaging videos in minutes with Biteable's library of professionally animated templates. Easily customize with your own branding, content, and messaging.

Stock Photos, Icons &Illustrations

Quality visual content can make or break designs and creative projects. These sites offer incredible stock photos, icons, and illustrations to elevate your work.

Unsplash

User-submitted stock photography you can use completely free. All photos are high resolution and professional quality.

Pexels

Another great option for completely free stock photos and videos. Submit your own visual content as well.

Noun Project

Massive library of SVG icons that can be customised to fit any project. Affordable subscriptions for frequent usage.

Storyset

Beautifully designed illustrations for presentations, social media, apps, websites and more. Categorised by theme to find the perfect one.

Freepik

Discover free vectors, stock photos, PSD templates and icons. Countless options for free high-quality visual content.

Generative.photos

Crazy AI-generated stock photos. Completely unique and free alternative for finding interesting images.

Additional Tools

And a few more useful services and apps to consider adding to your creative toolkit:

• Grammarly: Error-free writing for social media posts, emails, scripts and more.
• Hemingway Editor: Make writing bold and clear with Hemingway's distraction-free editor.
• Unfold: Create visually engaging Instagram Stories and posts with a huge range of templates.
• Remove Image Background: AI-powered background remover for ecommerce product images and other photos.
• Canva Print: Turn any design into a real printed product with Canva's printshop integration.
• Wave: Free audio editing software for sound design, music production and more.
• Lucidchart: Powerful diagramming and visualisation software for flowcharts, org charts, user flows and much more.
• MindNode: Simple mind mapping and brainstorming made it elegant. Visually organize ideas on Mac, iOS, and the web.
• Todoist: Task management for creatives. Organize projects and to-dos, collaborate with teams, and maintain focus.
• Paste: A clipboard manager for Mac that allows you to quickly access your clipboard history.
• PicMonkey: Intuitive photo editing and effects for bloggers, social media pros and small businesses.
• CommentSold: Build your online store right on Instagram and Facebook. Sell products you post directly through comments.

Find Your Next CreativeRemote Job at RemoteHub

Armed with these amazing tools, you'll be ready to take your creative career to new heights! For designers, animators, video graphers and other creative professionals, remote work provides incredible opportunities and freedom.

If you're looking to land an amazing remote design or creative job, join RemoteHub. As a top remotejob board, RemoteHub connects thousands of professionals like you with remote opportunities at fast-growing companies around the world.

Create your free RemoteHub profile to get matched with relevant remote design and creative jobs for you. Browse design, animation, product design, UI/UX and tons of other creative job categories to find your perfect remote role. Plus, gain access to RemoteHub's community, resources, and news to help you succeed in your remote career.

Discover an incredible creative job opportunity for you atRemoteHub today!

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