Whatever we see today in the world of technology and amazing gadgets, online sphere is the result of the hard work of designers and developers. No matter how professional they are, they at times get stuck and seek help in the form of resources.
It not just the developers that need useful resources to handle different type of tasks of various levels of difficulties. Even designers look for the smart tools. One very good reason to make optimum use of these resources is working the smart way as this cuts down on extra time and effort that could otherwise be used for some other productive work where resources can’t be of help.
The year that has passed by gave us some really cool, useful resources like tools, apps and websites. Days back we came up with the list of The Best Tools for Developers, 2014. As the title reads, the tools were carefully handpicked for developers to make optimum use of and apply where ever needed. Making their pick was the only thing that had to be done.
Today, we focused entirely on designers. Yes, you read it correct, we have prepared a compilation of the best tools for the designers 2014 to use them wherever the need arises. How about checking them out and making your pick? Sit back and scroll down!
1. Red Pen
Just drag and drop your design in this website and get expert feedback from various designers across the world.
2. Canvas
Want to show animations in your iOS app? Canvas will help you do so and that too without even a single line of code. Pretty interesting, Eh?
3. The Secret Handshake
There are a few websites that help student designers learn about the business. This website will help student designers to get the insight about designing field, honest answers and much more that will help them to grow their business in future.
4. Gyroscope
This app will help you create a personal website doing things you do online in a very beautiful style. The app is very neat and visually appealing. You can sign up for early access.
5. Typepick
Typepick is a online order page builder that helps designers even if they don’t know a single line of code.
6. PaymentFont
Are you opening a new e-commerce site or looking for payment icons, PaymentFont is a webfont that contains all main payment channels and methods and you can download it for free.
7. Use your Interface
This one is an online library that showcases transitional interface and interaction design patters to help UI designers understand more about the new patterns and get inspired.
8. Designers:Watch
This is a great website that has a database of carefully handpicked documentaries that is a must-see for any designer and artists.
9. The Setup / Interviews
A great website that publishes interviews from professionals doing good in various fields like designing, development, blogging and more. You can use this website to learn how they become successful and get inspired.
10. Mondrian
Mondrian is a free, fast, easy to use web-based vector graphics web app.
11. Capptivate.co
Capptivate is a web and iOS app that showcase latest iOS UI animations.
12. Give ‘n’ Go
There are many awesome Dribbble shots published every week and this website showcases a curated gallery that will be reworked as interactive CodePen pens.
13. Typewolf
14. Framebench
Framebench is a online collaboration tool that helps you get feedback real time on images, PDF and more.
15. UX Project Checklist
Creating a new design project, you should check out this website that help designers find out all UX considerations that will help them to create a great app or website.
16. Elastic SVG Elements
This is a website that shows some demos showcasing elastic effects with SVG shape animations.
17. I Love Ligatures
This is a Tumblr blog who showcases beautiful typography that will help you get inspiration.
18. Pantone’s Color of the Year 2015
If you are wondering that which color is chosen as Pantone’s color of the year 2015, you can check the website and other aspects regarding the color.
19. Origami
Origami is a free design prototyping toolkit for Quartz Composer.
20. Tindddle
This is a website where you will sign in with your Dribbble account and it will help you find great work on Dribbble.
21. Four Shadows Demo
A beautiful demo page that changes the direction of shadow based on direction of ‘hour hand’ on an analog clock.
22. Color Thief
There are many times when you see an image and want to use colors i your designs. Well, this tool helps you to grab color palette of any image you throw at it.
23. SVG Loaders
A collection of beautiful and colorful SVG loaders that you can download for free and use it on your mobile apps or websites.
24. The State of Web Type
This is a huge up-to-date database on typographic features on the web.
25. Clapper
Clapper is a useful website where you’ll find an extensible media player for the web.
26. Ink
Ink is a Photoshop documentor plugin that you can download for free if you are using Photoshop CC or CS6.
27. TypeQuest
TypeQuest is an awesome website that helps graphic designers and web designers to understand OpenType features and its powers.
28. UXBullshit
A website that will bring your smile to your face or make you think about UX theories that many made. You will various quotes on the UX that you can tweet or find another one.
29. Materialup
Google’s Material Design is getting famous for various reasons, if you too love it, check out this website that is a curated gallery of daily Material Design inspiration that is categorized into three categories : websites, mobile apps and concepts.
30. Guide to Usability Testing : A Free Ebook
This one is a free ebook by UXPin that covers tips and various analysis based on 30 different usability methods. It also includes advices from experts like Jakob Neilsen, Jared Spool, etc.
31. uiGIFs
This website is a gallery of user interfaces that is showcased in the form of animated GIFs. You can submit your UI if you created one or subscribe to the newsletter to get new user interface inspiration every Monday.
32. Monodraw
This is a fun but powerful tool that is available for MAC called Monodraw which is an ASCII art editor that will help you create text-based diagrams, layouts, flow charts and more.
33. Flat Shadow Generator
A useful tool that will help designers to include flat shadow in choice of your icons that you can later download for free.
34. Size Marks
A Photoshop script that is helpful for web designers and front-end engineers.
35. ColorRun
ColorRun is a simple color game in which you have to find the lighter of two colors. You can play it on web or download it on your iPhone or Android phone.
36. Web UI Best Practices : A Free Ebook
Another free book from UXPin that will help you learn about best Web UI practices on experts. This is an ebook that covers all subjects related to UI in great detail.
37. Targeted.io
A great tool for you that helps designers to test email designs across 40 email clients before sending them.
38. ZorroSVG
ZorroSVG is a great tool that helps users to create a transparent PNG file image file in just the size of JPEG so no more bulky image size.
39. Fontspiration
This is a mobile application that help designers to find typography related inspiration. Other than this, you can also create your own typographic designs using various fonts and built-in animations on your mobile. Getting right font combinaton is not easy so you can check our collection of 9 awesome tools to find perfect font combinations.
40. FormKeep
This is a perfect tool for designers and developers that helps you to generate a URL for your form’s end.
41. ToolsTools.Tools
This is a minimal game that designers would love to play in their free time.
42. Dedesign the Web 2
Another game for designers that help them to test their knowledge and find the sites based on their wireframes. We have also published an article that listed best free wireframing tools for designers.
43. Gerstnerizer
A tool for designers that help them to create patterns using variety of dot grids, square grids, triangle grids and hexagon grids.
44. Font Family Reunion
This website shows that which local font is compatible across major platforms.
45. JotForm Form Designer
This is a great tool that will help designers to create beautiful forms that are responsive, fully customizable, come with beautiful fonts and color schemes and ready to use styles.
46. Photoshop Simulator
Use Photoshop and want to get ride of unwanted programs that comes with Photoshop. You can try this tool for free that helps you not to download unwanted programs installed with Photoshop.
47. Adobe Color CC
A useful mobile app for iPhone users from Adobe that help designers to generate new color schemes whenever you are feeling inspired.
48. CSS Color Chart
This is a website that showcase CSS namespace colors in rainbow order.
49. Gridlover
Another free tool that will allow designers to generate a typographic system.
50. TrackDuck
A visual freedback tool that is visually appealing and help designers to get feedback on their design projects. There are many other tools like that, check out our article showcasing 10 best feedback tools for designers.
51. BeeFree
Launched in 2014, this one is an awesome tool for those who design emails. This is a drag-n-drop editor that help users to create responsive emails.
52. Fifty Three
Fifty Three is a website where you can meet with other creative people from all over the world, learn, sketch, play, design, brainstorm and much more.
53. Dimensions
Dimensions is a simple Chrome extension that helps designers to to measure screen dimensions.
54. Palette Town
Palette Town is a useful tool for designers that help them to know colors of any image you drag into this website
55. UILang
UILang is a programming language for web designers that helps them to build interfaces with pop overs, galleries, tabs, overlayes, etc.
56. Patternbolt
This website collects beautiful SVG pattern background that you can download in a single CSS or SCSS file.
57. SVG Circus
Another SVG related tool help users to create awesome SVG loaders, spinners and other looped animations within few seconds.
58. Gravit
Gravit is a new design tool that you can download to design various things in a fun and new way with powerful built-in design tools.
59. Lipsum.pro
Lipsom.pro is one of the fastest lorem ipsum text generator available.
60. Visual Designers Checklist for the Web
A checklist for visual designers that will help them to work in a productive manner and make sure they don’t forget anything related to their design project.
61. Triangly
Triangly is a useful application for designers who can create their beautiful portfolio using this tool and get new business.
62. YouiDraw
YouiDraw is an online vector graphic tool that needed no download and installing on your computer. A perfect Illustrator alternative that you can use for free.
63. Readymag
ReadyMag is a perfect tool for those who want to create online publications like presentations, magazines, portfolios and more.
64. Typ.io
A perfect tool for those who are just fanatics about typography and wants to know every font used in beautiful websites to get inspiration.
65. UXPorn
Are you a UX designer? If yes, you can check this website that is a gallery of wireframe templates, UI design patterns and more.
66. Stylify Me
Want to know the style guide of any website? Just type the URL into the field and you’ll get to know everything that you can download for further review.
67. Please.Js
Another color tool that will help designers to discover a random beautiful color that you might use in your next design projects.
68. Fontface Ninja
Fontface Ninja is an awesome tool that will help you find fonts any website is used. You can bookmark it or download it as a Chrome or Safari extension.
69. Notification Style Inspiration
This is a website that provides inspiration for those who are looking for various notification styles UI.
70. Affinity Designer
This is a professional graphic design software for MAX which you can use as an Illustrator alternative.
71. Social Good Ipsum
Another lorem ipsum text generator for designers in which you can just type, how many words you need and this tool will generate it in milliseconds.
72. Morphi
Morphi is a mobile 3D mobile and printing app that is available for iPhone, iPad and iPad mini. Soon, it will be available for Android users in which you can easily create functional products and wearables.
73. Coleure
A tool made by Rolando Murillo and Giorgio Leveoni that is a color picker and inspired by Pantone.
74. Pop
Pop is an awesome iOS and Android app that help users to transform pen+paper ideas into a real working prototype.
75. Responsive Logos
A tool that shows some scalable logos and how they do well in different screen sizes.
76. Find Guidelines on The Web
This website is a library of brand guidelines of many renowed companies such as Mozilla, Reddit, Twitter and more.
77. Odyssey
A nice tool for journalists, designers who wants to create interactive stories.
78. Tavern
Tavern is an online portal where product designers come and interact about their products, share their ideas and get feedback.
79. Webflow
An awesome tool that is made for designers who don’t want to code. This tool will help them to create beautiful interactions and animations without writing a single line of code.
80. Gridzzly
Want to create your own grid paper? Check out this tool that will help you to create one with few clicks.
81. Kaku
An awesome plugin that can ease the work of Photoshop users. This is a Adobe Photoshop plugin that helps users translate text layers into any language of your choice instantly.
82. Leaving Pixels Behind
A Google Slideshow that is a vector workflow for designers. It helps designers to understand more about vector design.
83. Captain Icon
Captain Icon, captain of all icon sets. This website offers 350 free vector icons to download in various sizes and file formats.
84. Iconion
This tool will allow you create icons. This means it will allow designers to convert any icon font into beautiful looking PNG icons.
That’s all for now. The year that we have stepped into is expected to surprise us with more and more cool, helpful stuff. To keep yourself posted, check out our blog daily or stay connected through the social networking sites.