Tools for web design

If you are a web designer, you should definitely check the web design tools that are listed in this article. I guarantee that they will improve your life, helping you save time and become a better professional.

Sometimes, I start designing a site by creating its logo. And the good news is that you don't have to be a talented graphics artist these days! No, sir! There are several logo designing tools out there, and some of them are able to produce fantastic content right off the bat!

Take Logotype Maker, for example. It's a tool that will help you generate lots of random logos within minutes. Of course, once you have discovered a logo idea that looks great, you should tweak it manually until it is perfect.

Don't let the fact that you can generate hundreds of high quality logos that fast stay in your way! Always do your best to create 100% polished logos.

When it comes to typography, you can always use the high quality, constantly growing Google Fonts library. Of course, if you feel like designing your own font (but why would you do that?) you can always try Type light, a freeware, open type font editor.

Sometimes you will want to play with various fonts, until you find one that matches your design perfectly. If this is the case, the 1001 Fonts website (now including close to 9,000 fonts, by the way) may be the ideal destination for you.

Let's face it: often times, we are inclined to copy other people's ideas because they are fantastic! This doesn't mean to simply take their designs and reuse them, of course. But maybe you like a particular font that they are using, and you can't find out its name. Sites like What Font Is have been built for people like you and me: you simply upload a bitmap that includes some of the font's letters, and the site will tell you the font name.

What about graphics editors? If you are looking for a free solution, Gimp continues to be the best non-paid tool. Of course, if you want to roll with the best in the industry, there's no better tool than Adobe's Photoshop, which goes beyond web design, allowing you to enhance all the images that will be used for the site, for example.

If you want to create color palettes, there are so many outstanding resources out there, that I don't even know where to start! Take Color Hunt, for example. Simply press the site's "Random" button and you will instantly get access to dozens of high quality color palettes, which should get your creating juices flowing ;)

To quickly test a site prototype, you can try HTML5 UP, which includes a huge collection of high quality html5 + CSS templates. The templates are mobile-ready, and can be easily customized to your liking.

If you need free images for your sites, there are many great options. I have written an article about a few of them here, but if you are looking for commercial quality images, you will need to pay for them. If you are ready to do this, my recommendation is to go to iStock, formerly known as I Stock Photos.