Best Web Design Software (2019)
So what should you use for the next web design project that you’re working on? Let’s review that? Hey everybody what’s up and welcome to another segment of tools of the trade where I cover the tools that I use to do my work as a freelance designer and this time I want to talk about the tools that I use when I’m designing website there’s. So many tools, let me get to the bottom right – there’s Photoshop, Illustrator, sketch XD envision studio, are all the software around which one should you use, which one is the best for web design.
Truth is bottom line is, it depends. It depends on your project. I work with different software depending on different circumstances, and I want to show you a few of the recent project that I’ve been working on and what software I used for each project. So, let’s get started with the latest project that I’ve been working on. It’s this website for clients, that’s called britain tex, and basically this was designed in photoshop.
Now, if you’re asking yourself, why would I design a website in Photoshop when there are other tools which are more ideal for web design in terms of responsive’ti in terms of acid generation? Well and we’ll cover them later? But the reason is that this website includes a lot of details like, as you can see here, those little textures. Those little dotted patterns, those kind of like unique shadows which are not basically just simple drop shadows and when you’re doing when you’re trying to do stuff.
Like that, which is a little bit more like not a simple vector or flat layout for your website and when you have image editing. So in this case we had a little bit of kind of like working on the colors. For this article and doing kind of overlays on top of that, so when you have that kind of thing where you need to work with images where you need to create custom, shadows or custom, textures, you’re always going to have to work within Photoshop, because that’s the Best tool for image editing now you could jump into any other tool like take the image from here and then place it in Photoshop, take the image from Photoshop or place it in sketch or or figma or whatever, but that’s a lot of jumping around and then, If you want to tweak stuff, that might not be the best productive thing, that’s possible.
So in this case we have used Photoshop. Now that being said, Photoshop does have some cons in terms of web design. So, first of all the way that you generate assets here by clicking on them – let’s let’s say I want to generate an assets from this and then doing expert without quick expertise. Png, I don’t even know what the settings for that is. This might not be what I want, so I’m usually doing expert as and then by the time that it takes to load this and set all these up so, and you see it did not even chose what I wanted it to expert so expert in assets here On Photoshop not ideal takes a little bit more time.
This software was not designed for web design, so it’s not responsive and let’s go into sketch, for example, and I’ll show you some of the new things that are happening much faster and much easier when you’re doing web design in software. That was built specifically for screen design and not for general image editing. So again, this is Photoshop and the use case for using Photoshop for web design is when you need heavy image, editing or a custom image.
Work pattern work that type of stuff. Let’s jump into sketch so sketch. This is a website that I didn’t sketch, maybe even two years ago, so this website uses a little illustration, but it’s all vector right. Everything here is vector shapes, so it’s really fast. Really. You know you can touch everything here. If you want to expert this, it’s basically just a button select. You know your expert in you can see all the assets precess from here.
So this is one click to export. It’s really really fun. If you want to change things around for responsiveness, so in sketch and most other new software for screen design, you can set up how you want the resizing. You know element to be, which is very, very helpful. If you’re going to design the desktop screen, then then you’re going to make sure that the responsiveness of the website and you’re going to design responsive.
You know copies. So you can see how this looks on mobile. This happens really really much faster with software like sketch, which is again, it’s super super fast, so I would say that, for anything which is basically flat or vector based, you would want to work with something like sketch, which is just the fastest way. The most seamless way to work so that is why, when I use sketch now recent website that I also did – and I used figma for it so figma, you might say that it’s more or less like sketch right, it’s ideal for you know flat website.
I would say flat website this website specifically had images, but it did not require any custom image editing. So we have this kind of like red overlay on top of the website, but, as you can see, I could have done that here with you know a red overlay and kind of set the blending mode for it to be multiplied. So this is rather simple, but the reason to use figma right so figma, the main difference is figma, is cloud-based, which means that it’s good for collaboration.
So on this website I was working with multiple people and the clients, and I wanted them to be able to edit the text, and so I, when I was working on em figma, it’s very very collaboratively. You can work on it online, much like a Google Doc. So that’s the use case when I use figma the my downside for working with figma in this case, because it’s cloud-based and then because in this website it’s not just factory based.
It’s also image and the images were heavy. It took a little bit to load. So it worked slower than I would like it to work and we’re probably slower than it would work in sketch just to load and open the files and play around with them. So, but but the the option to collaborate, which was the the main thing that I needed in this case. That’s why I use figma so again, figma very collaboratively. It works in the cloud works on all platforms.
You can design in your browser. Also, I think you can get started on free with that, so, unlike sketch, which you have to purchase a yearly yearly, something for its subscription or something buy off. Of course you have to pay for Photoshop as well, but I just assumed that all creatives have the Creative Cloud subscription. If that’s not the case, then obviously you might want to consider something like figma, which you can use actually for free works on both platform, neck and PC.
So that might be something that’s very, very useful for you. Another option is the Adobe XD, and this is a website for mobile masterclass, which was designed by another designer actually, which chose to work with Adobe XD and I’ve literally never worked with Adobe XD myself. But I’ve played around with this, and I actually have to say that I like this. I might even consider doing my next web design project with Adobe XD if it does not require collaboration like figma, because interface wise.
It’s really fast. The integration with Photoshop and jumping back and forth from Photoshop or illustrator, it’s really fast. It has more or less the same features, and so that might be for somebody who already has the Adobe Creative Cloud and is paying for Photoshop. Then this comes for free. So obviously might be another benefit for you to choose Adobe XD, but other than that. It’s pretty similar.
I would say it’s pretty similar to sketch and figma as well in terms of the features, and it has a really cool thing are called auto animate, which allows you to do cool animation. But I would say that’s more of a feature when you’re designing apps and you need to show interactions in terms of designing pages for web design. Usually what you wouldn’t necessarily have to use auto animate, just to explain things or you wouldn’t have to use that.
I mean if you end up developing this in web flow, which is what I use to develop, no matter what software I design and I always develop it myself and web. You can do the animations right in web flow yourself, and so there wouldn’t be much value into prototyping. The animations here with Adobe XD, but this interface of assets here in Adobe XD, is pretty cool and Styles panel. So this is another great alternative to use in terms of illustrations.
So in this case in those those illustrations, then I would probably get started with the illustration. I wouldn’t use a sketch itself to do the illustration. I would probably use Adobe Illustrator to do the illustration themselves and also logo design, these type of stuff, I’m not using the one of those softwares one of like sketch, XD or or envisions. Do your figma to do illustration work just because illustrator has a much more powerful.
You know illustration engine. You can do much more complex thing there and have a much more control, so usually the illustrations, I’m doing them within illustrator, then bringing them here. As you can see here, some of the parts of the illustration got some shadows, and so these type of things were added kind of like retouched here within sketch, but the basic illustrations are made within illustrator, where it’s ideal for illustration.
Anyway, we’d love to hear what you guys are working on at this year in 2019. What are the best tools that you are using when you’re doing your web design? Let me know in the comments below, if you’re not subscribed here, and you want to learn more about web design being a freelance designer make sure that you’re subscribed to the blog and I’ll see you in the next article.
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