11 Essential Web & Graphic Designs tools to use in 2022

An experiment conducted at Carleton University, Canada concluded that web designers have 50 milliseconds to create a solid first impression or they will risk losing the prospect.

People do judge a book by its cover and that’s why covers are there in the first place. In the age of the internet where plenty of options are available to your target audience and attention spans are getting shorter, it is important to get your cover right.

The importance of a well-designed website cannot be overstated. This is why hiring graphic designers is considered one of the best investments for businesses that get their customers online through graphic design.

In this article, we have listed 11 essential web and graphic design tools that will help you attract and convert your prospects in 2022.

1. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is so popular that it is now a verb. “That looks unreal, must be photoshopped”. That statement alone shows the range of applications of Adobe Photoshop. It lets you do pretty much anything, including editing tones and hues in critical areas of the image.

Preferred by beginners and professionals all over the world, if you can visualize it, you can create it using Photoshop. However, it does have a learning curve, and mastering the tool could take between a few weeks to months.

The truth is, there are no limits with Adobe Photoshop, and with it, you can also get access to Adobe Creative Cloud which contains many more features such as cross-device support.

It starts at $ 20.99/ month.

2. Illustrator

Also known as Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is known for its speed and ease of use helping professional graphic and web designers, as well as artists, create designs. It is also quite helpful in the ideation phase of a digital project.

It works on any platform, generates lightweight files, and is extremely scalable. Adobe continues to roll out new features such as variable fonts, 2D/3D graphics manipulation, stability enhancements, etc., to keep improving with time.

It starts at $ 20.99/ month.

3. Filestage

The COVID-19 pandemic made everyone realize that working from remote locations is possible which made web and graphics design teams hybrid, to say the least. This posed a challenge with collaboration as popping into your colleague’s workspace to look at a wireframe is not possible.

Reviewing design elements involve long email chains and boring screen-sharing calls. This made the review cycles long and tedious. Consequently, the quality of work remained the same, at the best, while teams lost valuable time.

Filestage offers an innovative solution for that. You can collaborate with designers, managers, clients, and stakeholders asynchronously from remote locations while sharing feedback. This not only saves time but also shortens the review process by huge margins.

It starts at €19/seat/month.

4. Desygner

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Desygner is a SaaS design tool that is loved by professionals with or without a design background. It is easy to learn and comes with thousands of templates for various use cases which will help you design and publish creatives within minutes.

It also features a simple dashboard, social share options, royalty-free images, icons, shapes, brand library, designer fonts, an in-built PDF editor, and more to help you get the most out of its drag-and-drop interface. 

It has a free forever plan which is suitable for growing brands.

5. Proofhub

 

Proofhub solves another problem for designers: streamlining the entire process. From ideation of a creative to publication of the same in the appropriate channel, there are multiple tasks, processes, and people involved.

Managing tasks, ensuring the processes are completed, and assigning responsibilities accurately becomes challenging when multiple design projects are going in parallel. Apart from taking care of all of that, Proofhub also helps in design review and integrates with existing tech stacks easily.

Proofhub is a great solution for fully functioning designing teams who want to get their process streamlined. Another benefit is that it doesn’t charge on the basis of the number of users, making it budget-friendly as well.

It starts at $ 45/month.

6. Fotor

Fotor is a cloud-based photo editing app that has evolved to fulfill other graphic designing needs of its users. Beautifying images, adding effects on them, resizing them, etc., can be done within minutes with Fotor’s simple interface.

When it comes to graphic designing, it offers plenty of templates, fonts, and stock images to choose from. It is enough if you want to design social media posts, banners, and static images for your brand.

It is available for free on all devices making it a great solution for solopreneurs.

7. Logaster

Logaster is a logo designing solution for brands or small projects. You can design logos for designs, business cards, letterheads, favicons, and more. They have successfully helped over 15 million brands build their unique identity through design.

Their solution is pretty simple to use and will help you build and retain your uniform brand identity across all platforms.

It starts at $ 5.99/month.

8. Mockplus

Mockplus is a prototyping tool that brings designers, product managers, and programmers to one place to make collaboration easier. Its drag and drops workflow builder helps team members conceptualize design paths for faster delivery of creatives.

Apart from making co-designing easy, it also provides templates, fonts, and stock resources that will make your work easier. This helps design teams build, share, get feedback, and iterate upon wireframes and prototypes while developing a product.

It starts at $ 59/year per user but you can buy a perpetual license at $ 199 as well.

9. Webflow

Webflow is a low-code site designing solution suitable for brands who want to launch their sites quickly. Its graphical drag and drop builder makes the process of web designing quite simple even for beginners.

It comes with tons of free templates and creatives that will help you launch your website fast. Furthermore, you can export and modify HTML/CSS tags as per your requirements.

It starts at $ 12/year if you want to have your custom domain. If you are just starting out, its basic plan is for free.

10. Coolors

Finalizing a color scheme is more challenging than it sounds. There are a lot of options and you will have to stick with one permanently as it becomes your brand identity. This is where Coolors comes in.

You can create multiple color palettes side by side that will help you compare and contrast easily and choose the one that relays your brand’s message effectively.

It offers a free forever plan.

11. Canva

Last but not least.

We cannot complete our list of must-have web and graphic design tools without mentioning Canva. Canva is a jack of all trades. It offers millions of templates, logos, icons, illustrations, stock images, videos, and sounds.

Apart from the easy-to-use drag-and-drop multimedia designing interface, its collaborative feature makes the review and approval process fast. If you are just starting out, perhaps Canva will be the best fit for you.

It offers a free forever plan.

We hope that the tools provided in this listicle will help you create better designs faster with your team that will improve your brand image.