Here’s a bunch of tools I like to use and maybe random things I’ve found helpful over the years!
Tools
Fuck Adobe, Use -
- Affinity Photo,
- Affinity Designer,
- InkScape,
- Affinity Publisher,
- Cavalry(Motion Graphics),
- Davinci(Video Editing and Compositing),
- Audacity(Basic Audio Editing),
- Figma (UX, UI, Presentations, Design Systems, Prototypes, Ideation and Brainstorming)
- Rive (UI Animations, Micro Animations, Web Animations)
- Framer (Websites)
- Blender (3D)
- Spline (3D on Web)
- GenP (Sub on reddit, Crack Adobe Software)
- File Converter(windows explorer)
- Microsoft PowerToys (Power tools for windows)
- FontBase(Font Manager)
- LM Studio (Run AI models Locally with an easy to use GUI)
- ComfyUI (Run Image Diffusion Models Locally)
- InvokeAI (https://github.com/invoke-ai, Run Image Diffusion with a Easy UI)
Design Inspiration
General Design
- https://trending.design/ (Animation, Branding, Graphic Design, Illustration)
- https://www.unsection.com/ (Web Design)
- https://21st.dev/?tab=components&sort=recommended
Animation
- https://www.designspells.com/ (Micro Interaction)
Typography
Eye candy
- https://typefaces.today/ (Display Fonts)
- https://www.axis-praxis.org/specimens/__DEFAULT__ (Variable Font Tester)
- https://v-fonts.com (Variable Fonts, https://v-fonts.com/fonts/font-face )
- https://hex.xyz/ (Fonts from Hex, https://hex.xyz/assets/styles/fonts.css?2024-06-18
- https://toomuchtype.com/ (really interactive type faces and visualizer)
- https://fontgauntlet.com/?font=%2Fstatic%2Ffonts%2FABCGravityVariable.woff2&family-name=ABC%20Gravity%20Variable(Variable font tester)
Paid stuff
- https://typefaces.pizza/ (Pizza Typefaces, $)
- https://djr.com (DJR Fonts, $)
- https://www.futurefonts.xyz (Future Fonts, $)
- https://type.today/en (Type Today, $)
- https://publictype.works/ (Public Type Works, $)
- https://pangrampangram.com/ (Pangram Pangram $) Free stuff
- https://www.fontconverter.io/en/ (Font Converter)
- https://velvetyne.fr/ (Velvetyne Fonts)
- https://method.ac/ (Typeface Design Practice)
- https://fonts.google.com/ (Duh)
- https://www.fontshare.com/licenses/itf-ffl (good quality free fonts mostly by Indian Type Foundry)
- https://ektype.in/ (High quality Indic Scripts)
Icons
- https://www.isocons.app/ (Isometric Icons)
Design System
- https://www.relume.io/figma-library (Relume)
Components
- https://www.reactbits.dev (React components)
- https://framer.university (Framer Components)
- https://codepen.io (Insane HTML, CSS & JavaScript)
Stock Photos
- https://www.shopify.com/stock-photos (shopify)
- https://unsplash.com/ (Unsplash)
Design Tools
- https://photogradient.com/ (Extract Mesh Gradient from Image)
- https://www.photopea.com/ (Online photoshop basically)
- https://www.shadergradient.co/ (really pretty gradiants for framer, figma and react)
- https://pikimov.com/app/ (motion graphis using browser, locally)
- https://editor.graphite.rs/ (edit vectors using browser, locally)
- https://omniclip.app (Video editor using browser, locally)
- https://www.motionity.app/ (opensource canva)
- https://studio.polotno.com/ (opensource canva 2)
Misc.
Playlists
- https://playlists.design/ (Music Playlists of designers from Lottie files)
- https://www.designsphere.xyz/ (Design Podcasts)
UX
Folders and Files
- Direct folders (makes managing folders easier(copy pasting paths))
- Fluent Search (Super powerful especially has the ability to also show previews, can use tags to search)
- Everything Search (and everything toolbar)
- File Optimiser (Super duper feature rich)
- File Converter (Accesses through file explorer right click)
- Dropshelf (Paid…) (Easy clipboard manager)
- JDownloader (Useful to download files from fitgirl)
- Link shell extension (fixes right click in explorer)
- LocalSend (easy to send files)
- Nilesoft shell(windows rightclick menu)
- Nana zip (7zip but prettier)
- Onion media converter (converts anything)
- Quicklook (explorer preview)
- SoulSeek (HighRez Audio files)
- Teracopy (replaces windows copy-paste)
- BulkCrap Uninstaller
- Explorer Patcher (patches the taskbar and some other file explorer things)
- Wiztree (visualise your files really fkn fast)
Internet
- cloudflare WARP (Hides DNS, Play Valo in insti)
- Open VPN
- https://github.com/tw93/Pake/wiki/Online-Compilation-(used-by-ordinary-users) (run web apps locally using rust)
Music
- Spotube (spotify playlists through youtube)
- Demucus GUI (audio splitter using ML)
- NeuralNote (Audio to MIDI for keyboard)
- Beatconnect (socialmedia DAW)
- Mixxx(DJ software for noobs)
- MuseScore (Transcribe music to sheet music)
- Ultimate Vocal Remover (Removes vocals)
Video
- OBS Studio + zoom to mouse script
- ShareX (Record GIFs and share em)
- ScreenBox (VLC but prettier)
Creative Coding
Other Resources Repos
Everything awesome
- https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome Design tools
- https://github.com/goabstract/Awesome-Design-Tools Design Systems
- https://github.com/alexpate/awesome-design-systems Design Principles
- https://github.com/robinstickel/awesome-design-principles Creative technology
- https://github.com/j0hnm4r5/awesome-creative-technology Free(as in freedom) Software
- https://github.com/johnjago/awesome-free-software Creative coding
- https://github.com/terkelg/awesome-creative-coding HTML Canvas Sketches
- https://github.com/raphamorim/awesome-canvas Audio Visualization
- https://github.com/willianjusten/awesome-audio-visualization Data Viz
- https://github.com/mathisonian/awesome-visualization-research Datasets
- https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets Product Design
- https://github.com/ttt30ga/awesome-product-design Product Management
- https://github.com/santiagoxlopez/awesome-project-management Remote Jobs
- https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job Internships
- https://github.com/lodthe/awesome-internships Job Boards
- https://github.com/tramcar/awesome-job-boards Slack Communities
- https://github.com/filipelinhares/awesome-slack No log-in tools
- https://github.com/aviaryan/awesome-no-login-web-apps Board Games
- https://github.com/edm00se/awesome-board-games