10 easy design-adjacent tools for everyone
By Jesse
Colour picker
This online colour picker tool is a great way to get an accurate colour code quickly from anywhere. You can drag and drop an already saved image from your computer, or take a Windows screenshot (win + shift + S) and paste it directly onto the page.
The website gives you the option to copy the HEX code as well as the RGB values.
Colour palette generator
I have two recommendations for colour palette generators:
Coolers is great for more random/aesthetic colour palettes, which you can generate by pressing the spacebar. You can start off with your own colour, or have it generate a completely random palette to give you inspiration, and there’s a huge range of palettes to choose from. As you’re generating you can lock specific colours when you like them, and only unlocked ones will generate new colours, so you can build your own custom palette.
Adobe Color uses colour theory to generate palettes, and you can choose from eight different “color harmonies”, which use different arrays on the colour wheel to display the palette. You can use the visual colour wheel to drag the colours around, and select a palette that works for you. You can also edit the tint of the colours.
Canva’s delete background tool
The delete background tool on Canva works amazingly well, but there are some images that are just a bit too complex for it. Did you know that it has a “configure” option, where you can draw on different sections of the image to either add or remove bits of the image? This way you can refine what’s shown, and easily deep-etch even the most complicated images quickly.
I love IMG
This is an online image conversion tool I’ve been using for a while, and it often eliminates the need to open design programmes like Photoshop or GIMP in order to edit your images. The site has a series of image editing tools, but what I’ve found most helpful is the conversion and compression tools. It’s much faster than launching a design programme, and it works really well.
I love PDF
In the same family as I love IMG, I love PDF features a large number of PDF conversion, editing and compression tools. With this online tool you can convert so many different file types into PDFs, which can make your day-to-day workflow so much faster. The PDF compressor tool is also great for adding PDFs to websites, as we always want to make sure the file size isn’t too big, to give users the best possible experience of the site.
Freepik
I’m sure every designer knows about Freepik, because it has such a large library of mockup assets, stock images and video, and design assets like PSD templates and various icons. It’s a great place to look for all of your vector and raster needs. Attribution is required for Freepik, but we love crediting creators.
Rawpixel
This is another stock image site, but with a twist: Rawpixel allows you to search by style as well as what you want to feature within the image. It’s a great place to search if you’re looking for more abstract or creative stock content that doesn’t feel very stock. They also have their own on-website design software, like Canva, where you can edit any of the premade designs on the site, according to your needs.
Font squirrel
If you’re looking for a huge library of both free and licensed fonts, Font Squirrel is a great place to go, but my favourite function on the site is the Font Identifier. It’s a handy online tool you can use to submit a screenshot of a font you’re looking for, and help get some ideas as to what it could be. Fonts can be really tricky, so even if Font Squirrel doesn’t have an exact match, they’ll often have options which are close enough for you to use, if the situation is pressing.
Mixkit
While the name does sound similar to our beloved throwback messaging app Mxit, Mixkit is instead a website which houses a library of video-creation assets. If you’re looking for licence-free stock videos, sounds, music, and templates, this is a great place to look, and is probably my favourite of the websites on this list. The templates are especially cool, and by having a quick search and downloading any of these options, you can elevate your video without spending the time to make an element from scratch.
Responsive Table Generator Tool
While this tool is a bit niche, it’s helped me in the past with website builds. It’s a great way to convert your spreadsheet easily into a responsive HTML table for a website, which can be passed on to your developer to add to your site. No coding is required, which saves a lot of time, and within the settings of the tool you can dictate various elements, like if the first row is a header.
Follow our social media for more tips like these: Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook