Today’s Toolkit: Popular Apps for Design Agencies

In the world of digital design, there is no shortage of software, apps and tools that can underpin every process or task in any agency’s operation. Since there’s an app for everything from wireframing to communication, we figured it would be helpful to shortlist some of our favourites:

Wireframes: UXPin

When it comes to wireframing – true bare-bones, UX-focused wireframing – UXPin is our favoured destination. It’s a cloud-based app that allows you to create interactive wireframes for web & mobile projects. Not only is it tried and true, but it’s easy to use and cost-effective.

Feedback: Invision

Most designers will already know this one. Invision has an extraordinary interface for sharing designs (anything from low to high fidelity) and collecting group feedback. Contributors can post comments anywhere on the design files and tag others for easy discussions. For any design project with a high amount of collaboration and client feedback, Invision is a useful tool.

High-Fidelity Design: Sketch

Sketch is relatively new to the design scene, having only grown in widespread popularity over the past few years. However, it offers designers a powerful yet flexible alternative to the Adobe world (namely Photoshop and Illustrator). Sketch can fuel anything from logo to UI design needs, and runs solely on vectors. The only major downside? It’s exclusive to MacOS.

Design-to-Development: Zeplin

Zeplin solves a problem most design teams never knew they had – the hand-off to development teams. Typically, a development team will open a PSD and begin splicing. However, Zeplin bridges this process by exporting all layers and elements into individual files – thus speeding up the early front-end development process. It’s also a great tool to share design artboards as a group.

Billing: Xero

There must be a million accounting and billing programs made for small businesses, although none quite rival the power & ease-of-use that Xero boasts. Equipped with a plethora of integrations – including Harvest for time tracking and Stripe to enable credit card payments directly from your invoices – Xero is a quickly necessary tool for agencies and their accountants alike.

Project Management: TaskBranch

Okay, we had to do it. But we mean it. TaskBranch, unlike popular generalists such as Asana or Basecamp, was created for agencies. With an intuitive interface and flexible project setup structure, TaskBranch makes it easy for agencies to manage any projects with clients.