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Friday, December 02, 2011
Infographic: The Most Popular Design Tools & Design Apps
BestVendor: What are the most popular tools and apps used by designers? We were curious, so we pulled together data based on 180 design and creative professionals who use BestVendor.
It's always interesting to see what everyone else is using and how it compares to the products I use. I'm right there with the pack on Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote, Photoshop, and Gmail, but I'm not even on the graphic with my text editor (emacs) or website hosting (PairLite) and there's not even a category there for things like AutoCAD which seems to be where I spend most of my time these days. I wonder how the graphics would have come out if they surveyed more than just creative designers and added more folks on the technical side.
I love these types of schematics. I too would be interested to see the same questions asked of other professions, especially more theatre artists and managers. I think if anything this shows that different professions have very specific needs from software. From my point of view, Mail (the Apple product) is a perfectly sufficient program for my needs, as of now. However, according to this infographic, designers are leaning towards Gmail. This also shows that an overwhelming percentage of designers use Evernote to take notes, while paper and pencil (though old-fashioned) is my preferred method. It's also clear that the design world is rather Mac-dominated. If I had choose what I use most right now in these categories, I would have to say that I use Microsoft Word for documents, Dropbox for storage, n/a for wireframing, Photoshop for visual design, Penultimate for note-taking (if I'm going to use any software at all), TextEdit for text editing, n/a for website hosting, Final Cut for video editing, n/a for Invoicing, and Apple Mail for e-mail.
These statistics are so fascinating! I love seeing that the products that I rely on and use so often in design processes are what others are using out there. And props to the makers of the tools. I love Google with all of my heart and would lose a chunk of my soul if it went away or charged. I recently worked in a design group where Google Docs and Dropbox were are main source of communication and it made the process so much smoother. I've tried other forms, however they just do not compare to the accessibility and speed of Dropbox and Google. I look forward to graduating and working in the business to see if these are the main tools used as well. I would be overjoyed.
It's interesting to examine this in terms of who responded to this survey. Mostly people in "Professional Services" and "Technology". Not so much in the arts, or in management. What I'd be interested in learning about is how managers would respond to a survey like this. I have a basic understanding of most of the things on this survey, but I would say that I would lean towards the Microsoft products before Google Docs, or Dropbox. It entirely depends on your perspective and what realm of the culture you are from. I wish they would have posted the demographics of the persons who took the survey before they listed the results of the survey. It would have been helpful to respond to and understand the survey if I knew who it was talking about before I looked at it.
It's nice to see what other people in our industry and others in terms of design. It's not surprising to see a vast majority of users have photoshop, gmail, dropbox, etc. It is interesting to note (though not surprising) that a lot of work has started moving towards the cloud since it makes collaboration between various users a lot easier, and there's a lot less stress regarding loss of information, which since often times it's creative work that is very difficult to regenerate, can be harder to get back. It's interesting that Microsoft Word doesn't show up at all for the text editors since I seem to see that a lot around CMU (although maybe that's just me). I might have to go check out the apps they suggested trying out. It's nice to see that many students here are using many of the same products that are being found out in the professional world, and that will doubtless be invaluable moving forward.
I find it fascinating the direction that some of these items are going in. The fact that people are trusting things "to the cloud" also facinates me. I do not store anything offline that I do not have a physical copy of or do not have duplicated elsewhere. Even today, there are times when networks fail and to have a backup has saved my butt more than once.
However, the ability to access a large amount of files from anywhere (as with dropbox) has made it extremely attractive for projects in which two people are working on the same thing. It is also awesome to access everything from your iPhone :p
It's always interesting to see what everyone else is using and how it compares to the products I use. I'm right there with the pack on Google Docs, Dropbox, Evernote, Photoshop, and Gmail, but I'm not even on the graphic with my text editor (emacs) or website hosting (PairLite) and there's not even a category there for things like AutoCAD which seems to be where I spend most of my time these days. I wonder how the graphics would have come out if they surveyed more than just creative designers and added more folks on the technical side.
ReplyDeleteI love these types of schematics. I too would be interested to see the same questions asked of other professions, especially more theatre artists and managers.
ReplyDeleteI think if anything this shows that different professions have very specific needs from software. From my point of view, Mail (the Apple product) is a perfectly sufficient program for my needs, as of now. However, according to this infographic, designers are leaning towards Gmail. This also shows that an overwhelming percentage of designers use Evernote to take notes, while paper and pencil (though old-fashioned) is my preferred method. It's also clear that the design world is rather Mac-dominated.
If I had choose what I use most right now in these categories, I would have to say that I use Microsoft Word for documents, Dropbox for storage, n/a for wireframing, Photoshop for visual design, Penultimate for note-taking (if I'm going to use any software at all), TextEdit for text editing, n/a for website hosting, Final Cut for video editing, n/a for Invoicing, and Apple Mail for e-mail.
These statistics are so fascinating! I love seeing that the products that I rely on and use so often in design processes are what others are using out there. And props to the makers of the tools. I love Google with all of my heart and would lose a chunk of my soul if it went away or charged. I recently worked in a design group where Google Docs and Dropbox were are main source of communication and it made the process so much smoother. I've tried other forms, however they just do not compare to the accessibility and speed of Dropbox and Google. I look forward to graduating and working in the business to see if these are the main tools used as well. I would be overjoyed.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to examine this in terms of who responded to this survey. Mostly people in "Professional Services" and "Technology". Not so much in the arts, or in management. What I'd be interested in learning about is how managers would respond to a survey like this. I have a basic understanding of most of the things on this survey, but I would say that I would lean towards the Microsoft products before Google Docs, or Dropbox. It entirely depends on your perspective and what realm of the culture you are from. I wish they would have posted the demographics of the persons who took the survey before they listed the results of the survey. It would have been helpful to respond to and understand the survey if I knew who it was talking about before I looked at it.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see what other people in our industry and others in terms of design. It's not surprising to see a vast majority of users have photoshop, gmail, dropbox, etc. It is interesting to note (though not surprising) that a lot of work has started moving towards the cloud since it makes collaboration between various users a lot easier, and there's a lot less stress regarding loss of information, which since often times it's creative work that is very difficult to regenerate, can be harder to get back. It's interesting that Microsoft Word doesn't show up at all for the text editors since I seem to see that a lot around CMU (although maybe that's just me). I might have to go check out the apps they suggested trying out. It's nice to see that many students here are using many of the same products that are being found out in the professional world, and that will doubtless be invaluable moving forward.
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating the direction that some of these items are going in. The fact that people are trusting things "to the cloud" also facinates me. I do not store anything offline that I do not have a physical copy of or do not have duplicated elsewhere. Even today, there are times when networks fail and to have a backup has saved my butt more than once.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the ability to access a large amount of files from anywhere (as with dropbox) has made it extremely attractive for projects in which two people are working on the same thing. It is also awesome to access everything from your iPhone :p