I’ve been a web designer since 2001 and the owner of an agency since 2005. Our customers are mainly churches and small businesses, including e-commerce businesses.

Our practice has evolved over the years from an exclusive focus on design to an orientation towards content and branding. After all, the design of any website follows from its purpose and target audience.

Therefore, the tech stack for my agency includes tools to understand and communicate a client’s mission. Like many project-oriented companies, we rely on apps to manage our time and communicate internally.

But purpose and message are the DNA that drives the design. Our tech stack below includes these tools, but in a way, the design is the easy part.

A web designer’s tech stack

Sunsama. Wise timing is a must for any project in the agency. I use Sunsama, a daily planner, to take care of my well-being while allocating blocks of time that make sense for my neurological makeup.

Sunsama

asana Our projects start with good planning. All are outlined in detail to avoid pieces falling through the cracks. Asana, a project management platform, keeps our entire team on track while keeping the client informed. A centralized portal like Asana ensures we finish on time and on budget. Our average web project has over 200 tasks!

Drop box. We mainly use Dropbox for storage. We like its team features and how it connects to our local computers. However, our favorite part is Dropbox Paper.

Dropbox paper. I used Dropbox Paper to write this article. It’s Google Docs without the complexity of Google. Dropbox Paper is simple, intuitive, and distraction-free. It’s an excellent Google Suite replacement unless you use spreadsheets.

Dropbox paper

Relaxed is our tool for internal communication. We appreciate the easy transition from desktop to mobile. And since we also use it for external groups, Slack replaces a lot of unnecessary emails.

ChatGPT we open daily. Rephrasing a website’s conversion content, condensing it, and applying a tonality are some of our uses.

Cooler. Most designs start with a color palette. Coolors is our choice for this task. It has an amazing palette generator and seemingly endless color combinations. It also produces colors from a given image.

cooler

Lordicon has an extensive library of symbols and lottie animations. Lordicon’s team is dedicated to their community and creating custom icons. Just add your needs to their wish list.

canvas made design easy. We use it to create simple templates for (i) website backgrounds, (ii) Open Graph images and (iii) photos with a specific shape or filter. Customers can then easily update their sites. For example, once we create the shape and filter, clients can drag and drop images instead of cropping, resizing and retouching from scratch.

Affinity. Adobe Suite price increases allow for more cost-effective alternatives. Affinity is one of them. It’s our tool to edit photos and work on vector files and designs. It is very affordable (with a lifetime fee), and it’s lightweight and doesn’t crash. Affinity generates the same designs as Adobe, but with much lighter files. The passionate community is a big plus.

affinity