With endless tools at our disposal, how do you find the ones that make a difference in collaboration, efficiency, and creative output? This is one of the areas that Wizardly thrives in. Why? Because we’re open to change and growth. Finding the tools that best serve not only us, but our clients. The growth mindset at Wizardly has enabled us to streamline our collaboration, expand our skill set, and complete projects more efficiently. Let’s take a look at some of those tools we love using!
Website Projects
The tools we use for website projects have evolved more than any other aspect of our agency. We went from Sketch to Figma, added user testing tools such as Useberry, and expanded our web development to include Webflow. These changes have kept us on our toes, and allowed us to enhance efficiency, and collaboration in every aspect of our projects.
- Figma: There is a reason everyone talks about Figma. The collaboration feature is a game-changer! Meg, Wizardly’s Creative Director, and I love collaborating real time on projects in Figma. (We use the cursor chat to share ideas!!) A few other ways we use Figma is presenting concepts to clients, gathering their feedback, and collaborating with developers for a smooth handover process!
- WordPress: We know, we know. WordPress is a dinosaur, but that’s one of the reasons we use it. WordPress has enough users and inertia that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. We’ll see the end with enough time to pivot effectively. That makes it a super safe bet for our clients that are producing content every week. The other reasons we use WordPress are: SEO power and its ability to manage content in an easy-to-repeat fashion.
- Monday: Out of every tool I have mentioned throughout this article, it doesn’t compare to Monday. It is the hub of Wizardly, thanks to Mynt Planning who has shaped it in a way that touches almost every aspect of our agency from design/dev requests that come in from clients, managing multiple web/deck projects at once, keeping each other accountable on internal tasks, and so much more!
- Slack: Communication is a key element in the work we do, therefore email isn’t enough. We use slack to create dedicated channels for the internal team who are involved on a specific project, and one that is reserved for client facing communication! This setup helps us manage and keep track of multiple projects at once!
Branding + Graphic Design Projects
The Adobe Creative Cloud is another dominating tool in our team. In any given project, you’ll find one or more Adobe tools open on our desktop. From Photoshop, Illustrator to the occasional In-Design, and more recently Adobe Express, we’re ready to tackle any design request that comes in!
- Illustrator: Out of all Adobe’s tools, we spend most of our time in Illustrator! I’m personally a big fan of Illustrator because it integrates so well with Figma. If you didn’t know already, you can copy a design from Illustrator to Figma as a SVG. No downloading, and uploading required! This has helped save countless time on moving illustrations into our design systems in Figma!
- Adobe Express: We’re a huge fan of using the tools we already pay for. And that’s one of the reasons we looked into Adobe Express to post to our socials. Turns out: it’s light, simple, powerful and capable of more than we expected. (Like uploading layered files from AI and PSD for animation!) We used to use between 3-5 different tools to create graphics for our socials – Figma, AI, Unsplash, PSD, AE. Now we source or create images, remove backgrounds, style type, store brand assets, work in the same file as a team, and send to socials all in one tool. Thank you, Adobe!
Deck Design Projects
This is an area where client preference plays a large role in the tools we use. Our team is diverse in all major softwares, including Powerpoint, Keynote, and Google Slides. We’ve noticed, however, that Powerpoint continues to be the most popular tool across our projects.
- Powerpoint: Yes, someday AI will replace PowerPoint (we hope), but in the meantime, large companies are reliant on the program. Did you know that you can save default colors, fonts, shapes, charts, graphs and a myriad of slide layout options within a powerpoint template, giving company employees brand consistency at their fingertips – ensuring good layout and design everytime.
- Pitch.com: Best AI deck tool, hands down. Now integrates with Figma!
User Testing
We put users first. We carefully plan how users interact with our brand at every step. Our goal is to make these experiences smooth and meaningful. To do this, we have a few tools at our disposal, including Google Forms for conducting user surveys, Google Excel for mapping out our competitor analysis, Useberry for testing concepts, and Lucky Orange for tracking how users interact with the design.
- Useberry: We love using Useberry to test designs and concepts. It is very valuable to receive feedback directly from users, as it is a key factor in a project’s success. In addition to being easy to use, we also love how seamless its integration with Figma is!
- Lucky Orange: When a project has launched, the work doesn’t stop there! Tools like Lucky orange enable us to monitor how users interact with our designs through heatmaps and other features. Our goal is to monitor their movements, identify ears that can be improved, and see if our designs meet the project, company, and KPIs goals.
There are many more tools that I didn’t get to mention because this article would turn into a mini book! We have used all of these tools to increase collaboration, create a space for creativity to grow, and make our projects more successful! New tools are actively changing the landscape of this industry, so we believe it’s imperative to adapt and be ready for change! We’d love to learn more about the tools you use!
Want further reading? Check out this article from Design Rush where Meg’s shares even more tools for web design.
Want to chat with co-owners Meg and Josh at Wizardly about a future project?
