As a designer, you can finally say goodbye to lugging around flash or external hard drives and overloading your computer with large software packages and files. Cloud computing offers a liberating way to design. It allows you to store files, documents, projects and software within a network of collective servers, instead of on one local computer. You can access your work from any device, rather than just the one you have saved files on, so you save both time and hard drive space. These are the 7 Best Cloud Apps for Designers, they should really have at least one of these.
Best Cloud Apps For Designers:
To gain a more in-depth understanding of the cloud, refer to this helpful cloud computing guide. Here is a collection of the best apps to help you take advantage of the possibilities that come with designing in the cloud.
Google Drive – Saving Information:
This is a great online storage center for any kind of file you might need to access for your projects. The free sign-up allots you 5GB of space, which you can upgrade to space amounts of 25GB, 100GB and more with membership plans. It’s an easy way to jump between devices to view or edit documents and photos without a physical form of storage.
Evernote – Organizing Ideas:
Evernote is a versatile app that can act as a digital scrapbook for your thoughts, ideas and notes. You can store research, inspiration and reminders when creative ideas hit, and it’s also a great tool for taking notes while meeting with clients. Eliminate the risk of forgetting things contained in countless sketchbooks and sticky notes by combining all your thoughts in one place.
Basecamp – Sharing Projects:
This is the most popular project management app, perfect for collaborative projects. Designers who work remotely especially like this app, because it stores and organizes every aspect of a group project, including files, discussion feeds and schedules so everyone can be on the same page without having to meet face-to-face. You don’t have to worry about losing files or trying to attach large files to emails, because everyone can work from different physical locations, while inputting work to the same project location.
Adobe Creative Cloud – Design Software:
This is a particularly exciting app for designers, as the problem with large software packages has always been that they are expensive, and they take up a lot of hard drive space. And with frequent new versions being released, the software continually costs money to upgrade. Adobe now offers its design programs through the cloud – solving these problems. With a reasonable membership fee, you can now access the latest versions of Adobe’s design programs from anywhere, as well as get special membership features.
Codeanywhere – Coding:
This is a browser-based code editor that enables you to save and test coding to easily make drafts of web layouts whenever creativity strikes. It also has versions specifically designed for mobile devices, and it syncs with your Dropbox account for easy access of your code. It supports all popular web formats: HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS and XML.
Typetester – Font Analysis:
Conducting type tests can sometimes be difficult to do in an organized way. Between categorizing and remembering different fonts and weights, the process can get messy. Typetester is the solution to your type testing needs. On your browser, it displays 3 font options of your choosing next to each other for easy visualization and comparison.
Xero – Accounting Software:
If you’re a freelancer and you don’t want to spend precious design time working on the financial and business aspects of your work, this is an excellent app for you. Xero saves you time by streamlining and creating all accounting documents like invoices, estimates, bills and checks. And if you’re not particularly business-savvy, it organizes all your financial information so you can always have access to what you need. This tool also offers features to analyze your freelance business; and of course, you can access any of this information from any device.
The cloud has so much to offer, and its potential is continually being tapped into. Make your life easier and save time, space and money with these helpful cloud apps for designers!
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