Web designing is not just about threading ideas and inspirations together for a beautiful website but also about meeting the accessibility standards, ensuring seamless user-experience, managing security and making it responsive, fast, and engaging. Keeping a tab on all these nitty-gritties of web designing while also letting the creativity flow can undoubtedly make it an onerous task for a number of web designers.
In order to streamline the web design workflow for a smarter and efficient design project management, there are many web apps that can be integrated into the web designing task. These web apps help the web designer work smarter for the successful completion of web designing projects within stipulated time. Today every experienced and astute web designer keeps a few apps in his tool-kit, which simplifies his task and improves the overall efficiency and output. Though these apps are available in abundance, here we are discussing about the top five web apps that have been appreciated for their reliability and impressive performance in accelerating web design workflow.
- Figma
Figma is the first browser-based interface design tool that boosts the team spirit among web designers working on a design project. It has simplified the working of web designers and made it easier for multiple web designers to collaborate in real time. It is a cross-platform tool which can be used as a web app as well as downloaded on Windows, Mac or Linux for real-time collaboration. It is an easy to use web app that helps the designers in moving between designs and prototyping without any type of syncing or exporting need.
Moreover, it empowers the entire team by creating design systems that have linked UI components, which can be used by the whole team. Figma also enables smooth communication with consolidated feedbacks by different members on a single platform. Using the Figma web app, designers can save a lot of time for accelerated web design workflow.
- Webflow
Responsive web design is the need of the hour and is, once again, predicted to be the ruling web design trend for the coming year. Web designers have already braced themselves for new advancements in this design trend. Webflow is a web app that can streamline the designer’s workflow by helping them design responsive websites without the use of any codes. It facilitates the designers to create websites without restraining them into the constraints of any template.
It offers a blank canvas for the web designers to bring their envisioned design to life without limiting the imagination with code constraints. There are a number of tools available on this web app that will let you create a responsive website that seamlessly fits through all screen sizes. It’s drag and drop concept facilitates quick and easy responsive web designing for accelerated web design workflow.
- Sketch
Since its launch in 2009, Sketch has become the most popular and powerful web tool for website designing. This web app allows ease of sorting and making any type of revisions to the documents. It is a vector-based UI designing app that is a convenient alternative to Photoshop. It is laced with a number of features that make it a great web app for Mac users.
Owing to its vector-based UI design system, the size of documents and files in Sketch is much smaller as compared to other web design tools like Photoshop or Adobe Creative Suite. This app also has a built-in grid system making interface design a smooth walk. Sketch, with all these amazing features, is available at an affordable price and can be used for accelerated web design workflow.
- Avocode
Avocode is increasingly becoming a favorite web design tool for all the web designers, and top web designing companies especially, those dealing with designing user-interface for applications. The fronted developers can use this web app for coding websites or applications from the Sketch or Photoshop designs. It also enables ease in synching PSD files into Adobe using its simple and convenient Photoshop plugin.
All the Photoshop or Sketch files are quickly analyzed by this web app, which are then converted into intuitive user-interface for the website. After that, exporting assets also becomes convenient and fully-controlled. The designer has full control over the designing as he/she can easily obtain the preview of the design and even get access to all the export assets and layers. This, in turn, leads to ease in building intuitive and beautiful UI designs which can be used for accelerated web design workflow.
- Canva
Canva is a browser-based web and graphic design tool that is becoming a favorite among the designers and non-designers alike. With a user-base of over 10 million designers, it is considered to be the easiest web designing tool for everyone. People are using Canva to create social media images and other interactive pictures used in web designs or print.
This web app is an excellent tool for improving the visual appeal of the website by adding interactive pictures. Other images like infographics, charts etc., can also be designed with this tool to post on social media pages etc. The free version of Canva offers access to 1GB storage and more than 8,000 templates. The premium version for the professional designers costs only $12.95. With so many features for creating beautiful images, this web app is great for accelerated web design workflow.
Over time, web designers are adapting to the state-of-art technology that is coming in the form of browser-based apps and other tools for an accelerated web design workflow. Although there does not exist any single web design tool that could enhance design productivity, the five tools discussed above are sure to simplify and accelerate your workflow. Incorporate these web apps into your web design process to perform a gamut of design and development tasks with ease and convenience. And don’t forget to share your experience and suggestions in the comment section below.
Author Bio:
Anurag Gupta is a budding entrepreneur with stakes in WeblinkIndia.net an acclaimed Web Designing & Development Company, headquartered in India. He also happens to be a keen writer, sharing insights, tips, and tutorials on subjects related to the ever evolving landscape of Web Designing and Development.