There was an era when being a designer meant you owned a lot of paper, a bunch of fancy pens and had to work in a studio, be it yours or your company’s. These days everything has gone digital and paper and pens have merged into a computer, and a studio is just about anywhere. But somewhere during all of this modernization and computers redefining the industry, the simple pen and paper became a computer and hundreds of programs. The amount of programs an aspiring designer is told they need to know can be quite daunting. So, let’s take a look at the top ten programs that the modern designer must know or, at the very least, will find quite helpful.
Adobe has a pretty tight headlock on the design industry and their Creative Suite (link: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html) is typically the industry standard when it comes to what skills and know-how an employer is looking for. Having just released a mid-cycle version of the Creative Suite, Adobe CS 5.5, and CS 6 due out some time in 2012, the entire Creative Suite will set you back anywhere from $1,900 to $2,600, depending on which edition you decide is right for you. The price tag alone is enough to strike fear in to the eyes of many aspiring designers, or even seasoned professionals, so some opt to sticking with individual programs rather than springing for the entire suite.
- Adobe Photoshop
The mothership of all Adobe programs is Photoshop (link: , a graphics editing program that does just about everything except wash your dirty laundry. Whether you’re looking to polish up pictures taken on a digital camera, create a print marketing campaign or mock up some wire frames for a potential client’s website, Photoshop has you covered. With menus and options to the hilt, it’s highly recommended you take a class or two just to familiarize yourself with this program. Photoshop has long been the industry standard in graphic editing and your level of expertise with the program can directly influence things like hourly wages and job offers. - Adobe Fireworks
If you’re a freelancer and new in the business, there are several alternatives to Photoshop. Adobe makes a little brother program to Photoshop called Fireworks (link: http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks.html). It’s not as powerful, but if all you’re looking to do is some simple manipulation, cropping, or layering on occasion, and it’s a little easier to familiarize yourself with. It’s a perfect solution if you’re looking to stick more to the web development side of the design field, but plan on easing in to Photoshop later on down the road. With Fireworks you can still open and manipulate layered .psd files, which makes slicing up wire frames quite convenient. And it also allows you to familiarize yourself with Adobe’s tools, menus and shortcuts for when you finally decide to make the leap towards Photoshop. - Corel PaintShop Photo Pro
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro (link: http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1184951547051#versionTabview=tab1&tabview=tab0) is another option if photo doctoring and manipulation is the name of your game. Corel even offers a Paint It!™ app for iPhone’s and iPad’s! And what’s even better than the app form of the program is the fact that it’s on sale now for $29.99 for the full version, which is $70 off!Some of us know that money doesn’t grow on trees, and funding can be tight when you’re first starting out as a freelancer. Luckily for those of us that are in that boat there are a few alternatives worth mentioning that come at a very affordable price, free! GIMP (link: http://www.gimp.org/) or GNU Image Manipulation Program, and Inkscape (link: are two of the more noteworthy ones. Though you probably aren’t going to be finding any big design firms using them.
- Adobe Illustrator
For the designers who still live and breathe print media, Adobe’s Illustrator (link: is another must know. The vector-based program is another that comes in the Adobe Creative Suite bundle, or can be purchased separately. Sharing much of the same interface as Photoshop and other Adobe products, once you’ve familiarized yourself with Adobe’s toolbars, menus, and shortcuts, you can work amongst them rather seamlessly.CorelDraw (link: http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1191272117978#versionTabview=tab1&tabview=tab0) and Adobe FreeHand (link: http://www.adobe.com/products/freehand/) are two alternatives with similar scope and functionality to Illustrator worth mentioning.
- Adobe Dreamweaver
If you’ve been sucked in to the interwebs of the design world and are planning on pursuing the life of a web designer, Adobe’s Dreamweaver (link: http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html) makes life simple and is yet another part of the Creative Suite bundle. Developing code from scratch doesn’t require much more than a program like Notepad or TextEdit, but with its color-coded code view and error spotting functionality Dreamweaver makes things a lot easier to follow. Dreamweaver also has built in FTP functionality so when you set up a site within the program you can directly edit and upload files to your server. - CoffeeCup HTML Editor
There are plenty of other HTML editing options if you’re just testing the vast waters of the web development world. Coffee Cup (link: http://www.coffeecup.com/free-editor/) is a free HTML editor that works with Windows 7, Vista and XP. - Komodo Edit HTML Editor
Komodo Edit (link: http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit) is another free HTML editor that works on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.If you’re already a part of the design world, but more on the graphics end of the spectrum, and are curious about web development http://htmledit.squarefree.com/ is a good resource. It allows you to plug code in to the top half of the browser and see real time results in the bottom half.
- FileZilla
Being the fast paced, digitally driven industry that we’ve become, it’s always a good idea to be familiar with FTP and know how to use at least one FTP program. Whether you’re updating a website or needing to deliver large sized files to clients that are too big to email, being able to post them to a server can be quite helpful. FileZilla (link: http://filezilla-project.org/) is a free, straightforward program that fits the bill for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. - CoffeeCup FTP
Coffee Cup Software (link: http://www.coffeecup.com/free-ftp/) also offers a free FTP program to go along with their free HTML editor, which goes along nicely with their editor.SmartFTP (link: http://www.smartftp.com/) and Core FTP (link: http://www.coreftp.com/) are a couple other options worth mentioning for Windows
- Gliffy
Gliffy (link: http://www.gliffy.com/) can be an extremely helpful site for designers who are looking to outsource web work to a developer. Gliffy is a free solution to making site maps and flow charts, which gives your developer a solid understanding of how you want the site’s navigation to flow.
Every employer is different, and every freelancer has his or her own preferences. But if you’re an aspiring designer looking for a way in to the industry, getting yourself acquainted with Adobe’s Creative Suite is the safest bet. The more programs you know and are able to list on your resume is that much more of an advantage over anyone else in line for the position. And once you’ve got a foot in the door, you’ll find yourself picking up other useful sites to reference and smaller programs that make things a little easier to manage.
With over ten years in the freelance web design and writing fields, Scott Stanton has had his finger on the beating pulse of the industry’s hottest design trends and bends for the past decade. Scott regularly write for Wix.com the free website builder.