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I was recently asked about what helpful tools I use that could help a non-designer out.

Here are 12 that I regularly use:

1. General Design Exploration: Figma and Canva still dominate here, but I prefer Figma for design exploration by creating layers and depth effects more simply. Simply, there is no better tool to scale up your custom-designed templates across channels.
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2. Design with Text: Thinking with Type: Ellon Lupton (I recommend the paperback for the great visuals, not Kindle)
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3. Photos and Visuals: Visual Electric. I enjoy uploading images and using ‘generate prompt’ to reverse engineer the image to create a consistent style. Setting beautiful preset styles like Guache Painting is much easier.
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4. Picking Fonts:
   • ​Google Fonts (Free)
   • ​Fontshare.com (Free)
   • ​Myfonts.com (Paid)
   • ​latinotype.com (Paid)
   • ​typewolf.com (Great type resource for learning more)
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5. Choosing Colors: I wouldn't say I like most color-picking apps like Coolors because most palettes feel unusable when applied. Here are two examples that show you the chosen palette applied in real-time.
   • ​colorai.app​
   • ​realtimecolors.com​
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6. Customer Insights: Descript is wonderful for transcribing client calls or customer calls. Then, take those transcripts and run them through ChatGPT or a product like Typing Mind to extract takeaways and insights for content. (I do this all the time for my games' podcast.)
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7. Collect all your brand assets in one place: Playbook.com - I was recently turned into this for holding all of your brand assets. Canva also works for simple brand design stuff.
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8. Visual thinking and content sequencing. Whimsical.com is useful for organizing marketing funnels, similar to a mind mapping tool. I enjoy creating visual flows to see how I can set up my Design Flywheel. I also use it for wireframing and seeing how my website pages should connect.
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9. Professional Photography: The best upgrade people can do to stand out is to pay for a personal photoshoot. I recommend searching Instagram for young photographers with a great style and spend $300-500 on 2-3 looks.
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   But if that feels like too much work, Photoai.com is a great alternative to generate AI photos for yourself. You have to upload 30 photos of yourself for it to generate new photos properly, but it’s a way to get started without a photographer.
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10. Email/Newsletters: I’m becoming more of an advocate for not using Substack unless you’re a writer trying to build an audience for maximum reach. If you’re building a service or product-based business, I recommend Kit or Beehiiv. I give Kit an edge, partly due to my own bias for how they have grown their business with very little outside capital.
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11. Website Design: Framer for my websites. You can get started with a simple landing page for just $5/mo. Then upgrade from there.
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12. Everyday Utility App: I have replaced Spotlight on my Mac with Raycast for almost everything. You can use AI, check your camera quickly before a meeting (type ‘open camera’), emoji picker, search for files within Figma without opening it, and so much more.

These tools are very useful for non-designers like you, Reader.

However, learning the fundamentals to make better design decisions takes more time.

And that can be your differentiator.

📸 Make It Yours Moment

We'll be moving again in a year! We had our first call with our architect to plan things out, and we can't wait to become neighbors if you're near the Wappingers Falls area.

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See you next Sunday,

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p.s. If you want to learn design, I have an exclusive 80/20 Black Friday Design Bundle that ends tonight. After that, they're gone.

Save $348 and get 200 hand-picked design examples, a workshop on designing YouTube Thumbnails, and an entire 20-day video course to learn the design fundamentals for your websites, social graphics, and more.

Get the Bundle here for $99 because it's going away Sunday night and won't be sold after that.