20 Free Software for Designers

Posted by Charles | November 5, 2007 .

Traditionally, designers have more expensive tools than software developers, no mention those high end hardware (I always envy those big flat screens on the designers’ desk). However, if you have talent, really cost you nothing to start express your imagination and creativity, at least at the software end. Here are some tools for you:

Icon Design - IcoFX

Let start something small, icon. Sometime, the little icon is more representative that those big images. You need a nice tool to craft one. IcoFx does the job very well.

image 20 Free Software for Designers

How about font - Linotype Font Manager

image_3 20 Free Software for Designers What most been seen/read/layout is font. Of cause you can pick the some common and boring one, but if you are really into the uniqueness aspect of text, Lintype tool is a great free choice.

Image Editing - GIMP and GIMPshop

I’m sure most of you know GIMP. It’s the opensource equivalent to Adobe Photoshop. And it’s not just some open source software; it’s really a serious one.

Free Illustration - inkscape

If you are hands on with drawing in digital ways and like Adobe Illustrator, then the free counterpart Inkscape does the work well enough to save you couple hundred bucks.

Pick (steal) the color - ColorPick

Don’t know about you, ColorPick is actually my most used media related tool. It’s small and always on my desktop. It’s on my thumb drive as well. Such a great little utility.

image_4 20 Free Software for Designers