1- MacBook Pro
My Macbook is where it all happens. It is powerful, beautiful, and portable. Do I think you have to have an Apple computer to do graphic design? No. But you do need a powerful computer. Running any of the Adobe Creative Suite programs will use a lot of memory. {And we aren't talking about the "500 gigs of harddrive" some of the cheapy computers come with. That is an entirely different kind of memory.}
2- Photoshop
Photoshop houses both my canvas and my tools. It is where the magic happens. If you are interested in trying your hand at graphic design, I would recommend first starting with the much less expensive Photoshop Elements to see if you like it.
3- Color Picker
You have probably seen the beautiful Design Seeds palettes floating around Pinterest. But how do you take those colors and use them in your designs? By having a color picker tool that reads the color & outputs it as a HEX value that you can use in Photoshop or on the web.
4- Google Web Fonts
Free is good. Google has a collection of fonts that are completely free for personal and commercial use. As a designer I can't just use any font out there, it has to be commercial use ok. GWF is helping to bridge that gap between beautiful fonts & free fonts.
5- Bamboo Tablet
The Bamboo Tablet allows me to sketch or draw straight into Photoshop or Illustrator. There is definitely a learning curve to getting familiar with using a digital canvas, but the tablet is extremely helpful when I am trying to make organic shapes or trace edges.
I hope that gave you a little peek into the tools I use everyday! Please come visit my blog where today Sheanna is giving away a special print!
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