Looking for recommendations that will help you become a better brand designer AND save some money? Look no further.
These are our favorite resources to recommend to new (and seasoned!) designers to keep the backend of their businesses running smoothly. Some of these resources are affiliate partners, marked with a *, meaning that if you choose to make a purchase, we receive a small percentage (at no additional cost to you) that goes towards supporting our free content.
These are our favorite resources to recommend to new (and seasoned!) designers to keep the backend of their businesses running smoothly. Some of these resources are affiliate partners, marked with a *, meaning that if you choose to make a purchase, we receive a small percentage (at no additional cost to you) that goes towards supporting our free content.
Although Jen currently uses Honeybook, she still highly recommends *Bonsai to designers who are looking for a more budget-friendly software for proposals, invoicing, and contracts. She loves the simplicity of the interface and the helpful support!
Jen and Giselle have raved time and again about how much ClickUp has helped transform their businesses. This project management tool handles has the rest beat because it is highly customizable, offering endless possibilities and all of the features from competitors (like Asana, Trello, Airtable, Monday, and Notion) combined and then some.
Giselle has spent two years perfecting her *ClickUp system to better serve her clients, her team, and herself. She created this course to help designers spend more of their work time designing, preparing for growth, getting more done in less time, and taking time off without worry with a project management system tailored to their design business.
Giselle signed up for *Dubsado when she started her studio, and it’s probably the only app she hasn’t let go of. Crucial to her process, Giselle has Dubsado full of canned emails, workflows, service packages, contracts, schedulers, and more to provide a seamless and impressive client experience.
Jen switched to *Flodesk as her email provider in 2019 and hasn’t looked back since. The beautiful templates, easy user interface, and ability to customize her emails with more control than she’s ever had was what sold her.
Giselle cannot recommend *Tailwind enough for marketing for introverts. Tailwind is ideal for Pinterest marketing, especially to bring new leads as you share pieces of your insta-worthy portfolio. It accounts for 50% of Giselle’s website traffic, followed by google SEO.
Unsplash is an amazing resource for FREE stock photography - this is a great option for lower-budget web design clients OR for creating web templates.
These are resources for brand designers we find ourselves recommending over and over again.
Giselle uses *Archetypes in Branding in the Discovery Phase of her brand identity process to help clients define their brands and guide their voice. It comes with a card deck!
Jen took Branding With Bre right before starting her branding studio at the beginning of 2019, and she credits so much of her success i to the things she learned in this course.
Both Jen and Giselle swear by Creative Market for fonts, mockups, and other graphic elements that make their brands (and concept presentations!) beautiful and unique. Check out our collection of favorites and what we’re eyeing up!
Both Jen & Giselle like to find great mockups and other graphic assets on Graphic Burger.
Both Jen and Giselle LOVE this time-saving genius Illustrator extension: *The Logo Package Express. Create, export, and sort hundreds of logo files in under 5 minutes.
Giselle LOVES the luxe with gold foil service *Moo offers for her business cards, and so does everyone that receives one. The extra cost is totally worth it when it helps you land higher-paying clients ;)
Giselle found *Moyo and never looked back. Moyo is a reliable, high-quality stock and mockup shop that continues to expand their large and gorgeous collection every month. Hello, beautiful portfolio work!
Jen loves using The Noun Project to source single icons and icon packs for web design use - or just to get inspired when creating custom icons for her clients.
Giselle took Share-worthy Design back in 2016 and can’t recommend it enough. Jamie from Spruce Rd is available for her students with genuine advice and continues to add immense value to the course each year, like her new Designer Day Rate. It’s a lifetime of learning!
These are our favorite resources for print.
Jen and Giselle had Dave Hopkins on as a guest in S03 E04 and were in awe at the depth of knowledge he holds regarding all things print design and production. Dave is a master print designer and instructor of the *Craft Beer Label Design Course, teaching you everything from trade secrets to print production so you can become a master craft beer designer in no time.
When a project calls for something more budget-friendly, *PSPrint does not disappoint. Sales offers are constant, plus blind ship is available!
Jen has heard wonderful things about Smartpress - an online printer designed for creative professionals. She can’t wait to use it for her next print project!
Giselle loves the quality and flexibility of *Sticker Mule. Super simple ordering, affordable price, quality product, rich color.
If you’re as much of a font nerd as we are, we highly recommend these tools and resources!
MyFonts is one of our favorite places to go for type inspiration and purchasing unique fonts. You can shop thousands of fonts from many different foundries.
Typewolf is a website that curates the most recent, popular, and classic type treatments from branding and web design around the world.
WhatTheFont.com is a tool that allows you to reverse search for a font that is part of an image. So good for those “what font is this?” questions!
We highly recommend all of these for designers who work in Squarespace.
Jen uses her *CSS Dictionary from Telltale Design Co. for almost every Squarespace project! Her favorites are the accordion, vertical line block, and summary block styling.
Jen discovered Chris Schwartz-Edmisten’s channel all about customizing Squarespace with CSS and immediately bookmarked it. Chris' responds SO quickly to YouTube comments and emails, and will even provide support for tricky CSS situations.
Kayleigh Noelle Web Design’s blog has amazing and free tutorials all about Squarespace customization. Jen’s favorite post is the one covering how to customize the form block.
Jen cannot sing the praises of Rache from *Square Stylist enough. Jen loves that her sites are able to break the Squarespace mold with beautiful and functional CSS additions. Rache’s support is amazing!
Jen took *the Squarespace Design Course by ilovecreatives.com in 2019. The slack community is amazingly helpful. Before Jen even finished the course, she started booking Squarespace packages around the $2-$3k mark!
These are great sources for general web design assets, inspiration, and knowledge.
Giselle has taken both the Webflow and 10k Web Process courses from *Flux Academy to really kick some butt in the web design game (and say good riddance to WP). She landed her first 20k website and came out winning with a beautiful site and impressed client!
Jen uses Toptal’s HTML icons guide when looking for arrows, copyright icons, or other symbols to use in her web design.
Jen uses Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest tool when looking up SEO keywords for client websites.
Jen and Giselle have fallen head over heels for *Webflow, an online website builder that was designed for designers without the limitations of other popular builders. They love it so much, they stopped serving Squarespace and WordPress websites to clients, moved their studio website to Webflow, and also redesigned their dream site for Better there too!
These wouldn’t fit neatly into a category, but we still wanted to share them with you!
Both Jen and Giselle use this *Audio Technica mic for Better Podcast. This pack is designed for streamers, podcasters, and other content creators who need a versatile, easy-to-install, easy-to-adjust boom microphone setup.
Stocksy is a website that has beautiful, high-quality and artistic photography. Jen recommends Stocksy when a web design client doesn’t have a budget for a full-on brand photoshoot but still needs high-quality imagery.
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