SpyreStudios

Web Design and Development Magazine

  • Design
  • Showcase
  • Inspirational
  • Tutorials
  • CSS
  • Resources
  • Tools
  • UX
  • More
    • Mobile
    • Usability
    • HTML5
    • Business
    • Freebies
    • Giveaway
    • About SpyreStudios
    • Advertise On SpyreStudios
    • Get In Touch With Us

A Guide to Next-Generation Design Tools

October 26, 2015 by Spyre Studios

Editor’s note: This post was written by Rafay, an entrepreneur, computer scientist, and professional ghostwriter for several high-traffic websites. He provides byline and ghostwriting services for digital and brick-and-mortar businesses with a focus on web development, WordPress, and entrepreneurship. You can find him on Twitter and Google Plus.

A whole new class of next-generation design tools is taking prototyping and design to the next level.

The web has been evolving for nearly two decades now but we haven’t seen two decades worth of improvement in web design tools.

As web design trends change the design game, the demand for new design tools continues to increase. Because web design has changed, the tools for web design have to change too.

I’ll be your guide to the world of next generation web design tools and walk you through an exploratory assessment of each.

Let’s get started.

Next-Generation Design Tools

The concept behind web design has always been to create beautiful design and to not have to worry about tiny coding details and other back-end intricacies. All of this is possible now.

The next-gen web design tools that we’ll be talking about in this post improve on user interface designs and user experience designs to a degree that was unimaginable a few years ago.

Sketch

next generation design tools

Sketch is a lightweight web design tool that gives users power, flexibility and speed to produce better results. The tool is designed for Mac and it leverages its exclusive features: Retina, Quartz, Auto Save and Versions.

Overview

Reusing elements in designing is inevitable in web design. Sketch makes it easier for designers to reuse elements by integrating symbols and shared styles features. Multiple pages and artboards makes designing an efficient and timesaving task altogether.

Sketch’s fully vector-based workflow saves designers from getting into web development. The web design tool offers vector Boolean operations which allow web designers to create complex shapes while fully utilizing layer styles.

Let’s sum up the features Sketch provides.

Features

  • Reusable elements
  • Preview designs on iOS devices
  • Scalable, responsive vector shapes
  • Complex and editable shapes based on Boolean operations
  • Pixel zoom feature
  • Approximate shapes and layers to their nearest pixel edge
  • Native text rendering shows how text will appear

Sketch packs a ton of powerful features into one web design tool and is widely used by professional developers in Apple and Google. If it’s good enough for these two, then it should be good enough for your web designing needs too. Bohemian Coding offers customers excellent support and documentation. You can get a license for $99 on their website.

Macaw

next generation design tools

Being a web designer, you’ve probably heard of Macaw and its ever-enticing tagline “Stop writing code, start drawing it.” If you’re anything like me, it must have gotten you pretty excited about what it features (and if it’s even possible). Let me start off with some good news: their tagline is absolutely spot-on.

Overview

Macaw is all about letting web designers focus entirely on designing by giving them the comfort and familiarity of a flexible image editor environment and writing HTML and CSS for them automatically in the back-end.

This next-gen web design tool uses the Stream real-time layout engine to allow for easy image handling. Stream takes care of the mathematical calculations which save designers from having to enter a battlefield with layouts.

The magic behind Macaw is that it accomplishes something most people thought was impossible – it translates design into HTML and CSS. The design-to-code engine, Alchemy, is responsible for this incredible madness that leads designers to accidently write code they never thought they could.

Let’s take a look at the features it offers.

Features

  • Responsive, flexible grids
  • Urbane typography controls
  • Familiar, visual access to new CSS features
  • Groups and containers integration
  • Local preview server with auto-refresh
  • Effective tools to manage spacing
  • Visually track down problems
  • Easy management of positioning

Whether you’re a professional web designer or are just starting out, Macaw will save you the trouble of learning to code in HTML and CSS. Don’t let your ability to design fall behind just because you can’t write code. Let Macaw’s Stream engine do the calculations while Alchemy writes beautiful, usable code for your designs. Try out the free trial or purchase their $79 license for both Mac OSX and Windows.

Adobe’s Project Comet

comet

Project Comet is part of Adobe Creative Cloud, a new tool for designing and prototyping user experiences. It is a next-gen design tool that merges visual design, wire framing, prototyping and previewing in one super-application. The only drawback: its preview release is scheduled for 2016.

Overview

The way you perceive your work has changed– responsive designs and interactive elements need to be addressed as real problems faced by user experience (UX) design. Project Comet tackles the challenges faced by UX design and scales seamlessly with larger, more complex projects.

The goal behind Project Comet is to minimize the friction that comes from using several tools for designing and prototyping. Project Comet uses the latest hardware compositing techniques and rendering technology that keeps getting better and better. Adobe’s CreativeSync technology makes it possible for users to bring their Illustrator or Photoshop assets by importing them to Comet directly. Indeed there are many benefits to being a loyal Adobe user.

Let’s look at the features Project Comet will offer.

Features

  • Vector drawing tools
  • Capable of designing, prototyping and iterating quickly
  • A tool specifically built keeping UX design aspects in mind
  • Fast, consistent and real-time design previews on devices of all sizes
  • Handles designs for an increasing set of mobile devices and screens

Like all Adobe products, Project Comet doesn’t require you to be an expert designer to be able to use it. Keep an eye out for its release and get a hands-on experience with this next-gen web design tool when it comes out next year.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we introduced you to the next generation of web design tools and addressed the current web design issues they tackle. We encourage you to experiment with them on different projects to see for yourself how they’ve changed (and continue to change) the design game forever.

The paradigm shift in web design tools is revolutionary and it has brought out some of the best (long-awaited) tools that we’ve ever seen. Our list of the 7 Best Tools for Web Designers in 2015 is also worth a read.

Which next-gen design tools do you use? What do you like best about next-gen design tools? Let us know in the comments section below.

You might also want to read:  Catchy Free Font Pairings For Headings and Paragraphs

Filed Under: Tools Tagged With: design tools

Recent Posts

  • What Factors Determine the Best Digital Marketing Agency?
  • 31 Fresh Design Elements for Spring and Easter
  • 10 Templates for Music Concert Flyers
  • How to Build a Web Scraper Using Node.js
  • Best PHP Books, Courses and Tutorials in 2022

Archives

  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008

Categories

  • Accessibility
  • Android
  • Apps
  • Art
  • Article
  • Blogging
  • Books
  • Bootstrap
  • Business
  • CSS
  • Design
  • Development
  • Ecommerce
  • Fireworks
  • Flash
  • Freebies
  • Freelance
  • General
  • Giveaway
  • Graphic Design
  • HTML5
  • Icons
  • Illustrator
  • InDesign
  • Infographics
  • Inspirational
  • Interview
  • Jobs
  • jQuery
  • Learning
  • Logos
  • Matrix
  • Minimalism
  • Mobile
  • Motion Graphics
  • Music
  • News
  • Photoshop
  • PHP
  • Promoted
  • Rails
  • Resources
  • Showcase
  • Tools
  • Tutorial
  • Twitter
  • Typography
  • Uncategorized
  • Usability
  • UX
  • Wallpapers
  • Wireframing
  • WordPress
  • Work

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

SpyreStudios © 2022