Design Tools
I grew up with a passion for technical drawing. I would pour over car magazines, and house plan books admiring the neatly drawn elevations of automobiles, and plan views of houses. I would imitate what I saw, but with my own designs. Hours on end, day after day. Yes, I’d also draw dinosaurs, cities, and forest critter scenes. But more often than not you’d see me with a straight edge in one hand and a pencil in the other.
There was a store that sold art or office supplies in the town I grew up in, and I guess I’d be there with my mom, and I’d spy drawing templates that allowed you to draw perfect circles, squares, and even couches and chairs in perfect, repeatable bliss. Over time I’d collect these templates, and still have them to this day. They helped me make even better drawings, and designs. I was one happy kid. I have them all, piled in a drawer at home and still use them.
So the theme of this post comes down to one simple question:
What are some of your organizations favorite design tools?
Design isn’t magic, or at least I don’t think it is that much magic.
It’s problem solving using knowledge, creativity, strategy, and design tools.
I think I was fortunate to go through design school at the dawn of the computer era. I learned analog skills that I still think benefit me as a designer to this day. But the reality is, now days, design tools are centered around the computer.
Here is a rundown of the various tools our studio uses to act upon the design projects we work on. This is helpful knowledge for any designer looking to work in a studio similar to ours, or for prospective clients who want to better understand the tools being used to create what the great creative solutions they desire.
Computer Hardware
Our studio is pretty agnostic when it comes to computer software and some of the software we use. As long as it runs the programs we talk about below, it’s fine. We use both in house designers and we partner with out of house design contractors.
In house we use both Apple, and PC computers. The preference is laptop computers though so that we can remain highly mobile. We don’t work from the office every day, and for days when we have to make revisions late into the night, a laptop makes it easy to work from home. I’ve been using the same MacBook Pro since 2017 for administration, creative direction, and marketing. When I was designing I used an iMac desktop but have since retired that unit. Our industrial designers use Windows 11 Pro operating system laptops capable of running modeling and rendering software. While there is no base spec, our latest machine is an Asus that uses an Intel i9 chip and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
Our designers (and even project manager) run multiple video screens to spread out their work and see everything at once. Nothing too exotic on that front though
Modelling and Rendering Software
We are also agnostic in terms of modeling and rendering software, as long as it can process a common file type such as a STEP file. Internally we use Rhino to model our retail displays and products. Those models are then taken into Keyshot to create photorealistic renderings. Our outside partners use Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, and SketchUp to model and sometimes render their concepts.
Creative and Business Software
The foundation of many studios, including ours, is Adobe Creative suite of products. We primarily focus on Photoshop, Illustrator, and In-Design, as do our partners. Photoshop is great not only for retouching photographs, but also making presentation pages, inspiration boards, and trend boards. We use Illustrator for print production layup and storyboarding shopper journeys. In-Design is great for creating product catalogs and some graphic design work.
For the business part of the business we use the suite of Microsoft Office software products including Teams for communication and project management. We use Excel, Word, and Powerpoint as well, the last one for creating presentations.
Ideation
As designers we will use anything at our disposal to generate and record ideas and thoughts. The studio has multiple white boards to record and explore during ideation sessions. Designers still use pen and paper to sketch and help process their thoughts and ideas. These days a lot of sketching is done on tablets such as Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Surface device using a digital pencil. I personally use Procreate on an old iPad Pro with an Apple pencil to do most of my sketching.
We will do some impromptu 3D mockup using foam core, glue, sticks, etc. to help convey our ideas or simply explore concepts like ergonomics, shadowing, proportions, but most of what we do during the concept phase is done in the computer or on paper.
Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Our industry is leveraging some exciting new technologies during the design process and for presentations.
Augmented reality allows us to present our ideas, and it is also used in the final product by expanding retail experiences beyond the build environment that we are providing. We use tools such as 8th Wall to host our AR experiences. These experiences can be built leveraging specific software or in our case they are often built using existing hardware and software we are already using.
Virtual reality allows our designers to collaborate and evaluate new designs when we aren't in the same room. VR helps reduce prototype costs and increases our speed to market. We also use VR to present our solutions to clients and get their valuable feedback. We operate our VR program using Meta Quest Pro hardware. The equipment is relatively easy to use and we’ve got a handy case that allows us to take the show on the road. Arkio is an example of software we use to ideate in, and present our virtual models to clients. We are also exploring the use of higher end applications such as Twin Motion and Unreal Engine to create realistic product and store experiences that we can use for development, and test with users and clients before prototyping.
And we are exploring the practical uses for artificial intelligence for research, inspiration, and content creation, using software that may include Firefly and Midjourney.
Those are some of our current and favorite tools for our design studio in creating the meaningful solutions we imagine and create. I don’t know that there is really anything special or proprietary about the tools we use, and our process is not uncommon. Ultimately software, hardware, pens, paper are all not unlike hammers, saws, and tape measures (we use tape measures, actually).
And for the record, my favorite tool is a black Niji stylist on Graphics 360 paper.
And yes, I use a plastic triangle straight edge when drawing on my iPad.