All Design Software Reviews

Sonali Agrawal

Independent UX Consultant, Yellow Fork Design

What is your top graphic design tip?

Understanding business goals and empathy are very important when it comes to design skills. It’s also necessary to get feedback and iterate based on the feedback received. And last but not least, sketch, sketch and sketch.

Sonali Agrawal is an independent UX consultant, creating beautiful web and mobile experiences for healthcare, startups, eCommerce, small businesses, banking and non-profit organizations. While maintaining focus on business goals, she never loses sight of building a maximized user-centered experience, that involves understanding business requirements, sketching, prototyping and finally making them visually simple and intuitive.

Alex Donne Johnson

Creative Director, Dazzle Ship

What is your top graphic design tip?

When it comes to generating ideas it’s easy to become precious, often people are precious over their first idea and it can be hard to develop in a group dynamic. It’s really important to be self-critical.

Alex is the creative director of the design agency Dazzle Ship. His career has spanned art direction for the James Bond gaming franchise, specialist strategy for various fashion brands linking them to underground music and youth culture, global communication campaigns for WaterAid and teaching at Swedish design institute Hyper Island.

Andy Hau

Director, A.H.A. Design

What is your top graphic design tip?

Make sure that your images are are the correct resolution and size. With retina screens becoming ever more crystal clear, it’s important that your imagery doesn’t suffer because of the incorrect dimensions. Pixelated and low-res images just look shoddy and lazy. To ensure that your image is displayed clearly on retina screens, make sure that it is saved as twice the resolution that it will be displayed at. So for example, if your blog is 600px wide, make sure that the image is designed and saved at 1200px wide.

Andy Hau is the director of A.H.A. Design, a multi-disciplinary design company that specialises in architecture, graphic design and product design. He believes that creativity has no boundaries and a creative vision transcends the media it is created in.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Partner & Chief Operating Officer, WebDevStudios

What is your top graphic design tip?

Know when to hire out for graphic design work versus the DIY (do-it-yourself) route. Hiring a professional for the big impact items like your logo, your website and other branding materials is important because you want high quality in order to make a fabulous first impression. Other ancillary items can be done by you, or an assistant, using low-cost tools that allow you to do it yourself, like Adobe Spark or Canva, which are tools that can help polish up your social media appearance and blog posts and articles by allowing you to create stunning images and videos that complement your content and offerings.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at WebDevStudios (WD3, LLC), where their large team of web development experts provides custom web design and development solutions for clients big and small, like Viacom, Campbell Soup Company, Uber, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, National Park Service, Wharton University, University of Pennsylvania, Kaspersky Antivirus and more. In this role, she provides the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure WebDevStudios has the proper operational controls, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to effectively grow the organization and to ensure financial strength and operating efficiency.

Jim Callender

WordPress Developer, Freelance Web Developer UK

What is your top graphic design tip?

It’s important to keep in touch with other professionals – for sharing and knowledge transfer. As well as learning from your peers, you will soon become a mentor for other new professionals in the same marketplace. It’s also great for sharing work when you or others members in your local network get too busy.

Jim is a freelance WordPress designer & developer, who helps companies with cutting edge WordPress websites. He’s been working with WordPress for over 10 years. He has completed many WordPress websites for global corps, digital agencies, small businesses and charities.

Mirko Humbert

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Designer Daily

What is your top graphic design tip?

Be consistent. Establishing a brand takes time, don’t change your visuals all the time, stick with your corporate identity in every new graphic design produced for the company. Being inconsistent would make it harder to recognize your brand for customers and potentials customers. It obviously goes further than just the logo, it includes the colors, fonts, and shapes you use in most designs as well.

Mirko has been working as a freelancer for more than 4 years now in his little city of Fribourg, Switzerland, with a 6 months trip to Shanghai in the middle of this. After graduating from the eracom in Lausanne, Switzerland, he immediately jumped into the freelancers bandwagon.

Lytro (2006-2018)

What it did: Lytro developed light-field cameras capable of refocusing images after being taken.
Why it closed:  Lytro struggled to build a viable business. A large fraction of former Lytro employees joined Google.
Survived by: Raytrix, GoPro, Pelican Imaging, Sony, Polaroid

New Matter (2013-2018)

What it did: New Matter offered MOD-t, an end-to-end consumer 3D printer that allows users to find, customize, and print objects.
Why it closed:  Business is no longer sustainable. They have formed a partnership with Robo 3D to continue offering technical support for their MOD-t.
Survived by: Robo 3D, Cura, Slic3r, Autodesk

ShutterCal (2013-2018)

What it did: ShutterCal was a calendar-based daily photo journal. It was also a photography community where you can browse the calendars of other users, participate in the forums, and otherwise get ideas for your own projects.
Why it closed:  Reason not indicated
Survived by:  Instagram, Momento (iPhone), glimpses

Electroloom (2014-2016)

What it did: Electroloom designed and created seamless, ready-to-wear garments based on custom 3D geometries.
Why it closed:  Electroloom did not have the financial ability to continue supporting the company.
Survived by: Kniterate, Unmade, Ambercycle, Bolt Threads

Vyclone (2011-2016)

What it did: Vyclone is an application that synchronized video clips from multiple users and angles, and creates one editable film.
Why it closed: Reason not indicated
Survived by:  Socialcam, Viddy App, Spark Camera, Cameo

Streamnation (2013-2016)

What it did: Streamnation is a cloud storage solution that allowed users to securely store, stream, and share all of their media within their friends and family circle.
Why it closed:  Streamnation cited a technical “roadblock” as making their service inefficient. The company is pivoting to focus on what was previously a side project, named Project Noah (a completely different product).
Survived by: Plex, FileStream.me, Offcloud, Cloudload

Picturelife (2011-2016)

What it did: Picturelife was a photo-storage and management service which securely stored and organized digital photographs.
Why it closed: Picturelife was acquired by Streamnation which was also later shut down.
Survived by: Google Photos, iCloud, SmugMug, Piwigo, Apple Photos

Copygram (2011-2015)

What it did: Copygram allowed users to download, share, and print Instagram photos, squares, contact cards, posters and more.
Why it closed: Reason not indicated
Survived by: DownGram, Facebook