Design your way

Building a remote-first business in 2021 means building a business that can operate and generate profits without any physical offices. Fully remote employees oversee and run digital infrastructure and processes. Teams communicate and complete tasks with the help of digital platforms. And clients receive products digitally or in the mail.

But businesses can’t be remote-first without a few key structures and steps in place. In this article, we’ll share exactly what those are.

If you’re ready to run your own remote business, the following seven steps will get you there.

How to Build a Remote-First Business in 2021 (Step-by-Step)

And without further ado, here are seven steps to build a remote-first business in 2021:

1. Set-up a Dependable Digital Infrastructure

A digital infrastructure is a combination of the technology you use to manage your remote business. This includes your systems, processes, and anything else your business needs.

From project management to communication tools, your digital infrastructure will be the glue that keeps things running.

A dependable digital infrastructure gives your team secure access to any platform they need to do their work. This allows them to be as organized and productive as possible. It also helps them collaborate with other team members and clients when needed.

To set up a digital infrastructure, you’ll first need to create an assignment protocol.

An assignment protocol means how your business is going to handle work requests and assignments. Make sure to plan how you’ll handle incoming work requests and divvy up assignments.

Then, use a collaborative platform like ClickUp or Pipefy to keep track of all work and assign tasks easily. A platform like this isn’t just accessible by your whole team, it also integrates with other digital apps so you can manage everything in one workspace.

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Once you’ve created your assignment protocol, map out your business’s:

• Daily responsibilities (for instance, operations and checking sales)
• Weekly responsibilities (for instance, confirming all projects are completed)
• Monthly responsibilities (for instance, paying employees and delivering products to customers)

Once that’s done, you can determine which digital tools you’ll need to take care of those responsibilities.

For instance, if you need to track daily sales leads and closed deals, you’ll need sales management software like SetSail.

If you need to pay employees every month, you’ll need payroll management software like Oyster.

Here are some other tools you might need:

• Slack: for team, employee, and client communication
• Adobe Illustrator: for graphic designers and editors
• LastPass: to manage company-wide passwords
• com: to edit marketing copy
• Ripl: for social media management

Whatever tools you choose, just make sure all team members can access them so they can do their job as productively as possible.

2. Create Solid Business Systems

Once you have a grasp on your regular responsibilities, you’ll need to create processes, automations, and workflows to manage them. Doing so will help you and your entire team collaborate and finish tasks efficiently.

Here’s what you might use processes, automations, and workflows for:

Processes

Your processes should aim to make every task more manageable and quicker to complete.

You might design processes for:

• Project management
• Customer orders
• Customer onboarding
• Employee onboarding
• Billing
• Purchasing
• Product delivery
• Payroll

For instance, your project management process could be:

1. Check incoming work requests in ClickUp
2. Segment work requests into individual project tasks
3. Assign each task to a specific employee

Automations

Why do repetitive work that a bot can do for you? Use your collaborative platform to set up automations for any repetitive, mundane tasks.

You can set up automations for:

• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Assigning task due dates
• Sending task and event reminders
• Completing assignments
• Delegating tasks

Workflows

For every process you have, you’ll need to create a workflow for it. A process is a sequence of tasks. A workflow is a way to make that sequence more efficient and productive. Unlike a process, a workflow isn’t something you design intuitively. It’s carefully analyzed, thought-out, planned, modeled, and then consciously automated.

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For instance, your project management workflow could be:

1. Check incoming work requests in ClickUp
2. Segment work requests into individual project tasks
3. Create a work description, brief, and due date for each task
4. Assign each task to a specific employee
5. Monitor assignments to see if they’re completed on time
6. Reassign tasks if previous employees can’t complete them
7. Run a quality control check on each completed task
8. Submit completed projects to the appropriate client

Here’s another example. Let’s say you run a remote sales team and you’re setting up automated workflows to manage new leads.

This first workflow you want to design is one that divides quality leads from poor ones. So you decide to set up an automation that sends sales reps a lead scoring template every time they log a new lead.

You also want to recognize employees when they make a sale. So you set up an automation that sends sales reps a congratulations email every time they make a sale.

A workflow is any system that makes your processes as smooth and automated as possible.

3. Hire a Dedicated HR Team

Managing HR for remote-first businesses comes with its own challenges, including managing:

• Employment contracts
• Employee benefits
• Taxes
• Hiring and contract termination
• Time off
• Insurance
• Anything required by law

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But when you hire a dedicated HR team, they manage all of these details for you. Consider hiring an HR team to manage employee hiring, training, onboarding, contracts, benefits, and time off.

Having an HR team frees you from having to do tasks unrelated to your leadership responsibilities. This way, you can focus on more important tasks, like growing your empire.

4. Hire the Right Employees and Freelancers

When it comes to building a remote team, you need disciplined, skilled, and reliable employees.

Since remote employees are autonomous and not under direct supervision, they need to be able to manage their own work.

Here’s what to look for when hiring remote employees and freelancers:

• Great communication skills (i.e., responds to emails quickly)
• Experience in their field
• The ability to collaborate remotely when needed
• Organizational skills
• Attention to detail (i.e., they noticed you misspelled their name)
• Willingness to learn new skills
• A fresh perspective
• The ability to work independently

During the hiring process, it’s important that candidates fully understand what would be expected of them. Make sure they know your company’s mission, goals, and other measures for success.

Set clear goals and be as detailed as possible. You’ll need to communicate your strategic vision, brand identity, milestones, and goals. This way, candidates can be honest about any skills or limitations they would bring to that role.

Once employees are hired, make sure they understand:

• Who to turn to for what (i.e., who they can ping with their questions)
• What systems and tools to use to do their work
• How to submit work
• Who to reach out to with project questions
• How to get paid (i.e., do they need to send you an invoice?)
• Processes that support their job roles and responsibilities
• Where to access training and job resources

5. Create a Training Plan

Making training an integral part of your remote business is essential to staying on top of market changes and new skills.

One way to do that is by conducting regular online training sessions and sharing access to online resources like StuDocu does.

When creating your training plan, write down answers to the following:

• How often do you want employees to train?
• What specific skills do you want them to learn?
• Do you want employees to get certified for specific skills? Which ones?
• Who’s going to lead training and development?
• How are you going to administer training? (i.e., learning modules or live webinars)
• Do you want to set up employee mentorship programs?
• What technology or platforms are you going to use?

The answers you wrote down are now considered your ‘employee training plan’.

Once that’s done, identify employee training needs. Do they need to learn how to manage customer accounts? Do they need support developing technical skills? Compile their training needs into a list, along with any other training topics you want them to know.

The list you just compiled is now a ‘thematic units’ list that you’d like your employees to learn.

Next, copy your thematic units and paste them into a new list and name it ‘syllabus’.

Under each thematic unit in the syllabus, you’ll notate:

• The unit’s learning objectives
• A summary of what the training will be about
• A list of tools and resources needed to conduct the unit
• Credentials and employee access for all tools
• When the training is going to start and end

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Once that’s ready, you can hand it over to your training and development team to implement.

6. Prevent Information Silos

An information silo is when departments or groups at a company choose to withhold information or knowledge from other employees at the same company.

When different departments have different priorities, management may create an environment that discourages communication between these groups. Sometimes this is necessary, but other times it can result in problems like redundant job roles or lack of support.

Information silos are also inefficient and create bottlenecks within an organization. When groups work separately and restrict shared access to information, it’s difficult to create a consensus on company priorities. This can also lead to frustrated employees, missed deadlines, or even restrict employees from performing their jobs well.

A globally distributed team needs access to all information. This includes team members, company knowledge, and resources. Consider using a reliable VPN to help you prevent information silos. VPNs increase security and enable employees in countries with restrictions to bypass blocked pages. NordVPN is one of the top-rated VPNs and provides servers in 60 different countries.

Here are some other ways to prevent information silos:

• Encourage employees to share resources in a dedicated Slack channel
• Create a company handbook that includes anything an employee would need to know
• Give your HR team the tools they need to direct employees to the correct resources when needed

7. Maintain Team Engagement

A downfall to remote work is that it can make employees feel disconnected from the rest of the team. If the entire company is offsite, disconnectedness can impact your business even more. From poor employee morale to insufficient work quality, disconnected teams can make your bottom line suffer.

That’s why it’s essential to maintain engagement with your remote team.

Here are some ways to do that:

• Host weekly ‘coffee chats’ where employees hop on video calls to chat and connect
• Plan monthly company-wide meetings
• Run silly contests and surveys
• Have interdepartmental virtual meetings every week
• Host online games
• Encourage employees to share funny memes in your ‘watercooler’ channel on Slack
• Add a team culture app to your Slack channel (like HeyTaco)

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Wrap up

These seven steps can help you build a remote-first business you’d be proud of.

Remember to:

1. Set up a dependable digital infrastructure
2. Create solid business systems
3. Hire an HR team
4. Hire the right employees and freelancers
5. Create a training plan
6. Prevent information silos
7. And Maintain team engagement

Running a remote team is a tremendous challenge, but with the right processes in place, you’ll be on your way to building a successful business.

Author Bio

Joanne Camarce is a digital marketing expert specializing in SEO, eCommerce, and social media. She loves meeting new people and embraces unique challenges. When she’s not wearing her marketing hat, you’ll find Joanne fine-tuning her art and music skills.

The post 7 Tips for Building a Remote-First Business in 2021 appeared first on Design your way.

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12 Ways A Graphic Designer Can Earn Money

Graphic design is a highly thriving marketplace. The recent rise of digital marketing has given a massive increase to the graphic design field. With the advent of various new design software, it is getting increasingly easy for people to take up graphic design. All they need is a decent internet connection, a computer system and lots of free time. This is why freelancing portals such as Upwork, Freelancer, and others are overflowing with graphic designers. Amongst all this, it is getting increasingly difficult for graphic designers to find good quality and high-paying jobs. 

As a graphic designer, it always helps to have a long-term retainer contract. But these are not easy to get. Hence a designer always needs to be on the lookout for better opportunities, be it in terms of short-term logo design assignments or branding, or even digital marketing design support. Following are some good avenues for graphic designers to earn extra money:

1) Design Website Elements or Icons:

There are over 200 million websites on the Internet right now. Each website owner wants their website to stand out from the crowd and fetch them more visitors and more revenue. One good way of customizing their website is through using highly creative website elements or icons. This is where graphic designers can step up and deliver. You can start creating creative and trending sets of website elements and icons. It can be in the form of website headers, buttons, menus, and various icons. You can have your own website selling these elements or utilize third-party platforms like Freepik, Shutterstock, etc. Once you have a huge bulk of website elements and Icons ready, then you can create your own website and put them on sale over there.    

2) Comics and Graphic Novels: 

The demand for comics and graphic novels has been increasing over the last few years. As a graphic designer, you can make the most of this new trend. There are two ways to go about this. Either you can approach an already existing comics or graphic novels set up and provide your services there at a good cost. Or you can create your own comic or graphic novel. This will not be an easy task as you will have to figure out the characters, the storyline and keep coming up with new content. For creating the characters, you can use Illustrator. There are many other tools and software that can help you fast-track the creation of comic books. If things work out well, you can also set up your own team of illustrators, content writers, and marketers to make this into a profitable venture. 

3) Designing Beautiful Colour Books:

According to Forbes, over 12 million adult coloring books are sold every year, making it a multi-million dollar industry. Along with children, the market for coloring books is opened to adults as well. More and more people are taking this up as a hobby. Creating mandalas for coloring is also considered therapeutic and is now recommended by many professionals. As a designer, you can add value to this by developing highly creative coloring books. This can be in the form of detailed mandalas, natural landscapes, or majestic animal kingdoms. From a design point of view, this task is not highly challenging; rather, it gives you a greater creative bandwidth to develop highly engaging coloring books. 

4) Developing New Fonts:

There is always a demand for new and creative fonts. Gone are the days when people used to restrict themselves to Times New Romans. Now they want exclusive fonts for their designs. A lot of bigger companies are now getting dedicated fonts designed for their use. At this time, graphic designers have a lot of opportunities to exploit. You can start by tweaking existing fonts to create a set of new fonts or even create fonts from scratch. The good idea is to pick up various genres and create fonts for them, like fonts for Sports, fonts for travel, fonts for food, etc. There are many websites on which you can sell these fonts. 

5) Developing Emojis and Stickers:

We all love using creative emojis. They have, in a way, changed the way we chat with each other. Every other day new keyboards are being released by developers that are loaded with fun emojis. For graphic designers, this world is highly unexplored, and therefore there is a lot of scope in it. You can play around with the simpler yellow color emojis or go after your favorite cartoon characters and make emojis out of them. One good way of designing stickers is to pick up trending topics such as current affairs, movie releases, or whatever is in the news. You can launch these emojis or stickers as packs or sell them to customized keyboard makers. 

6) Printable Wall Art:

The global home decor market is seeing a good rise as it continues to grow over 20% a year. It has led to a revolution in the drop-shipping companies that are ready to offer you thousands of products for your home, including custom printed designs. One of the products that are high in demand is printed wall arts. This can be in the form of wallpapers or even framed art pieces. This demand is good news for graphic designers as they can express their creative sides by designing stunning digital art pieces. These could be in the form of movie posters, abstract designs, retro art, or even minimal designs that would enhance the beauty of homes. There are hundreds of such design websites where you can get registered and start designing printable wall arts. 

7) Developing Amazing GIFs & Memes:

We are living in the decade of GIFs.They are getting more and more prominent in usage and acceptance. The growing demand fuels its need. But more importantly, making GIFs is so much fun. There is a common misconception that graphic designers work only on static images. That is far from the truth, as many designers are proficient with basic video editing skills. Photoshop also offers a good way of making videos. As graphic designers, it would be a lot of fun to work and earn by churning out GIFs and Memes. However, you can not do it just for your own fun. You would want to find a good source where you can convert your skills of making GIFs and Memes into money. There are a lot of websites and other digital platforms that you can explore for this purpose. 

8) Create a Design Blog Website:

Today the majority of graphic designers thrive on design blog websites. These websites offer them insights into the latest trends in graphic design. They are full of knowledge as they include how-to or tutorial videos. Apart from that, they also house a lot of resources on them which come very handy to the graphic designers. It would be a good idea for you to get on the other side of the table and develop your own blog that provides these resources. You can either create your own website from scratch or use several available WordPress themes to develop the website quickly. You can divide the content into various sections like design inspirations, tutorial blogs, listicles about resources, latest design trends, and even put up your own designs for sale on it.  

9) Teach Graphic Designing:

For senior graphic designers who have spent a good amount of time executing design projects, converting their knowledge into an engaging course is a wonderful idea. Given the pandemic and work-from-home routine, people are getting extra time to pick up several skills online. Graphic design is a highly useful skill that a lot of people want to develop. Hence the market and target audience are set well for you. You will need a certain set of resources like a camera or any other recording device and a good microphone. Your courses can vary from graphic design starter course to detailed courses on photoshop or Illustrator. Then you can set these courses for sale on websites like Coursera or Udemy and earn money out of them.

10) Create YouTube Channel:

One good alternative to graphic design courses is creating your own YouTube Channel. There is a lot of money that you can earn by creating good quality videos on graphic design. Again you will need a set of resources, but they would not be as demanding as the ones you need for creating an entire graphic design course. Your focus should be on creating small 10 minute videos, touching upon short graphic designing issues. It could be something like how to remove background from an image or how to design perfect fonts. Once you get good followers on your YoutTube channel, you can start running ads to earn money. Over time you can start reviewing products or software as that can be a good source of income.  

11) Start Selling Merchandise:

If you are looking to expand your horizons beyond graphic designing, one good option is selling particular merchandise. Your designing skills will also prove to be quite handy in this. There are a lot of options for you to start with, like T-shirts, printable wall arts, and, most popular of all – customized products. There is a huge demand for these kinds of products. The Internet is flooded with websites providing such selling services. All you need to do is to sign up on these portals and start designing and selling your products. It can help determine the whole process and replicate it by creating your own website and creating your own merchandise. You may have to tie up with local vendors for this, but the profit margins will get really high. 

12) Enroll in Freelancing Portals:

One of the best ways of having a constant flow of income is registering yourself on a good freelancing portal. One of the best ones out there is Upwork. There are many other platforms like Designhill, Toptal, Fiver, and others. For designers, there are altogether separate portals which you should make the most of. DesignBro, CrowdSpring, 99Design, Designcrowd, etc., are some of the good ones worth having your presence. You will need to set up a strong profile so as to attract more work. It helps to develop a good portfolio file to show to potential clients. Include the best of your projects in this. The good part about these portals is that they try to secure the payments for you. So you can rest assured that you will be paid for your work.  

It is always good to have a variety of income sources, no matter what your profession is. For graphic designers, this is getting easier day by day as their demand is increasing. By making the most of the digital marketing wave, they can enhance their skills and widen their reach. By doing this, they can surely make some good money.

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14 Tutorials for Designing the Perfect Mockups for Your Brand

Designing visually appealing mockups is something that all designers need to be able to execute as part of their design jobs. Gone are the days when designers could submit their designs in a simple form. The clients now want to see how the logo or packaging would look like in the real world. This, in a way, is a win-win for both designers and clients as all the parties know how the output is going to be. For designers, it gets easy to convince the client about how good their designs are and how they will look when executed. For the clients, it becomes easy to imagine the applications. They can then get the final output tweaked to suit their liking. 

With the growing popularity of design mockups, there are many template options available on the internet. The majority of them provide open files to get easier for designers to use them and customize them as per their requirements. But one needs to develop a keen eye to understand which mockup will work on which product and how to tweak the open files. Moreover, there will be times when a ready-made template will not help, and the designer will have to develop the mockup right from scratch. The following video tutorials will help in designing the perfect mockups for your brands:

1) Creating Mockup Using a Base Image:

One of the most basic tutorials, this video will guide you through creating a product mockup using a base image. Often, you will come across requirements of showcasing the logo or the packaging design on objects such as T-Shirts, caps, cups, etc. For this, you will need to find an excellent high-resolution base image with the object. Try selecting an image with simpler backgrounds and less texture. This 10 minutes tutorial will then help you understand stepwise what needs to be done to set up the logo or packaging on that particular object. 

2) Realistic T-Shirt Mockup in Photoshop:

Creating T-Shirt mockups is a lot of fun. This is also one of the essential inclusion that designers provide to view the design output. This tutorial provides the proper guidance for executing this task. You will need a base design or logo that you want to set up on the T-shirt. The tutorial uses a black T-shirt, but you can use the same steps for any color you want to work on. Generally, it is preferred that you use a single-color T-shirt to not conflict with your design. You can select the color base on your logo or design to ensure that it looks best on it. The tutorial also teaches you how to fine-tune the T-shirt color to enhance the visual of your design. The video is just 12 minutes long and provides you the basic guidelines for creating a realistic T-shirt mockup. 

3) Packaging Design Mockup in Photoshop

PHLEARN is one of the most viewed tutorial channels on YouTube by designers. Coming from this channel, this 18-minute tutorial is a must-watch for designers working on packaging design. For any packaging design you create, you need to provide a mockup of that on the package so that the client can visualize it. This tutorial uses a base image and teaches you how to impose your design on it. The choice of the base image depends on your design, but the steps to achieve the outcome are almost the same. It provides you with important tricks like using the transformation tool, Blur tool, and the Vanishing Point Filter to make your final mockup look visually stunning and highly realistic.  

4) Stunning Logo Mockups:

The work of a designer does not end at just designing amazing logos. They also have to then present it in the best possible way. Logo mockups help in this, provided the designers choose the right setup for the mockup. Some of the best possible setups are visiting cards, hoardings, reception desks, or stationary. But this tutorial takes it a step further to teach you realistic 3D rendering of your logo. This adds a special x-factor to your design which will make it easy to impress the client. The good part of the tutorial is that it is just 4:30 mins long, but even in that short duration, it explains how to create logo mockups on several objects.  

5) Tshirt Mockup Composite Design in Photoshop:

This tutorial is for experienced designers looking to learn how to create visually stunning mockups of their T-shirt designs. Coming from the tutvid YouTube channel, which already has 1.15M subscribers, this tutorial is rich in terms of its content and its production. It starts by talking about how to create the mockup on a flat T-shirt using several different methods. Then it takes the tutorial up one level to show how to create mockups using a photo of a model wearing the T-shirt. You will get to learn how to use layers, masks, adjustment layers, and blend modes to create a realistic mockup in no time—a very useful tutorial for designers working in the fashion sector or even for Ecommerce websites. 

6) Mobile Application Mockups:

Creating mobile applications is one of the latest trends for brands. Even if you are not designing the mobile user interface, the client would always like to see how the branding will look in a mobile application. Creating stunning mobile application mockups is the solution for this. This video tutorial by Dansky helps you achieve that easily. It uses a high-resolution mobile image as a base and helps you load the mobile application on it. The tutorial is just 3 minutes long, so be prepared to pause the video a couple of times to better understand. But the good part is that it provides the download link of the project files. 

7) Create Website Mockup in Photoshop:

The best way to go about a website development project is to first understand the requirements and develop the wireframe and website design. For getting approval on the website design, you need to present it in a visually appealing manner by using mockups. This nine-minute tutorial helps you with this task. By the end of the tutorial, not only would you be able to design really good mockups but also understand how to use gradients to create the needed light and shadows effects. The tutorial teaches you how to make the most of transform options like distort, scale, skew to set up the layers in the right manner using smart objects—a very helpful resource for designers working on website development. 

8) Make Beautiful Business Card Mockups:

Designing business cards is an essential part of the brand identity designing process. This is generally the second step designers take up once they are done designing the logo. Showcasing the business card design in the form of mockups helps the client visualize it in a better manner. This seven-minute tutorial guides you through the entire process. It takes a base image of visiting cards, something you can get easily, and then imposes the business card design on it. The good part is that it showcases both sides of the visiting card in a single image. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use transformation tools, smart objects, levels, using multiple layers and how to give finishing touches to the final image. 

9) Create Composite Mockups for Magazines:

Every time you design a magazine, you need to also come up with a good mockup to showcase how the magazine will look like. At times this can become a challenging task. There are many good resources to help you with this, including this tutorial. This crisp video of 4:30 minutes walks you through the entire process using a magazine page image as a base. The good part of the video is that it just doesn’t impose one image on the base but rather takes it layer by layer. This way, you get to learn more about how to extract the most out of the various tools of Photoshop. 

10) Create Appealing Billboard Mockups:

Another branding aspect that relies heavily on mockups is billboards. Given how expensive the execution of setting up a billboard is, clients will always ask for mockups to ensure everything is alright before the design goes for printing. Usually, designing billboard mockups is simpler than other mockups as they are on a flat surface. For fancy modern billboards, this may vary. This tutorial takes a base image of a flat billboard. You can use a good image of the real billboard that the design will be applied on as the base image. Then using various photoshop tools like transformation, skew, blend, smart objects, and others, you get to learn how to create stunning billboards that will definitely catch the eye of passersby. 

11) Create a Scrolling Website Video Mockup in Photoshop

While most designers create a static mockup for websites, it fails to present the website in a scrollable form. This makes it miss the mark during client presentations. You can up your designing game by creating a scrolling website mockup in photoshop with this video. Unlike popular belief, you can create videos on photoshop. For this tutorial, you need a good base image with a laptop or desktop on it and the entire website wireframe. The tutorial teaches you how to get that image as well. Once you have these things ready, you can start by loading the base image on photoshop and creating the right smart objects in it. Then you need to set up the entire scrollable website image in the smart object and fine-tune it for the perfect view. Use the timeline tool to create the scrolling effect on the laptop/desktop screen. You can take a video out or even a GIF out. The 10-minute tutorial is highly informative and makes you an expert in making scrolling website video mockups.

12) Transform Your Book Cover into a Mockup:

Setting up a book cover on a flat book is an easy task and does not look very impressive. Rather you should use a perspective image with a human element in it, as shown in this tutorial video by the highly reputed Photoshop Training Channel. Their YouTube channel has 1.47M subscribers, so you can rely on their expertise when it comes to Photoshop. The video starts with a ‘what not to do’ section, which is interesting. Then it moves ahead to teach you how to create guides and the perspective crop tool. Then by using smart objects, you can impose the book cover design on the mockup and further fine-tune it. It also teaches you how to use a warp tool, shadow effect, and layer mask to create a highly professional output. In just 7 minutes, it teaches you how to master the art of book cover mockup designs. 

13) Step by Step Tutorial on How to Download and Use PSD Logo Mockups:

This tutorial is one of the most important and useful ones as it teaches you how to use the thousands of logo mockups available on the internet. A quick Google search will take you to many websites which provide free or paid logo mockups. You need to download them, extract their open files and customize them to your liking. This elaborate tutorial will guide you through this process. It also provides information on which are the good resources. Once you have downloaded the original files, it helps you decode the open files and understand the working of smart objects. 

14) Create Your Mockup from Scratch:

Are you tired of using the standard templates available on the internet? Then why not make your mockup right from scratch. This tutorial is for the extra creative people who have the time and resources to set up their environment for mockups. You will need resources like a good camera, lights, and other props that you can use to create a visually appealing environment. Then by taking photos, you can set them up using smart objects in Photoshop for creating mockups of stationery or even packaging designs. 

The world of mockups is a very vast one and keeps on expanding. There are many dedicated tools and software available now to get you the perfect 3D mockups you need. As a designer, you should always make sure to provide mockups of your designs, as this will help you provide a better understanding to the client. 

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10+ Useful Tools and Resources That Will Improve Your Workflow

Let’s assume you are starting a business or project from scratch or are looking to build or improve on an existing one. Having the right design tools and services at your fingertips can make it much easier for you to reach your goal.

It has been our experience that the best foundation to build an online presence on is one that incorporates the best tools, designer resources, or services available. Being satisfied with nothing but the best has worked for us and for millions of others as well.

The options available to you naturally depend on your need, and your workflow can definitely be influenced by what you pick and choose. It’s important therefore that you understand the features a given option offers.

To assist you in this matter we’ve put together the following list of 15 items that you, or your team, business, or agency should definitely consider. All are tops in their respective categories and can potentially be game changers for you.

1. BeTheme | Limitless Website Builder for WordPress

“Limitless” hits the nail on the head insofar as the capabilities of this multipurpose website builder are concerned.

Longtime favorites among BeTheme’s 40+ core features include its library of more than 600 professionally designed and customizable pre-built websites that cover more than 30 industry sectors and all the popular website types.

Other favorites include the Shortcode Generator, no-code Admin Panel, Layout Generator, and Muffin Builder that combine to make website building easy.

BeTheme’s authors are not resting on their laurels.

Muffin Builder has been replaced by Muffin Builder 3. With its more intuitive UI, Muffin Builder 3 enables it user to:

• Create any layout using sections, wraps, shortcodes, and styling options
• Save and restore design revisions
• Import and export sections and blocks of content
• Highlight code and manage shortcodes while text editing

Theme Options 3 is another new feature. Theme Option 3 provides users with:

• The ability to globally set portfolio, shop, and blog page styles
• 600+ settings to modify design elements and layouts

Click on the banner to learn more about BeTheme.

2. Total WordPress Theme

Something to look for when choosing which multipurpose theme might be best for you is to find one that lets you build any page layout you want without having to deal with any restrictions or limitations.

Total, with its custom styling options and flexible page-building features, fills the bill in that respect.

Among these features you’ll find:

• 40+ easy to import pre-built Theme Demos to help you get started
• 100+ Builder Modules to create custom pages
• Front-end drag and drop using the WPBakery page builder
• Unique pre-designed Card Styles for displaying post entries
• A developer-friendly API for creating custom card styles
• Templatera – a WPBakery add-on for creating, re-using, and managing page layouts

Total is also translation ready, SEO optimized, and developer friendly.

Click to find out more.

3. Mobirise Website Builder

Mobirise is a free offline website builder for Windows and Mac that is ideal for creating small to medium size websites. It is an excellent choice for non-techies who typically prefer to work visually.

• Since Mobirise is offline you are not tied to any platform, and you can host your site wherever you wish
• The package includes 4000+ website blocks in 5 free and 100+ premium HTML themes together with 300+ home page templates. These blocks are designed with the latest web design trends in mind.
• Page-building features include sliders, galleries, full-screen intros, images and videos, data and pricing tables, Google maps, forms, icons, and more
• Google AMP/Bootstrap4 guarantees your website will be crazy-fast and 100% mobile
• Mobirise is free for both personal and commercial use and has been used to create more than 1.5million sites to date.

Click on the banner to learn more about Mobirise, 2021’s #1 offline website builder.

4. Uncode – Creative Multiuse & WooCommerce WordPress Theme

Uncode is a sleek, high-performance, pixel perfect multipurpose theme that 80,000 website designers have used to build websites that have those same characteristics.

• The Wireframes plugin’s 450+ section templates enable you to create any layout you have in mind
• The WooCommerce Custom Builder with its Single Product Builder and other custom features makes it an ideal theme for eCommerce website building
• Uncode’s “must- see” showcase of user-created websites emphasizes the site-building opportunities open to you

5. wpDataTables

The wpDataTables plugin makes creating tables and charts from huge amounts of complex data a relatively quick and easy task.

• wpDataTables tables and charts can be responsive, interactive, front-end editable, and easy to maintain
• thousands of rows of data can be processed in seconds or minutes, and the wpDataTables can work with data from multiple sources and in multiple formats
• Conditional formatting allows users to highlight or color code key data

6. Trafft

Trafft is a booking software application that is still in an early stage of release. If you join as an early adopter you will have an opportunity to contribute to Trafft’s game-changing approach to how businesses book and manage appointments.

Highlights include:

• Managing appointments and SMS and email notifications
• Customizable booking forms
• Employee assignment and time management

Sign up for the Early Bird plan for as little as $5/month.

7. Rey theme for WooCommerce

Its integrating into Elementor, WooCommerce, and the WordPress engine no doubt contributed to Rey being considered by many as the best WooCommerce theme in 2020. This highly modular theme:

• Offers a vast array of customizing options
• Focuses on performance
• Features a cool, modern design
• Is SEO friendly
• Introduces an impressive collection of eCommerce custom features and tools

8. Goodiewebsite

GOODIE is a web development platform that those who need to get a website coded and up and running or have other web requirements to connect with professional developers to complete the task.

• GOODIE specializes in small personal and business websites, custom website design, and eCommerce websites
• Other specialties include responsive email development, front-end development, and website maintenance

9. Amelia Booking Plugin

Amelia is an easy to use plugin that automates appointment and event bookings and booking management and saves both businesses and their clients significant amounts of time in doing so.

• Appointments can be made, changed, or cancelled online 24/7
• Amelia can serve multiple business locations
• Employee work schedules and time off can be tracked and managed
• Amelia can be integrated with Zoom and Google meet to conduct consultation or training sessions online

10. Getillustrations – Premium illustrations library

GetIllustrations is a ready to use library of premium illustrations that can change your approach to website UI, app, and presentation design.

• This, the world’s biggest bundle of its type, features 6881 illustrations and counting
• Illustrations are available in Vector AI, SVG, PNG, Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD formats

Once purchased, an illustration comes with a commercial license and is yours to keep without limitations.

11. 8b Website Builder

This brand new online website builder could easily become the star of the show in 2021.

• 8b can be used to create websites at your desktop at home, or on your mobile device when you are out and about.
• 8b’s UI is futuristic in appearance and super simple to use
• There are 250+ website sections and 16 starter templates to get you off to a fast start

One more thing: 8b is free.

12. Siter

The Siter website builder has affordable monthly and annual plans, but you can start using it for free. Siter is a great choice for design teams or for any project where there is a need for collaboration.

• Siter does not require coding, but you can insert custom code as needed
• Search for quality royalty-free photos, embed YouTube videos, access thousands of free icons
• Use a free Siter domain or you can use your own

13. Heroic Inbox

Heroic Inbox lets businesses manage their shared inboxes right inside their own websites. This can be especially handy when communicating directly with a customer and there is a need to refer to previous email communications.

• Heroic Inbox can organize email using tags
• Staff can collaborate on providing appropriate responses
• An Inbox Zero status can be attained in no time
• Key performance metrics can be tracked and acted upon

14. WHATFONTIS

WHATFONTIS helps designers find the font they want or need by identifying a font from an uploaded image in seconds.

• These service rapid search capabilities are based on its database of 700K+ fonts and its powerful font-finding algorithms
• Submitted fonts are positively identified 90% of the time
• Premium support is offered should the AI engine produce an awkward result
• Cursive fonts can be identified if the letters are separated

15. Litho – The Multipurpose HTML5 Template

The Litho HTML5 template with its creative modern design and Bootstrap4 performance characteristics is perfect for almost any type of business or agency, including startups.

Litho’s key features include:

• Detailed documentation and 5-star support
• 37+ home pages and 230+ ready to use templates
• Page styles for portfolio, blog, and shop sites
• Hero sliders, contact forms, interactive banners, tabs, buttons, tables, and other elements needed to build beautiful websites.

***** 

You want to create a website but you don’t have much if anything in the way of technical knowledge or experience. Then these design tools and services will serve you well.

Once a new or updated website design goes live, your work isn’t quite done. You still have to maintain that website. Selecting the right tools, like those above, makes that an easy task as well.

The focus here has been to give you what we believe to be the best software solution for the task at hand. Once you put one or more of these solutions to use, we are certain you will believe that as well.

The post 10+ Useful Tools and Resources That Will Improve Your Workflow first appeared on Web Design Dev.

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