What Software Do Designers Use?

You want to be a designer. You have an imagination. You can draw. What else do you need to make a career?

The answer is mastery of the software programs that replace hand drawing today. Software such as the Adobe Creative Cloud programs, AutoCAD, Figma, Rhinoceros 3D, and many others is as central to the design process today as traditional drawing media. Design, which is essentially applied art, is no longer a purely creative field: it’s also a technical one. Designers need to know their way around the tech world to succeed in the 21st-century workplace. And there's a good reason for the importance of design-by-software: the programs at today’s designers’ disposal can do things that can’t be done with paper and pencil. Consider only two examples: the vector graphics you can create with Adobe Illustrator that can be infinitely scaled without any loss of quality and the 3D capabilities of AutoCAD that make it possible to create and even print out designs in three dimensions.

What is a Designer?

A designer is a person who comes up with designs—plans, drawings, schematics, renderings, and prototypes—of just about anything you may encounter in today’s world. Everything from a shampoo bottle to the outsides of airplanes had to be designed before they could become tangible realities. The designer is often the person who comes up with the idea for something and then comes up with the plans for it. Designers are idea people and creative types who possess the ability to see things that don’t exist (yet).

Designers come in as many shapes and sizes as the objects they design. You’ll thus encounter everything from Floral Designers to Mechanical Designers and Graphic Designers to UX/UI Designers. Each field requires specialized knowledge, but the threads connecting all of them are a creative spirit and artistic ability. Much designing today is done on the computer, using CAD (computer-assisted design) software, but the good old-fashioned ability to draw is still an essential tool in most designers’ toolkits.

Read more about what a designer does.

What Software Do Designers Use?

Adobe Creative Cloud

At the heart of design software lies Adobe Creative Cloud, a suite of programs that covers a full range of design capabilities. From the retouching and editing of photographic images with Photoshop to the less well-known 3D possibilities inherent in the substance programs, with stops at typesetting and everything you need to edit an entire film and soundtrack. Adobe is available by subscription rather than purchase (so the software is always up-to-date), so it has cornered its market segment. Designers of all ilks need to know their way around this compelling software universe.

Adobe’s best-known product is Photoshop, which is so well known and used by so many that it has become a verb (as in: “stand over there so I can photoshop you out of my family’s vacation pictures.”) Photoshop can do a lot more than that. It also allows for the editing of photographic images in previously unthinkable ways. Photoshop is part of the triad of programs that sits at the heart of the Creative Cloud, the other two being InDesign and Illustrator. Graphic Designers use this triumvirate of programs daily; designers in other fields will also find themselves using this aspect of the Creative Cloud, perhaps more than they first imagined.

Although not every program in the Cloud will be helpful to you in the design field of your choice, you’re probably going to encounter some of its programs in any design endeavor you undertake. Adobe’s After Effects and Premiere Pro are the core Creative Cloud programs for motion design and video editing. AfterEffects can be used to add special effects to a cinematic project as well as be used to create animation and motion graphics. These programs are the home turf of Motion Graphics Designers. Additionally, Adobe Cloud is structured so that you can use images from Photoshop as the basis of your AfterEffects animations. Thus the more you know about the Creative Cloud, the more capabilities it places at your fingertips.

Autodesk

For all its versatility, Adobe Cloud doesn’t do everything a designer can. Designers who are required to develop detailed plans of everything from a watch to a 15-bedroom mini-palace will require software capable of rendering plans and schematics, sometimes even in three dimensions. This is the world of computer-assisted design (CAD), the most popular software for Autodesk’s AutoCAD. Capable of drawing plans in detail that isn’t possible for human drafters, AutoCAD can even make drawings in 3D, which can then be turned into tangible prototypes using a 3D printer. AutoCAD is only the best-known of Autodesk’s software suite. The company also manufactures scarcely less useful Revit modeling software, as well as Infraworks (analysis and visualization of infrastructure design concepts), Inventor (mechanical design and product simulation), and Fusion 360 (3D modeling of product designs.)

Autodesk is the market leader in CAD software, but other comparable programs are on the market. A short list of those would include SketchUp, Microstation, Vectorworks Architect, and the popular Rhinoceros software for all aspects of 3D design, from the simple to the most complex creations your hardware can handle.

Figma, Sketch

UX and UI Designers, the people who fashion the experiences and create the interfaces that users encounter on apps and websites, have their range of specialized software. Figma is one product that has gained a substantial foothold in recent years and is used to create interfaces and allow teams to work collaboratively on projects, instead of the way Google Docs allows for collaboration in document creation. Adobe has its prototyping software, Adobe XD, but it has lost much of its market share to (the free) Figma. That undoubtedly explains why Adobe recently purchased Figma for $20 billion (pending DOJ approval.)

Other programs can be used to design, prototype, and build user interfaces. These include Sketch, a Mac-compatible vector graphics program that has acquired considerable popularity as an alternative to Illustrator. Other UX & UI design trade are InVision Studio, Axure, and Proto.io.

Coding and Specialized Software 

Although not software, there are computer languages of which designers should be aware. Web Designers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create web pages; the first two would make an excellent addition to any designer’s toolkit. More sophisticated (and less user-friendly) programming languages can also enter into the toolkits of designers of various types. Game Designers, for example, require a considerable coding ability to do their jobs. In addition to proficiency in C# or C++, they need to know how to employ game engine software such as Unreal Engine, Unity, or Gordot to lay a game’s groundwork and to keep all the code in good order. Fashion Designers use their own specialized software, such as CLO, MarvelousDesigner, or TUKA 3D, as well as Adobe Illustrator. If you want to design something, there’s almost sure to be software to help you do the job. Part of being a professional is knowing how to use it.

How to Learn Design Software

There are multiple ways of learning to use any kind of software. First, although it’s hard to recommend something as complex as design software, buying the book and teaching yourself is. Already a tenuous strategy for learning a foreign language, self-training is a possibility, especially for those with broad independent streaks. Teaching yourself comes with some inevitable handicaps, however: you won’t have anyone to ask when a question arises, and yours is probably not the best hand to guide your study of something about which you know nothing.

If you want to be in charge of your training, you’ll do better by enrolling in an on-demand class rather than trying to do it all yourself. An on-demand course is a series of video tutorials in which a teacher shows you the way through whatever you’re trying to learn. True, the teacher is teaching to a camera rather than a room of live students, and there’s no interaction between you and your instructor (or vice versa.) You, therefore, won’t be able to ask questions when you need help. On the plus side of on-demand learning are affordability and convenience, although, be forewarned, you need a lot of determination to stick with an on-demand course to the end. 

The third option is a live class in which the teacher works with students in real time. You’ll pay more for live instruction, but a live class is worth the money if only for the opportunity to ask questions and get answers. When you think of a live course, you’re likely to think of brick-and-mortar schools. While live in-person courses remain available, they’re no longer the only option for live education today. Thanks to the internet, people can partake in all manner of live experiences, from shopping live streams to religious services, all from the comfort of their own spaces. Learning is no exception, and you can take a live class with a live teacher without venturing out of your home. This can be convenient for people living in large cities who don’t want to fight through crowds and traffic to get to school. For people who don’t live in major metropolitan centers, live online learning opens doors to the previously impossible. True, the very busy may not be able to commit to attending a class at the same time every day or week, but for most people, live education remains the best of the available options.

Other Skills Needed to Become a Designer

While software is essential to professional design today, it’s not the only skill you need to have under your belt if you are to succeed. You will also need the ability to imagine things that don’t exist yet. (You may take this ability for granted until you encounter non-creative people who can’t see things unless they can put their hands on them.) In addition to that spark of creativity, you’ll need some drawing ability: after all, the A in CAD stands for “assisted.” The software can’t do everything for you.

Above and beyond those creative abilities, you’ll need some so-called “soft” skills to make a career as a Designer. Those include the ability to work as a part of a team and to be prepared to design pieces of a whole. As you’re going to have to open your creative work to others’ input, and as that input isn’t always provided in the most constructive way imaginable, you’re going to have to possess the ability not to take critiques of your creative work personally. Finally, you’ll also need some highly developed communication skills. Designers are called upon to communicate (and, if need be, defend) their creative visions to their team, clients, and, eventually, the public they want to purchase your product. What may first have seemed a solo career involving you, a pencil, and some paper, is, in reality, a “people” profession.

Learn the Skills to Become a Designer at Noble Desktop

If you wish to become a designer, Noble Desktop, a tech and design school based in New York that teaches worldwide thanks to the wonders of the internet, is available to give you the education you need to get started in this exciting field. Noble teaches certificate programs in numerous aspects of design and the technology that makes design possible in the contemporary world. These certificate programs offer comprehensive instruction in their topics and will arm you for the job market in whichever aspect of design interests you.

Noble has certificate programs in graphic design (the Adobe trio of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator), digital design (the main troika of Adobe programs plus Figma for UI design), UX & UI design, and motion graphics. All these programs feature small class sizes in order to make sure that each student receives ample attention from the instructor, and can be taken either in-person in New York or online from anywhere over the 85% of the Earth’s surface that is reached by the internet (plus the International Space Station.) Classes at Noble Desktop include a free retake option, which can be useful as a refresher course or as a means of maximizing what you learn from fast-paced classes. Noble’s instructors are all experts in their fields and often working professionals whose experience is invaluable when they mentor students in the school’s certificate programs 1-to-1.

Noble offers further design courses that are briefer than the certificate programs. You may also wish to consult Noble’s Learning Hub for a wealth of information on how to learn to be a designer.