Best Web Design Tools of 2020

In the present day, you will find several useful Web Design tools today, and making a suitable choice becomes quite tricky. Your choice of a web design tool depends on the work-flow that you have planned and the in-built utilities and functions. The work-flow of a Web Design depends on the complexity and feature requirement of a simple Website or an extensive Web Application. Due to the presence of a comprehensive online community, several Web Design tools are open-source, and the developers can make use of most of the functionalities of web designing via these Web Design tools. There is also a high availability of plug-ins and libraries which facilitate Web Design keeping the current trends in place.

Due to the invention of wire-framing tools, prototyping has become more accessible, and people can choose their appropriate Web Design tool quickly. We will cover a few popular Web design tools for the freelance web designers for hire keeping in mind the current trends of Web Design in 2020. It is not going to be an exhaustive list of the tools, but it will give you a detailed insight.

Invision Studio

InVision Studio covers all the basics of web designs, and it is a UI/UX tool, your developer will like a lot. It comes with a huge volume of in-built features and tools that help create attractive & trendy interfaces, templates, and wire-frames. It is also used for rapid prototyping, responsive, and collaborative design, and it works seamlessly with the existent design systems

If you are using InVision with Sketch, you'll find several cross-over of the features in both of these tools. When you talk about rapid prototyping and animation in the design with clickable items, InVision Studio is incomparable. Rapid prototyping allows you to create complex and imaginative transitions; it enables you to create the desired level of animation. If you wish to facilitate robust planning of the screen transitions, data flow from one screen to another, and the appearance of the screens with an animation effect, the InVision tool is the best possible choice. If you want to create an interactive UI, wish to plan screen transitions with an animation effect, and additional effects like swiping, clicking, and hovering, you will find all the required functionalities in InVision.

After you are done with the prototyping, you can also share the InVision slides collaboratively within your team-mates for further inputs and revisions. You can also test the design on different platforms on how the screens will appear and behave based on different browsers. As it provides collaborative design, your clients can readily look into the plans and put necessary comments to change or revise. It also works tremendously well with multiple device resolutions so that you get to test the responsiveness quickly. 

Sketch

Bohemian Coding's Sketch is a potent vector-based tool which helps in building the interfaces and prototypes when you want to collaborate with teams and share your designs. Sketch has been constructed primarily for creating websites and apps to remove the unnecessary features which congest the interface. Sketch is faster and more efficient than many software, which comes with a wider variety of tools and functions. 

It has got an excellent built-in grid system, and it makes the interface design much more comfortable. To prepare overall with user-friendliness, responsiveness, and function-oriented, Sketch is much appreciated. In comparison, Photoshop is a much-complicated application for creating the designs of a Website or Web Application.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD helps to create the best possible environment under the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. If your developer is interested in Adobe and they are new to XD, they will find this application from Adobe not much like Adobe. It comes with a different set of behavior and design rules. However, it is much ahead of the other competitor tools for the same purpose. It is different from Photoshop, but perfect for rapid prototyping.

This vector design and wire-framing tool keep getting better, and there are additions in terms of voice prototyping, which are the latest trend in User Experience trends. XD includes all sorts of drawing tools that enable you to define non-static interactions. It also builds the mobile and desktop previews, and it comes with sharing tools for giving and receiving feedback on the designs. You can do it with a device-specific artboard for starting a project, and here you would be able to import even a popular UI kit, like Google's Material Design. 

Adobe XD also integrates with the rest of the tools and applications in Adobe Creative Cloud. Hence, it enables you to import and work with the assets and resources from Photoshop or Illustrator efficiently. If you are already using other Adobe tools, the familiarization with XD won't take much time, and your Web designers can quickly create attractive layouts as per your requirement or desire.

Figma

It is an interface design tool where multiple designers can collaborate and share the design on a real-time basis. It becomes instrumental when there is a large UI/UX team working on different modules or screens and collaborating for the desired outcome. It can be availed in the browser or on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and you'll see both the paid & free versions of the same based on the type of usage you need.

Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is termed as 'Photoshop killer' by some. It has been very popular with European designers very much, for it has exceptional purpose tools & functions. Some features are adjustable and help to create non-destructive layers. It mainly means you can adjust the images or vectors, and you don't have to damage or spoil them at all.

It has 1,000,000 percent zoom, which is a bliss for designers; it's especially useful when you work with vector art. Undo, and history features are also really instrumental and helpful for the designers. This tool eliminates much re-work on your design and thus helps you in availing an excellent user interface with a unique user experience.

UXPin

The next Web Design tool we are going to mention is UXPin. It is a dedicated prototyping app, and it is available for Mac, Windows, or in the browser. With UXPin, you get closer to the code, and it also enables you to work with different interactive logic, functions, stages, states, and code components. Hence, rather than only using the artwork and various design elements, in this tool, you get a facility of playing with the code too.

You will find integrated libraries and functions for iOS, Material Design, and Bootstrap, along with hundreds of free icons sets, and these help you to achieve the design output. UXPin now comes with additional features for the accessibility options to ensure your designs stay per WCAG standards, which is much appreciated in the design world.

Proto.io

Proto.io helps to build lifelike prototypes that begin with rough ideas, and you can finally complete with fully-fledged designs as desired for your Website or Web Application. In this tool, you get a range of possibilities that include detailed and custom vector animations.

Here, you can start the design by developing the initial ideas first with a hand-drawn style. You convert them into comprehensive wire-frames, and finally, come with high-fidelity prototypes. You will find Sketch and Photoshop plug-ins here, but this tool is also more than capable of handling an end-to-end design process. User-testing is also one of the mentionable features here to perform the design reviews and quick tests over different device resolutions. It can be termed as an all-in-one solution, and you will see that several trusted brands are already using this tool widely.

There are other popular Web Design tools in the market like,

• Fluid
• Justinmind
• Interplay
• Bootstrap
• Adobe Comp
• MockFlow

Now, the decision is yours to make use of the best possible tools based on your Website or Web Application planning. Remember, most of the tools give you the flexibility to come out with a mobile-friendly design, and you will find integrated plug-ins within those tools, as well. Further read, should you use a DIY website builder or hire a web designer to build your custom website.