Best web design tools and resources to try in 2022

Web design feels like it’s forever evolving.

Luckily, there are many tools and resources out there to help designers stay on top of web design trends. Whether you need a tool to help you create a mockup, a logo, a full-blown website, or  just give you some inspiration, the web is full of websites that you can use to level up your web design skills.

Some of the best web design tools empower designers to easily bring their ideas to life. Knowing all the principles of design or how to code should not be a barrier to entry to designing and building for the web.

Here’s a roundup of some popular web design resources and tools that you may find handy for your design process.

1. Figma

Figma is a collaborative design tool that lets you design website mockups, prototypes, design systems, and more. It’s pretty much an all-in-one design platform.

The company launched in 2011 with the goal of bringing design tools to the web — enabling anyone with an internet connection to open up their browser and start designing.

Today, companies from all over the world use Figma as an ideation and design tool to create a more accessible web.

Best for: Designing mockups

Price: $0-$45/month

2. Webflow

We might be biased, but we couldn’t create this list without including ourselves on it. Webflow is a web design and development platform that allows you to create responsive websites and on a completely visual canvas. Over the years, Webflow has become the go-to for web designers to turn their static (and dynamic) designs into functional websites.

With Webflow, you can design any website in a drag-and-drop user interface reminiscent of Photoshop. As you design in Webflow, the tool writes clean semantic HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

In the no-code space, Webflow is truly one of a kind in the class of website builders. Mainly because it’s the only web development tool that writes clean code as you design.

In fact, many modern web designers use Figma and Webflow as their main tools to design and build custom websites. The combination of these two tools is so popular that we created a course on how to create a website from scratch.

Best for: Creating fully custom websites

Price: $0-$45/month

3. Coolors  

Next time you’re designing, and you need some quick color inspiration, be sure to check out Coolors.

Coolors is a color palette generator that lets you easily mix and match colors for any web design project. The tool gives you a palette of five different colors, which are generated randomly. You can also generate a matching color palette based on a specific color of your choosing — making it a great tool for finding a matching or complementing color for your designs.

The tool is used by many big brands like Apple, Disney, Airbnb, and more, making it widely popular among some of the top web designers out there.

Best for: Generating colors

Price: Free

4. Design Gradients  

Design Gradients is a free design tool that gives you 48 linear gradients — curated by designers.

This is a simple but powerful tool for anyone looking for beautiful gradients to use in their next design project.

The website features a desktop and mobile version. The desktop version lets you copy the HEX or CSS of the gradients, and the mobile version lets you copy a PNG to use on social media or with other apps.

Best for: Gradient inspiration

Price: Free

5. Adobe XD  

Adobe XD is a familiar name among web designers. Very similar to Figma, Adobe XD is a design mockup and prototyping tool that allows designers to ideate and collaborate on design projects.

As a member of the Adobe creative suite, you’ll need a paid subscription to use the tool. However, because of its popularity among designers, there are tons of tutorials and resources on the web that show you how to design pretty much anything in Adobe XD.

From websites, mobile apps, brand design, and game design, the sky’s the limit with your design abilities in Adobe XD.

Best for: Prototyping

Price: $9.99/month

6. Design Principles  

Design Principles is an open source collection of design methods and principles. This website is a great resource for web designers of all stages to learn about UX, UI, development, and more.

With over 195 examples of design principles curated from around the web, Design Principles is a resource you’ll definitely want to check out.

Best for: Learning design principles

Price: Free

7. Canva  

Canva is a design tool that allows you to quickly and easily create anything from thumbnail images to business cards.

The tool sometimes gets a bad wrap among the design community as being a “basic tool.” However, Canva is a powerful platform that makes it easy for even non-designers to make something beautiful.

Best for: Quickly designing social media assets

Price: Free

8. Procreate

Procreate is an iPad graphics editor app designed to help you create digital art. With Procreate, you can sketch, paint, and design anything you would with a physical paint brush.

Designers use Procreate to create graphics and animations for websites, books, social media posts, and more. The tool is like taking all of your physical colored pencils, paint brushes, and paint colors, then putting them all on your iPad.

So, if you own an iPad, and are looking for a high-quality graphic design tool, you should definitely check out Procreate.

Best for: Graphic design on an iPad

Price: $9.99 one-time payment

9. Feather

Feather is a free library of open source icons. There are over 286 icons you can use for your web design project.

You can find everything from hamburger menu icons to social media icons. The best part is you can customize the color, size, and stroke width (in pixels) of any icon before you download it.

Best for: Free icons

Price: Free

10. Fontshare

Fontshare is a great site to find beautiful modern fonts for free. Their fonts are not open source, but are free to use for personal and commercial use.

It’s a great resource to find free fonts that actually look good for your personal or professional projects. And even better, you won’t have to worry about licenses and rights of use when using fonts from Fontshare.

Best for: Beautiful personal and commercial free fonts

Price: Free

11. Framer

Framer is a design and prototyping tool that allows you to create interactive products. With Framer, you can design anything from websites, to apps, to UI kits.

Framer is a great tool for design teams looking to validate their ideas faster. It’s no wonder why teams from Microsoft, Shopify, and Hulu use this tool.

Framer also has a suite of tutorials and templates to help you get up and running as soon as possible.

Best for: Interactive design

Price: $0-$25/month

12. Remove Background

Remove Background is a free web-based tool that allows you to easily remove a background from any image.

It’s a great tool if you need to turn a JPG of a logo (with a white background) into a PNG with a transparent background. (Not sure which one you need?

Leveraging AI, Remove Background creates a transparent version of your image file in just five seconds. The tool also has different plugins that can easily integrate with your existing design workflow.

Best for: Removing backgrounds

Price: Free

13. Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor designed for macOS, iPadOS, and Windows.

Similar to Procreate in many ways, Affinity Designer lets you create print projects, concept art, UI designs, logos, and more. Except, this tool is available on more than just an iPad.

Affinity Designer is loved by many web designers, graphic designers, game developers, and illustrators. If you’re looking for a great design tool that only needs a one-time payment, this is it.

Best for: Illustrations and graphic design on desktop

Price: $54.99 one-time payment

14. Blush Design

Blush Design is a comprehensive library of illustrations made by artists around the world. 

You can use Blush Design to either create a completely random illustration pack, or give the tool some guidelines like choosing a specific style you’re looking for.

From there, you can customize the art to fit your brand and download PNG and SVG versions of your illustrations.

There are also tons of collections created by talented designers that you can use and draw inspiration from.

Best for: Ready-made illustrations

Price: $0-$20/month

15. Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D is a 4D and 3D software suite created by Maxon. It’s a popular tool for designers that want to create 3D computer animations.

Even though it’s a pretty advanced tool, if you’re looking to give your website designs a “wow” factor,  it’s worth checking out.

Combining animations from Cinema 4D with a tool like Webflow can also allow you to create scroll-based animations on a website.

Webflow has a full tutorial on how to leverage Cinema 4D on your website — using After Effects and Lottie.

Best for: Complex 3D animations

Price: $94/month

What are the best web design tools?

At the time of writing this, the best web design tools are Figma, Webflow, and Adobe XD. These tools have a large community of designers, making it easy for anyone to learn how to not only design beautiful websites but actually develop them as well.

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