The Design Biz Starter Pack

Are you thinking about starting a design business, or maybe even running a small team? It can feel like there are a million ways to spend your money on what are peddled as necessary tools required to start up a business: things like workshops, client portals, digital organization subscriptions, accounting, bookkeeping – it goes on and on – not to mention all of the creative tools to do the *actual* design work! Putting myself back to where I was when starting out, I did my best to allocate my funds (and time) to what would be the most impactful, without breaking the bank. There is no perfect guidebook to entrepreneurship, but there is, at least, a Starter Pack for the design biz-curious.

Asana: for Project Management
Asana is often marketed as a great tool for teams – and it is, but it is also a user-friendly management tool for a single worker/ solopreneur (Pro tip: a single seat is free – no bells and whistles, but still gets the job done). It allows you to organize clients, projects and tasks on a calendar, or a board if you prefer that. I had experience using this platform from my previous job so I was already familiar with it, but I promise it’s super intuitive even if it’s new to you. I have tried some other management tools since, and Asana continues to be my favourite.

Adobe Creative Cloud: for Design
This one will go without saying for most designers out there – the monthly subscription is well worth it for what you get out of it!

Calendly: for Booking Meetings
At some point, I got sold on the idea that meetings should be automated (meaning, you don’t always have to do the back and forth asking about what timing works for both parties, etc). Calendly is a one-time set up with your schedule, and then it allows your clients to select a time that works best for them via a link – which books right into your Google or Apple calendar. I still sometimes do the old-fashioned manual style meeting setup, but this tool has definitely come in handy.

Google Mail: for Emails
Emails are simply a part of life and communication. Most clients are already familiar with emailing back and forth to get things done, so there is no “client training” or learning curve with this communication method. I have tried implementing client portals, but I have found that while it may add a nice branded touch and certainly does have many arguable upsides, it does add a “to-do” item – sometimes many, to both my and the client’s plate. Maybe my thoughts on this will change in the future, but when starting out, my recommendation is keep it simple – and just make sure you keep your email inbox super organized.

Google Drive: The Catch-all
Google Drive for desktop offers a seamless storage option for all of my design files, integrating directly into my Mac Finder. So rather than having to download working files, or storing my thousands of files on my Mac (which it simply would not have space for) I simply click through my finder which mirrors everything on Google Drive, allowing me to open, edit and save files directly from there. Another very nice feature of Drive is that it automatically saves old versions of files, so if you accidentally overwrite or delete something and need to go back, you can usually just find your old version via the Manage Files option.

Google Docs: Like MS Word, but make it Collaborative
What I love about google docs is that it’s live and collaborative for various parties to go in and make changes to copy, or comment. So if you’re ever working on something content-related that is inherently going to have revisions or questions, Google Docs answers the call. Additionally, since I already use Drive, Google Docs is right at home in the Google Workspace ecosystem.

Google Sheets: For the Boring Stuff
Google Sheets is like a collaborative Excel document that also lives in Google Workspace, great for crunching numbers – and I do find numbers crunchy.

An iphone: For the ‘Gram
Creating content for social media is just part of the gig as a business owner. Make sure you have a good camera to take photos, or at the very least the phone itself to engage with content and create posts to share your work. In a visual field like design, make instagram your friend in capturing a community and an audience for your work.

In closing – when starting out in business, it’s best to keep it simple, while setting yourself up for the future – the most important thing is that you simply start, and you’ll learn what you need to along the way.

Credit: Illustration by Aimee Rideough