What’s on my dock – Dec 2025

This list is a snapshot of the tools that genuinely earned a place in my creative workflow. I use a lot of tools, I love trying new things, and I work across design, motion, AI, web, writing, photography, brand, and sometimes sound. So this ranking is personal, honest, and based on real usage and real integration into my creative workflow.

To keep it honest and unbiased each tool is rated on:

Usefulness: Does it actually help me create and contribute to my work?
Ease of Use: Does it support my flow, or interrupt it?
Enjoyment: Is it enjoyable to use and feed my creativity?

Then adjusted by:

How often I used it: Daily tools rank higher than occasional ones.
Price: Expensive tools must be worth it, so there’s a penalty.

Usefulness: ★★★☆☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★☆☆

Usefulness: ★★★☆☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★☆☆☆

Usefulness: ★★★☆☆
Ease of Use: ★★☆☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★☆☆☆

Executive assistant service for email management.
Functional more than exciting – helpful, but not energising.

Tags: Admin Support, Email Organisation
Price: £10–30
Link: fyxer.com

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★☆☆☆☆

Professional digital illustration app for iPad.
A tactile sketching environment that feeds visual thinking and style exploration. Best digital brushes around.

Tags: Illustration, Digital Drawing, iPad
Price: £0–10
Link: procreate.com

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

Procedural motion graphics and animation software.
Powerful motion system with serious potential. You need to put in the work to get the best out of it.

Tags: Motion Graphics, Procedural Animation
Price: £10–30
Link: cavalry.scenegroup.co

Usefulness: ★★★☆☆
Ease of Use: ★★☆☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

High-fidelity AI image generation model.
Still powerful, but no longer the centre of the AI universe. Realism was unmatched, but its attention to detail is just not production standard.

Tags: AI Image Generation
Price: £10–30
Link: midjourney.com

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★☆☆

Web-based 3D design and collaboration tool.
Charming and full of potential, feels like it could become essential when creating dynamic web experiences. Although, Hana (it’s new 2D space) really stops me in my tracks - although it looks simple and powerful, it’s really not very usable.

Tags: 3D, Interactive, WebGL
Price: £10–30
Link: spline.design

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Professional 3D modelling, animation, and rendering.
Stunning results, steep learning curve. Epic and brilliant, but be prepared to put in the time to learn it.

Tags: 3D Modelling, Rendering
Price: £30+
Link: maxon.net

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★☆☆☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Professional assets and plugins for Cinema 4D.
A must have for any designer working in 3D. A texture, material, object and lighting upgrade button, but you pay the price.

Tags: 3D Materials, Plugins
Price: £30+
Link: greyscalegorilla.com

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★★☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

No-code website builder for designers.
Polished, powerful and expressive. Build beautiful, bespoke website using tools that feel familiar to designers.

Tags: Web Design, Interactive Prototyping
Price: £10–30
Link: framer.com

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Professional touch-based audio workspace.
A tactile escape that adds a multi-sensory atmosphere into visual work. A really accessible way to explore real sound design for beginners.

Tags: Audio, Music Production, Sound Design
Price: £0–10
Link: apple.com/logic-pro-for-ipad/

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Figma-native generative AI for experimental tools, apps and prototypes.
Shockingly capable for what it is. Not found one thing it can’t make.

Tags: Prototyping, Generative Tools, Animation
Price: Included in Figma
Link: figma.com/make/

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

AI-powered full-stack web app builder.
Turns ideas into working web apps in a way that feels smooth and an extension of my thinking, instead of stifled by technicalities.

Tags: App Builder, AI Prototyping
Price: £10–30
Link: lovable.dev

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★★☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

Collaborative design, digital, prototyping and presentation tool.
Still the backbone of most my design work; powerful, collaborative and unavoidable.

Tags: UI Design, Prototyping, Presentation, Project hubs.
Price: £10–30
Link: figma.com

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★★☆
Enjoyment: ★★★☆☆

Curated visual inspiration and bookmarking platform.
Pinterest alternative with more tasteful content, but importantly, the best cross platform extensions to easily add anything to a board from anything.

Tags: References, Mood boards, Collect and curate.
Price: £0–10
Link: cosmos.so

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Browser-based motion design tool.
Figma for Motion. Infinite canvas, fast, super intuitive, clean and genuinely fun to play with.

Tags: Motion Graphics, Animation
Price: £10–30
Link: jitter.video

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

Real-world typography archive and research tool.
A bottomless reference resource that makes every type choice feel more intentional. This is my go-to to source typefaces that are more niche and surprising.

Tags: Typography Reference, Research
Price: Free
Link: fontsinuse.com

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★☆☆
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

Real-time AI generation and image upscaler.
A generative tool that offers all the most popular models in a unified interface, and the best image up-scaler I’ve used to date.

Tags: AI Image Generation, Creative Exploration, Image Upscaling, Style Training
Price: £10–30
Link: krea.ai

Usefulness: ★★★★★
Ease of Use: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★☆

WebGL effects and interactive web design tool.
Expressive, lightweight and very playful. Sparks new ideas the moment I open it.

Tags: Interactive Design, Prototyping, Motion
Price: £0–10
Link: unicorn.studio

Usefulness: ★★★★☆
Ease of Use: ★★★★★
Enjoyment: ★★★★★

These don’t shape the creative work, but they keep the studio running:

ChatGPT: Thinking partner, sounding board, clarity, planning.
Float: Scheduling, staying on budget and staying sane.
Google Docs, Sheets: Use this for proposals and costings – necessary and fine.
Google Mail, Calendar: The only option, in my opinion.

Tried, tested, not adopted, for now:

Higgsfield: Impressive tech, feels a bit gimicky though. Long list of style, but you can’t create beyond them. No real role in my workflow yet.
Endless.tools: Same idea as Unicorn Studio, but far less intuitive.
Figma Slides: Tried to love it, didn’t get the basics right.
Affinity: Great idea, and AMAZING for the industry. Not quite hooking me yet though.
Recraft: Fun but output is surprisingly one note (all looks the same).
Flim: Very useful for certain types of jobs, want to use it more.
TouchDesigner: Still struggle to get my head around it. Years later.
Houdini: Oh man, please send help.
Eleven Labs: Pretty powerful sound platform, the generated SFX are pretty soulless though.
Are.na: Super niche collections, but too much digging required to find the right thing for my liking.
Savee: Only willing to pay for one of bookmarking tools, and Cosmos is winning.

Tools I’m watching and potential future entries:

Flora: Node-based creative workspace, beautiful interface, but can’t quite get my head around some of its quirks.
LTX Studio: Seeing good things, need to explore.
PixVerse: The examples on the homepage just turn me off, sorry.
Invideo.ai: Seems really cool, waiting to try it.
Same.energy: Actually really fun to use, especially for moodboarding.
Figma Sites: I’m on team Framer, thats all.
Figma Buzz: Curious but haven’t brought myself to convince a client to get onboard.
Canva: Great option for handing off to clients, but please let me build a brand kit for free.
Runway: Literally tried it so many times, never had good results, don’t know what everyones talking about.
Haptic Labs Studio: Simple and intuitive way to create custom haptics for devices.
Kling.ai: Looks like one of the most powerful video gen platforms, yet to really explore though.
Google Gemini: I keep hearing great things, but I’m just locked into ChatGPT because of its memory capabilities. Gemini is starting to pull my attention though.
Epidemic Sound: I feel like I should be using it, but haven’t found a use just yet.
Suno: Seems like the best generative audio platform, but cant get past the AI-ness of it.
Subframe: Not sure if this is something that I need in my life.

A note on the incumbents:

Adobe Creative Suite technically scored, but ranked low, and for now, I want this list to spotlight emerging, independent and lesser-known tools that are shifting how creative work happens. Adobe has legacy, power and depth, but it doesn’t excite me much anymore, and this space is for the tools that do.

If there’s anything I’ve missed, need to check out or you think I’m crazy for not scoring higher, go ahead and drop a comment.