HEY DESIGNER -
When I first started out I would have given anything for a cheat sheet like this - a full list of programs & platforms, curated from years of experience running a successful design studio.
I'm sharing every platform and tool I use to run Studio Fulchi - a boutique design studio building iconic ecommerce brands.
I'm breaking it all down below along with discounts and freebies to make trying them out for your own studio a bit easier.
Cheers to this saving hours of research and bringing a little inspiration to your day!
- Kristen Fulchi
a client management system
The absolute BEST tool in this entire list. Honeybook is literally the backbone of the studio handling the majority of our business tasks. It’s how we send all of our contracts, invoices, proposals, timelines, and questionnaires. It’s also how we book inquiry calls and brand strategy sessions. Honeybook has the ability to send reminders automatically, saving so much backend management time and can break invoices up into payment plans with an auto-pay feature (beyond genius!)
an organization tool
A completely free platform that helps you stay organized. Seriously, I’ve tried so many other websites and platforms, even pen and paper and none of them have actually stuck like Walling. Each client gets their own individual board so we can zone in on just them. We add their project scope, timeline, notes from our calls, and to-dos. The best part is that we can all see what’s happening on a project at the same time and can assign tasks to one another. I also use Walling to organize my weekly to-do list, day-to-day activities, content ideas, and business tasks & goals.
accounting software
I can bet you know what Quickbooks is (an accounting software, for those who don’t), but I can also bet you don’t know how essential it is for running a successful business. Porting in sales from our bank account and expenses from our credit card, it allows us to easily see where we are at any point in time. I can break out expenses into categories, see where they might have increased month after month and can break sales out into categories as well and see our biggest source of revenue or how our smaller revenue streams might be doing. It’s so essential to keep your finger on the pulse and truly understand how your business is doing. I’ve come to look forward to pouring over our report every quarter. Oh - and it’s also a mega plus at the end of the year to easily be able to hand this over to our accountant instead of hours pouring over numbers I can’t even remember from earlier in the year.
basically your HR department
Ever wonder how you should be paying contractors and employees? I mean, the “right way”? This is it. Gusto is our HR department and how we pay both contractors and employees. It calculates and pays taxes for you, withholds tax for your employees, sends out W-2s and 1099s every year, notifies you of documents you need to make sure you’re in compliance with each state, and even has the ability to offer your employees insurance. It has been such a lifesaver to pay employees and contractors quickly, knowing that it’s all being documented for the end of the year. Payroll literally takes me less than 5 minutes
which is just mind-blowing!
specifically Chase Ink Business Unlimited
If you don’t have a dedicated business credit card, it’s time to get one. It makes it so much easier to calculate your expenses and ensure they’re imported correctly into your accounting software. I chose Chase Ink Unlimited as our business credit card for two reasons - 1. No annual fee and 2. The rewards. You get 1.5% cash back on every purchase, not just “business” ones (as defined by them), plus you get $750 cash back if you spend $7,500 in the first three months. I knew I needed a new computer and signed up for this card just before I made the purchase to make sure we got the credit for that and essentially got a $750 discount on my computer. So if you have a couple of big purchases coming up, sign up to take advantage of that initial bonus!
specifically Business Convenience Plus
I’m including this one here for anyone who didn’t realize you can 100% have a different business credit card and a different business bank account, they don’t have to be tied together. The Chase Unlimited Card is such a no-brainer, that it just wouldn’t make sense to open up a credit card with our bank. Take advantage of these perks where you see them, otherwise you could be missing out on money. Also - love TD Bank because it allows me have a view of all of my bank accounts at one glance and tie together the balance of them to avoid fees for dropping below any minimum (a concern I had encountered quite a bit in the beginning of business)
file storage
This is how we deliver and receive client files. It’s super easy to keep organized and I love that it fits in seamlessly with your desktop so it feels like you’re just adding another folder where you’re already
organizing things (unlike Google Drive, where it feels like you’re switching tabs and messing with the flow especially when exporting or importing files with Illustrator). This is also where clients drop all of their images when we head into web design (if we didn’t do photography together) and where we drop all of their brand files.
a screen-sharing extension
The number one way we communicate internally AND externally with clients. This is hands-down the best way to talk through things when everything is virtual. I love that it allows me to share my screen, share my face, and title my videos for easy searching after. This is how we share brand and website first looks with clients (they can hear my excitement and passion for the project and all of the thought behind the design) and how we share details with each other internally to make sure we’re on the same page for different aspects of each project.
video call platform
SO much better than Zoom, this is the only way we video call with clients. They make it super simple with a personal link to your room that’s short & concise with no passwords or crazy long meeting details. Clients simply click the link that could look something like whereby.com/businessname and knock to enter your room. That’s it. And it’s completely free.
to quickly sort through photos
Sometimes we have clients dump every photoshoot they’ve ever had into Dropbox and it makes it really hard to sort through and find the good ones to use for their website or additional collateral designs (like catalogs). We use Photo Mechanic to easily sort through and mark our favorites. We’ll then import them into Lightroom and export them for web (Shopify has a 20 megapixel limit that almost all photos we get sent exceed). This way we’re only sifting through the photos once at the beginning before designing and it makes the process so much faster.
for sending newsletters
This is the platform we use to send out our newsletters and the platform we recommend to our clients. It’s seriously the easiest to jump into and start creating beautiful emails. We’re already so swamped here at the studio that if I do have time to send a newsletter, I don’t want to spend forever trying to make it look pretty. Flodesk makes it easy to save our brand colors and logos and has an easy drag-and-drop format that just makes it all so simple. It also integrates with Shopify, so it’s great for recommending to any of your e-commerce clients too!
social scheduling platform
I’ve realized I’m more consistent with posting on social when I treat it like a project, meaning I spend a full day or two on it, completely absorbed in my brand and what my audience needs to hear. I’ll plan out two weeks to a month in advance and schedule it all on Later to go out automatically. I’ve tried posting manually every day and it is the biggest time suck and distraction from client projects. Later is my go-to. I get a notification when it posts and head in to quickly share to stories and interact with a few accounts. It’s so much easier to pop in quickly and get right back to client work when posts are automatically published.
all the best platforms
Again, a basic here, but beyond crucial, we couldn’t do our job without Illustrator, Photoshop, and Lightroom. For anyone
that hasn’t invested in this, it’s well worth it, allowing you to create truly custom designs instead of being limited in other web programs like Canva. Ask for the student discount or buy it during a sale, to make sure you get the best price. We use Illustrator to create every single design element, Photoshop for mockups and image adjustments, and Lightroom to quickly edit our photography projects.
a drawing app
The app you need if you illustrate anything for your designs! It is the absolute best to pick up a pencil instead of mouse and head into procreate to sketch out ideas. One of the best features is that it allows you to create your artwork in multiple layers, which helps with making tweaks and revisions or even just multiple iterations of the same thing. You can also easily switch out brush types (think thin pen line, watercolor, grainy pencil) which all happens with a quick tap and you can even download additional pen tool types from creators online.
free stock photos
The best free stock photo (and video!) site out there. I mean, Pexels has quality images that amaze every time. Just scroll through their homepage and you’ll see what I mean. They feel artistic and genuine, there’s no staged stock photo-y feel about them. We use Pexels all the time for client projects whether that’s as imagery in their brand presentation, photos for their site, or photos we mockup as posters or magazines for their brand first look.
an online marketplace for designers
I mean, this for me was a no-brainer to add. They have some of the most STUNNING type foundries on here and gorgeous mockups to boot. I pay for the monthly subscription where you get freebies, a discount on all purchases, plus your monthly fee turns into credits so it’s basically just getting a discount and freebies. I source fonts and mockups here for practically every project it’s that good. Remember, don’t be shy to make a $19 purchase for a mockup if it makes your thousands of dollars project look better. It’s an easy decision, it allows your client to see your vision better and instantly uplevels your portfolio which means higher booking conversions.
like, a physical one
This one is an actual, physical tool and it’s listed here because it’s become something I can’t design packaging without. It is so helpful to see how a dieline will translate to real life, ensuring that you’re designing for the actual size, not what it looks like in Illustrator. It’s also great to measure existing products you may have lying around to see how the product you’re designing will relate.
literally, exactly that
This one was a recent discovery that I am so happy to now have as part of our process. You simply enter in a HEX code and it generates a name for that specific color. What a lifesaver. Long gone are the days of staring at the screen, trying to come up with a unique name for a random shade of green.
an ecommerce website builder
Shopify is the ONLY website platform we work with. Simply put it's built for ecommerce, which means that will always be it's primary focus for updates (versus other popular platforms where you have to use apps just to make a sale). While it's fantastic to use for ecommerce clients, it's also amazing to use as a design studio to sell digital products - think website templates, pre-made brands, illustrations, guides, etc. A great secondary source of income for your studio. Btw, both this site and Studio Fulchi are built on Shopify.
extracting audio
This one is more for designing reels and launch videos than actual graphic design, but it’s such a good find I had to include it here. It basically extracts the audio from any video you find. Just copy the link from Insta (hit share and then copy link) and add it to this site. It lets you download the full video so you can upload it to Premiere Pro, separate the audio, and use it to create your own video. I am not a fan of editing in the Instagram app (it’s SO glitchy) and I want precise cuts - and you only get that in Premiere. It also gives us the ability to blend and/or loop audio tracks to customize it to fit our vision.
an extension for chrome
This is the best way to screenshot and screen record those beautiful websites you’ve just designed. It’s a Google Chrome extension that’s completely free and they have the ability to screenshot just the visible part, the full page, or a selected area. So perfect for adding to one of the stellar mockups from Creative Market above.
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