My current Design stack

Tools for the modern designer

My number one design tool is pen and paper. This has been going on for about 20 years, with no clear second place. Specifically, Muji Gel Ink 0.5, Black in a Muji Double Ring Lined Notebook. The only other acceptable pen is the Field Notes clic pen.

Once I have my notes in order, I turn to my handy MacBook Pro and start the tedious task of turning my scribbles into something that other people can understand. I have been playing with Wispr Flow for dictation, but I am still wary of it’s consistancy and just type most of the time. I absolutely love Granola, I use it for meetings and also as a dictation assistant. I am still in the grey areas of using an LLM to generate notes from things I say. Does that mean I actually wrote something? I don’t think so, but it is a helpful step in the process.

I have never been a Figma master. I am just not that kind of designer, but I am fluent enough to work with others in Figma and can get by when needed. I do love a Figjam, but it is not part of my daily design stack.

Over the holiday break, I decided to recreate my personal portfolio site on Squarespace into a self-hosted site. I used Cursor + Claude Code + Github to recreate my portfolio site, update the overall design, and finally kick the Squarespace annual fee. Cursor + Claude code is pretty incredible, but it did take me twice as long to fix 2 broken images on the site as it did to create the entirely new site… so there is still a bit to go before the generative tooling is where it claims to be.

For work, my main design tool is still Slack. If you are in a modern design org, I promise your most impactful design tool is Slack. It is ok to admit it, but you also have to be very careful about the power of an instant question-and-answer machine.

I am keeping my Stack recommendation on hili, check it out!

What is your favorite design tool from 2025?