Here is a pretty straight forward line up of every software and web based tool I use on a daily basis plus anything that I’ve found extremely useful for growing my illustration studio. None of the services I mentioned are advertising, but resources that helped my creativity expand or made my life easier.

Adobe Creative Cloud - Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom & Premiere Pro

As a self-employed freelance illustrator I wear many hats besides just painting illustrations in my home studio. Adobe is the only place that have the entire package of tools necessary for my day to day. Photoshop is where I edit my botanical illustrations after they have been digitized. Illustrator I use some times for creating vector art, based on my black & white botanical drawings. Lightroom has the best photography editing capabilities in my opinion, so I use it to edit all my photographs in bulk, that I later post on Instagram and here, on the Blog. Premiere Pro is the last tool I added to my toolbox and had to master for my career, that was quite easy and pretty quick - I use this one to edit videos for my Youtube channel.

Squarespace

Simply the best website builder there is. For years I looked into building my studio website myself and I needed to have all the right tools to be able to build it fairly quickly and also edit it whenever I wanted. For someone who just started growing the business, inevitably there will be many iterations along the way, and I now feel like it is a never ending process. Now that I have my studio website accessible at any time to even make tiny tweaks - I couldn’t be happier. And no, you don’t need to know how to code to use it, the builder interface is very visual, intuitive and easy to use. Having my website up and running brought me amazing clients and more work than I could imagine, it was definitely worth the effort and Squarespace is also a super affordable option for someone who is just starting out, and for any type of business.

Google docs, notes & drive

After multiple trials and errors to organize my workflow in a way that simply works, I came up with some sort of the system that helps me with my daily activities, tasks, goal setting and more. My day starts with reviewing my daily tasks I have for a particular day in my Google Keep. I also use this particular app to write down any ideas that come to mind, lists and any project notes that I’m currently working on. I use Google drive to store the most important files and Docs for any strategy/ vision outlines, long term project records and also project briefs. After having several bullet journals, notebooks and trying out many different ways to manage my time, I know for sure that it is very personal, and depends on personal preferences. This is just what worked for me for several years now.

Trello

I’ve had Trello boards for years now and always used them for continuous, long term projects like building a website for my botanical illustrations or setting up an Etsy shop. It is a great visual tool for the times when you need to see the “bigger picture“, in some way similar to the mind mapping. I like to always break down large projects into stages, where each stage have a scope of work, that’s then divided into specific tasks. Some times a super long list of tasks can be really overwhelming and so I believe this is the right tool to see more perspective and also to revisit the project, evaluate if the strategy is in line with your goals, etc.

Dropbox

Sharing files with clients is easy with Dropbox, and it’s also what all of my clients are familiar with. Depending on the project, I like to actually work with files that are backed up to the cloud and shared with the client most of the times, this way I make sure the work that I’m doing will not be lost in any circumstances. They have a free version for those who are just starting and don’t need more than 2GB, that’s actually really good and for me have been enough for a long time.

Google Keyword Planner tool

Keyword Planner is a free Google Ads tool. How can it be helpful for a freelance illustrator like me? The answer is simple - for business development that’s not usually shared by those who use it. The most important point here, in my opinion, is supply and demand, that now is accessible to the public and can be studied with the right tools. Google gives you a completely free access to search volumes for any term, at a specific location, monthly. This simply means that you can check if there is a demand for a service or a product you are planning to sell and test your ideas this way, before putting in the work and creating a product or a service no one is looking for.

Typeform

Valuable tool to organize incoming inquiries. It’s easy to use and saves time in back and forth between illustrator and a client before the project starts. This gives me a clear idea about the potential project as I receive a filled out form with all the information I need from the client to reply them with an estimate, timeline and the process details. Typeform supports multiple question paths built in the forms and a huge list of other useful features in different plans.

Planoly

To keep up with an Instagram algorithm you need to post daily. I have a routine of taking pictures of my botanical illustration process in batches, bulk editing them and then setting up those images for a week or couple of weeks moving forward. Love Planoly, it’s free with 30 image posts per month and you can write all the posts captions in advance.

Payoneer

I work with international clients from all over the world, and it’s very simple to receive money from them using Payoneer. It is a payment solution for freelancers, amazon sellers and basically a virtual bank, where they also issue a debit card linked to your account.

Free invoice builder

This Invoice builder made my life easier in therms of creating invoices for my illustration services and keeping track of them. I just like how easy it is, that’s all.

Pixsy

If you ever had to fill out Google copyright infringement report this tool is for you. Pixsy is basically a very precise image search, that finds places your copyrighted artwork or photographs are used on the web. With this service I personally have found multiple websites taking my artwork that I shared years ago on Tumblr and posting it on their website as “copyright free“ clipart to download, and that is illegal. It is much easier to take action from having this data as they share web links to images on websites they found. There is a free plan with 500 images that you can try out and never fear someone stealing your work ever again.

Hope this gives you an idea of the bare essentials you will need to start any kind of illustration business. Feel free to leave a question about any of these, I’ll be more than happy to help!