We do a wide spectrum of projects so I’m not going to expound on every software package we use for for film compositing or logo design. Instead I’ve listed 3 productivity tools that we use on a daily basis to keep us creative, focused and in the loop.
Organization
NoteBook is an invaluable application as it helps keep my desktop clean and organized. All my reminders, notes, random thoughts, brilliant ideas and blog articles are written and neatly organized within one simple file. Prior to NoteBook my hard drive was cluttered with text files galore, anytime I had an idea for a project it went into a file. That stuff quickly got out of hand since folder structures didn’t do quite what I wanted and I couldn’t link ideas together easily.
Collaboration
Basecamp is an excellent online team collaboration tool. We used it to organize our 48 Hour Film Project and work remotely with other designers and web developers on various projects. For our film project we were working with crew members from across the state who had never worked together, and in some cases never physically met before the shoot. We posted workflows, guidelines, rules and shared location scouting info all in an elegant location.
RSS Reader
Vienna is my RSS reader of choice. When I first started using a dedicated RSS reader a couple years ago I downloaded trials of all the major applications and tried them out. Vienna was the only one that did all the things that I wanted (light, fast, good looking, multi-pane views and a highly customizable interface)—plus it’s freeware.
