Studio Toolbox (Fall 2019)

A certain autonomy comes with being a studio of four—and with it the ability to rapidly evaluate and settle on tools that work the best for our team. While we align to the idea that tools don’t make the designer or developer, we figured a handy post of the apps we use at Adjacent might help someone out there. Naive we are not, so here’s some disclaimers, lest we ruffle any feathers:

1. You’ll see some old-school’ers on our list. Their inclusion is more of a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” than our being sticks in the mud and resistant to change. In fact, we periodically evaluate our tool stack and you’d be hard-pressed to mention something we haven’t heard of yet.
2. Like with WordPress, we’ve made an intentional decision to be really good at one thing instead of spreading ourselves thin. Hence, we try our best to avoid redundancy in our apps.
3. Could we work in other tools than the ones listed here? Absolutely, and at times we do when the project calls for it. We’re quick learners, after all.
4. Most importantly, we’re not saying these are objectively the best tools for everyone—they just so happen to be the best ones for us at the moment, is all.

Sidenote: We love digging into how other agencies operate, so in the spirit of our sharing our list, we encourage you to pass along yours!

Good? Good. Without further ado, here’s our toolbox as of Fall 2019: