Tools, tips and resources
to help you become a more efficient and effective
designer.
About
StudioRat is an online resource dedicated to helping designers improve their workflow. It’s a place where you can discover time-saving tools and resources, learn new software tricks and get a fresh perspective on creative processes.
As designers, we have an endless list of tools available to us, which are constantly evolving and enabling us to work better, faster and smarter than ever before. The problem is, technology is moving at such a rate that it can be tough to keep up with what’s new. As a result, we can sometimes find ourselves using outdated techniques and spending far more time on certain tasks than we realised we had to.
StudioRat exists to help improve your knowledge of the tools you have available to you and to educate you on more efficient and effective ways of working. As well as going in-depth about how and why we use certain tools, we’ll be sharing useful resources and software-specific tips and techniques, all of which we hope will help to save you time on future projects.
If you have any questions or ideas about topics that you would like us to cover, feel free to contact us.
Latest content
The best sites to find free placeholder logos
In this post, I'll be sharing my top picks for sites where you can find free placeholder logos for your design projects. Placeholder logos are perfect for when you're working on a client project but don't have their logo yet. Or, when you're creating a template or...
FontBase – A fast, easy-to-use font manager
In this post, we're going to take a look at a tool called FontBase—a font management app to help you more efficiently manage, find and preview fonts. I'll explain what a font manager is and why you need one, as well as how to use FontBase and why I recommend it as...
How to create template files in InDesign
In this post, I'm going to show you how to save time by using template files in InDesign to kick-start your design projects and cut out repetitive file set up tasks. What are template files? Template files let you create useful starting points for series of documents...
Who’s behind StudioRat?
Sam Jones
Founder
Sam is a designer and creator based in Staffordshire, England. He’s been working in the design industry for over 11 years and has a mix of in-house, studio, and freelance experience.
Whilst freelancing, he also ran a successful shop on Creative Market, which entailed countless hours of experimenting with creative tools and processes—something which completely changed the way he works today.
He now loves exploring the process as much as he does creating the work, and has made a habit of seeking out issues and inconveniences and trying to figure out better ways of doing things.
He started StudioRat as a way to catalogue and share all of the helpful tools, tips and resources he’s picked up and developed along the way.