Out tools are an essential part of our process. They allow us to stay organized, work efficiently, and collaborate with others. Poorly designed tools create friction, frustration, and inhibit the creative process. Well-designed tools are a joy to use. As designers, we are especially critical of the tools we use. We regularly survey the market to ensure we are using best-in-class products and services, and we won't hesitate to switch if we find something better. These are the tools we use to run our business.
Most architecture firms run Windows-based computers because most architectural software only runs on Windows. We adopted Macintosh early and never let go. The Macintosh ecosystem (hardware, software, and services) is by far the most efficient way to run a small office. While most of our colleagues fight their computers, we love ours!
We have a love-hate relationship with Vectorworks.
Like all designers, we cut our teeth on Adobe products. We mastered Photoshop, spent endless hours in Illustrator, and were beta testers for InDesign 1.0. That changed as Adobe bundled software into increasingly expensive suites and apps slowed to a crawl under the weight of legacy code and outdated paradigms. We still use Photoshop for very specific tasks, but we abandoned Adobe products long ago for more elegant alternatives.
Serif entered the arena with Affinity Design in 2014, followed by Affinity Photo in 2015, and Affinity Publisher in 2019. These were direct competitors to Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. What they lacked in feature parity, they made up for with a clean, efficient code base that ran on native macOS technology. Affinity products did 90% of what Adobe products did, and felt much better to use. Affinity was recently purchased by Canva and rolled all three applications into a single design tool, creating a seamless workflow between all design tools. Affinity is our go-to design tool for a print and publishing projects.
Serif entered the arena with Affinity Design in 2014, followed by Affinity Photo in 2015, and Affinity Publisher in 2019. These were direct competitors to Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. What they lacked in feature parity, they made up for with a clean, efficient code base that ran on native macOS technology. Affinity products did 90% of what Adobe products did, and felt much better to use. Affinity was recently purchased by Canva and rolled all three applications into a single design tool, creating a seamless workflow between all design tools. Affinity is our go-to design tool for a print and publishing projects.
When Studio Bueno designed our identity in 2014, they chose Calibre.
Architectural drawings were traditionally hand letters. All architects, up to a certain generation, learned the meticulous tradition of writing like an architect. That changed with the onset of CAD (computer aided design). Early adopters defaulted to AutoCAD line fonts that were designed to be plotted on a pen plotter. AutoCAD eventually allowed for more font options, and many architects opted for hand-lettered fonts, like Tekton and Graphite, for a traditional hand-lettered look. But by far, most architecture studios made the strangest decision of all: none! They simply went with the AutoCAD default RomanS or Windows default Arial. Why would architects, who are famously fickle about every nit-picking detail, lie down for out-of-the-box typography?
We recently adopted Sentient as a compliment to Calibre. We use it highlight text and quotes. The letter forms are remarkably similar to Calibre, and the two typefaces work well together.