What It Shows
This infographic visually breaks down web tool use based on a polling of 180 designers, for documents, file storage, wireframing, visual design, note taking, text editing, web hosting, video editing, invoicing, and email.
Why It’s Good
It’s a nice idea, as designers tend to be a web savvy bunch. It’s nice to see what designers are particularly interested in, but overall it serves as a good general indication of tool quality. What I mean is, a lot of these tools are useful for people besides designers, so the appeal and use of the collected information is broad.
Artistically, it’s pretty nice. The design is crispy and for some reason I’m fond of the patterned grey background.
While I think the conclusions of an infographic should speak for themselves if the infographic is done well enough, I appreciated the brief analysis.
What It’s Missing
It bothers me that in some cases one being used more than an other is a statement of quality between two competing tools (eg. Harvest vs Freshbooks) whereas sometimes it’s a matter of what it’s being used for, and the tools don’t actually do the same things. Adobe Premiere is for more common video editing use, whereas After Effects is more for special effects and polish, so naturally the latter will be used less often. Not a big criticism, and not really misleading in any way, I suppose.
As Randy Krum at Cool Infographics pointed out, I’m not sure what the color distinction between elements is meant to represent. They are not brand-associated, nor do they seemed chosen for contrast and distinction, since Textedit and Notepad are next to each other under Text Editor in two only slightly different shades of yellow.
The infographic was found at the Fast Company infographic of the day page here.
