Today we want to tell you about our usual tools in the factory... uh, office, and the trusted software we use daily that makes our lives easier when developing new products and services.

Design

Figma

Although in the past we have used Photoshop and Sketch, nowadays we feel comfortable using Figma for conceptualizing, prototyping, and designing product screens.

Procreate

Our favorite tool for digital illustration with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Procreate. Basically, all the illustrations in our recent projects have been done with Procreate.

Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo

As owners of one of the old licenses, we gave up on the Adobe suite when they switched to the subscription model. We started using the Affinity suite and, honestly, we don't really miss Photoshop and Illustrator that much either.

CapCut

Since we started editing videos for FermentApp, it has become our reference video editor. It's easy to use, even for people like us who are not specialized in editing, and really versatile.

Coding

Visual Studio Code

Our reference development environment, and a dream come true compared to old IDEs like Eclipse or NetBeans (a shiver runs down their spine). It has absolutely everything.

GitLab

Our code repository and version control for all our projects. We also use their ticketing system, both internally and with some clients through email integration.

ACF (Advanced Custom Fields)

Our main plugin and cornerstone in any WordPress development. It allows us to create and map complex data models in projects with a fairly simple administration interface.

WPML

Our recent projects have all been multilingual. In the absence of a better solution, we have been using WPML, which, while it does deliver on its promises, doesn't always do it in the best possible way.

Organization

Google Workspace

To a greater or lesser extent, we use practically all the applications in the Google ecosystem: Gmail for the studio email, Calendar for managing schedules, Docs for collaborative document and proposal development, Drive for organizing documents, Spreadsheets, Keep, and more.

Dropbox

For synchronizing all our files in the cloud in an easy and transparent way, it's the most convenient solution and the one we've been using for many years. Is there any new solution that improves upon it? Please let us know.

Communication

Telegram

Neither Slack nor slock. As a creative duo, the most efficient solution for us is to use Telegram, which we also use for our personal communications. Under the Lostium folder, we create new rooms for each project to consolidate all conversations related to it. Long live their stickers!

Google Meet

Although it belongs to the Workspace suite, we wanted to give it its own space as our favorite tool for video conferencing due to the quality and its good integration with the rest of the tools: Calendar, Gmail...

Productivity & other

Toggl

Essential time tracking tool for invoicing hourly projects and managing hour banks (support, maintenance...). We have been using it since it was a quite ugly skeuomorphic red button, and the truth is that its design and interface have improved greatly over the years.

ChatGPT

We have recently started using it and, despite the initial hype, it has been very useful for some micro-tasks. From assisting with small translations, programming suggestions, generating outlines... It's not a silver bullet, but the reality is that it has already found a place in some parts of our workflow.