Awesome Design Tools: a curated design tools list
/Awesome-Design-Tools
Awesome Design Tools is worth bookmarking if you regularly need a tool for a specific design job rather than a general browse. The list is split by task — accessibility, animation, AR, collaboration, color picking — so you jump into a category instead of scrolling one giant wall of links. It isn't annotated beyond a one-line blurb per entry, so you still click through and judge each tool yourself.
What is the Awesome Design Tools collection?
Awesome Design Tools is a curated, community-maintained list of design software, split into named sections like Accessibility Tools, Animation Tools, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Tools, and Color Picker Tools. Each entry is a one-line description with a link. The project also points to companion files for plugins, conferences, and UI kits, with updates arriving through pull requests reviewed against published contribution guidelines.
What tool categories does the list cover?
- ✓Accessibility Tools: WCAG-focused checkers and color-blindness simulators such as Axe, WAVE, and Contrast.
- ✓Animation Tools: motion and prototyping apps like After Effects, GSAP, and Lottie for micro-interactions and UI transitions.
- ✓Augmented Reality: AR creation and prototyping kits including Spark AR Studio, Lens Studio, and Vuforia.
- ✓Collaboration Tools: team workflow and feedback apps such as Slack, Notion, Trello, Miro, and Airtable.
- ✓Color Picker Tools: palette generators and eyedropper utilities like Coolors, Khroma, and Color Hunt.
- ✓Companion lists: separate files in the same repo cover Awesome Design Plugins, Awesome Design Conferences, and Awesome Design UI Kits.
Who uses this collection and when?
- •A solo designer picking a first accessibility checker without wading through review sites.
- •A frontend developer scouting an animation library for one specific micro-interaction.
- •A product team choosing a whiteboard or collaboration tool and wanting several options side by side.
- •Someone new to AR design tooling who needs a starting shortlist instead of an open-ended search.
Strengths
- ✓Organized into named categories, so browsing by task beats scrolling one unsorted wall of links.
- ✓Covers categories most design lists skip, like augmented reality and accessibility testing.
- ✓Companion files split plugins, conferences, and UI kits out instead of dumping everything into one README.
- ✓Contribution guidelines are published, so new entries go through PR review rather than a free-for-all.
What this list doesn't cover
- △Each entry is a single line — name, link, one-sentence blurb — with no pricing, platform detail, or last-checked date beyond the free/open-source/Mac-only labels contributors are asked to add.
- △Coverage is uneven across categories: some sections run long, others stay short, so depth depends on which one you land in.
- △It's a link list, not a review site — no ratings, comparisons, or confirmation that a linked tool is still maintained or still free.
- △The README ties the project's history to the team's move to build the Abstract SDK, so it's unclear from the file alone how actively categories get refreshed now.
- △No search or filter UI — you rely on the browser's find-in-page or the table of contents to reach a category.
Other design tool directories to bookmark
Frequently asked questions
Awesome Design Tools is free to browse — it's a public GitHub README with no paywall or signup. Individual tools it links to set their own pricing, and maintainers ask contributors to label each entry as free, open source, or Mac only so you can spot cost and platform quickly.
Contributing to Awesome Design Tools means opening a pull request against the repository, following the published Contribution Guidelines. Design tools go in the main README; plugins belong in the separate Awesome Design Plugins file. The guidelines are described as simple and worth reading first.
Awesome Design Tools groups entries into named sections such as Accessibility Tools, Animation Tools, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Tools, and Color Picker Tools, each with a short intro and a bulleted list of tools with one-line descriptions.
Awesome Design Tools accepts community pull requests as its update mechanism, per its contribution guidelines. The README notes that its original creators moved on to build the Abstract SDK after their company joined Abstract, which is worth knowing when judging how fresh the categories are.
Awesome Design Tools asks contributors to attach free, open source, or Mac-only labels to each entry they submit, per the contribution guidelines in the README. That labeling depends on contributors applying it consistently, since it's a manual, PR-driven process rather than an automated check.
Awesome Design Tools covers standalone design software and apps, while Awesome Design Plugins — a separate linked file in the same repository — covers plugins that extend existing design apps. The README tells contributors to submit tools to one file and plugins to the other.
Who should try it — and who should skip
Awesome Design Tools suits a designer or frontend developer who already knows which category they need — accessibility, animation, AR, collaboration, or color — and wants a fast shortlist instead of ad-heavy search results. Skip it if you want reviews, pricing comparisons, or a single best pick: it's a link list you still have to vet yourself, one entry at a time.
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