9. Our Top 10 Tools for Improving Creativity
Apps and websites and products for boosting your creative output
Sometimes a creative practice just needs some free time to flourish. Sometimes you need a creative community to cheer you on (like this Bonfire community. Go, you!)
And sometimes you need the right tools to get your creative juices going.
Well, you’ve come to the right place.
Here is a list of our favorite tools for improving creativity, whether you need a jolt of inspiration, a creativity boost, a time-saving tactic, or a cure for the blank page.
Got a favorite creativity tool that you would recommend? Let us know!
Our top 10 tools for improving creativity
1 - A good, simple notebook and a trusty pen
We’re going lo-fi with this first suggestion because creativity doesn’t always need the latest digital apps and online hacks. Plus, a notebook and pen allow you to be creative away from a screen and all its distractions.
There are a TON of great notebooks out there, but here are a few that are especially worth checking out:
And if you’re in the market for a trusty pen, here is a great breakdown of very good pens from The New York Times.
2 - Forest app
With this little app, you plant a virtual tree every time you want to start a focused creativity session. The more sessions you complete, the bigger your trees grow and the more amazing your forest looks!
Tools like these — basically a gamified Pomodoro timer — help us stay focused and on-task with our creative practice, much like Neil Gaiman and his two rules for his creative time: create or do nothing.
3 - Mymind
Like if Pinterest and your bookmarks had a baby. And if that baby could read your mind!
With Mymind, you simply save anything you want to remember later — cool images, links, notes, quotes, tweets, TikToks — and Mymind will auto-organize everything for you so that you can easily find and reference it anytime.
Made for designers, writers, researchers, developers & visual minds of all kind.
And their homepage even has a manifesto on it! They are speaking our language.
4 - Miro
Miro is a digital whiteboard where you can brainstorm and collaborate remotely with anyone — or sketch and ideate by yourself. I love using it for mind maps of ideas, building flowcharts, and plotting out the connections between all the disparate creative thoughts rolling around in my head. I put it all in Miro, and Miro makes it easy to group, sort, and clarify.
5 - Pip Decks
Pip Decks are decks of cards, each card with a prompt, a tip, or a technique, all built around a central theme. There are pip decks for storytelling, for branding, for design, for leadership, and so much more.
Warning: Go to their website once, and be prepared to see Instagram ads for the next week!
6 - Adobe Firefly
Yes, I’m recommending an AI tool. There’s soooo much AI out there these days, and we creatives can truly benefit by wrangling AI to suit our creative process. Adobe Firefly is one of the most varied tools with a handful of one-off apps that will generate amazing art for you — text-to-image, generative fill, text effects, and recolor, just to name a few.
Here is the word Bonfire in toast form:
7 - PhotoRoom
Let’s say you have some real-world images you want to fancy up. PhotoRoom is full of photo features to make those images shine and to give you gobs of creative inspiration on how you could show off a product you’re selling, a social post you’re creating, or anything in need of a creative, visual pop.
8 - Song Maker
There is a lot to be said for the value of play when it comes to creativity. This simple, intuitive music maker from Google is a delight to use, and you can actually create some pretty decent tunes without a lot of effort. Use it when you need a break from the depths of your creative work or when you need to get in a playful mindset before beginning.
9 - Readwise
For book lovers and online readers, Readwise is a godsend. It will take all your book highlights, store them, and remind you of all the great stuff you’ve read over the years. I’ve plugged in all my Kindle highlights, and Readwise shows me five highlights every day. Also works great for inspirational (or funny) tweets you want to save.
10 - Pocket / Instapaper
Speaking of saving, these read-it-later apps can be a treasure trove for creative productivity. Not only do they help when you’re in your creative flow state to find an article you really want to read (you can always just save it for later), but they also provide a library of useful online content that you have personally curated just for you.
And if you ever save too many things that you know you’re never going to read, allow me to give you permission to declare bankruptcy on your saved items and archive ‘em all. I give myself this same permission about every three months.
Over to you
What would you add to this list?
Do you have any favorite tools that you enjoy using to boost your creativity?
We’d love to hear from you.
For more…
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