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Digital Creativity: a Practical Guide

Digital creativity tools

A practical guide to getting digitally creative and using digital tools and technologies to explore work, ideas, and research.

There are a whole range of tools, technologies, and techniques you can use when being digitally creative. We've collected together guidance, suggestions, and inspiration in a range of areas from creating presentations, images, and websites to working with virtual and augmented reality.

Choosing methods and tools

Choosing the right methods and tools is just as important as using them! The process of finding what will work for you, your ideas, and your project can be trial and error, but there are a few things to consider that will help you make choices and find the right tools to try out:

  • What do you actually need to do? - Defining what kinds of outputs you're looking for and what these outputs should do will help you to look for tools that actually suit your needs.
  • How much time do you have? - Time is key when learning new digital tools and techniques. Do you have time to explore a range of tools or do you need to focus on a few? Have you factored in time for learning how to use new tools?
  • Do you need to buy anything? - Many of the tools we suggest will have free versions, but you might need physical hardware or more powerful software that comes with a price tag. If you don't have money to spend on the project, you might have to adapt to what you can do with free and open source tools.

Don't forget the importance of play: make sure you try out tools with test ideas or data before you start using them for your project or work. This will give you an idea of the functionality of the tool whilst also helping you to learn how it works.

Which tools could I use for digital creativity?

We've put together a number of guides to introduce you to a range of different digital creativity tools (though this is by no means an exhaustive list). If you're not sure which to explore, you could learn about how to choose tools and methods.

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