Tools of my trade

​A look at some of the apps and software I use for my copywriting work, and can collaborate on with clients and digital design partners. 

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The perfect way to share and store project documents, or to collaborate live on copy and presentations with my team in different locales.

An oldie but a goodie, I always come back to Word for my copy documents – and it can do decent sitemaps too. I like how they can convert into Google Docs for sharing and collaborating.

Balsamiq is my favourite tool for mocking up wireframes, and it's decent for sitemaps too. My work often involves showing the digital team how the copy design could work.

I first used this when doing a job for the NZ government on a site of 12,000 pages (!). To create a new site, we began by defining the core copy templates that would be needed, and I wrote one of each. The rules and guidelines we set in these templates will help to roll out the content faster from there.

I love lists, so naturally I love Trello. Particularly good for large scale and complex projects where we're working on multiple website sections, across collateral, or for planning future work . A place to store notes and make sure we don't forget anything along the way.

UXPin is a wireframe and prototype tool. I'm still learning this one, but having a visual of the page really helps me when writing copy.