Breathtaking photography. Must-follow social media feeds. Orangutans. Yep, National Geographic, which has a whole crowd of Webby Awards in its trophy case, has built an online presence that most other media companies only dream about. How? With some handy tech tools, of course. A few members of the Nat Geo team were kind enough to share their go-to apps and websites—check out five below, and see them all here.
Sketch
Bethany Powell / @powellbethany VP, Digital Products & Experience Favorite App/Service:Sketch “As designers, we love the Adobe Creative Suite products, but as Experience Designers working on digital products, we really needed a tool that was built for us. With Sketch, the ability to create wires, prototypes, and hi-fi prototypes—all with one tool—is a massive time saver and makes file changes easy to track. Our design team has also leveraged the text styles and symbol libraries to share our custom design language and visual systems with teams around the globe.”
Jonathan Hunt / @jonathan_h Senior Vice President, Audience Development and Social Products Favorite App/Service:Mediagazer “I’m a media nerd, and the media world is my IRL telenovela. It’s sad but true, and luckily MediaGazer, in all its web 1.0 glory, helps me follow the big media stories and the conversations surrounding them.”
Kate Coughlin / @Kate_Coughlin Director, Audience Development Favorite App/Service:IFTTT “I’m a multitasker, always juggling a million projects, and I don’t remember to check all of the apps I’d like to use every day. I love IFTTT because it connects all of them, from Pocket to FitBit to Twitter, and allows me to do more, learn more, and consume more content in one space.”
Matt Zymet / @MattZymet Executive Director, Advanced Formats Favorite App/Service:DropTask “I'm a very visual thinker. Standard to-do lists are fine, but I want to see context—how everything connects. DropTask is a brilliant visual productivity tool that gives you a robust graphical interface for your projects and tasks, with multiple ways to view your work. It integrates with other common tools (Outlook, Dropbox, Evernote, Google), and also works with mind-mapping software iMindMap for a visual thinker’s one-two-punch. Even better, it has a robust app ecosystem across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, my platform of choice.”
Patrick Witty / @patrickwitty Deputy Director of Photography Favorite App/Service:Metadata Pro “Metadata Pro is an essential tool for sidestepping the 24-hour rule on Instagram Stories. It can wipe all info, including date and capture time, from photos and videos in a snap. Our photographers who are in the field and off the grid for more than 24 hours at a time rely on it. Thumbs up emoji!”
