Rachel Okonkwo
Design Editor
Former Airbnb senior designer, 12 years in design ops
Rachel covers design tools for tools8020. She spent six years at Airbnb on the design systems team and three years at Webflow on customer-facing template tooling. She has built design systems for two startups (one acquired by Stripe in 2024) and writes about the practical economics of design tools — when investment in a tool pays back in production speed versus when it adds overhead. Based in Lagos and Brooklyn.
Rachel Okonkwo leads design tool coverage. Her reviews focus on real production work — what shipping looks like in each tool, where the handoffs break, and which tools justify their price for solo designers vs. teams of 10+.
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Reviews by Rachel
Canva
Browser-based visual design platform for non-designers creating graphics, presentations, and marketing assets.
CapCut
Mobile-first video editor from ByteDance with a generous free tier and AI-powered tools.
Carrd
Single-page website builder — simple, fast, and free for most use cases.
Descript
Podcast and video editor that lets you edit audio and video by editing the transcript.
Figma
The collaborative design tool that won the category. Browser-first, multi-player editing, deep plugin ecosystem.
Framer
Design-led website builder where the canvas IS the production output. Marketing pages without a dev handoff.
Sketch
Mac-native vector design tool built for UI/UX designers creating app interfaces and design systems.
Squarespace
Design-forward website builder for portfolios, small business sites, and online stores — no developer required.
Webflow
Visual web development platform for building production-grade sites without writing backend code.