Subscribe Now!
...with web-based news readers. Click your choice below:
...with other readers:
FeedBurner makes it easy to receive content updates in My Yahoo!, Newsgator, Bloglines, and other news readers.
Learn more about syndication and FeedBurner...
Current Feed Content
-
Popular Design News of the Week: September 16, 2019 – September 22, 2019
Posted:Sun, 22 Sep 2019 10:45:23 +0000
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.
Don’t Make the Same Design Fail as the Chicago Bulls Logo
15 Unique Website Layouts
Where to Put Buttons on Forms
Free Collection of Amazing PNG Images
5 Soft Skills Every Product Designer Should Master
Microsoft’s New Font for Devs is Very Aesthetically Pleasing (and Free)
7 CTA Button Design Guidelines
Sticky Positioning with Nothing but CSS (Thanks to CSS Position: Sticky)
Typography Basics: Terminology, Examples, And Infographics
AI UI Pattern Library
Inconsistent Behavior Among Browsers When Clicking on Buttons
(Why) Some HTML is “Optional”
A Love Letter to Personal Websites
Augmented-UI
Dark Mode – Working with Color Systems
‘Intent’ Should Be Every Marketer’s #1 Obsession
Four Tips from my First Year as a UX Developer
UX Design — Question Everything
This Typeface Hides a Secret in Plain Sight. And that’s the Point
10 Best Sites for Vector Illustrations
Storybook 5.2
To do Better Work, Change your Environment
100,000 AI-Generated Faces – Free to Use!
Apparently We’ve been Doing Logos Wrong all this Time
Light Theme, Redeemed
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
Source -
How Powerful Micro-Interactions Boost Your UX
Posted:Fri, 20 Sep 2019 10:45:27 +0000
Because of the sense of value users perceive from micro-interactions, they not only boost engagement, but also inspire positive feelings towards your brand, and ultimately, influence users’ actions.This article will discuss the basics of micro-interactions and how you can utilize them to enhance your UX design.
What Are Micro-Interactions?
In digital design, micro-interactions are found in most user engagements with products. It occurs when you hover your mouse over text and it changes color to indicate it can be clicked. It’s when animation comes out showing the progress of your upload. It’s even the message that pops up to let you know you’ve input the wrong password.
These little visual cues and other subtle indicators are micro-interactions. And while they may not be readily noticed by users, that’s actually, often, when they’re properly executed. Micro-interactions, however subtle they may be, hold the general design scheme together – providing bits of information that allow users to navigate the interface and perform basic functions.
How Micro-Interactions Work
Micro-interactions have four basic elements: trigger, rules, feedback, and loops/modes. These elements help organize the operational cycle of these design elements:
Triggers
These are what initiate the micro-interaction process—a tap of a button, or a click of a mouse, for example. It can also be initiated by the system when certain qualifications are met, like when you get sound notifications when you receive a message.
These triggers work with a set of established action rules that prescribe what can and can’t be done.
Rules
These basically determine what happens once a micro-interaction is triggered. So when you swipe up on Tinder, for example, the rules state that you’ve “Super liked” someone. But the rules also state that still can’t message them until they’ve liked you back.
Feedback
As the name implies, it lets users know what’s going on. Anything a user sees, hears, or even feels when a micro-interaction is happening is feedback. For example, if you set your phone to vibrate, that short vibration is feedback.
Loops/Modes
These basically define the nature of the interaction—does it flash once, repeat? What happens over time? For example, the loops can be the number of times a user can input the wrong password, while the mode would be that an account would be temporarily blocked after five password errors.
When and How to Use Micro-Interactions
1. Page Animation
When you talk about page animation, it could be the creative transition between pages or just a cool scrolling progress icon. These types of micro-interactions can give users better insight into the relationship between previous and current pages. It also makes even the process of skimming more engaging.
2. Swiping
Similarly, you can also take advantage of how innate swiping has become by incorporating smooth transitions to your content when users swipe. This way, you can add some entertainment value to your content (without users needing to get on a dating app).
3. Animated Input Fields
You probably haven’t met anyone that enjoys filling out forms. But animating fields can at least make the mundane task more engaging, and even helpful.
4. Status Animation
Similarly, in this age of dwindling attention spans and on-demand entertainment, nobody likes to wait. But by using animations for things like download/upload status, you can show users’ progress, while adding more fun to an otherwise boring function.
You can even use it to add to your branding.
5. Notifications
When it comes to notifications, it’s better if you can give users options. For example, there are users who prefer less intrusive notifications. Others, meanwhile, wouldn’t mind Facebook Messenger’s chat bubble popping up even while they’re watching a YouTube video.
Facebook and Instagram have taken this to another level, providing users with a hit of dopamine every time someone likes their posts. This builds habits, making users look forward to getting notifications.
6. Pull-Down Menu
It’s become a staple design in smartphones’ operating systems, and it’s because it’s incredibly user-friendly. Just by pulling down from the top of your screen, you get access to all your notifications and your basic settings. Ease of navigation is one of the most important functions of micro-interactions, and pull-down menus enable just that.
7. Call-to-Action Buttons
Your CTAs are there for a reason – and that’s because you want users to click on them. Adding animation to your CTA buttons can help stimulate users’ behavior. And at the very least, make them curious about what might happen.
8. Anchor Text Animation
Animating anchor text is a great way to incorporate creative branding into simple functions like going back to your homepage or even just indicating that something can be clicked.
9. Tutorials
Micro-interactions are also a great way to educate users about how to use your product. Simple animations or even graphics that point out basic functions can go a long way towards better UX by making your product easy to use, and unveiling cool hidden functions.
Takeaway
These small details all add value to the overall experience of your users. A small feature like a non-intrusive notification or a cool status animation can make users feel that the company cares about them, and leads to feelings of goodwill towards the brand. And once that sort of relationship is built, you can then influence their actions to align with your own goals.
With everything going digital, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd – but these subtle micro-interactions can help you achieve just that.
Source -
How to Decrease Decision Fatigue and Increase Conversions
Posted:Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:45:46 +0000
It sort of feels like our lives are nothing more than an endless string of decision-making, doesn’t it? You go to the grocery store and half an aisle is dedicated to olive oil. Or cereal. Or yogurt. Then, you go home and your streaming services give you literally hundreds of options for horror movies. Or documentaries. Or TV shows. And it doesn’t get any better online.Decision fatigue happens when you put your consumer in the position to choose from an over-abundance of options.
That said, decision fatigue isn’t some minor frustration caused by having too many awesome choices. It can do some major harm to your conversion rate. For instance: Hick’s Law states that with each new option you put before a user, the longer it will take them to process all of their choices.
That’s the opposite of what you want to happen on a website. You want visitors to quickly explore, find exactly what they need, and convert. The longer you delay this, the lower your chances will be to convert them at all.
Or, you might find that too many choices lead visitors to make poor buying decisions.
This happens when there are too many similar-looking options or there’s an excess of information and the customer gives up. They know they need to buy something, so they make a hasty purchase just to “get it over with”. As a result, the company ends up having to deal with more returns and refunds because of unsatisfied customers. And they will cost you.
Your website already has enough competition to contend with, so why create competition for your visitors’ attention internally?
What Web Designers Can Do to Reduce Design Fatigue
If you or your client want your website to convert, you really need to think about the ways you’re forcing them to stop and wonder: “Which one do I choose?”
Whether your website sells content, services, or products, less is always going to be more in terms of decision-making. And this isn’t about how many products you sell on a website. This is about how you frame every individual decision leading up to conversion.
Here are some examples of where decision fatigue may take place and how to reduce friction there:
1. Clear Up the Navigation
With smaller websites and more narrowly-focused businesses, you won’t have to worry about this too much. With big stores, however, the navigation can get you into a lot of trouble if you don’t organize it well.
Here’s what I mean:
This is the website for ShopRite, a major grocery chain in the U.S.
While I understand that people may come to this website for a variety of purposes, it’s clearly set up as an online ordering system. If that’s your main priority, then the navigation should not be organized in this manner.
“Shop Aisles” certainly belongs there. But do they need three menus to promote specials and coupons: “Weekly Circular”, “Online Promotions”, and “Save”? What about “Discover”, “Careers”, and “Recipes”? There’s a lot of extra noise here.
If the data is telling you that the majority of customers come here to shop, give them what they want in a clear and simple fashion. Don’t make them read through other menu labels or click on them to figure out what something labeled “Discover” even means.
2. Choose One Promotion
Promotional offers and discounts are a great way to entice new visitors to take the plunge and for returning visitors to buy again. But just because they can be effective in increasing sales doesn’t mean you can go overboard with it.
For instance:
This is what the Bed, Bath & Beyond website looks like at the time of writing. Above the fold, there are promotions for:
- “Free shipping on orders over $39”
- “Reserve online and free pick-up in store”
- “Up to 50% off select Shark vacuums”
- “Save $100 on the Artisan Stand Mixer”
- “Up to 75% off deals for every home in your room”
- And, depending on where you catch the slider, there are rotating offers there as well.
Basically, the first impression they want anyone to have is: “Never pay full price with us!” and “We have so many deals, it’s going to be impossible to decide where to get started!”
Even if the offers your website advertises don’t conflict with one another, each one still requires visitors’ attention, which is a problem. When you offer something special, they’re going to take time to read it and make sure they’re not missing out on anything.
To keep your design from distracting visitors from converting, only include one (or maybe two) promotions on a page.
3. Reduce the Number and Variety of CTAs
This typically isn’t a problem on internal pages of a website where the structure is simpler:
- This is the topic;
- This is the call-to-action.
The home page, however, can be more complicated.
This is a section from the lower part of the Thrive digital agency website:
The home page, in general, is way too long. While it’s important to demonstrate authority and leverage customer testimonials when possible, this page is overkill. Then, when visitors get through the bravado, they stumble upon the call-to-action section above where they can:
- Get a free proposal;
- Call someone;
- Follow them on up to five social media platforms;
- Contact them through the website;
- Learn about how the agency gives back.
- Read more customer reviews.
If you’ve already taken up that much time to convince visitors of your trustworthiness, then it’s time to give them one clear call-to-action. It’s up to you to decide what the priority is and then let the navigation provide other options if the primary CTA isn’t a good fit.
4. Show Only the Most Recent Content
Content marketing is an essential part of most websites. And while it might seem like a good idea to show off how much high-quality content is available all at once, too many options can trigger decision fatigue.
Just like what happens with this example from the Convince & Convert website:
In just this screenshot, you can see six pieces of lookalike content, with four more poking up from the bottom. That’s ten headlines visitors have to read to determine which one or ones is worth clicking on.
You’d be better off using a recent posts slider where only one post shows at a time. Then, the “Blog” link in the navigation or the search bar at the top of the site can help them find more content if they’re interested in exploring.
5. Include Filters and Sort Functionality for Search Results
When it comes to online search, you don’t want to take a page out of Google’s book where the responsibility is on the users to type exactly what they’re looking for and to decide how far they want to dig into the search results pages (which usually isn’t far).
Give your visitors an easy way to filter and sort their search results so that the most relevant options present themselves and everything else is weeded out.
For example, this is the Patina Restaurant Group’s chain of restaurants from around the US:
This page has dozens of dining options split up per location. It’s not a great approach to helping diners find the perfect place to eat with so much information being thrown at them.
That said, Patina Restaurant Group does have a solution for the problem. At the top of the page, there’s a custom search filter people can use to sort by location or by occasion:
In this particular example, it takes the list of 13 Midtown restaurants I was looking at before, down to 2 options.
As you look for ways to narrow down search results for your own users, don’t be afraid to look outside the box and develop filters specific to the things they’re looking for.
Wrap-Up
I know it might seem like a good idea to give your visitors as many options as they want. It almost seems luxurious, right? But when you ask visitors to make too many decisions, you run the risk of creating friction that doesn’t need to be there.
To reduce decision fatigue, take a look at your website and identify those spots where users have to make a choice.
Do I stop and watch this video… or do I request a free consultation?
Do I look at the 24 phones available… or do I do a side-by-side comparison of the top 3 top-rated phones to see which ones have the features I need?
Do I buy the mattress I came here for… or do I spend 20 minutes reviewing the specs of the one that’s 50% off this week?
Your goal is to design a website that turns visitors into customers. But, more than that, your goal is to design a website that turns visitors into satisfied customers. Make the decision-making process simple and easy so that can happen.
Featured image via DepositPhotos.
Source -
20 Freshest Web Designs, September 2019
Posted:Mon, 16 Sep 2019 10:45:36 +0000
This month, there’s tons of color, and some elegant transitions. Video is huge this month, with a number of sites opting for video front and center. You’ll also find some delightful animated illustration. Enjoy!Bon Iver Visualizer
This impressive site, built with Spotify data, visualizes all of the people currently streaming Bon Iver music, including key details of their location like elevation, and weather conditions. It’s a fascinating attempt to make streamed music a collective experience.
Jia Szeto
Paris-based stylist Jia Szeto’s portfolio site is a joy to browse through, with colorful frames that bring out the best in the photography, and stylish transitions that move you from one project to the next. It’s deceptively simple, and very high-class.
Headless Horse
Headless Horse presents a new way to browse through a studio’s portfolio. In this case, move your cursor around the wall of seemingly random thumbnails. It works, because Headless Horse have worked with some huge clients, so recognizable brands leap out at you.
Monastery
This site is a joy to browse around. The exquisite product photography and the luxurious feel of the transitions — note the subtle blur added to the fade — make Monastery’s skincare range highly-desirable before you’ve even tried it.
Hazelbrook Legal
Hazelbrook Legal is a corporate law firm, its site is innovative in its field, using a large video, showing a ball rolling around an Escher-style maze. The ball is solid, and its path is calm and certain. Exactly what you want from this type of company.
Ramus
Ramus is a design collective drawing talent from across the creative industries to produce works of art with light. The scale of its portfolio is truly impressive, and a different showcase video loads each time you visit the site.
Thirst
If you want to be successful in design you need to carve out a niche. Thirst has certainly done that by only designing packaging for drinks. The animated gradients on its homepage calls to mind exotic flavours perfectly.
Near Miss Memorials
Near Miss Memorials is a public safety campaign from New Zealand that’s educating the public about crossing train tracks safely. Scroll along the tracks, and watch videos of people risking their lives for a few extra seconds off their journey. It’s an impactful, and potentially life-saving site.
Seafood From Norway
If like me, you’re hooked on Nordic Noir TV dramas, then the opening video on Seafood From Norway’s site will get your pulse racing. The site is actually a very beautiful advert for the Norwegian fishing industry, showcasing its high standards. The recipes are great too.
Cognito
This awesome illustrated site uses animation and simple illustration to simplify technologically complex solutions. Best of all, the flow of the illustrations lead you through the sections of the site, drawing you into the content brilliantly.
VLNC
French design studio VLNC has a unique approach to the thorny problem of how to layout thumbnails, they turned them into a mouse trail. It’s a surprisingly effective way to make use of one of the web’s oldest clichés.
Fetching Fields
The ingredients on Fetching Fields’ site look good enough to eat, and with its luxury-feel brand you’d expect this to be a fancy new foodie option. But Fetching Fields are selling treats for our dogs. Because our furry friends deserve the best.
Tusk
One of the most difficult aspects of a site to get right is the tone. It’s when user experience, art direction, content, animation, and typography all come together to just feel right. Tusk gets it perfectly.
We Compost
Normally, any delay in getting to a site’s content is a bad thing, but Auckland’s We Compost opens with a delightful animation of earthworms, which ties the concept together instantly. It’s lovely.
Bimble
Who says parallax is dead? This simple site for CBD-based drink is calm, brand appropriate, and makes excellent use of the tried and tested effect that we all love to hate to love.
The Jacky Winter Group
The Jacky Winter Group represents illustrators, artists, animators, lettering designers, and all manner of visually creative professional. The site is almost an assault on your eyes. It’s modern, exciting, and packed with energy.
NYT Food Festival
This great little site for the New York Times’ Food Festival captures our attention with fun, animated typography. There are excellent splashes of color blocking throughout the site, even if the vital information is a little hidden away.
Almond Surfboards
With an innovative range of surfboards, the site for Almond Surfboards captures a retro, West-coast vibe perfectly. The warm off-white colors and all-American typography feel precisely on point. Check out the accessories section for some awesome flag-based lettering work.
Hudson Hemp
Hudson Hemp uses an opening looping video to set the tone of its content. It’s respectable, science-orientated, it could be a feature for National Geographic. All essential characteristics when you’re selling a product about which there is so much misinformation.
Adventure of the Detective’s
I don’t pretend to fully understand Andrew Maruska’s quest-generator for D&D. But what I do understand is the excellent choice of typeface, that levels-up this one-pager. It feels entirely appropriate, and I wish more sites were brave with their font choices.
Source
-
Popular Design News of the Week: September 9, 2019 – September 15, 2019
Posted:Sun, 15 Sep 2019 10:45:48 +0000
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.
20 Graphic Design Websites that will Inspire You
My Favorite CSS Hack
New Volkswagen Logo Breaks its own Rules
The Best UX Design of 2019
7 CSS Triangle Backgrounds
19 UI Design Trends for Web and Mobile Worth your Attention
Common Design Mistakes
Why Adobe XD is Better than Sketch.
Colors & Fonts, a Curated Library of Colors and Fonts for Digital Designers and Web Developers
Less… Is More? Apple’s Inconsistent Ellipsis Icons Inspire User Confusion
Free HTML / CSS Style Guides
19 Amazing Sources of Web Design Inspiration
Bugs that Became Features
UX of Email Newsletters
Site Design: Purple, Rock, Scissors!
Stop Infinite Scrolling on your Website
6 Things to Consider When Making your Portfolio Website
Drama: Prototyping, Animation & Design Tool. All-in-one
Batman 1989: Illustrators and Designers on Why the Logo Still Resonates
10 Simple Tips to Improve User Testing
Daily Pattern Challenge
Figmac – Make Figma Feel More at Home on the Mac
4 Small Details that Reveal How Design at Apple is Changing
Source Wireframe Kit – 537 Desktop and Mobile Layouts in 22 Categories for Sketch and Figma
Is Full-time Freelance Design for You? Ask Yourself these 7 Questions
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
Source -
15 Best APIs for Web Designers and Developers
Posted:Fri, 13 Sep 2019 10:45:39 +0000
With an API, you create a connection between your website and an application for the purposes of drawing on its data or features. This allows you to not only enhance the on-site experience, but to streamline a lot of the processes that would otherwise require much tedious hand-holding behind the scenes. Many of you are probably familiar with the multitude of APIs Google has created.But it’s not just Google that’s trying to make it easier for web developers and designers to create impressive online experiences. According to APIHound, it has a repository of over 50,000 APIs while ProgrammableWeb lists over 22,000. Even if only the top 1% are usable, that’s still 200 to 500 high-quality APIs you could be leveraging to build websites.
That said, I’m not going to leave you to figure out which ones are worth your time. Below, you’ll find the 15 best APIs for web design and development:
1. Google Analytics
Tracking visitor activity on a website with Google Analytics is non-negotiable these days. But there’s more to get out of this platform than just watching web traffic go up and down. You can use the Google Analytics APIs to:
- Monitor custom data, like e-commerce conversion rates and lifetime value calculations.
- Create special tracking dashboards for the backend of your website.
- Go deeper with sales funnel tracking and analysis.
2. Google Geo-location (Maps)
Google Maps is the more commonly recognized geo-location API from Google. However, there are other ways to use this API to your advantage:
- Make embedded maps look however you like (e.g. street view enabled, 360-degree pivot, etc.)
- Show route data along with real-time traffic insights.
- Equip search fields and forms with pre-populated geo-location data that matches real world locations.
3. Google Fonts
The Google Fonts API gives developers a way to call on a Google Font from the directory. This way, you don’t need to host any cumbersome font files on your server. Google handles the load.
4. Google Translate
Building an international website and need a quick and convenient way to translate it into numerous languages? You can use Google’s Cloud Translation and API service to help. All you need is an HTML and Google Translate will take care of the rest.
5. Google Calendar
For a business that hosts lots of events — online or in-person — a calendar would come in handy for the website. With the Google Calendar API, you can instantly make that connection and start displaying public or private events.
6. G Suite Apps
Google’s suite of apps have their own corresponding APIs, too. So, let’s say you have a contact form that provides your client with important information prior to a sales call. You could configure the Google Sheets API to capture the data submitted by users, which would help the sales rep or business owner in preparing for the call ahead of time.
7. YouTube
You know it’s not a very good idea to upload video files to your server. Thanks to the YouTube API, you can easily embed video players into your website and customize the playback settings. You can also use the API to pull in data from YouTube to your website’s dashboard.
8. Vimeo
Vimeo is another popular video playback solution that has its own API. If your clients would prefer to manage their video content with Vimeo, know that you have the ability to leverage the API to embed videos on the site, pull in usage data, and customize playback.
9. Facebook Messenger
Want to build a Facebook Messenger chatbot for your website? With the Messenger API, you can do that. What’s more, you can program how the bot interacts with visitors, so it doesn’t just end up being a holding queue for visitors waiting to connect with a real person through the site or over on Facebook.
10. Facebook Apps and Plugins
Facebook provides developers with APIs so they can get more out of their marketing efforts on the social media platform itself. However, it also provides a set of APIs and SDKs that can be used on websites. With them, you can:
- Add a Facebook login.
- Embed social media feeds and posts.
- Track website conversions in relation to Facebook.
11. Twitter
Truth be told, all of the leading social media platforms have their own APIs. But if we’re looking at the more valuable ones to include on your website, Facebook and Twitter are probably them. That said, Twitter’s offering for web developers is a bit lighter than Facebook’s. With it, you’ll gain the ability to embed Twitter feeds, posts, as well as share buttons.
12. Twilio
If you’re not familiar with it, the Twilio API is an incredibly powerful tool for businesses that want to integrate voice, SMS, chat, or AI bots into their websites.
For instance, think about a website that allows visitors to schedule appointments. By asking for a phone number in the request, you can program your API to automatically send appointment reminders via text.
You could also use this for something like a free SaaS trial. You include a few additional fields like Business Name, Company Size, and Phone Number in the signup form. Then, a few hours after the visitor signs up, a sales rep follows up by phone to see how they’re enjoying it.
13. Dropbox
Do you need a secure place to store files from your website? You could use the Dropbox API to make that happen with ease. You can also use the API to handle more complex tasks like enabling website visitors to upload documents to your Dropbox account (like resume files). You could also use it to get prospective employees, tenants, or clients to e-sign documents.
14. MailChimp
There are different ways you may want users to engage with your website, but most of them are likely to end in a form — lead gen, contact, or e-commerce.
If you’re using MailChimp to power your email marketing efforts, then connecting its API to your form and website would be useful. You can manage your email lists and automate how your site and email work together through it.
15. Payment Processors (Stripe and PayPal)
There’s no reason to manually process payment information anymore when payment processors have created such a reliable means of connecting their platforms to our websites. The APIs for payment processors like Stripe and PayPal are what enable developers to do more than just collect payments, too. You can enable tracking, handle refunds and disputes, and more.
Wrap-Up
The above list covers the essentials you’re going to need when building a website and adding all those critical features your clients desire. But there are so many more APIs you can leverage.
If you’re new to this and want an easy way to work with lesser known APIs, consider leveraging IFTTT or Zapier. These tools help you create “recipes” that connect your website to existing APIs. Think of them as a friendly go-between.
Featured image via Unsplash.
Source -
Free Download: 30 Script Fonts
Posted:Wed, 11 Sep 2019 10:45:13 +0000
The foundation of all typography is your choice of font. The font creates the voice of your text, its character and personality. For designers who aim to produce vital and engaging designs, a well-stocked font menu is a must.Of all the varieties of typeface, the most expressive, the most characterful, are script faces. The hand-drawn, hand-written, and hand-painted qualities make them ideal for designs that eschew the corporate grey of Helvetica.
This fantastic free download is brought to you by Mighty Deals. The collection includes scripts ideal for branding, scripts perfect for imitating lettering, and scripts made for communicating. There are masculine scripts and feminine scripts, traditional scripts and contemporary scripts, elegant scripts and grungy scripts. 30 different voices for expressive typography. Once you take into account the variations in weight, style, and swashes, there are 65+ font files to download and enjoy.
In the download you’ll find: Alessandria, Andora, Anthasic, Aprillia, Aveline, Beautify, Bender, Blendhes, Blusty, Fibonaccy Journey, Fountain, Frutilla, Hadfield, Jelytta, Kitten, Lauren, Magnolia, Manyland, Matane, Milea, Monday Bay, Pink, Sansterdam, Santelia, Selima, Sophistica, Spirited, Sweet Buttermilk, Sydnee, and Valerissa.
Download the files below.
SourcePlease enter your email address below and click the download button. The download link will be sent to you by email, or if you have already subscribed, the download will begin immediately.
-
Android Fans Rejoice, Vivaldi Has Arrived
Posted:Tue, 10 Sep 2019 10:45:02 +0000
It’s time for me to go all fanboy on you guys, because Vivaldi is on Android, ya’ll! Vivaldi the browser, that is. You know, the one made by former Opera devs, and which is aimed at power users who want loads of customization and choice, plus a little privacy.It’s the browser I’ve been using and only mildly worshipping for a while, now. Look, it’s just best if we make it clear that I am biased. Though I do worry that too many browsers are based on the Chromium project these days, I give Vivaldi a pass because it’s just that good. It’s been my day-to-day browser on the desktop since version 2.0 released in October 2018, and now it’s going to be my main browser on my phone.
Well, I might wait until it’s out of beta. We’ll see.
So what do you get in this version of Vivaldi for Android?
Vivaldi Features
Encrypted Sync – You can synchronize all of your bookmarks, history, and other data with the mobile version, no problem. Not done reading an article you started on your desktop or laptop? Open the menu and hit “Recent Tabs”. Tabs from other devices will be there too.
Notes: This is end-to-end encryption, so the people that make Vivaldi never see your data. It won’t sync your extensions, for obvious reasons.
Lite Mode – This is a browsing mode designed to save you data while you’re on the go. Like Opera’s Turbo Mode before it, it routes your browsing through their own servers, where they compress the data you receive on your end. I have no idea if this is encrypted, though. I haven’t been able to find too much in-depth information on this feature.
Notes – The Notes app in Vivaldi’s desktop version made it to the mobile version. They’re dead-simple text based notes, but they do get synced across devices with everything else.
Page Capture – It does what it says on the tin. You can capture what’s visible on your screen, or you can capture the whole darned page. Keep in mind that mobile pages can get very, very long, as the page’s width gets squished down to mobile sizes.
Search Engine Nicknames – So when you’re typing in a URL bar, you can type “g ducks” to search on Google for ducks, or “w ducks” to search Wikipedia, or “b Google” for reasons that I’m sure you can guess.
Reader Mode – This is a great feature that many other browsers already have, but hey, it’s good that Vivaldi has it, too. Cut out all distractions, and just get to the article already with the push of a button.
Tab Management – Okay, let’s be real. It’s easy enough to browse through your existing tabs, recently closed tabs, and even tabs from other devices. Those features are all well and good, but you’re just not going to get the same depth of tab organization tools. At least… not yet. It’s a beta of the first version, so I’d expect more advanced tab management to come along, down the road.
(Oh, and in this beta version, tab previews don’t always load.)
Private Browsing – It would be dumb if they didn’t have it.
Important features they didn’t bother to mention – As with the desktop version, one of Vivaldi’s strongest selling points is the feature that you will probably use only once: the settings screen. They’ve got loads of options that allow you to customize how the browser works, particularly in regards to privacy.
First Impressions of Vivaldi for Android
It feels snappy. For context, my current phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A; it’s not particularly high-end, but it’s not slouch either. Even so, I’ve had Chrome and even Firefox sometimes feel sluggish and annoying. I’ve just started using Vivaldi, but I can say that so far it feels faster and smoother.
Will it stay that way? Time will tell.
As it is, they also pay attention to detail, and they are considering the needs of a variety of users. Case in point: there’s a button that allows you to access the search/URL bar at the bottom of the screen, so you can use the browser one-handed. Heck, it even makes two-handed browsing easier, depending on the size of your phone.
The one thing I most miss from the desktop version is an ad blocker. That’s right, no native ad blocking with Vivaldi on Android. It’s very sad.
All in all, though, I believe Vivaldi’s mobile version is a strong contender.
Source -
20 Best New Portfolios, September 2019
Posted:Mon, 09 Sep 2019 10:45:13 +0000
Every month we roundup the best portfolios launched by agencies, freelance designers, and other creative professionals, into one easy-to-digest collection.And now we come to September. The kids are off to school (the poor dears), the teachers are off to school (the poor dears), and you’re free to spend some time thinking about the most important holiday of the year. You’ve got to get ready for it emotionally, spiritually, and financially.
That’s right, I’m talking about Halloween.
But before you get the pumpkin spice out of the cupboard, why not have a look at these fancy new portfolios? Enjoy.
Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea
, kids. If you find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to implement it responsibly.Braden Hamm
Braden Hamm’s portfolio is a wonderful reminder that typography is everything, layout hardly matters, and what are we even doing with our lives? Well, I’m mostly kidding, but the type design in this particular portfolio is generally fantastic. I’d also like to mention the general use of white space, it’s great.
Platform: Static Site
LGND
LGND uses simple, yet stylish type, calm colors, and excellent contrast to make a corporate-friendly design that isn’t boring at all. It even feels a little “futuristic” without going full sci-fi, and that’s impressive on its own. I don’t know whether it’s because corporate design is legitimately better, or just that I’ve turned 30, but this sort of design is growing on me.
Platform: WordPress
Say
Say’s agency site keeps it simple, going for that sort of artsy, sans-serif minimalism, and I just like it. I like the minimalism, the understated way they use color, and I even like the way you can sort of “paint” on the home page.
I don’t like the custom cursors nearly as much (especially when it’s hard to tell which part of your cursor does the actual clicking), but otherwise it’s a pleasant site to browse.
Platform: Craft CMS
Daniel Blom
Daniel Blom’s portfolio has everything a photography / filmography site needs! Pictures flying all around (only when you first load the site), a masonry layout, and more superminimalism (a word I just made up)!
No but really, after a few concessions to the Flash designer in all of us, it’s a simple and straightforward experience for the most part. I do like that you can change the backgound color of the site while you browse, though.
Platform: WordPress
Revolve Studio
Revolve Studio’s site stands out because it was written in ASP.NET. You hardly expect to see that outside of a corporate site.
It’s also a highly presentation-like site, with even a lot of the content being laid out as it might be in a PowerPoint. It also… doesn’t show any work. The site itself more or less is the portfolio piece, with loads of animation, careful attention to type, and even an example of what they can do with augmented reality design. There’s even audio, but only if you turn it on.
And yet, it doesn’t feel crowded. That’s an achievement.
Platform: Custom CMS (I think)
Fabio Fantolino
Fabio Fantolino’s portfolio might literally be what happens when a grid-obsessed animator gets too into PowerPoint. But really, it’s a gorgeous site in its own way, smoothly animated, and I love that color scheme, simple as it is.
Platform: Static Site
Thibaud Allie
Thibaud Allies’ portfolio is one part print design, and 99 parts definitely designed by an art director. Everything from the giant text to the placement of the images is artsy as heck, but still fairly usable.
Platform: Static Site
Clickpivot
Clickpivot a one-page website with what is basically a buzzword for a name, and that works, I think. I mean, look at that layout, that type. This is the one-page website that every corporate website aspires to be.
All hyperbole aside, it truly is a pretty site.
Platform: Static Site
Ransom
Ransom is artsy, asymmetrical, and almost post-minimalist in its aesthetic. It’s an approach we’ve seen before, but it wouldn’t be on this list unless it was laid out with love, and you can see the attention to detail in this design.
Platform: WordPress
Constance Burke
Constance Burke is a fashion designer, and her illustrations and sketches make up a large part of her site’s overall look and feel. Besides that, there’s a bit of a paper-dress-up-doll aesthetic going on, which both fits the industry she works in, and provides a unique feel to the site. Dress all of that up (pun intended) in a site layout and aesthetic that is well-designed, but intentionally understated, and you get a snazzy portfolio.
Platform: Static Site
Wild
Wild makes use of grid-focused design, some rather slick animation, and a touch of background video here and there to spice things up. The overall result is sleek, professional, and a pleasure to browse.
Platform: Custom CMS
Hochburg
Hochburg’s portfolio mostly sticks to a dark, type-focused aesthetic for most of its normal pages, and switches off to a bright and image-heavy design for the actual portfolio pieces. Light or dark, though, it looks good. Also, they have their own merch shop, which is kind of a power move for any design studio.
Platform: Contao CMS
West Studio
West Studio’s portfolio site is all about the imagery, and can you blame them? Their concept art isn’t just their product, it’s astoundingly beautiful. If their work wasn’t great, no amount of smooth, dark layouts and bold typefaces would make much difference… though they have that too.
The way they integrated their art into the design takes the site to a whole new level, though.
Platform: Custom CMS
This Works
This Works uses skewed elements and splashes of high contrast to spruce up a design that would otherwise be borderline brutalist. And hey, anyone who can make monospaced body text work is fine by me.
Platform: Static Site
Shamim Shafiee
I love almost everything about Shamim Shafiee’s portfolio: the colors, the layout, the type, it’s all good. But what truly makes this whole thing stand out, is that cut-out picture of the man himself, standing proud and tall on the home page (and the “Who Am I?” screen, incidentally).
I mean, he just looks so determined, so confident. He’s the designer for you, and he’s just waiting for you to figure that out, I’ve been a designer for over a decade, and I wouldn’t dare put myself on my site like that.
This sort of thing might normally looks cheesy and sooo ‘90s, it’s working here. It’s all about the attitude.
Platform: WordPress
Giacomo Mottin
Giacomo Mottin’s portfolio kind of mixes some presentation-style design at the outset, with some classic fancy minimalism. It’s dark, it’s sleek, and it looks as fashionable as you’d expect from, well… Italy.
Platform: Static Site
Wesley Van ‘T Hart
And somehow this portfolio looks even more minimalist than the other sites that I’ve already called “superminimalist”. Oh well. In any case, the type is gorgeous, and the almost excessive use of empty space gives the whole design a feeling of elegance.
Platform: Static Site
Haus
Haus is all about them graphics. It’s not often I go on about how much I love a site’s graphics—and the rest of the site is pretty solid, I’m going to shout-out their typography in particular—but Haus is doing things I’ve never seen before.
Take the home page, to start with: it looks like they have a constantly shifting amorphous 3D object floating around, and it’s textured with a constantly-shifting set of kaleidoscope patterns. It’s downright hypnotic, which may not be great for usability, but I can’t take my eyes off it.
Platform: Custom CMS
Aimee Sy
Aimee Sy’s portfolio embraces pastels, a print-inspired layout, and… iframes with zoomed-out websites in them? I can’t recall if it’s the first time I’ve ever seen that approach, but it’s certainly striking either way. The sites are semi-usable and browseable (another word I just made up according to my spellcheck).
Overall, while this portfolio is mostly built from familiar elements, the final product feels quite distinct.
Platform: Cargo, Backdrop
Feed
Feed delivers another simple, minimalist site that does what it says on the tin. As their name suggests, they do seem to prefer a style of layout that looks a bit like a “feed”, and they make liberal use of lazy-loading to create an effect that looks like infinite scrolling (but actually isn’t). It’s a great way to sort of lead people further in to the design and available content.
Platform: Craft CMS
Source
-
Popular Design News of the Week: September 2, 2019 – September 8, 2019
Posted:Sun, 08 Sep 2019 10:45:11 +0000
Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.
Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.
Organize your WordPress Media Library with Folders
The Apple Logo is (probably) Going to Start Looking a Little Different
8 Fantastic Examples of Variable Fonts in Action
Dark Patterns – Hall of Shame
Design System Management: 7 Steps to Enhance ROI and UX
10 Bites of UX Wisdom Every Designer Should Know
Abstrakt.design – 13 Free Illustrations
Designing Dark Mode
Best Tools for Graphic Designers in 2019
Cancel Vs Close: Design to Distinguish the Difference
Nobody Liked That: YouTube Kills Exact Public Subscriber Count
CSS Vertical Align: Techniques and Examples
Illustrator Guides & Grids
A Beginner’s Guide to Scrollytelling
Sorry not Sorry
How to Get Better at Embracing Unknowns
Golden Ratio: Everything You Need to Know
10 CSS Fixed Backgrounds
Design Critiques at Figma
The Life of a Solo UX Designer
Why Side Projects are Great for Business
Creating an Interactive Report with Google Data Studio
Accepting your Limitations as a Web Designer
Maximize your Next Big Career Move with this Tool
If You Want to Make the World a Better Place, Start with your Day Job
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
Source
FeedBurner delivers the world's subscriptions wherever they need to go. Publish a feed for text or podcasting?
You should try FeedBurner today.