Reviewing the Safari redesign in iOS 15

Pros and cons of the browser’s new design.

ezGIF

An online toolset for creating and editing animated GIFs.

“Some design is just meant to make people smile and that’s ok. Not everything has to be ground breaking.”

Stock photo color trends

Top popular colors used in stock photography.

The search singularity

How to win in the era of infinite AI content.

Lessons in interactivity, 2021 redux

The past, present, and future of interactive media.

Helvetica Now Variable

The classic typeface is now available as variable font.

Design systems updates to help speed up your workflow

Figma introduces three new updates to components.

Grids

Principles of design grids, explained in a demonstrative and entertaining way.

The design of avatar

What you need to know to design better Avatars.

Diagnosing common color management issues

What you can do if colors look too dull or too vibrant.

Frame.io is joining forces with Adobe

Adobe buys Frame.io, a cloud-based video collaboration platform.

Why design systems need content designers

Leaving content out of the equation damages the user experience.

Why WebKit supports AVIF but Safari does not

Apple’s unconventional method for decoding images in its browser.

My problem with Figma

Why does Figma not value and support platform-specific UI standards?

Pixel: a biography

A biography of the elementary particle of pictures.

“This is your reminder that just because you see a UX or UI pattern being used in a certain way by a big company or tech company doesn’t mean that pattern is the best to use or right for your users.”

Avoid these common alt-text mistakes

It can be tricky to write helpful alt-text descriptions for images.

Bringing the power of our open platform to FigJam

Figma enables builders to create plugins/widgets for its online whiteboard.

The psychology of user offboarding

How Adobe’s subscription cancellation process could be done without dark patterns.

Content’s defining problem (and how to solve it)

Why our global content community needs clear definitions.

Instad

Restyler for diagrams, flow charts, data visuals, and infographics.

Illustrations by Iconfinder

Modern illustrations that will bring life to your website or presentation.

Fast and cheap ways to find UX research participants

A look at recruiting techniques, leveraging relationships, and using automation.

Why are hyperlinks blue?

A deep dive into the origin and evolution of hyperlinks.

LudoTune

A musical toy for building tunes, loops, songs and musical sculptures.

Buttons Generator

A collection of buttons for your next web project.

Vector? Raster? Why not both!

A walk-through an interesting image optimization technique.

WePresent

Unexpected stories about creativity.

Thinking with your hands

How our gut feelings as UX designers can sabotage teamwork.

Color Parrot

Ask a bot to identify colors from your photo and get their names and hex codes.

Talk it out in Figma and FigJam

Figma launches two new ways to communicate with your teammates.

Color and contrast, what does it mean?

How the WCAG color contrast ratio works and what it means to you.

“Engineers are really incredible at being able to quickly spot all of the edge cases within a design that may have been overlooked.”

“Engineers are really incredible at being able to quickly spot all of the edge cases within a design that may have been overlooked.”

UI Design Tips

A collection of simple UI tips to make your users happier.

Crafting organic patterns with Voronoi tessellations

How to form aesthetically pleasing patterns inspired by nature.

A future of design without designers?

An outline of one potential scenario based on some of the current trends.

Components AI

A new way to explore generative design systems.

What they don’t tell you when you translate your app

Things you need to consider.

“The most annoying thing about design is that it takes so much effort and then when you finally get it right, it should feel obvious and effortless to anyone else.”

Color and universal design

How to use color in a world where every device is mobile.

QuetRis

How QR codes are made.

Using Saliency in progressive JPEG XL images

Google enables images to load the more prominent parts first.

Increment: Mobile

The origins, evolutions, and cornerstones of modern mobile development.

Adobe software alternatives

A comprehensive list of alternatives to the products of the Adobe ecosystem.

What we look for in content design portfolios and work samples

Do’s and don’ts when you apply for a content design role.

Smoosh

A hyper-compressed, extremely high-contrast, barely legible typeface.

OKHSV and OKHSL: two new color spaces for color picking

Alternatives to HSV and HSL that better match color perception.

Iconsax

1,000 icons in 6 different styles, free for personal and commercial use.

Principles for designing sustainable, environmentally friendly websites

Lighter is nearly always better.

Focussss

Input focus and form validation in a different, playful way.

“Nobody tells you that being an old man designer is just endless slideshow decks.”

iPhone 13 Sketch Library

Fully editable and highly flexible mockups for the new iPhones.

Sketch iOS 15 App Icon Template

The latest app icon tweaks, home screen mockups and wallpapers.

Basic Pattern Repository

A collection of simple hand-made SVG patterns.

Noto: A typeface for the world

Google Fonts now include all Noto fonts (1,000+ languages, 150+ writing systems).

What’s new in Unicode 14.0

Seven new smileys, heart hands, pregnant man, and many more.

Hoefler&Co &Monotype

The famous Hoefler Type Foundry is joining Monotype.

Mechanic

A framework for making custom design tools in the browser.

Doodle Ipsum

A tool to generate placeholder illustrations with a simple line of code.

A Lens A Day

Quick conversations about different topics in information architecture.

Inovatik HTML Templates

Free HTML templates for websites and landing pages.

Quicker UX research synthesis

How to shorten the synthesis process without limiting outcomes.

SVG Grid

Components AI now lets you quickly create grid based vector graphics.

Accessible Palette: stop using HSL for color systems

A new way to easily build consistent and accessible color palettes.

“It’s really important to remember that: 1. Making something bad. 2. Then iterating until it’s good … is way faster than: 1. Make something good upfront.”

Where design can make the biggest impact in the next decade

32 experts on the most urgent matters facing designers today.

Morflax Things

A powerful online 3D device mockup builder.

Fette Palette

A color palette generation function using curves within the HSV color model.

Quick Links

A centralized link menu to access all links on a web page.

Globalizing your UX designs

Designing for users across the globe creates more inclusive products.

Using modern image formats: AVIF and WebP

Strengths and weaknesses of JPEG, PNG, AVIF, and WebP.

“At an unspecified time in the future, Google Search will start punishing websites that have awful accessibility, and websites will very quickly become much more accessible, and we’ll all be like ‘Wow, why didn’t we do this sooner?’”

“I think we need a few more articles about the differences between UX designers and product designers. Just to make sure we all stay confused.”

Ssshape

Make SVG blobs and organic shapes, and copy or export them.

Dimensions

An ongoing reference database of dimensioned drawings.

From the weeds to the board room

How Design Leaders shift from managing down to up and out.

Stocks House

Search the best stock photo websites all at once.

“Design is really a constant loop of asking yourself ‘Why didn’t I just do this version in the first place?’”

Redact Photo

Quickly pixelate sensitive information in your image in a secure way.

“I wonder what it would be like to wander around in life being blissfully unaware of bad typography. Must be great, that.”

Why we crave software with style over “branding”

We’ve now come full circle in the world of software and tech brand design.

What your portfolio really tells people…

The hidden truth in our design portfolios.

The autofill dark pattern

A deceptive UX pattern that, in reality, is a browser issue.

Huetone

A tool to create predictable and accessible color palettes.

On Fire illustrations

Spice up your website using acid colors and defiant episodes.

“Content design is basically 90% trying to understand what the hell you’re supposed to design and write, and 10% actual designing and writing.”

How (and why) we built branching

Figma launches a way to enable design collaboration at scale.

From designing interfaces to designing systems

How it came to the concept known as design systems.

How to become a digital writer or content designer

Things you can do to get started.

How to bake accessibility into digital products from the beginning

The who, what, and when of building digital accessibility.

3dicons

A versatile open-source 3D icon library with over 1440+ icons.

“Experimentation in big tech companies can actually be a disadvantage, because teams often start using it as a replacement for sound product and design thinking.”

Morflax mesh

An online tool to easily design 3D illustrations.

UX design has a dirty secret

The strange world of user experience design without users.

Typographica Library

A digital bookshelf of type and lettering resources.

CurrentColor SVG in forced colors modes

How to address an issue with currentColor before a fix lands in browsers.

“‘Sign up’ and ‘Sign in’ are the most confusing terms for me as non-native english speaker. Always takes me a moment to click the right thing. Can't we go with ‘Create account’ and ‘Log in’?”

imgproxy

A fast and secure standalone server for resizing and converting remote images.

ANRT Fonts

Open source fonts from the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique.