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3 Essential Design Trends, September 2022

As the season starts to change, so do some of the trends that web designers are using in projects. From a return of blur to interesting frame edges for images to neon color, there’s a lot to get excited about.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Blur is Back

Blur as a design element is gaining traction in a big way. This web design trend can look like a lot of different things and be used in a variety of ways.

From backgrounds to blur in images to blurred elements in the foreground, there’s a use case for almost everything.

The thing that makes blur a highly usable design element is that it is easy to create and use. Blur can be created in Adobe Photoshop or similar software, with CSS, or be part of the way an image is created. It can be soft or hard, with or without color, and any size or shape.

The versatility and flexibility make it a popular choice for backgrounds and foreground elements, as you’ll see below.

Future London Academy uses blur in a bit of an unusual way with a blur element in the foreground that blurs the edges of some oversized lettering. The technique is repeated on the scroll and on some images as well.

Outcrowd uses blur in the background with animation to help create visual focus as you scroll. The colorful blurred circles get smaller and less blurred as the user moves down the page to contribute to the story the design is trying to communicate.

Bricklayer Dao uses blur in the background, almost as a red “sunspot” to help create a focal point on the center of the screen. Note how the blur here does not have a distinct shape; it’s almost a swash that leads the eye across and down the screen.

2. Interesting Edges

Most containers that you see for images and videos online are either rectangular or circular. Straight lines help separate content elements from one another.

But more designers are thinking outside the box – literally – with interesting edges for content elements. (Note this website design trend is pretty tricky to pull off and you’ll really have to think about these shapes work together, especially when you switch from horizontal to vertical orientations.)

The commonality with all of these projects that use interesting edges is that images are tucked in behind an element that isn’t a shape you’d typically expect. Most include some element of motion as well, from a load or scroll animation to video. (You should click through to see how each of these examples works.)

Lenka Daviesova has an image behind two cut out shapes that includes a simple load animation. What makes this interesting is that you don’t feel like anything is missing from the parts of the image you can’t see. Your brain fills in the blanks for you.

Ho Daigi Mountain Resort has moving images behind a foreground element in the shape of a mountain. This shape helps provide information about the location and is a clever way to tuck the logo into the lower third of the home hero area. The mountain edge is carried through every scroll on the homepage design.

Kafeaterra uses interesting edges in a totally different way. While the shape is a common rectangle, it’s highly dramatic and text elements encroach into the space. It’s so unexpected that the overlap of elements with no real space of their own, sets a very specific tone for the content.

3. Neon Yellow

One of the most difficult color choices to portray on screens is trending – neon yellow.

Neons are traditionally difficult because they can create visual and contrast challenges and not always look as intended due to user settings. Neon yellow is showing up everywhere right now with black or dark backgrounds though. (Maybe because of the popularity of dark mode.)

The commonality for most of these trending designs is that the yellow is an accent and is not used widely, for the most part. Too much neon can get difficult to read or result in eyestrain.

There also seems to be a consistent vibe with these projects that feels somewhat masculine and stark.

Metaluxe uses neon yellow for text accents and a giant QR code on the homepage. The hue is designed to help move you through content with ease from top to bottom to the call to action.

Robbert Lokhorst uses neon yellow – two shades here, actually – in the logo, as a button highlight, and for keywords in the all-text hero area. Note how the logo and button hues are more yellow than the primary text.

Tortoise & Hare CX Agency uses neon yellow on a black and white video roll as a text and button accent. While this could be a tricky combination, the extra shading over the video helps create enough contrast for it to all come together. Generally, it is not advised to use a neon yellow over white or light colors because there isn’t enough contrast to read it. Here, though, they do a great job of pulling the pieces together.

Conclusion

One of the things that’s interesting about this collection of trends is that we are seeing new iterations of things that were popular in the not-so-distant past. Blur was a major trend just a couple of years ago and seems to be re-emerging again. Neons seem to come and go pretty regularly.

If nothing else, these “recycled” trends are a good reminder to file work well so you can dig out some of those old ideas when they come into fashion again.

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29 août 2022/par Service comm.

10 Great Places to Find Music for Videos

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Creating videos for social media or to embed on your site can be a fun and creative way to promote your brand or business. More importantly, time spent on a page is a significant SEO ranking factor, so providing a video to watch is of enormous benefit.

However, coming up with the music for your videos can be challenging. You want something catchy that fits your video’s tone but don’t want to violate copyright laws.

Music licensing can be tricky, but if you’re smart about it and know what license your needs fall into, things will go swimmingly. Many different types of licenses cover differing budgets or use cases.

Public Domain: Public domain music is music that is not protected by copyright and can be used by anyone for any purpose. This includes traditional folk songs, classical music, and works released explicitly into the public domain.

Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a license that allows you to use someone else’s work for free, as long as you give credit to the creator. There are several Creative Commons licenses, so read the terms before using any music in your videos.

Royalty-Free: Royalty-free music is music you can use without paying royalties. This means you can use the music in your videos without getting permission from the artist or paying for a license. You can usually find royalty-free music on stock audio websites.

10 Places to Find Music for Videos

Below you’ll find the ten most common places to find music for your videos, including Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok videos.

1. YouTube Audio Library

The first place to look for music is YouTube’s Audio Library. This is an excellent resource for finding free, high-quality music for your videos. You can search by genre, instrument, mood, or duration and preview the tracks before downloading them.

You can use music from the YouTube Audio Library in your Instagram and Youtube videos. Just make sure you follow the copyright guidelines specified on the YouTube website.

2. AudioJungle

AudioJungle from EnvatoMarket is an excellent resource for finding high-quality music for your videos. You can search by genre or mood and listen to previews of the songs before you download them.

AudioJungle offers a variety of paid plans that give you access to more features and higher-quality audio files. Prices start at $12 per month for the basic plan and go up to $48 per month for the premium plan.

3. Free Music Archive

The Free Music Archive is another resource to search for free music. It’s a little more eclectic than the YouTube Audio Library, so you’ll find a broader range of genres and styles here.

However, all of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos. In addition, you can search by genre or artist and even listen to previews of the songs before you download them.

4. Incompetech

The next website to find royalty-free music for videos is Incompetech. You can search by genre, mood, or instrument, but also read about music licenses. Besides, the site has a handy “music for video” section that features tracks that are specifically designed for use in videos.

Incompetech is free for users, but the company still earns money on display ads and Patreon donations.

5. Bensound

Bensound is a website where you can find high-quality music for your social media videos. It has a library of music that you can choose from, and you can also create custom playlists. The site is easy to use, and you can search for music by genre, mood, or artist.

All of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos. Prices start from approximately $12/mo subscription, or you can pay $34 per track.

6. ccMixter

ccMixter was created as a Creative Commons Project. It is a collaboration platform for musicians who want to promote their work. The site also has a handy “music for video” section that features tracks that are specifically designed for use in videos.

ccMixter offers a variety of paid plans that give you access to more features and higher-quality audio files. Prices start at $12 per month for the basic plan and go up to $48 per month for the premium plan.

7. Epidemic Sound

Epidemic Sound is a music company with a rich history dating back to 2009. They provide high-quality music for social media videos, and their library is constantly expanding. Epidemic Sound was founded by three friends working in the music industry. They were frustrated with the quality of stock music available, so they decided to create their own.

Epidemic Sound has since become a go-to source for high-quality music. In recent years, the company has been working hard to expand its library and make it easier for people to find the perfect song for their videos. As a result, they now have over 30,000 tracks available.

Epidemic Sound’s monthly subscription service starts at $15/month. This gives you access to all of the site’s music, and you can download as many tracks as you want.

8. Musopen

Musopen is a perfect website for finding classical music for your videos. The site has various tracks to choose from; you can filter them by composer, orchestra, period, mood, length, and more. In addition, all of the music on the site is licensed under Creative Commons, so you’re free to use it in your videos.

Musopen offers a subscription plan that gives you access to high-quality music for your social media videos. You can choose from three different pricing plans, and each plan comes with a different number of downloads per month.

9. Jamendo Music

Jamendo is a website where you can find royalty-free music for your social media videos. The music on the website ranges from rock to electronica, and there is something for everyone.

You can either browse the music by genre or use the search function to find the perfect song for your video.

10. StoryBlocks

StoryBlocks is a website created by two brothers, Aaron and Evan Sharp. It has a royalty-free music library with various music genres to choose from. You can find everything from pop to classical on this website.

There is also a section of the website devoted to social media-friendly tracks. This means you can find music perfect for your videos without worrying about copyright issues.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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6 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

What Even Is Web Design in 2022?

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The term “web design” refers to the process of planning, organizing, and editing content online. On the surface, it seems like a simple enough concept. However, the reality is what we consider “web design” can change over time, influenced by our perception of the “web.”

In 2022, a professional web designer might create custom websites from scratch, but they may also be responsible for:

UX Design: Creating elements focused on user experience
App design: Building digital components of a website or online experience.
Theme design: Creating visual tools for supplementing web design.

Web design isn’t just about making a site look attractive anymore. The definition goes beyond the aesthetic to include a complete consideration of the functionality, performance, and abilities of countless assets we engage within the digital world.

What is Web Design? The Definition Today

Web design is the practice responsible for creating a website’s overall look and feel or web asset (such as web and mobile apps). It involves the process of planning and building elements of your project, from structure and layout choices to graphics and presentation.

Web design has various components that work together to create the final “experience” of a website, including graphic design, interface design, user experience design, search engine optimization, content creation, etc. These elements determine how a web asset looks, feels and performs on various devices.

Though the definition of web design in 2022 has evolved, it’s still different from web development, which refers to the actual coding which makes a website work. When you’re building a website, you’ll need web design and web development.

Elements of Web Design in 2022

When designing a website, modern designers need to consider two overlapping concepts: the overall appearance of the website and its functionality. The proper connection between these elements will maximize the site’s overall performance and usability, and make a design more memorable (for all of the right reasons).

Let’s break down the elements of web design into its visual and functional components.

Visual Elements of Web Design

Visual elements of web design influence how a design looks. The various visual components of a design should still follow the basic principles of graphic design. In other words, designers should be thinking about contrast, balance, unity, and alignment simultaneously. The visual elements of web design include:

Written copy and fonts: A website’s appearance and the text on the site often go hand in hand. Designers need to work together with content writers to ensure written copy makes sense structurally and uses the correct fonts for legibility.
Colors: Colors for web design are usually chosen based on factors like color psychology, which demonstrates a color’s ability to affect how someone feels, and branding. Most brands have specific colors they use consistently throughout their visual assets; this helps create a sense of cohesion and unity in designs.
Layout and spacing: Layout and spacing influence how content is arranged in an app, website, or another visual asset. The right layout helps to create a visual hierarchy, guiding a viewer through a page and drawing their attention to the correct information in order. Spacing helps to separate components on a page and create legibility.
Images, icons, and shapes: Images, icons, and shapes help convey significant amounts of information. The right ideas and icons can strengthen a brand message, direct a customer’s attention using a web app, and bring context to a design.
Videos and animations: Videos and animations are becoming increasingly common in today’s web design strategies. Videos can include 360-degree videos, which help immerse someone in a space, video streams, and short content clips.

Functional Elements of Web Design

Functional elements in web design are the practical components designers need to consider to ensure websites and assets work as they’re supposed to. A website, app, or any other web asset needs to function correctly to be accessible to users.

Functional elements of web design may include:

Navigation: The navigation elements of a website or app are among the main components determining whether a site is functioning properly and ensuring a good user experience. Audiences need to be able to move around the app or website quickly.
User interactions: Your site visitors may have multiple ways of communicating with your web app or website, depending on their device. You’ll need to make sure people can scroll and swipe on smartphones and tablets and click on desktops. If your website has VR or AR elements, you’ll also need to consider these immersive components in your design.
Speed and performance: While web development elements can also influence a web design’s speed or performance, it’s also essential for a designer to show elements of the composition don’t weigh down the functionality. Designs need to load quickly and correspond with the demands of browsers on various devices.
Structure: A website’s structure plays a critical role in user experience and SEO requirements. Users need to easily navigate through a website without encountering any issues like getting lost or ending up on broken pages.
Compatibility: A good design should look perfect on all devices, from a wide range of browsers to the various devices users might leverage today.

What Does Good Web Design Look Like in 2022?

More than ever, achieving high-quality web design is crucial to success in any industry or landscape. More than half of the world’s population is active online. If you’re not appealing to this audience correctly, you’re missing out on endless opportunities.

Notably, while elements of good web design can be subjective, such as which themes or colors someone might prefer for their website, the underlying foundations of strong web design are the same for everyone in 2022.

Good web design is any design that looks good, performs as it should, and delivers the best possible experience to your target audience. Effective web design should include components like:

Effective use of white space for organization and structure.
Clearly presented choices and navigation options for the user.
Clear calls to action to drive user activities from one page to another.
Limited distractions and a straightforward user journey.
No clutter or unnecessary components irrelevant to the needs of the user.
Responsive, flexible design accessible on any browser or device.
High-quality content and images are designed to hook a reader’s attention.
Appropriately sized fonts and legible typography.
A good balance between images and text on a page.

Other elements like eye-catching imagery and professional photography can help your web design stand out. Using the right building blocks, like a strong color palette and the right shapes or icons in your design is helpful.

Of course, there is some scope for variation in good web design. A web designer in 2022 needs to be able to adapt their use of the various essential elements of design to suit a specific target audience or the unique identity of a brand.

What Doesn’t Work for Web Design in 2022?

Just as web design elements seem to appear consistently in all excellent examples, there are also parts of web design we’ve left behind over the years. Simpler, more straightforward designs have replaced cluttered spaces, flashing images, and endless animations.

The focus in 2022 is on creating an experience that’s simple, engaging, and intuitive, capable of speaking to the right audience without confusion or being visually overwhelming. In most cases, some of the top components to avoid include:

Clunky performance: Non-responsive website design, slow pages, and other examples of clunky functionality are a no-go in 2022. Websites need to be quick and responsive.
Distracting content: Flashing images, animations, and complex backgrounds are a thing of the past for a good reason. Websites today need to be clean, simple, and clear. Any elements which don’t add to the value of the design should be removed.
Generic content: Filler text, irrelevant stock photos, unclear buttons, and links can be removed from today’s website designs. A web design should be specific to the audience’s needs and the brand’s identity. Generic components don’t work.

Creating Web Designs in 2022

Today, the underlying definition of web design has a lot of similarities to the definition we’ve known for several years already. Creating a great website or web asset still requires focusing on user experience, aesthetic appeal, and functionality. However, today’s web designers generally have more components and different devices.

Web design in 2022 is about creating high-quality experiences for customers that can support various environments and devices. The best web designs are aesthetically appealing, functionally reliable, and capable of adhering to the latest trends in web creation, like augmented reality, 360-degree video, and ultra-high resolution.

Featured image via Pexels.

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18 mai 2022/par Service comm.

Memory Debugging and Watch Annotations

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Before diving into debugging memory issues and the other amazing running process, memory debugging capabilities (which are amazing)… I want to discuss a point I left open in the last duckling post. Back there we discussed customizing the watch renderer. This is super cool!

But it’s also tedious. Before we continue, if you prefer, I cover most of these subjects in these videos:

Source de l’article sur DZONE

15 mai 2022/par Service comm.

3 Essential Design Trends, May 2022

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Do you ever look at a website and think, why did they do that? Sometimes with website design trends, that’s the exact thought that can come to mind. What about an element works (or doesn’t) and why did it get so popular so fast? That’s the theme of this month’s roundup.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month.

1. Light and Whimsical Design

Even for content that’s important or heavy, lighter more whimsical designs are trending. It’s a somewhat strange juxtaposition of design and content, and one that we don’t typically see that often.

Designs that have “weighty content” and information with a light aesthetic tend to have these elements:

Lighter color palettes
Atypical font selections that might be experimental
Movement and animation
Cartoon shapes or characters
Almost child-like feel to the overall design
No photos or videos that show people
Serious content once you start reading

That last item is the part of this design trend that’s most surprising. From the design alone, you’d expect light content or information design for kids. But in these examples, it is not at all.

OTR South is for mental health resources for youth. Note that the design does have a youthful feel, but the content and topic are quite heavy.

Wild Fox Squad is a prelaunch site that will ask you to buy NFTs.

Chia Studios is a website design agency.

The question this trend leaves you with is does the visual tone mesh enough with the content to create the right vibe or credibility to engage with the website, do business with the company, or even buy something online?

2. Long Scroll with Animation

At first glance, you might not think there’s a lot going on with any of these website design examples. But as you begin to engage with the sites, there’s an obvious trend – they all have long scrolls with animation from the top to bottom of the homepages.

Long scrolling is one of those website design topics – and trends – that people often feel strongly about. Some people love it. Others loathe it.

Here’s the challenge with long scrolling. If something seems long to scroll at desktop size, it takes forever to scroll on smaller screens unless you eliminate a lot of content. That begs the question: will users see and read everything you need them to on the homepage if it is exceptionally long?

Here’s how each of these examples uses long scrolling and animation together.

Match Artists opens with animation as the site loads and then flips to a static home screen. As you scroll, photos expand in the frame with a subtle animation. The more quickly you scroll, the more animated this website appears to be. There’s not a lot to read, which makes the image-scroll-animation combination easier to digest.

Myla Yeomans has an almost empty home scroll, that moves into a text-heavy scroll (shown below) with every scroll screen changing color with animation. The effects aren’t harsh but can give you a bit of motion sickness unless you scroll slowly because of the size and volume of text in the design.

Reyes Holdings might have the busiest animated scroll of this set of examples. There are slider animations that move left to right for content in the hero area as well as parallax and loading scroll animation down the page as elements seem to come in from almost every direction.

3. Pink

Pink is a color trend that has a lot of strong feelings attached to it. The color alone can create assumptions about the website design or content before a user even starts engaging with the site.

Whenever you design with a color like this, you have to consider the baggage that might come with it, whether you agree with it or not.

Pink is often associated with femininity, the pale pink in some of these examples is connected with babies, and it’s not often seen as a strong hue. Common meanings and associations with the color pink include sweetness, health, romanticism, and innocence. All of those concepts should be taken into consideration when this color is part of your design plan. With that in mind, each of these websites uses the pink color trend in quite different ways.

Thursday is a singles website/app. It has a modern vibe and the pink here is muted in a way that almost has a beige tone. The question for users is, does it have enough of a vibe to appeal to all types of people? Something that would seem important for a dating app.

Skin Clinics goes all-in with pink tones on the website and, it appears, in their offices. This is an instance when it is hard to quite figure out how I feel about the color. It’s nice that it doesn’t feel as clinical as all white, but all skin isn’t this color either. It can create an odd tug for how you feel about the design and facility as a whole.

Pixel Bakery uses a few shades of pink for its design that feels oddly childlike. Maybe it’s the yin and yang contrast combination with the almost baby blue. Then there’s this – nothing seems to “match” from a design perspective. Pale pink background, deeper pink logo and text, almost red pink calls to action. There’s a lot to visually digest here.

Conclusion

How do you feel about all of the trending designs featured this month? Do they seem like things that you might try? Web design trends are interesting in that way because they almost seem to catch fire – someone tries something new and then others keep using the design idea and iterations of it. Sometimes these ideas work brilliantly and sometimes they fall rather flat.

It’s a good exercise to think about trends without jumping to the conclusion that you need to use them; sometimes that can also be a lesson in what not to try with your own design.

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2 mai 2022/par Service comm.

Side Hustles for Web Design Professionals: How to Make Some Extra Cash

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A career as a web designer can be extremely lucrative. The average web designer in the US makes around $50-55,000 per year, equating to an hourly rate of around $25. Of course, not every designer will automatically get a full-time, high-paying job as soon as they earn their web design credentials.

Sometimes, you might need to generate a little extra cash, perhaps to supplement your part-time income or keep the lights on while you’re taking some new courses. You can even use your web design skills to earn some extra money on the side while working a standard 9-to-5.

Today, we will be looking at some of the most effective ways to make extra cash on your web design skills.

1. Freelance

Starting with the simplest option, working as a freelancer is one of the best ways to start making cash with your design skills. There are dozens of websites out there to help freelancers find clients these days. Some of the best options include:

Toptal: For web developers, designers, and software experts;
Upwork: For all kinds of design freelancing;
99Designs: Excellent for selling your designs whenever you like;
Dribbble: Display your work and find new clients;
Behance: Sell everything from animations to videos;
Envato Studio: Sell packages for web design.

As a freelancer, you’ll be able to choose which hours you want to work, and which projects to work on. You can make money from all kinds of design skills this way, from making pages for a website to designing widgets and applications.

However, you’ll also be responsible for tracking down potential leads, building your portfolio, and managing your own taxes, so keep this in mind.

2. Sell Design Assets

As a web design professional, you’ll end up with a lot of assets over the years. Whether you’re working freelance or full-time, not every asset you create is going to be picked up by your customers. Sometimes, you’ll end up with unused content sitting on your computer.

Fortunately, you can leverage these assets for some extra cash. You can sell things like icons, backgrounds, UI assets, and more. You can even sell themes on sites like ThemeForest if you’ve built something your clients weren’t happy with.

There’s a market out there for just about every asset, from icons and PSD templates to documents, fonts, UI assets, backgrounds, and brushes. You might even build your own website where you can sell assets in the future.

3. Design and Sell NFTs

Feel like getting in on the cutting-edge of a new marketplace? NFTs are probably one of the hottest topics in the digital world today. As concepts like Web 3.0 and the metaverse gain traction, NFTs will only become more valuable.

Countless companies and innovators are looking for people to design their NFTs for them these days. If you don’t mind dedicating some of your free time to creating digital graphics, you’re in for a significant amount of earning potential.

If you learn enough about the NFT landscape and blockchain, you could even create your own NFTs. However, this would probably require a lot of time and research. You can learn more about the NFT design and art landscape here.

4. Become a Consultant

Don’t have time to build endless new websites right now? No problem, just help other people build their sites instead. Consultants are people in any industry with expertise and insights they can share to support other people. As a web design consultant, you can offer your expertise to other upcoming freelance designers or business leaders.

You’ll need to invest some time into building your personal brand as a consultant. This means developing your social media pages (like LinkedIn) and creating a portfolio. It also helps to have an air of thought leadership. This usually means you’ll need to share at least some content online.

Consulting can be an excellent way to share your skills with other people without having to do all the work of building a design course.

5. Teach Web Design

On the other hand, if you like the idea of being a teacher, you can make money almost passively with web design courses and webinars these days. While you do have the option of selling one-on-one education to students, this will usually take up a lot of your time.

If your focus right now is on a side hustle to increase your earnings, it’s often much easier to use a site like Udemy or Skillshare. The great thing about teaching web design these days, it’s much easier than you might expect. The majority of solutions on the web allow you to drip content to your clients automatically. This means you only have to create the content once.

You can create a handful of videos, quizzes, and downloadable assets, and make money off your educational resources while you sleep.

6. Create a Web Design Blog

Blogging is still a surprisingly lucrative way to make money. If you have a creative streak and you know how to write about web design in a way other people can understand, you can turn this into an excellent side hustle.

Start by building your own website using your design skills, then start publishing regular blogs with the content you know your customers would be interested in. It’s a good idea to cover a range of topics, from Photoshop, to how to design widgets and more. You can even share reviews of various web design tools and add affiliate links to earn money that way.

Make sure you use SEO strategies to improve your chances of customers actually seeing your blog and promote your content as often as you can across social media. Once you have your blog, you can make money from it by:

Working as an affiliate and promoting design products;
Showing banner ads or sponsored posts on your website;
Selling digital products through your blog (like themes).

If you decide to take the affiliate route, here are some excellent programs to consider.

7. Contribute to other Websites

If you don’t have time to launch your own website and build a following for your blog, you can still make money from writing in other ways. Becoming a freelance web design writer means you can sell your blogs and content to other leading publications.

Many popular websites are constantly looking for new content to add to their blog. If you develop a strong relationship with some of these site owners, you could get yourself a regular gig.

Contributing to other sites as a writer helps you to develop your thought leadership. Many companies will even allow you to link back to your social media pages or profile.

At the same time, you get to earn some extra money writing about things you enjoy.

8. Sell Themes and Templates

A lot of web designers today rely on other themes and templates created for WordPress to help them build their websites. Access to themes and templates can make building a new website a much easier, straightforward process.

If you’ve got some excellent coding prowess, you can develop and sell a host of website themes and templates, and sell them wherever you choose. As mentioned above, there are a number of websites available for selling web design assets. Alternatively, you can sell your own packages and templates on your website, depending on your needs.

If you create a particularly valuable theme, you can actually earn a full-time passive income over time. Placing your themes and templates on marketplace sites will also get you a lot of attention from potential clients in the future.

9. Flip Websites

If you’ve ever seen one of those shows where someone buys a house, makes it look great, and then sells it for a higher price, you’ll understand the basic premise of flipping websites. The idea is to purchase an existing website for a low price (preferably with a good domain name), then fix it up to sell on a website selling directory.

If you want to earn a decent amount of money for your website, you’ll need to dedicate a decent amount of time to building traffic, improving the appearance of the site, and so on. However, it can be fun to take on these projects in your free time if you’re looking for a way to hone your skills.

You might learn some important lessons about how to make websites more profitable while you’re flipping your various sites, which could make you more appealing to customers in the long term.

10. Write a Book

Similar to flipping websites or producing an income from a high-traffic blog, writing a book isn’t something that’s going to give you a lot of extra income overnight. However, it can be an excellent source of passive income in time if you know how to use this strategy correctly.

If you have a specialist skill in web design, or you serve a specific niche, you can generate a lot of attention for an eBook or physical book sharing plenty of accurate and specific information. Remember, writing about web design, in general, will usually make it harder to earn money because there’s already a lot of competition out there.

Writing a book is a fantastic way to create a possible extra source of income as a side hustle, and it can also make you more credible if you decide to go full-time with your web design skills in the future. It’s definitely more impressive to present yourself to clients as a published author.

Remember to advertise your book whenever you can to improve your chances of additional sales.

Find Your Side Hustle

Web design skills are highly sought after in various parts of the digital world. If you’re willing to devote a little time and creativity to exploring the various avenues above, they can all deliver an excellent source of income to you and your potential business. All you need to do is figure out which side hustle makes the most sense for you.

Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all. In some cases, you might even be able to run multiple side hustles at the same time, particularly if you’re using strategies for passive income, like writing your own book or selling your own course.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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27 avril 2022/par Service comm.

14 Best YouTube Channels for Designers in 2022

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Whether you are looking for comprehensive tutorials on UX design or professional courses on topics like logo design, video or photo editing, there’s the perfect YouTube channel for you as a designer.

The best thing about YouTube is that you do not have to be a professional to jump into a video tutorial and gain the knowledge you need. There are many people who have become experts in, say, Photoshop by watching many hours of YouTube videos.

In 2022, there are established and emerging channels that you, as a designer, can use to get inspired and fix problems in your workflow.

Let us take a look at our 14 favorite YouTube channels for designers:

1. Will Paterson

Subject: Logo design, hand lettering, Illustrator tutorials

Subscribers: 608K

Creator: Will Paterson

Are you looking for a YouTube channel that will help you improve your logo designs and entertain you at the same time? If so, Will Paterson is the channel for you. Whether you are a professional designer or a beginner, this channel has everything you need: from logo design and Illustrator tutorials to product reviews and vlogs; nothing is left out.

2. Arnau Ros

Subject: Web design (UI, UX), Freelancing, Figma tutorials

Subscribers: 7.7K

Creator: Arnau Ros

In about a year, Arnau Ros has managed to become one of our favorite YouTube channels. In a few words, Arnau is a very talented freelance product designer. He has published numerous videos on how to use Figma, one of the most popular problem-solving platforms for designers.

And that’s not all. Arnau has created a series of videos that will help you get started in the world of freelancing from scratch as a new designer.

3. Adobe Photoshop

Subject: Photoshop tutorials

Subscribers: 618K

Creator: Adobe

Although there are numerous YouTube channels that offer top-notch Photoshop tutorials, the official Adobe Photoshop channel should not be underestimated. Adobe has created a quick start guide for most Photoshop features, toolboxes, etc. So if you need to quickly complete a task in Photoshop, this is the perfect channel for you.

4. Satori Graphics

Subject: Freelancing, Graphic design guides (fonts, plugins, techniques, etc.)

Subscribers: 884K

Creator: Tom Cargill

From career development videos to poster and type designs to workflow tutorials, Satori Graphics has it all. We highly recommend this channel for beginners and designers who want to master Illustrator and create a top-notch portfolio for their design work.

5. Hello, I’m Alexa

Subject: Freelancing, UX design, vlogs

Subscribers: 23K

Creator: Alexa Herasimchuk

Alexa’s YouTube channel is a great choice if you are a UX designer and want inspiration. What we love about Alexa is that her channel covers everything a UX and product designer needs to know. Be sure to check out the fascinating video discussions with other designers that she has uploaded.

6. Mt. Mograph

Subject: 3D animation, motion graphics guides, Adobe After Effects

Subscribers: 277K

Creator: Mt. Mograph co.

For more than 3 years, Mt. Mograph has been one of the most popular YouTube channels for graphic designers. The channel is especially popular among creatives who want to learn more about 3D animation, geometric motion, and need the best After Effects tutorials.

7. Swerve Tutorials

Subject: Photo editing, motion graphics

Subscribers: 167K

Creator: Swerve

Swerve has created some of the most comprehensive how-to videos for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Motion Graphics. The channel’s speed art videos are extremely inspiring. Even though the channel is not constantly updated, it already contains many videos that you should definitely watch.

8. Tutvid

Subject: Graphic design software (Illustrator), Photo and video editing (Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom)

Subscribers: 1.19M

Creator: Nathaniel Dodson

Tutvid needs no introduction. With more than 1 million subscribers, this has been one of the most popular YouTube channels for creatives for years. When it comes to tutorials about Adobe Creative Cloud software, nothing beats this channel.

If you are looking for comprehensive tutorials on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and Premiere, Nathaniel Dodson is your man.

9. CharliMarieTV

Subject: Freelancing, web development, chats and vlogs

Subscribers: 209K

Creator: Charli Prangey

If you are not yet familiar with the digital nomad lifestyle, be sure to check out the CharliMarieTV channel. Charli is a freelance web designer and entrepreneur who has created some of the best videos on website design, coding, remote work, and more.

10. Canva

Subject: Canva tutorials

Subscribers: 126K

Creator: Canva

Canva is a popular web-based graphic design platform. Like the official Adobe Photoshop channel, this is the best way to quickly learn how to use Canva software. In addition to quick tutorials, this channel includes videos with all the important software updates and in-depth Canva workshops.

11. Every Tuesday

Subject: Graphic design guides for Procreate

Subscribers: 345K

Creator: Teela Cunningham

When it comes to Procreate tutorials, there’s nothing better than Every Tuesday. The channel has different playlists for beginners, intermediate and professional creatives. From hand lettering projects to watercolor flowers to digital gouache, you’ll find everything you need to master Procreate on Teela’s channel.

12. Zimri Mayfield

Subject: Logo design tutorials, vlogs, logo redesign

Subscribers: 437K

Creator: Zimri Mayfield

Those of you who love logo designs probably already know all about Zimri Mayfield’s channel. Professionalism and a great sense of humor are combined in one of the most inspiring YouTube channels for designers.

13. Yes I’m a Designer

Subject: Adobe creative cloud tutorials

Subscribers: 517K

Creator: Martin Perhiniak

As a certified Adobe design master and instructor, Martin Perhiniak has created a must-follow channel on YouTube. From basic Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials to advanced masking tutorials, you’ll find it all at Yes I’m a Designer.

14. Roberto Blake

Subject: Adobe tutorials, brand/business development

Subscribers: 549K (as of March 2022)

Creator: Roberto Blake

If you are looking for something more than graphic design tutorials, our last suggestion is perfect. Roberto Blake has created numerous Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Indesign tutorials, but also gives numerous talks and shares his knowledge on video marketing and brand development.

Wrap Up

Although there are numerous YouTube channels for designers, these are our absolute favorites. Of course, that does not mean there are not more equally successful and inspiring designers on YouTube. Made by Mighty, Sketch Together and Ch-Ch-Check It are just a few more examples of great YouTube video creators if you search for a specific topic.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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15 avril 2022/par Service comm.

Case Study: Redesigning Todoist for Android

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Todoist is a to-do list app that 25 million people rely on every day to keep their lives organized. As part of the Doist design team’s goals for 2021, we aimed to redesign the Todoist Android app to take advantage of the latest Google Material Design guidelines.

In this post, we cover the design decisions and processes behind redesigning the Todoist Android app for Material Design. We explore the Design and Android team’s collaboration practices that brought the app update to life, which resulted in winning the Material Design Award 2021 in the large screen category. Let’s get started!

Opportunity

When we started the project, our design implementation on Android was ready for a major overhaul. The last milestone redesign on Android was initiated after the release of the first Material Design guidelines in 2016. Since then the team successfully worked on continuous improvements to the Android app, but we saw the opportunity to improve Todoist on Android on a more holistic level.

We set out to clean up instances of older UI components, colors, and text styles and update them with the latest Material Design components. We observed that some interactions and navigational patterns had become inconsistent with what users were expecting on newer Android devices and were eager to modernize this experience. With new hardware and software changes in mind, we set out to make the experience on larger phones and tablets even better, so Todoist could take full advantage of the latest generation of devices. Material 2 and 3 provided an incredible new framework to rethink the current app experience. With this in mind, we set out to challenge what a modern Android app should look like and innovate on top of the default user experience.

Solution

The team set itself the goal of redesigning our Todoist Android app and aspiring to make it the best-designed productivity app on Android. The project was ambitious and scheduled to take several months to complete. We set ourselves the following targets while working on the project:

Review the current implementation and older design specs.
Study the latest Material Design Guidelines and assess what is relevant for our project.
Research great Material Design apps and case studies and learn from their execution.
Define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes.
Design and development work together to assess the proposed solution and implementation.
Test an early version of the new app internally to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Invite beta testers to the new app to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Refine the app and address core issues before launching to the public.

Review

The project was kicked off by reviewing the current Todoist Android app implementation, noting down what areas needed to be fixed and what was up to date. While reviewing, we took screenshots of the app implementation for reference. This way we could easily see the current state of the app and compare it to the new design proposals that would be created. Once the review process was finalized, we had a comprehensive overview of the current state of the app and the layout, component, and styling changes we wanted to make.

Study

We continued the project by studying the latest Material Design Guidelines, assessing the components and practices that were most relevant to Todoist.

When the project kicked off in February 2021, Material 2 was the most recent version of their design system. Since Material 2 had already been released for quite some time, we anticipated that design changes to Material would be announced soon at the Google I/O event in May 2021. Rather than wait, because we expected the changes to be iterative, we pushed ahead with our work.

We identified 25 components and UI patterns that we wanted to change across the app. The changes included buttons, forms, menus, sheets, navigation drawer, app bar, system bars, text and color styles, and more. We started by creating a table view in a Dropbox Paper document with the component changes and references links to Google’s Material Design Guidelines.

This components list was a starting point for discussion to plan the scope and complexity of the changes. Close async discussions between the design and development team in Twist and Dropbox Paper comments helped us make decisions about scope and complexity early on and set a solid foundation for the project.

Research

In the initial Material Design study, we also researched inspiring Material Design apps, Material studies, Play Store apps, and Google Workspace apps to learn from their execution.

We started out by studying the Material Design Award Winners 2020 and tested out the products that were showcased. The showcased winners struck a good balance between implementing the Material Design Guidelines while maintaining their own product’s brand within the system. This balance between Google’s guidelines and the Todoist brand was also key for us to get right and so we strived to find this mix across the work we created and implemented in the project.

Along with the MDA winners, we researched the Material Studies that Google produced to showcase what apps could look like with branding and Material Design guidelines applied. It was a great reference to see how far components could be customized while maintaining the core platform principles. The Reply case study in particular offered valuable insight to us as its content type and layout came closest to Todoist. It showcased how components like the app bar, navigation drawer, and large screen layouts worked while being customized.

We continued our research by searching the Google Play store for inspiring app examples. Google Tasks, Press, Periodic Table, and Kayak stood out to us as the level of polish and quality of the apps were on par with the experience we were aspiring to create.

Sometime later in the project when Material You was released (more on that later), we stumbled upon the Google Workspace apps blog post which previewed Material 3 changes that Google was introducing to their own products. It offered a great glimpse at what was to come before the Material 3 Design Guidelines were officially released. This post sparked new internal discussions and further design explorations that we considered for future Todoist Android updates.

Design Spec

As we started to define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes, we opted to create a design framework, focusing on creating components rather than designing every screen in the app. This allowed us to consistently apply the design system in the app. We did so by using the previously defined component list that we created during the review and study process.

Core screens from different areas of the app were chosen to demonstrate how the components could be applied. We chose to mock up the Todoist project view, navigation drawer menu, project view edit screen, settings, and project detail view, among others. These screens gave us a good overview of how buttons, forms, drawers, lists, and other components would work together and in different states; selected, pressed, disabled, etc.

During the project, we were transitioning our Doist design system to Figma and started creating our first components in the new Doist Product Android Library. We started by using some components from the Material Design UI kit – Components library from the official Google Figma resource file and added them to our Doist design system. We then continued to build up the Product Android Library file with our Todoist-specific components such as task list & board views, detail views, sheets, colors, typography, etc.

We continued by documenting color and typography changes that were based on the Material Design guidelines. The design team opted to implement a new Design Token framework that would share the same values between our design system and the development implementation. The development team would output the values they had in the current implementation and the design team would analyze which values were needed and which could be merged, changed, or deleted. This informed the new Design Token color and typography system which we then documented and discussed with the team to implement. Later in the project, we were happy to see a similar token system introduced by Material 3 in the latest guidelines which validated our thinking and principles behind the new design system.

The design documentation expanded to hold other edge-case mockups that could sit alongside the design system. We documented different responsive screen experiences between phones and tablets against the previous implementation. Additional sections were created to document the motion that should be used for certain components and screens by referencing existing Material Design guidelines examples or prototyping custom motion in Principle and After Effects. The design spec also touched on haptic feedback that should appear on touch targets, how dark mode should work across the new components, documenting Todoist themes within the new design language, and more.

Design Implementation

At Doist, the benefit of the squad is that cross-team collaboration is built into the make-up of the team. Designers, developers, support, and product managers work together in a squad to deliver the project. This close collaboration from the start is key to bridging the gap between scope, estimations, design, development, and delivery. The squad discussed their findings on a daily basis and came up with the best plan of action together.

Designers started by creating components in Figma and shared them with developers in Dropbox Paper. We used screenshots to document the current implementation next to the new designs and linked to the default Google Material Design components. This allowed the team to compare all references in one place. Developers shared their feedback, adjustments would be brainstormed together as the designs were iterated.

Designers on the project would share their work in progress on a weekly basis with the rest of the design team in a design review Twist thread. Here details about the designs were discussed, alternatives mocked up and bigger picture plans made. Design reviews brought up topics like FAB (Floating Action Button) placement, theme options, accent color usage on components, consistency with other platforms, navigation options, and shadow elevation. After thorough discussions and alternative mockups were presented, the design team aimed to find the right balance between Material Design and Todoist brand guidelines. The development team, also part of the design reviews, gave their feedback on the solution and raised technical complexities early on.

Eventually, the design was stabilized and consistencies updated across components and mockups. The design spec was kept up to date so the development team could always review the latest designs in Figma.

Testing

As soon as the development process started, the Android team provided early screenshots and videos in Twist threads while they were implementing the design spec. This practice allowed us to review the app implementation early and often. Designers could review the development work and share feedback in Twist, which resulted in getting the implementation to a high quality. Alongside Twist discussions, the team set up a Todoist project to track ongoing issues and fix bugs. Designers logged new issues, developers would solve them and share the new implementation for designers to review.

When the team had the first stable version of the Android app, we shared it internally at Doist to get more insight and feedback. Other Doisters could access the redesign via a feature flag that could be turned on in the app settings and test the new version for however long they wanted. The feature flag system allowed people to give us early feedback on the design decisions we made and report bugs. Feedback was submitted by the wider team through a dedicated Twist thread and designers and developers could discuss how best to address the feedback during the active project implementation.

After we refined the app implementation further and addressed early feedback we opened up the app update to our beta users. Here users had access to the new Android redesign and were able to give us feedback. Our support team gathered feedback and shared it with us in a dedicated Twist thread. The squad aimed to analyze every comment and looked for patterns where we could make tweaks and improvements to the user experience.

As part of these tweaks, we made changes to how the bottom bar and navigation drawer worked. Some users reported frustrations with the way the new bottom navigation and menu drawer worked. In its first implementation, the drawer was half raised when opened and had to be swiped up to be raised again to see the full content list. This was an issue for some users as it was slower to get to the content below the list. So we decided to fully raise the drawer by default when opening. We also made it easier to open the navigation drawer by sliding up from the bottom app bar. This was a small shortcut but it enabled users to get to their content faster.

Material You

While we were in the testing phase and about to wrap up the project, Google unveiled Material You, and sometime later the Material 3 Guidelines were published. With the newly announced resources, we went back to study the latest guidelines and references we could find to see where the Todoist Android app redesign fits in and which adjustments we might need to make now or in the future.

Dynamic Color was a big new feature that was announced as part of the Material You update. As Todoist supports many different themes the Material You Dynamic Color feature seemed like a good fit for our product. We decided to prioritize this feature and implement Dynamic Color light and dark themes as part of our Todoist theme settings options.

To implement Dynamic Color, the development team started off by creating a demo prototype that utilized the Dynamic Color system and showcased how we could select from a range of color choices that the system defined based on the wallpaper choice. From there, we tried to incorporate system behavior in our design mockups. We designed a range of different color mockups and components to see which ones could fit with which components. We then came up with a color system that worked for the Todoist app and the new themes. These new Dynamic Color themes would sit alongside our current theme options in the Todoist app settings. From here users could choose between Dynamic Color Light and Dark themes.

Along with Dynamic Color, the team also created a customizable bottom app bar, allowing users to set up the app in a way that’s most convenient to their workflow. The location of the Dynamic Add Button can be changed to the center, left, or right corner of the screen. The order of the Menu, Search, and Notification buttons can be rearranged to best fit the ergonomics of the user’s dominant (left or right) hand and optimize their navigation patterns.

Launch

As critical beta feedback was addressed and stability tweaks were made, the squad felt ready to release the new Todoist Android app to the public. The team logged the issues that could not immediately be addressed for future reviews and updates.

The design and marketing team readied the launch by creating What’s New banner artwork and copy that are displayed within the app when launching the update. The Doist marketing team also created release notes and shared the app update announcements on our social channels. The brand and product design team worked together to create custom image assets and copy that summarised the project work in a simple and beautiful way.

What’s Next: Material 3

After a successful launch of the redesigned Todoist for Android app, Google contacted Doist to announce that Todoist was selected as the Material Design Award 2021 winner in the Large Screen category. The team was excited to be recognized for their hard work and it felt like we achieved the goal we had set out to accomplish.

Internally, designers and developers continued to study and discuss the Material 3 updates. The design team started exploring mockups and design changes inspired by Material 3 and Google’s Workspace app updates. Some of our current Todoist explorations include changing the FAB styling, updating the app bar, further removing elevation shadows, and more. Here is a preview of what a future Todoist update could look like.

We hope these insights into Doist’s design process and collaboration practices have sparked your interest. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for future design updates!

Takeaways

Study the Material guidelines, Material Design winners, Material studies, and Google Workspace apps to make informed design decisions when designing your next product or app update.
Evaluate which Material Design components and practices are right for you and implement them into your product.
Carefully balance the Material Design guidelines with your brand guidelines to create a unique and consistent experience between your product and the platform it lives on.
Collaborate with your Android developers early and often to ship app updates efficiently and increase the design implementation quality.
Use design components and build a design system along with practical mockups to create an efficient design spec.
Consider how the latest Android features fit into your product and which have the most impact on your users before deciding to implement them.
Test and review builds with your internal team and external beta users to get valuable feedback and make adjustments before releasing them to the public.
Create announcement artwork to showcase your latest app or feature update along with a clear description to share in-app and on social media.

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13 avril 2022/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools For Designers, April 2022

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Bored with the same old design tools? There are plenty of new toys to experiment with, from fun divots to functional design tools that could become your new go-to’s.

Here’s what is new for designers this month…

Kosmo

Kosmo is a new project management and invoicing system designed just for freelancers. Designers and developers will love it because the interface is sleek and modern. The tool lets you send invoices, track time, manage projects, send proposals and contracts, and manage billing. You can customize everything from your brand to colors so that your invoices reflect your business style. The platform has a free option as well, making it easy to have the tools you need to run your business. (Plus, there’s a very affordable premium plan if you want more features.)

STUDIO

STUDIO lets designers layout and publish responsive websites, including the ability to connect to backend data, all with a low learning-curve GUI and no coding knowledge prerequisites. You can publish to a free URL with free hosting on the cloud. The free version also includes forms. STUDIO also has premium plans if you like the tool for websites of all sizes and bandwidth needs.

NFT.js

NFT.JS allows you to deploy an ERC721 contract that can perform all the required functions without writing a single line of code. Interact with the contract by calling functions and sending transactions to the contract with a couple of lines of NFT.JS. Provide the input file into the metadata object, and NFT.JS uploads all the files provided in the metadata to IPFS as well as uploads the metadata.json file to IPFS and mints the NFT.

Color Morph

Color Morph is a fun little tool to help you generate mesh gradients in SVG format, or generate CSS, that you can snag and use in projects. The patterns are trendy and fun to use.

Scripts Organizer

Scripts Organizer is an advanced code editor for WordPress. This premium tool helps you make workflow scripts work for you with scheduling, advanced functionality, live previews, safe mode, SCSS partials, code injections, import and export, and more.

Texture

Texture is a fun web project that creates generative art that you can use for backgrounds or pretty much anything else. Preview the textures, pull the JavaScript or CSS or even edit and continue to play with them on CodePen.

Avvvatars

Avvvatars are a set of unique placeholder avatars that are free. The tool is easy to use, includes 40 colors, is accessible and lightweight, comes with 60 shapes, and is customizable. You can grab it on GitHub or as a Figma file.

Epic Ruler

Epic Ruler is a premium design utility tool that measures distance, dimensions, position, pick colors, test contrast, and align on-screen elements anywhere on your screen. You can also create alignments, and it comes with a great color picker that helps you pinpoint hues down to the pixel.

Jotform Apps

Jotform Apps is a new set of app tools from the company you may know for form-building tools. The free no-code app builder lets you add forms, links, widgets, and branding to one fully customized app that can be downloaded onto any smartphone, tablet, or computer. Get started with a template to jumpstart projects.

Spruce

Spruce is an open-source, lightweight CSS design system that’s built on Sass. The tool, which is in beta, is designed to help you start with a solid foundation for projects. It includes structure and code, typography, tables, and buttons.

Yaade

Yaade is an open-source, self-hosted, collaborative API development environment. It’s made for those who want self-hosting in security – if you don’t know the password, there’s no way in! You can import OpenAPI v3 files, there’s data import and export, and a dark mode default.

Agnostic UI

Agnostic UI is one stylesheet that works with multiple frameworks. The user interface components work in React, Vue 3, Svelte, and Angular. It includes semantic and accessible HTML with unprocessed CSS so you can code on the platform to get ahead of web standards.

Turbulent Buttons

Turbulent Buttons is a button-and-hover animation that goes the extra mile. This is a fun button and animation that is anything but boring.

Never Install

Never Install is a cloud platform that allows you to run any application from the browser without installing it on your device. It is an alternative to traditional desktop application usage and enables people to stream applications over the web. The developers are working on a next-generation cloud platform to bring any GUI application regardless of the operating system, device, and system requirements to the browser. The tool is free to use.

Photoinsight

Photoinsight is a tool (free and paid) to manage digital assets, including photos, videos, and 3D elements, in one place. You can search, filter, and group views based on your preferences. Plus, there are tools such as batch renaming and statistics and trends to help you manage files.

Formspector

Formspector answers that nagging question – are my forms working? Use the tool to set automated tests that will notify you if anything stops working, from newsletter signups to contact forms to support requests.

Wikifox.js

Wikifox.js is a lightweight, powerful, and restful JavaScript library that connects to the Wikipedia API. This library can be used to get content from Wikipedia.

Lightning Builder

Lightning Builder is a free browser-based drag and drop website builder. You can design a mockup in minutes so that you can show developers or writers what you are thinking when you are planning a new design or website project. Use it to ease communication for teams with new project builds.

Waaard

Waaard is a tiny tool with a lot of practical applications. Use it to create a protected link or file that only people you want to access it can open. With plenty of verification methods, you’ll know your links are safe.

Doodle Ipsum

Doodle Ipsum is the lorem ipsum of illustrations. Customize doodles, grab the code, and use them on web prototypes, landing pages, or no-code tools.

FF Din Stencil

FF Din Stencil is a fun display typeface for just the right application with a distinct style. It comes in a variety of weights and styles and is part of a greater FF Din family.

Fontanella

Fontanella is a typeface designed by Coto Mendoza, which emerged from calligraphy and manual drawing exploring the skeleton and classic proportions of Roman capital letters. It has an easy-to-read style with interesting sans serif characters.

Sarlotte

Sarlotte is a statuesque typeface with long tails, swashes, and flourishes. From the type designer: It seduces your eyes with its curves yet still manages to maintain its classy serenity, it’s perfect for branding, logos, invitations, and more.

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11 avril 2022/par Service comm.

20 Best New Sites, April 2022

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This month’s collection of the best new sites released in the previous four weeks might seem like a mixed bag, but if you look carefully you’ll see distinct themes emerging. Full-page images and videos are back with a vengeance, and designers are embracing large-scale 20th century-inspired typography from Art Nouveau to ’80s corporate.

Here are the sites that grabbed us this month. Enjoy!

I Killed a Cactus

I Killed a Cactus is a beautifully rendered 3D site that guides the less-horticulturally inclined of us in the best ways to care for our houseplants.

Aris Hotel

After a couple of years in which travel has been restricted, we’re itching to get moving again, and this elegant site for Aris Hotel is steering us in the direction of Crete.

Emergence Magazine

With excellent writing and great photography, Emergence Magazine is dedicated to stories that intertwine ecology and spirituality. Its bold typography epitomizes its ethos.

Milton Textiles

Milton is a textiles manufacturer with an eye for design. Its site showcases its art-inspired collection with big, bold, colorful photography.

Brutally Human

Brutally Human is the one-page portfolio/pitch of designer Stanley Vaganov. He has an impressive client list, and his site exudes the confidence that comes with that.

MAAP

MAAP uses a billowing flag to grab your attention as soon as you land on the site. The whole site is clean, efficient, and cool; exactly what you’d expect from a cycling apparel company.

Diabla

Outdoor furniture is typically presented as minimal and sophisticated. Diabla throws surrealism into the mix by introducing brand colors to its large-scale photography.

Steffie de Leeuw

The site for designer and artist Steffie de Leeuw features large typography that appears to be woven through layers of intricate illustration.

Garden Eight

What could be better than Garden Eight’s gaggle of 3D-rendered cartoon creatures floating around a page, twisting and transforming into new shapes?

Circus Shanghai

The site for Circus Shanghai uses a rich mid-century illustration to reference both the solar system and the Chinese flag; it’s an arresting combination.

Moooi

Ever inventive, the new micro-site for Moooi asks you to defy gravity with an engaging scroll through collages based on its product range.

Josephmark

More full-page motion, this time for design studio Josephmark. The site blends rich colors with a brutalist layout and minimalist typography to create its own identity.

Tony G

We love the infinite scroll on the homepage for creative agency Tony G. It’s a great way to add a slideshow to your homepage without the flaws of slideshows.

Estudio Piedras

This site for furniture design studio Estudio Piedras uses bold lettering mixed with product shots. The straightforward site is punchy and mimics the solidity of the materials used.

The Fleur

The Fleur is a botanical encyclopedia of fictional flowers that Ondre Jzunka has created as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Gloutir

Gloutir is the site for a “subscription-based workhorse design and development studio” that breaks all the rules of typography, and yet somehow it works.

Sophias

The rich blue and bright cream of the site for Sophias urban bistro and city garden echoes the welcoming real-world interiors and ties the brand together.

Lucalem

Lucalem is the portfolio site of designer and developer Lucas De Melo. A little more fun than the typical freelancer’s site, it features a disturbingly phallic character.

Soft Power

Soft Power is a creative design studio with an eye-popping list of international clients. Its advertising-style site uses a trendy glitch effect expertly.

Aather

Pastel colors and subtle textures evoke a calm mood, ideal for candle company Aather. It’s challenging to visually present smell, but this site does it well.

Source

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4 avril 2022/par Service comm.