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□ Emoji Keyboard Online □ □ □ Click to Copy Emoji Emoticons - Emoji Keyboard. Material Design Color, Flat Colors, Icons, Color Palette | Material UI. The Color Scheme Designer. Your Smartphone vs. Your PC – Adventures in Consumer Technology – Medium. It’s no secret that the modern day smartphones is overtaking the desktop’s dominance as the primary gateway to the Internet and for media consumption. Smartphones have become users’ most important device driven in part by the rise of cloud computing. It looks like the only reason to use a computer is for work-related tasks, but that too won’t last long.

Today we hold more powerful devices in our hands than ever before. Our data is already on the device, but it’s also synced to the cloud. So it’s only natural to use our smartphones as desktop computers whenever we need to be productive and get the job done. I simply plug my Galaxy S8 Plus into my Samsung’s DeX docking station, which is also connected to a large screen and peripherals, to deliver an enhanced productivity experience than what’s possible with my smartphone’s tiny screen. Design solves problems Today, more than ever before, we can say that desktop computers won’t be around forever. Hardware is not a barrier anymore. 3 ways to improve your visual design skills – uxdesign.cc. Typography Inspiration for the Modern Web · Typewolf. Font Pair - Helps designers pair Google Fonts together. Beautiful Google Font combinations and pairs.

Typography can make or break your design: a process for choosing type. Identify your purpose Before you do anything else, first identify the purpose of your design. What information do you want to convey? What is the medium for your design? Good design aligns its typography with its purpose. This is because typography is key to setting mood, tone, and style in your designs. For example, if you are designing a greeting card that’s illustration heavy, choose a font that fits the style of your illustration. If you’re designing an image-driven landing page, choose a simple font that doesn’t detract from your images. Identify your audience After determining the purpose of your design, identify your audience. After clarifying the purpose of your design, identify your audience. For example, some fonts are more appropriate for children. Other fonts are more appropriate for seniors. When choosing type, take into account your audience and their needs. Look for inspiration Look at the work of other designers.

Font Inspiration Pairing Inspiration Determine font sizes. 8 New Graphic Design Trends That Will Shine In 2017. So we’re already into 2017, in case you haven’t noticed. That means you probably have already broken one of your New Year’s resolutions. Don’t worry, my resolution to get better sleep has already been dashed. But one of my resolutions that I will not be breaking is to become a better graphic designer in 2017. And this is great news for you, because I will help you also become a better designer in the process.

If you have read any of my other articles, you’ll know that I am not a traditionally trained graphic designer. I am, instead, a writer who enjoys design enough to immerse myself in it and learn all that I can, using simple graphic design software to help me along the way. A great place to start is to see what the graphic design world will look like this year, and what trends will take it by storm. It is going to be an interesting year, to say the least. Graphic Design Trends You Should Know for 2017: Embed this infographic by copying and pasting the code below: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 50 Shades of #FAFAFA – Jon Moore – Medium. 1. Use a UI framework. I know you want to make this design your own. I tell you what, come up with a design system even 10% as beautiful and extensible as Material Design and then we’ll talk.

Devs can build faster, you can save yourself time, and your users won’t have as much work figuring out new usage conventions. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. It was the best of times, it was the wrost of times. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. Once you convince the CEO that your dropdown should fly in from the right side of the screen on a camel on a flying carpet, then be sure to to send a nice animated .gif to your customers explaining why that flying carpet was better than the feature they asked for (PS.

(PS. 27-a. 27-b. 28. 29. 30. “You should see what I REALLY wanted to do before [PM/dev/the client] told me to change it. I’ve never won this game, so help me out if you have any tips. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular? | Interaction Design Foundation. Design Thinking is not an exclusive property of designers — all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? What’s special about Design Thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way — in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, in our lives. Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google and Samsung, rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and leading universities around the world teach the related methodology — including Stanford, Harvard, Imperial College London and the Srishti Institute in India.

Before you incorporate design thinking into your own workflows, you need to know what it is and why it’s so popular. Here, we’ll cut to the chase and tell you what design thinking is all about and why it’s so in demand. What is Design Thinking? Free quality presentation templates. The 10 Commandments of Typography. 7 Tools That Will Help You Do More Productive Design Work — Product Hunt. Am I Responsive? How to Be an Educated Consumer of Infographics: David Byrne on the Art-Science of Visual Storytelling. As an appreciator of the art of visual storytelling by way of good information graphics — an art especially endangered in this golden age of bad infographics served as linkbait — I was thrilled and honored to be on the advisory “Brain Trust” for a project by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, New Yorker writer, and Scientific American neuroscience blog editor Gareth Cook, who has set out to highlight the very best infographics produced each year, online and off.

(Disclaimer for the naturally cynical: No money changed hands.) The Best American Infographics 2013 (public library) is now out, featuring the finest examples from the past year — spanning everything from happiness to sports to space to gender politics, and including a contribution by friend-of-Brain Pickings Wendy MacNaughton — with an introduction by none other than David Byrne. Accompanying each image is an artist statement that explores the data, the choice of visual representation, and why it works. Making Time to Create. “I’m not creative.” I say (and hear) this much too often. And when I do, my creative friends cringe because they view creativity as a skill you can cultivate and learn (not something you’re born with). They are frustrated with my fixed mindset about creativity. Unfortunately, after several years of facilitating parent, teacher and student workshops about creativity, I realize that I’m not alone in my thinking about creativity.

However, I’ve recently started combining 3 of my favorite videos as a set in training sessions and watching these three together has helped me believe that even I can become more creative with practice and effort (and really, if I can do it, that means anyone can do it)! 1. I have shown this video at dozens of trainings and every time I notice something new. Anyone can be creative, you just have to find the medium that works for you Creativity happens in stages In this week’s parent tech coffee morning we showed this video as the opening conversation starter. 2. 3. Use our methods. DP0 (Design Project Zero) is a 90-minute (including debrief) fast-paced project though a full design cycle. Students pair up to interview each other, create a point-of-view, ideate, and make a new solution that is “useful and meaningful” to their partner.

Two versions of DP0 are “The Wallet Project” and “The Gift-Giving Project”. They have the similar format, only the topic is different. The original DP0 The Wallet Project was created for the d.school’s very first course in 2004 and the project starts with students looking at the content of their partner’s wallet or purse (and goes on to ask every student to design something for their partner). Another DP0 topic is The Gift-Giving Project where students are asked to redesign how their partner gives gifts. Get the materials to facilitate the activity for a group yourself here. Or play the Crash Course (video facilitation that leads the group) here. How to Keep People at the Heart of Your Next Problem Solving Process. Problem solving is a skill we want all of our students to be honing whilst at school.

However one of the issues I stumble upon during my work is the weaker focus on problem finding. In many ways problem finding can be more accurately and more broadly defined as the time when we check that a problem is worth solving in the first place. This is something students don’t experience enough.[1] All too often they are presented with a problem and get busy generating ideas, or as adults we assume that the problem is clear when it is not and start from a much weaker position. I enjoyed this recent article from Emily Heyward[2] that focused attention on ensuring a problem is worth solving in the first place. Instead of immediately jumping ahead there are significant gains to be had by staying in the problem for much longer. Staying focused on the problem also prevents you from falling into the fatal trap of assuming the world is waiting with bated breath for your product to launch.

Your Apple/Android/Windows Hatred Is Irrelevant, Give It Up. How often have you seen comments like “I hate Apple products”, or “Anyone who buys an Android phone is an idiot”? What about something along the lines of “Facebook sucks”? It’s probably all too often. There is a lot of entirely irrational hate towards tech companies and their products, meaning the most innocuous article can start a full on flamewar. I’ve personally been accused of taking money from both Apple and Microsoft in comments below my articles. The supposed evidence for my breach of ethics? Let’s take a look at how people come to hate tech companies, and why they’re wrong to do so. Fundamentally Wrong The fundamental attribution error (FAE) is one of the strongest human biases, and it has an incredibly powerful effect on day to day life. So, if I win a photography competition I assume it’s down to my skill as an artist, while if someone else wins its because they were lucky – or because they’re friends with one of the judges.

It’s 2015, Nothing Really Sucks Anymore Closing Out. Where Would You Place Your Favorite App? — Tech Doodles. LittleBits. The Utopian Promise Of RepRap, the 3D Printer That Can—Almost—Print Itself. Bowyer and Olliver pose with the original parent RepRap and its first child. (Photo: Steve Baker/WikiCommons GNU 1.2) In search of new skills for their technology, inventors have long turned to the natural world.

In the past few years alone, robots have learned to run on water like basilisk lizards, drill like wood wasps, and detect sound waves with the precision and nuance of a bat. But despite their many and increasing skills, machines lack one of the most natural of talents. Meet the self-replicating rapid prototyper, or RepRap for short. RepRap Mendel, one of the most recent common models. Rather than boasting cheetah-like legs or the slimming power of a cockroach, RepRap is based on broader principles that drive the natural world–reproduction, selection, and evolution.

“Ever since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of self-replicating machines,” says Professor Adrian Bowyer, emeritus at the University of Bath and the original mind behind RepRap. (Recommendations for) Designing Learning Spaces – Part 2 – LEARN AND LEAD. In this contemporary age, what is the ideal learning space? As part of A New Learning Space in 2014, I referred to this ideal learning space offered by OECD.

More recently, on December 11, 2015 I published, Designing Learning Spaces – Part 1. In that post I highlighted some of the research which strongly argues that learning spaces can accelerate learning initiatives grounded in student-centred pedagogy. There is little doubt that learning space design has a significant role to play in facilitating and reflecting new pedagogical approaches. The teacher-student relationship is changing, with a shift to student-centred teaching in multi-purpose spaces that allow for individuals and groups, specialist areas, indoor and outdoor learning, and flexible community oriented spaces. With that in mind, I make the following recommendations.

So……. , when designing learning spaces: RECOMMENDATION ONEInvolve the users, especially the students. RECOMMENDATION THREE: Remember Pedagogy and Technology. Greg. Good Design Isn’t About Being Clever — Life Tips. Power Of Conventions Users of your product will expect to have initial knowledge of its function. When I use a door-knob, I expect to twist it to the right to open the lock. When I use an iOS app, I expect to swipe to go back. You should rarely design experiences to counter-act these reinforced assumptions. Imagine if you shipped a laptop with a DVORAK keyboard layout instead of QWERTY.

Technically, it’s more efficient. However, 99% of the users would need to unlearn decades of typing experience for a marginal gain. Think about the opportunity cost of swaying away from accepted conventions: is it worth the potential upside? When Conventions Fails Let’s look an icon that is in almost every iOS app, the three-lined hamburger menu. Primary navigation. When that icon is used, I have no idea what to expect. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. Breaking Out Of Conventions. Math is not God: Do not fear, do not worship. A: I use this and many other ratios.

Using math has had a positive effect on my work. But sometimes I don’t use math. “What I always liked about math is, there’s no bullshit.” — Sumner Stone I am not great at math, but I use it often. Consider the task of deciding on a font-size for your website’s headings. But Tim, you might say, what if I use standard numbers systematically? But Tim, you might say, my colleagues think my mathematic calculations are idiosyncratic. Although we live in a polarizing world, I think you, dear design student, are a reasonable person. Fear of math makes our design decisions bland and unruly. 10 Best Email Signature Design Case Studies [With Tips On How To Create Your Own] They say first impressions are important, but what about last impressions?

If you conduct business via email, your email signature is often one of the final points of communication a consumer has with your service/brand. A good email signature is simple, informative, professional, and puts the information in the forefront. But, this doesn’t mean your signature has to look dull or boring. There are many ways to get the most out of your email signature, so let’s run over 10 easy tips and look at somebeautiful examples. 01.

Don’t Include Too Much Information A common trap people fall into with email signatures is treating them like a mini autobiography by jamming them full of links, information, quotes, and boatloads of info. So, instead, try to keep your signature to the point and tailored to your brand. Check out this simple and minimal email signature example by Murdock. 02. But what if your brand logo is flat black, with no striking feature color for you to use? 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. It’s All About Design | The Connected Teacher. Google Design. Introducing Design Explosions — Design Explosions. A Principal's Reflections: Design Empowers Learning. When Everyone Is Doing Design Thinking, Is It Still a Competitive Advantage? 5 simple UX principles to guide your product design — Personal Growth.