20 blogs for designers that i love. The Elements of Typographic Style: Robert Bringhurst: 9780881791327: Amazon.com: Books. Create Free Brand & Design Style Guides with Frontify Style Guide. iA | Know-how. Jason Santa Maria - On Web Typography from Build on Vimeo. Design the Beginning — The Year of the Looking Glass. Pretty much any time we design something new, we start at the middle. See, the middle is when someone has a problem — she’s bored, she has a question, she needs to get somewhere, she wants to buy something— and voila! She whips out this New Thing we’ve designed, goes through this amazing experience we’ve crafted, and merrily solves her problem. Happy customer++! She sings our praises and awards us a big, fat 5-star rating. The middle is how everything should work, when everything else is working.
In the middle, the main character already knows what New Thing is and why it’s useful. When we design the middle, we tell an aspirational story, a North Star, to paint a picture of a future we want to see. This is all fine and good. The problem is that we often neglect to design the beginning until the very end. We do this every time design new user experience shows up as an item on a checklist of “launch blockers”.
We assume it’s easy to get past the beginning. Conditional Loading for Responsive Designs ◆ 24 ways. On the eighteenth day of last year’s 24 ways, Paul Hammond wrote a great article called Speed Up Your Site with Delayed Content. He outlined a technique for loading some content — like profile avatars — after the initial page load. This gives you a nice performance boost. There’s another situation where this kind of delayed loading could be really handy: mobile-first responsive design. Responsive design combines three techniques: a fluid grid flexible images media queries At first, responsive design was applied to existing desktop-centric websites to allow the layout to adapt to smaller screen sizes.
Rather then starting with the big, bloated desktop site and then scaling down for smaller devices, it makes more sense to start with the constraints of the small screen and then scale up for larger viewports. One of the great advantages of the mobile-first approach is that it forces you to really focus on the core content of your page. <script> searchNews('cats'); </script> See the result. 9 Helpful Typography Related Online Games. The Design Encyclopedia. Better web typography in 13 simple steps. Now that web fonts are natively supported in most browsers and more and more typographic features are implemented in the latest versions of HTML and CSS, a bright new era of increasingly sophisticated web typography is upon us.
This means web designers need to get (re)acquainted with the rules of classic typesetting - but it doesn’t end there. Whereas print typography is static, web typography is a fluid and malleable medium. More than simply learning how to achieve a specific look, designers now have to be able to predict the end result across different browsers and end users. Instead of simply knowing the rules they also need to understand the reasoning behind them.
Here are some of the basic dos and don’ts of typography, specifically applied to the web. 01. Find out what your fonts can do The very first thing you must do is check the capabilities of the fonts you are going to use. Yet any font is only as good as the type designer built it. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12. Kern Type, the kerning game. Thinking with Type | Contents. Complete Beginner's Guide to Interaction Design. Interaction design has its origins in web and graphic design, but has grown into a realm of its own. Far from merely working with text and pictures, interaction designers are now responsible for creating every element on the screen that a user might swipe, click, tap, or type: in short, the interactions of an experience.
Newsletter Sign Up Original UX articles Curated Resources Never miss an issue! This article serves as a good jumping off point for people interested in learning more about Interaction Design. What is Interaction Design? Interaction Design (IxD) defines the structure and behavior of interactive systems. Interaction design began the day the first screen was designed to hold more than static copy.
Interaction design has evolved to facilitate interactions between people and their environment. Common Methodologies Although interaction design spans myriad types of web and mobile applications and sites, there are certain methodologies that all designers rely on. Goal-Driven Design. Of Action - You're already a pretty good designer. I'm a seasoned hacker that is able to tackle immensely complex problems with aplomb.
I'm able to untangle spaghetti code and weave it into beautiful patterns. I envision systems and code them with the same grace a jazz pianist improvises music.But I can't design for my life. Please help. I've heard this story a couple of times in the ten years I've been working with programmers. The programmers' approach to building a cathedral would involve using his tools and raw materials in order to build more advanced objects. Our craftsman follows the architect's plans religiously, and painstakingly chisels every stone so that every brick fits in perfectly. Once finished, he steps back and mesmerized by the beauty of it all, he thinks 'Hey, I built this cathedral all by myself, perhaps if I tried designing my own cathedral I'd get all the praise, instead of this lazy hack who just handed me the layout and waited for it to be built'. 1. 2. 3.
Now, let's get to the good stuff: You are already creative. Making the Transition from Development to Design—My Experience and Advice. A couple months ago, a person emailed me asking for tips for transitioning to design from a development background. As someone who had loosely gone through the same path (from programming to design to programming then back to design), I wanted to share any advice I could possibly give. After writing the letter, I thought it may be useful to a few other people out there. So if you are a developer looking to get into design, this is written specifically for you. To preface, this article is not why developers can be good designers. This article does a great job of articulating those ideas. So instead of duplicating good work, I spent time on some ways a developer can get into design.
Remember, these are tips based on my personal philosophy and things that have shaped my approach. Tip #1: Don’t stop building things It will not be long before anyone designing software will require an understanding of how to make software. It is important to keep your development skills honed. Should I Work for Free? Dribbble - Show and tell for designers. Startups, This Is How Design Works – by Wells Riley.