Popular Design News of the Week: July 26 2021 – August 1, 2021

Color is one of the fundamental building blocks of design. The color decisions we make–what colors and where, how many different colors, or even if we use color at all–all have a huge impact on how well a design works as intended. So, here’s a chance to test your expertise on all things color-related. We’ve put together an inconceivably hard color quiz. Can you beat 7/10? We’ll start you off with an easy one, but be warned, they get harder…...

The best free online coding websites for beginners are hubs of education and insight, designed to take your knowledge and career to the next level. For years, technical careers have been gaining more attention among innovative individuals. In a digital world, people capable of speaking computer language often have the widest selection of job opportunities. However, before you can start leveraging the blossoming job market, you need to...

Productivity is a crowded space, with countless apps and services promising to make your life and business easier and more profitable. Of all the apps that make that promise, very few deliver, but we’ve found one that does: Taskade. Flexible Planning With Taskade Every problem is unique, and part of what defines us as creative professionals is the different ways we approach problems. What suits one person in one situation doesn’t suit...

This month we have a variety pack for you. There are all sorts, from the most conservative layouts and structures to more experimental navigation. And we see how even the most traditional and functional websites can connect with users through mood-enhancing color schemes, clever font choices, and illustrations. Non-functional–that is, purely decorative–details can really improve the user’s reaction to a site when applied sparingly....

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

What makes a company special? There are hundreds of organizations out there selling fast food, but only one McDonalds. You’ve probably stumbled across dozens of technology companies too, but none of them inspire the same kind of loyalty and commitment as Apple. So why do people fall in love with some companies more than others? Most of the time, it comes down to one thing: brand essence. Your brand essence, or brand identity, represents all...

You have been looking for a theme for your website. You haven't yet settled on all the design details or come across a specialty theme that appears to have what you might need. Then, a multipurpose theme would be a wise choice. Multipurpose WordPress themes have become extremely popular because of the flexibility they offer. Also, because of their relative ease of use and the powerful tools, you will usually find built into them. With a good multipurpose...

Craft CMS is increasing in popularity, and as it does, the previously relatively scant range of plugins is growing rapidly. There are plugins for Craft ranging from simple field utilities to the full ecommerce solution provided by Pixel & Tonic — the makers of Craft. An early decision that has borne fruit for Craft has been the plugin licensing model. Paid plugins for Craft charge an initial license fee and then a reduced annual renewal...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

Looking to give your homepage a well-needed design update in late 2021 or 2022? Not a bad idea; first impressions are crucial when it comes to business websites. But, fixing your homepage and website design is no easy feat. Web design trends are evolving faster. Blame the ever-decreasing user’s attention span. The average visitor now spends just 0.5 seconds scanning your homepage to form an opinion about your brand and decide whether to...

If you have a WordPress website, you’re obviously aware of the benefits this premier open-source website-building platform brings to the table. But are you aware of the legion of website and business enhancement tools lying in wait among the thousands of cool WordPress plugins currently on the market; one or more of which could easily take your site or business to the next level? What’s out there? Quite a bit, obviously.  Which useful...

The dog days of summer are here. From vacations to pool time, you might not be thinking about work that much. But there are still plenty of new tools and resources popping up to help you become a better or more efficient designer. Here’s what new for designers this month. Haikei Haikei is a web app that you can use to generate SVG shapes, backgrounds, and patterns in a web-based editor that you can use with any design tool or workflow process. Everything...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

On June 29th, GitHub announced Copilot, an AI-powered auto-complete for programmers, prompting a debate about the ethics of borrowed code. GitHub is one of the biggest code repositories on the Internet. It hosts billions of lines of code, creating an unparalleled dataset with which to train a coding AI. And that is exactly what OpenAI, via GitHub, thanks to its owners Microsoft has done — training Copilot using public repositories. The...

A press release is one of the most valuable tools in a marketing team’s arsenal. Though press releases have been around for decades, they remain one of the best ways to reach new customers, improve your brand reputation, and generate awareness.  Press releases are also wonderfully cost-effective. Unless you’re using paid distribution channels, all you have to spend is your time to create your press release. So, how do you get started?...

This month, you will either love or hate the featured design trends. The common theme among them is a strong design element that can create distinct emotional connections. They range from interesting monotone color choices to brutalist examples to AI-inspired faces and design elements. Here’s what’s trending in design this month. 1. Interesting Monotone Color Palettes Monotone color palettes aren’t something that we usually...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

There’s no shortcut to success when it comes to Google search results. That is unless you count pay-per-click advertising. While pay-to-play will shoot your site to the top of the SERP immediately, it’s not a sustainable strategy for maintaining your position there. So, you’re going to have to get serious about SEO. This guide will show you what to do to improve your SEO ranking and start seeing results this year: Use Google Analytics...

There is no shortage of places to buy fonts online, but the quality of what is on offer is variable, and the way of searching catalogs has remained largely unchanged since the first stores appeared decades ago. I Love Typography — a popular source of news about typography and type design since 2007 — has stepped into the marketplace, starting by inviting some of the world’s top designers to contribute to its new store, resulting in 40 foundries...

Ever since online stores first emerged they’ve faced one big challenge compared to their real world rivals; yes, it’s convenient to shop wherever, whenever you want, and delivery options permitting, buy from anyone anywhere in the world. But it’s a minimal experience compared to the fuller sensory experience of shopping in the real world. Online stores can only access our sight and hearing, whereas physical shops can engage all our...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

It’s only been a few days since Microsoft officially followed Apple past the $2 Trillion valuation mark, and having done so it appears to be mimicking more of its long-term rival’s approach with hardware cut-offs and a macOS-style GUI refresh.  Hardware Shock The first surprise for fans of Windows is that there is a Windows 11; the push for Windows 10 adoption was widely expected to all but eliminate numbered versions; creating a landscape...