22 Exciting New Tools For Designers, June 2021

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...

This week, a significant portion of the Web fell over when on Tuesday, sites powered by Fastly were impacted by a massive outage that affected around 85% of the network. The near-total collapse — which was quickly identified and remedied — took out sites including GitHub, Stack Overflow, PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, Reddit, Amazon, and CNN. Furthermore, it was all but impossible to express rage on Twitter because the server that handles...

Every designer has their own preferred strategy for collecting resources. Some pluck brushes, fonts, and templates from different “stock photo sites” and public marketplaces. Others collect graphics from swipe files and forums around the web. The never-ending desire for themes, visual content, and graphical components has prompted an influx of “design packages” to appear around the web. These all-in-one bundles, ranging...

If you are feeling like me right now, you have mixed emotions about the world in general. And this is translating into a pretty distinct design trend that’s happening almost across the board: Websites aren’t using many images of people right now. There are just too many questions about what is appropriate (mask, no mask? groups?), so the default answer seems to be using more “artless” options focusing on typography, graphical elements,...

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...

Do you know logos? Is branding your thing? Then try our fiendishly hard logo quiz… We’ve lined up ten logos belonging to household names. We’ve even given you four options to choose from to identify the logo. There’s just one catch: we’re only revealing a small part of the logo. We’re kicking off with a couple of obvious ones to ease you in but be warned, they get tougher… Featured image via Pexels....

HTML is one of the foundational building blocks of the Web. But just as web design best practices and techniques change over time, so does the code we use. As HTML evolves, some of its older markup has been deprecated while other parts have been repurposed. Does that create more problems for us, though? Would we be better off starting over so we can make sure we’re all working from the same language rather than trying to edit out the bits we don’t...

Want to know which of the top blogging platforms you should consider using this year? Blogging is still one of the best ways to draw attention to your brand, generate thought leadership, and build your credibility. Research suggests that US internet users spend 3x more of their browsing time on blogs than on email. Additionally, people view about 20 billion blog pages on average each month.  So, how do you join the blogging revolution? You’ll...

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...

Psychologists tell us that by answering a handful of oblique questions, we can gain greater insight into our real desires. Today, we’re going to put that to the test with a simple fill-in-the-gaps story that will help you determine your ideal career in design. We’ll tell you a short story, and ask you to add a few key details, from which we’ll work out what kind of career probably suits you; what kind of roles you should pursue, what kind of...

Asset management and website performance optimization are two of those unavoidable headaches faced by every website owner. A digital asset management (DAM) platform can provide centralized asset repositories with intuitive dashboards to help you manage assets. On the other hand, an image CDN can help you get rid of that messy responsive syntax and provide dynamic asset optimization with huge performance boosts. The problem is that website...

This month we have several examples of brutalism used to good effect as a foil to showcase products and/or work. By contrast, at the other end of the scale, we have brands who have chosen to go more of an immersive experience route, using full-screen images, sound, animation, and even VR. Both are valid approaches, depending on the content. The former tends to work better as a backdrop for artwork, photography, and artisanal craft goods — acting...

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...

This week at I/O, Google unveiled the latest version of its Material Design design system, Material You. Initially presented as an upgrade for Android 12, Material You is the biggest revision to Material Design since its launch in 2014 and will be rolling out across all Google products in the coming year. Material You is an adaptable system that takes the building blocks of Material Design — the spacing and component approach — and skins...

Parallax is a term that is applied loosely and frequently in the world of web design. As a trend, it has been popular and unpopular in equal measures for some time. However, it’s still one of the most valuable tools for animation in the digital world. Parallax creates an illusion of depth when scrolling, a timeless effect that still has lots of value in the web design world. Sure, parallax has its issues, from problems with usability, to concerns...

User experience design is something that most of us associate with websites. But why isn’t it something we extend beyond the website? Here’s why I ask this: As a consumer, it’s so rare that your only interaction with a brand is through its website. Take an ecommerce site, for example. You buy a product from it, and then what happens? You get a confirmation email; You get another email when the package ships; You might get another email or...

Each 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...

Every month we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD. The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers. These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today. So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these...

Are you thinking of building a website with a site builder but find yourself confused by the dizzying array of options? Well, puzzle no more because we’ve put together this great infographic to cut to the heart of the question: Which is better for you, Squarespace or Wix? Each of these site-building giants is ideal for a particular type of person, but which is best suited to your next project? Do you need total creative freedom? How about a large...

Creatives need a digital space to call their home. A place from which they can show off their best work, and from where people can get in touch with them to buy or hire from them. You should have a digital space of your own as well, and we’re here to help you do just that.  With one of 600+ Be Theme’s pre-built websites at your fingertips you can establish your own digital presence in no time at all. While you’re certain to find one to get started...

From dev tools to productivity to a little bit of fun with sudoku, this month’s collection of new tools is packed with something for everyone. Here’s what new for designers this month. May’s Top Picks Am I FLoCed? Am I FLoCed? Is a tool to see if you are part of a Google Chrome origin trial. It tests a new tracking feature called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). According to Google, the trial currently affects 0.5% of users in selected...

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...