What’s new for designers, May 2015

May 11, 2015

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included lots of podcasts, design resource directories, lots of web apps, learning resources, productivity resources, new frameworks, APIs, team resources, and much more. And as always, we’ve also included some awesome new free fonts! Almost everything on the list this month is free, with a few high-value paid apps and tools also included. They’re sure to be useful to designers and developers, from beginners to experts. If we’ve missed something that you think should have been on the list, let us know in the comments. And if you know of a new app or resource that should be featured next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman to be considered!

ReadThisThing

is a modern storytelling toolbox that includes resources and tools for things like audio and video content, staying up to date on the news, social media, and more.

Startup CVs

lets you upload your CV to be discovered by startups across the US and Europe. It includes startups looking for all sorts of job functions, from entry level to co-founder.

Tailor

uses statistical analysis to create better copy for your landing pages. It lets you show incoming users different layouts or copy based on what has worked best for users in the past.

The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

gives you access to hundreds of interviews with all sorts of creatives and interesting people. Interviews include Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Elle Luna, and more.

Collections

is Google’s answer to Pinterest, letting you create collections for your interests, follow and be followed, and customize your collections with custom names and cover photos.

OneLiners.co

lets you crowdsource your company’s tagline. You can also suggest and vote on taglines for others.

Funnel

lets you easily create contact forms, track deals, send proposals, track customers, and more. It even works with Gmail.

Riddle

lets you create social content in just one minute. You can better engage your audience through quizzes, lists, polls, and more.

Marvel API

The Marvel API lets developers create stuff using information about Marvel’s library of comics, including both upcoming releases all the way back to their start 70 years ago.

IntroBar

lets you welcome visitors from specific sources and even offer them special deals. Giving a custom intro based on where visitors came from lets you get more out of your visitors.

Deekit

is a shared, real-time whiteboard for remote teams that works for designers, entrepreneurs, freelancers, developers, and more.

Augment

is a Chrome plugin that lets you access apps like Google Calendar, Evernote, Dropbox, and more, right within Gmail. Take action right from your inbox, making Gmail a powerful productivity tool.

Pexels Videos

is a collection of completely free stock videos for your projects. They’re broken down by category, with videos of people, drinks, animals, industry, and more.

BassCSS

is a collection of base element styles, layout modules, color styles, and more. It’s designed for clarity, performance, speed, and scalability.

9 Squares

is a collaboration between nine different designers and animators from around the world. Each one creates a 3‑second looped, abstract animation based on a 4‑color palette.

Layzr.js

is a small, modern, fast library for lazy loading images. It’s dependency-free, and boosts page loading speed while keeping options to a minimum.

Trianglify Generator

The Trianglify Generator lets you create a custom images based on triangles and color gradients. You can adjust the width and height of the final image, as well as adjust the variance in triangle shapes, the cell size, and the color palette.

Email Framework

This Email Framework makes it easier to build bullet-proof responsive HTML email templates. It supports over 40 email clients, and has been thoroughly tested with Litmus.

Beagle

is a tool for creating better proposals that lets you import content to base your proposals on existing ones. It also has tools for collaboration, and lets you send directly to your client with a custom cover letter.

First Aid Git

is a searchable collection of frequently asked Git questions. Answers were collected from personal experience, Stackoverflow, and official documentation.

Peek Space

is a collection of free-to-use, curated space photos that you can use for your projects. The images are all from NASA, and were curated from thousands of images available online.

How to Center in CSS

is an app for centering your content with CSS. Just specify the type of content to center, the container size, and alignment, and it generates your code for you.

Kubist

lets you create Cubist-style artwork from an image. Just upload an image and adjust the number of points to use and the style to create your own custom image.

Project Fi

is a project from Google that aims to deliver a fast, easy wireless experience alongside leading hardware makers, carriers, and users.

Electron

lets you build cross-platform desktop apps using web technologies. It’s open source, and works with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Ways We Work

interviews a variety of founders and creatives on how they work. It includes questions about the tools they use, how they stay on top of email, and more.

Visual Studio Code

is a free app for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications. It works on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

RightFont

for Mac lets you manage fonts, and find the correct font quickly. It even integrates with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, as well as Sketch.

Font Library

is an open source project for tagging and organizing Google Fonts. You can browse by a variety of tags, including “friendly”, “small caps”, “whimsical”, “cute”, and more.

Ntype

is a 4D communication tool that lets you share messages via URL. Messages are animated, and you can even download an OTF font of the current rotation.

Wwwhere

is a directory of web apps and resources that are broken down by category. There are apps and resources for coding, community, project tools, UX, inspiration, and much more.

Pintsize

is a Sass front end template. It’s simple, configurable, scalable, and lightweight.

The Path to Performance

is a podcast dedicated to making websites faster. So far they’ve had interviews with Jeff Lembeck of Filament Group, Mark Dorison of Chromatic, and Lara Hogan of Etsy.

10Up Engineering Best Practices

The 10Up Engineering Best Practices illustrate how to engineer in the “10Up way”. They’re aimed at already-capable engineers, rather than beginners.

Octobotapp

The Octobot iOS app tells you when something has changed in GitHub’s services status. It’ll tell you when there’s a partial service outage and when systems are back up, with optional push notifications.