What’s new for designers, October 2016

October 17, 2016

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers, we’ve included color tools, icon sets, automation tools, design tools, printables, Sketch plugins, and 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!

Color Library

lets you separate the colors in an image to print with colors other than CMYK (or RGB). Pick two, three, four, or five-color palettes.

Paperworks

lets you keep all of your receipts, invoices, and payments in one place. It even automatically scans your inbox for things to add.

Kap

is an open-source screen recorder that uses web technology. It’s easy to use and fast, plus it’s extensible.

Hero Patterns

is a collection of repeatable SVG patterns for backgrounds on your digital projects. Select foreground and background colors prior to downloading.

Fireflies.ai

is a Chrome extension that acts as a personal assistant for your daily tasks. It has natural language processing to automatically identify and suggest relevant tasks.

Push by Zapier

is a Chrome extension and app for building small, single-purpose workflows that live inside Google Chrome.

Disrupt Cards

are like a Silicon Valley-inspired game of Cards Against Humanity, with references and situations that will likely only make sense to those in the world of tech.

Internet Curated

is a collection of more than 100 resources on the web. There are collections for apps, design, business, development, inspiration, and more.

Mastodon

is a free, open-source social network server that’s decentralized. It allows anyone to build a social network seamlessly.

Figma

is an interface design tool that offers up real-time collaboration tools. It works for designing everything from icons to responsive layouts.

Break

Ever started a project and then realized 8 hours later you were still sitting at your desk, without taking any breaks? Break will remind you to take frequent breaks from your computer, which in turn increases productivity and reduces strain on your eyes, joints, and hands.

UI Movement

is a curated collection of animated UI designs, including everything from chat to menus and more. You can also subscribe to their weekly newsletter to get the best UI inspirations delivered to your inbox.

React Color

is a collection of color pickers from Photoshop, Sketch, Chrome, Github, and more.

FramerJS Club

is a showcase of FramerJS prototypes and articles. There are examples of tools, inputs, modules, games, and more.

Open Color

is a color scheme for UI design that’s provided as CSS, SCSS, LESS, Stylus, Adobe library, Photoshop and Illustrator swatches, and Sketch palette.

Greyprint

is a starting point template for icons, symbols, and glyphs. It includes pre-made styles (for Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, and Affinity Designer) to speed up your workflow.

Affinity Designer 1.5

The newest version of Affinity Designer brings a host of UI, UX, and web design tools to the app, including tools for responsive designs.

Sneakpeekit

is a set of printable grids for design wireframing. There’s a precision grid, browser and grid, 2‑up and 4‑up grids, and more.

TheDirectory.io

is a directory of digital design agencies. It also includes tools to find a job at one of the agencies listed.

Sketchode

is a Sketch plugin that provides graphical representation of any project, and aims to smooth the hand-off from designer to developer.

90 Free Line and Solid Icons

These 90 Free Line and Solid Icons are available for both Sketch and Illustrator. They include things like magnifying glasses, hearts, stars, message icons, and more.

The Vox Media Designer’s Toolkit

is a look a the tools the team at Vox uses most often to brainstorm, moodboard, design, prototype, and test.

Cat Ipsum

Need some filler copy? Love cats? You’re in luck with Cat Ipsum then!

Jpeg.io

lets you convert any major image format (jpg, png, gif, svg, bmp, eps, psd, tiff, and more) into a highly optimized JPEG file.

Citysets

is a growing collection of free city-based icon sets. So far it includes, London, New York, Paris, and Sydney.

Ghostlab

lets you connect any number of browsers and devices for synchronized browsing. It automatically tracks changes to your local files and refreshes them on all connected clients.

Enformed

is an easy way to manage HTML forms, with no PHP, Javascript, or server-side coding.

TransparentStartups

Transparent Startups

lets you see how much revenue a variety of tech startups are actually making on a monthly basis. It includes data from 39 companies, some you might not recognize, but also ones you probably will (Buffer, ConvertKit, etc.).