Exciting New Tools for Designers, April 2020

Default avatar.
April 20, 2020
Exciting New Tools for Designers, April 2020.

While there’s a lot going in the world with the COVID-19 pandemic, the design world is also reacting. You’ll notice that some of the newest tools and resources for designers are for working through or with the virus’ impact or are inspired by this change to our lifestyles. Here’s what new for designers this month.

Snapfont

Snapfont

is a browser extension that lets you test any font on any website in a snap. You can preview differences in body and headline fonts to get a feel for how a website would look or function with different type families. It’s great for testing font sizes, looking at fonts together in a real environment, and provides a live” testing opportunity before you settle on new font choices. It works with all Google Fonts. snapfont

CSS Podcast

The CSS Podcast launched in March and is releasing an episode a week about cascading style sheets. Una Kravets and Adam Argyle, Developer Advocates from Google, break down complex aspects of CSS into digestible episodes covering everything from accessibility to z‑index. The episodes are short – generally less than 15 minutes – and are easy to digest. csspodcast

Saas for COVID-19

Saas for COVID-19

is a directory of discounts and deals for designers and developers impacted by the worldwide virus. The website build just asks that you use provided discounts to build amazing tools.” saas

Virtual Events for Developers

Virtual Events for Developers

is another tool that you can use while you may be spending more time at home due to COVID-19. This list is packed with online opportunities for learning and staying connected to the design/​dev community. events

SnipperApp2

SnipperApp2

is a native Mac OS developer tool that lets you create GitHub markdown notes and save code snippets to multiple storage locations. snipper

Faux Code Generator

The Faux Code Generator turns real code (GitHub Gist) into faux code in the form of an SVG image. Paste in the URL, pick a theme, and create your code. faux-code

Midori

Midori

is a library for animated image backgrounds. You can pick a number of images, type of transitions, a few effects and see how it works. midori

Color Push

Color Push

is a cool art experience from WeTransfer that uses color and movement to help you create art in 90 seconds or less. Then once you are done, you can download your generative art. WeTransfer says this about it in a blog post about the tool: 

The process offers users a moment to zone out from day-to-day tasks and express themselves however they wish. 
colorpush

3D Kinetic Typography

How does 3D kinetic typography look and work? This cool pen by Anna the Scavenger shows it off in a funky style that will have you wanting to do more with it. 3dkinetic

StockSolo

StockSolo

is a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and XD that brings stock photos to a panel in the native application. Photos are available from Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay for use in projects. There are more than 3.2 million images to choose from. stocksolo

Flat HTML

Flat HTML

is an alternative to templating and generating complicated HTML. Use it to write a series of statements for what each element should be set to. flat-html

Circle Swap Photo Gallery

Circle Swap Photo Gallery

is a super fun pen by Steve Gardner that uses React and GSAP to swap images in a gallery using a nifty circle animated action. The circle pops to center, rotates, and shows a new image. circle-swap

BEM Cheat Sheet

BEM Cheat Sheet

is a collection of naming suggestions for some of the most common web components. It’s a resource to help you find the right class name and keep projects moving along. bem

Jitsi

Jitsi

isn’t a design tool per se, but it is a great resource for web designers and developers. This is a secure, fully-featured, and free video conferencing tool. It works as an app and integrates with Slack. It’s all open source and you don’t have to have an account to use it. jitsi

Shorthand

Shorthand

is a feature-rich CSS framework that lets you create a modern design without actually having to write the CSS. It’s a customizable tool that is packed with things you want to use – colors, gradients, font styles, transitions, and more. shorthand

Boardist

Boardist

is an emerging productivity tool that lets you design a board” space for lists, tasks, and more. Create bookmarks, notes, lists, or files and schedule tasks. It’s designed to keep your projects on track and keep you working well with a team. boardist

Sketch Dark Mode Plugin

Dark mode

is all the rage these days and this plugin allows you to generate a dark mode version of any document in Sketch. darkmode

Tabler Icons

Tabler Icons

is a set of 450+ SVG icons for web projects in a simple line style. Each icon is designed on a 24×24 grid with a 2 px stroke. tabler

Reflect

Reflect

lets you set up automated end-to-end testing for a web app and even get alerts when things break. This tool lets you do it without writing code. reflect

Shorten.rest

Shorten.rest

is a robust and flexible transactional URL shortening API. The tool is designed for enterprise-level use and includes a free plan, up to a certain number of clicks per month. shorten

Impacted 2.0

Impacted 2.0

is a rough slab with a harsh feel. It contains a robust character set with 650 characters and more than 600 glyphs. The font is all uppercase, with lowercase options having a new set of rough defects.” impacted

Hunny Bummy

Hunny Bummy

is a spring, playful typeface in a handwriting style. It contains 150+ characters and 80+ glyphs. hunny

MonoLisa

MonoLisa

is a monospace font for developers. The idea behind the typeface design is to improve developer productivity and reduce fatigue from sitting in front of a screen. monolisa

Stay Safe

Stay Safe

is a handwriting style typeface that fits the mood of the times. It contains a full upper and lowercase character set, numerals, and some glyphs. staysafe

Carrie Cousins

Carrie Cousins is a freelance writer with more than 10 years of experience in the communications industry, including writing for print and online publications, and design and editing. You can connect with Carrie on Twitter @carriecousins.

Read Next

15 Best New Fonts, May 2023

The choices you make when selecting a typeface have more impact on your design than almost any other decision, so it’s …

10+ Best Tools & Resources for Web Designers and Agencies (2023 updated)

Having the ability to envision a tastefully designed website (i.e., the role creativity plays) is important. But being …

20 Best New Websites, May 2023

This month, there are tons of great new agency websites to get excited about. 3D animated prisms are a popular theme, a…

How to Find the Right White Label Website Builder for Your Agency

Web design agencies face a lot of obstacles in closing the deal with new clients. One of the most common ones is the ar…

Exciting New Tools For Designers, May 2023

There are hundreds of new tools for designers and developers released each month. We sift through them all to bring you…

3 Essential Design Trends, May 2023

All three of the website design trends here mimic something bigger going on in the tech space, from a desire to have mo…

10 Best AI Tools for Web Designers (2023)

It’s time to stop worrying if AI is going to take your job and instead start using AI to expand the services you can of…

10 Best Marketing Agency Websites (Examples, Inspo, and Templates!)

Marketers are skilled in developing strategies, producing visual assets, writing text with high impact, and optimizing …

15 Best New Fonts, April 2023

Fonts are a designer’s best friend. They add personality to our designs and enable fine typography to elevate the quali…

20 Best New Websites, April 2023

In April’s edition, there’s a whole heap of large-scale, and even full-screen, video. Drone footage is back with a veng…

Exciting New Tools For Designers, April 2023

The AI revolution is having a huge impact on the types of products that are hitting the market, with almost every app b…

3 Essential Design Trends, March 2023

One thing that we often think about design trends is that they are probably good to make a list. That’s not always true…