Exciting New Tools for Designers, November 2020

In the spirit of fall feasts, this month’s collection of tools and resources is a smörgåsbord of sorts. You’ll find everything from web tools to icon libraries to animation tools to great free fonts. Let’s dig in. Here’s what new for designers this month.

The Good Line-Height

is the tool you won’t be able to live without after using it a few times. The tool calculates the ideal line-height for every text size in a typographic scale so that everything always fits the baseline grid. Set the font size, multiplier, and grid row height to get started. 

Link-to-QR

makes creating quick codes a breeze. Paste in your link and the tool creates an immediate QR code that you can download or share. Pick a color and transparency, plus size, and you are done. 

Quarkly

allows you to create websites and web apps both using a mouse and typing code – you get all the pros of responsive editing, but can also open the code editor at any time and manually edit anything and it all synchronizes. The tool is built for design control and is in beta. 

UnSpam.email

is an online spam tester tool for emails. Improve deliverability with the free email tester. The service analyzes the main aspects of an email and returns a spam score and predicts results with a heat map of your email newsletter. 

Filmstrip

allows you to create or import keyframe animations, make adjustments, and export them for web playback. It’s a quick and easy tool for modern web animation. 

CSS Background Patterns

is packed with groovy designs that you can adjust and turn into just the right background for your web project. Set the colors, opacity, and spacing; then pick a pattern; preview it right on the screen; and then snag the CSS. You can also submit your own patterns. 

Neonpad

is a simple – but fun – plain text editor in neon colors. Switch hues for a different writing experience. Use it small or expand to full browser size. 

Link Hover Animation

is a nifty twist on a hover state. The animation draws a circle around the link! 

Tint and Shade Generator

helps you make the most of any hex color. Start with a base color palette and use it to generate complementary colors for gradients, borders, backgrounds, or shadows. 

Pure CSS Product Card

by Adam Kuhn is a lovely example of an e‑commerce design that you can learn from. The card is appealing and functional. 

Free Favicon Maker

allows you to create a simple SVG or PNG favicon in a few clicks. You can set a style that includes a letter or emoji, font and size, color, and edge type and you are ready to snag the HTML or download the SVG or PNG file. 

Ultimate Free iOS Icon Pack

is a collection of 100 minimal icons in an Apple style. With black and white version of each icon and original PSD files, you can create sleek icons for your iPhone screen in minutes. And it’s completely free! No email address or registration required. 

Phosphor Icon Family

is a flexible icon family for all the things you need icons for including diagrams and presentations. There are plenty of arrows, chats, circles, clocks, office elements, lists, business logos, and more. Everything is in a line style, filled, or with duotone color. Everything is free but donations are accepted. 

3,000 Hands

is a kit of hands that includes plenty of gestures and style in six skin tones and with 10 angles of every gesture. They have a 3D-ish shape and are in an easy to use PNG format. This kit has everything you need from a set of hand icons. 

Radix Icons

is a set of 15px by 15px icons for tiny spaces. They are in a line style and are available in a variety of formats including Figma, Sketch, iconJar, SVG, npm installation, or GitHub. 

Deepnote

is a new kind of data science notebook. It is Jupyter-compatible with real-time collaboration and running in the cloud and designed for data science teams. 

ZzFXM Tiny JavaScript Music Generator

is a tiny JavaScript function that generates stereo music tracks from patterns of note and instrument data. Instrument samples are created using a modified version of the super-tiny ZzFX sound generator by Frank Force. It is designed for size-limited productions. 

Image Tiles Scroll Animation

is a different type of scrolling pattern using Locomotive Scroll. The grid creates a smooth animation in a fun and modern style. 

Bubbles

is a Chrome extension that allows you to collaborate by clicking anywhere on your screen and then dropping a comment to start a conversation with anyone. This is a nice option for work from home teams. 

Tyrus

is a toolkit from the design team at Airbnb to help illustrators make the most out of their design businesses. It is broken into sections to help you with design briefs, originality, deadlines, and feedback. 

PatchGirl

is an automated QA tool for developers. You can combine SQL and HTTP queries to build any possible state of your database. 

Apparel

Apparel is a beautiful premium typeface family with plenty of versatility in a modern serif style. It is a contemporary, classy, and fresh serif typeface with a laid-back. Its medium-large x‑height makes it ideal for headlines and brand identity design. 

Christmas Story

is a nice solution if you are already starting to think ahead to holiday projects or cards. The long swashes and tails are elaborate and fun. 

Nafta

is a fun handwriting style font that has a marker-style stroke. It’s a modern take on the popular Sharpie font. It includes all uppercase letters. 

Safira

is a wide and modern sans with ligatures and a stylish feel. The rounded ball terminals are especially elegant. 

Shine Brighter Sans

is a super-thin sans-serif with a light attitude. The limited character set combined with its light weight is best for display use.