Articles by Ben Moss

Google’s minimal search page has consistently been heralded as a minimalist masterpiece since it first appeared in 1996. It’s been argued by numerous designers—myself included—that it was the perception of Google as a ‘pure’ unadulterated search was more central to Google’s rise and eventual dominance,...

Twitter is launching a redesign of its iOS, Android, TweetDeck and Twitter Lite apps. The redesign is intended to make the service “feel lighter, faster, and easier to use” and features a number of changes that mean an update is pending for twitter.com too. As with any redesign, there’s some good, some bad, and some probably-ok-once-we-get-used-to-it....

Affinity Photo for iPad was announced this week at Apple’s WWDC. The desktop version is one of the most elegant pieces of design software on the market, and that excellence appears to have been successfully transferred to the iPad. The iPad edition of the award-winning software has been built specifically for the iPad’s...

Opera have released a major update to their browser. Codenamed “Reborn”, the new browser has been in development for months and includes several features that were pioneered in Opera’s experimental Neon browser. The most prominent feature is the addition of native support for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram,...

Launched just over four years ago, Quartz is a digital publisher of news that aims to present readers with a truly world view. Focused on the business world, qz.com is targeted primarily at mobile devices; two thirds of Quartz readers access the service on their phone. Originally released in 2016, Quartz Index is a form of digital...

The artificial intelligence (AI) industry is undergoing unprecedented growth. AI development is finding its way into all areas of business and, increasingly, into creative endeavors. Despite the obvious difficulties, Canva, The Grid, and Autodesk have all tried to market AI design algorithms, with varying degrees...

There’s a tendency within the design community to depict freelancing as a goal to be achieved. Who wouldn’t want to lie in every day, do two hours of work in front of the TV, followed by an afternoon in coffee shops posing for stock photographers, all while getting paid twice your current salary, and having your pick of...

When we talk about web design in 2017, we’re really talking about responsive web design. In just over six years, the term ‘responsive’ has become an all pervasive industry standard. Responsive web design is the process of designing a site, or a web app, so that its content adjusts appropriately according to the device...

Every year, blogs like this one try to predict what’s going to happen in our industry over the next 12 months. Design is a product of its environment and good design reflects the world that it exists in; no one has a crystal ball, so unsurprisingly design predictions are wrong as often as they are right. However, there are...

January is the time most of us cease reflecting on the year gone by, and start looking to the months ahead. It seems everyone has different ideas on what to expect in 2017 (you’ll read ours next week) and one of the most anticipated changes this year, is the introduction of CSS Grid Layout. Grid Layout allows us to define areas...

“Wow!” is the usual response on trying VR for the first time. Even after spending hours in a headset, the experience is still extraordinary. From a designer’s point of view, VR introduces a range of new challenges, but it also frees us from some of the problems we’ve wrestled with for years; any notion of a viewport is...

WeTransfer is one of the mostly widely admired start-ups of the last decade. In many ways it embodies what we tell our clients to aspire to: a simple idea, solving a common problem, well executed. What really makes WeTransfer standout is the high-value it places on design; since its launch in 2009, WeTransfer has used design...

When Adobe announced it was moving into the stock image market, the biggest benefit it brought to the table was tight integration with its Creative Cloud suite of applications—the ability to search for and license stock photography within the apps. Now, Shutterstock, one of the largest and most popular stock providers...

Email is far older than the web; introduced in 1972, anyone who’s ever tried designing for email can be forgiven for assuming that it hasn’t had an update since. It’s still routine for layout in email to be controlled with HTML tables, mention flexbox support to an email designer and watch them roll around laughing. That’s...