Side projects are the wellspring of many a creative career. Industry changing concepts, technology leaps, companies, entire communities, have all sprung from a simple idea developed in a designer’s spare time. Sadly for many, being freed from the ‘tyranny’ of a client brief, also means being freed from the tyranny of a regular paycheck. Ideas that could come to fruition in months, take years to realize—or are abandoned altogether—because...

Happy New Year! At this time every January we try to predict what’s going to happen in our industry over the next 12 months. I hope that 2018 will be a great year for inclusive design, for standards-compliance, for ethical practices. I hope for those things every year, and annually it does feel like we’re inching closer. However this post is about unexpected trends, changes, and an attempt to predict the landscape ahead of us, because it feels...

Framer is known as a prototyping app, but in an unexpected move they have just announced the launch of a fully integrated, visual design tool. Aimed at creative professionals, the new Framer is designed to rival established options including Creative Cloud and Sketch, new kids on the block Affinity and Figma, and is timed to steal the thunder of InVision, whose own much heralded design app is expected next month. We’re betting on something...

Pantone have unveiled their official color of 2018, Ultra Violet (Pantone 18-3838 to be precise.) Pantone have been nominating a color of the year since 2000, and it’s often seen as a barometer for the prevailing cultural mood—although with designers jumping on the annual selection as an easy option for an on-trend palette, it has frequently been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Violet is not, as commonly perceived, a shade of purple but...

It has often been asserted by fans of pop-wisdom that there are only two distinct plots in the whole of western culture: a person goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town. A brief flick through your bookcase will disprove the rule—unless you permit metaphorical journeys, in which everything fits—but the frequency with which the idea is repeated, and the sense it seems to make, speaks volumes about the centrality of the unknown in...

Dropbox has launched a controversial redesign of its brand identity, intended to help the SaaS standout in a market increasingly packed with pretenders to its throne. What they’ve unveiled seems certain to split opinion. On the one hand, the previous identity was business-like and sat comfortably alongside other tools in your GUI; on the other hand, that identity is tied to a business model that Dropbox, it seems, no longer aspires to:...

Yesterday YouTube launched a major UI revision to all its channels, from mobile, to games consoles. At the same time it’s made the first significant revision to its logo since its launch 12 years ago. The revised logo has been made live on mobile and desktop, and will begin to appear across all channels in the coming days. Some companies are for ever launching redesigns, others release minor iterative tweaks on a regular basis. YouTube is one...

Omnipresent publishing platform Medium has rebranded, launching its third logo in as many years. The new logotype is heavily influenced by Medium’s original slab-serif identity, which suggests that the last logo wasn’t performing as hoped. Medium’s 2015–2017 logo was an oddly drawn, pseudo-isometric effort, combined with an inoffensive middle-of-the-road sans-serif; it always felt like an idea compromised by too much management....

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, than the merits of its (in)famous algorithm. So it’s something of a surprise to learn that Google is abandoning...

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. The new design is expected to start appearing worldwide over the coming days and...

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 hardware, and the interface has been entirely re-imagined to take full advantage of touch interactions. The Affinity...

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, via the sidebar. Quick-access icons have been added for these services, and they’re always available via speed dial....

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 storytelling that transcends web sites, or news feeds, and enters the realms of Time, or National Geographic, by...

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 of failure. Adobe is understood to be working on AI enhancements to its Creative Cloud product range. Eventually, someone...