Articles by Paddi MacDonnell

2015 continues to be a fantastic year for fonts. Type designers are increasingly prolific and there’s a new design for every possible project, often completely free, or with a free option or weight. There are a couple of dominant trends for Summer: The first trend is a revived interest in ethnic and folk art styles, like the...

When you’re working on a branding project, the principle asset is the font you use for the logotype. The decision on what font to use is a critical point in any identity design. You often need something both legible and original, that can have both distinct personality and work in a variety of situations. When making your selection,...

Whether you’re building a new website, a new app, or a dashboard, you can’t do without great icons. The Web is in love with icons, they’re used everywhere from apps to responsive sites, all because they pack information into a small space. And because each set of icons is unique, you can give a different voice to a design,...

We all have great ideas, but some people are a little better at making them real than others. And kudos to them, the dedication it takes to slave away creating a new take on USB ports, a standing desk for a laptop, or a political action figure — when everyone says you’re mad — is truly impressive. But as this collection of Kickstarter...

So far, 2015 has been a bumper year for fonts, with dozens of new designs going live. There are a couple of dominant trends, both carried over from last year. The first is the ongoing influence of lettering that gives us great typefaces like Gallow Tree. The other is a love of expressive geometric sans, in designs like Ohmega...

Designers love UI Kits. They’re a great way to explore ideas, and they’re a great palette cleanser after a difficult project. Another reason to love them is that they give us incredible insights into the minds of other designers, without a client complicating things. As such they’re a great way to spot trends as they...

All designers need a little inspiration from time to time. So it’s lucky for us that there are thousands of designers, educators, philosophers, writers, and business people willing to hand out advice for free. What is more, the Web is packed with designers and illustrators who’ve put pen to paper (or finger to trackpad)...

It’s been a great year for fonts. New, more affordable, options in font design software, and more and more designers moving over to font design has produced a great crop of typefaces that are absolutely free to use for personal and commercial projects. Today we’ve put together a list of some of the greatest fonts we’ve...

By now, most Apple fans have their hands on an iPhone 6, and they do look pretty incredible — even if Apple have accidentally introduced curved screens. The iPhone is a wonderful example of iterative design; each model is an evolution rather than a revolution, and they all build on the previous design. Looking at the original...

WordPress 4.0 is now available, and millions of sites worldwide are in the process of upgrading. Despite the fact that WordPress themselves have talked down the significance of the .0 version number, WordPress 4.0 may be the most significant update in years. There have been changes to the UI, enhancements to the writing experience,...

The hamburger icon—three little bars used to indicate a link to a menu—is one if the most controversial techniques on the Web right now. Designers, we are told, all hate it; customers, we tell everyone, hate it too. Why then, is it everywhere? The hamburger icon is easily scaleable and it fits cleanly into a pixel grid. It...

We might be inclined to think of highly decorative and multi-colored fonts as belonging to the digital type age. Not so. Chromatic Type which enabled the use of outlines, shadows, and multiple colors (among other things) go back to the mid-19th century. They were made up of two or more corresponding sets that were printed one...

The pinnacle of web development is hand-coding. No other approach delivers the same bespoke quality, performance and all round job-well-done-ness as rolling up your sleeves and digging into source code. As a result, most of us spend all day everyday staring at markup, style sheets, and assorted server-side code. Despite...

It's looking to be the hottest trend to hit web design since large text: inline typefaces are the perfect marriage of character and clarity. Perfect for flat design, inline typefaces create texture without using bevels or drop shadows. Typically they have hairline strokes inside the thicker bold strokes; this gives them...