Each month we be post a brief review-article featuring
the very best of what’s been happening in the world of design and
development over the course of the previous month. This typically
includes news, features, newly released fonts, freebies, plugins and
other important happenings across our industry, keeping you up to date
on what’s trending each month.
Iconic Launches (finally)
Iconic is the company arguably
responsible for the recent resurgence in SVG interest among the
front-end development community. Iconic originally stated as a
KickStarter project
last september and was successfully funded with over $90k in pledges.
After much anticipation, the project officially launched earlier last
month. Iconic offer interactive SVG based icon systems for developers
with a range awesome features.
Delete.im
Launched earlier in March,
Delete.im
is a web app for sharing messages that are auto-deleted after a given
time-frame that you stipulate. Want to send or share something you
usually wouldn’t email, like a password or login address? Delete.im
ensures your data is safe and temporary. They also have an
API page for developers wanting to integrate.
Stripe
Stripe is a developer-friendly
system for integrating and managing super-simple payments online and in
mobile apps. It’s light-weight, secure and easy to integrate with simple
API’s. Great for clients wanting a simple payment system.
CodeKit 2.0
CodeKit is a front-end
development task-manager. Unlike other task managers that run from the
console, CodeKit is actually an app, with an interface. While it might
not offer some the extensive customisation other free task mangers have,
it’s super easy to use and packed with useful features. There’s also a
free trial available for download before you decide “shut up and take my money!”
Free PSD: Dark Analytics Dashboard
Italian based designer Davide Pacili released this
free analytics PSD on Dribbble for download. It’s fully layered and beautiful attention to detail. Grab it now.
Moto 360 – The Android SmartWatch
With the release of
Android Wear – the Android OS for smart-watches, Motorola hit the blocks releasing the first Android based smart-watch –
Moto 360. Nothing too flashy, but a nicely designed piece of hardware disguised as a a fashion accessory.
Redesigning IMDB
Concept redesigns are something I tend to stray away from on this
site. All too often they’re visual candy bars with little thought
process into usability. However, every once in a while, a really good
one pops up.
Gilles Bertaux did
an IMDB redesign as well as explaining the thought process behind both
the aesthetics and the redesign process. You can read it
here.
Borat Ipsum
While definitely not politically correct,
Borat Ipsum
is a placeholder text generator that generates quotes from Borat. The
tagline is “Placeholder Text Generator of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. A bit of light humour, sure to brighten
up the darkest of days.
Gravo | Free Font
Gravo is a newly released free sans serif from Ilario Strazzullo. It’s clean, simple and has a slightly retro feel to it.
Pure CSS Flat Mobile Devices
There’s lot’s of different ways to implement mockups on the web – images, SVG, GIFs, but nothing beats pure CSS.
Here are 8 mobile devices made entirely from CSS. The project homepage on GitHub is
here with further details on implementation.
Taco Spillet
A
web game for making tacos?
Yes please! Although the entire games is in (Norwegian?) it’s still
super fun trying to make tacos on web. The site design and art direction
is also very well executed.
Behind The Software UI of Tron Legacy
Software UI design in Hollywood is notoriously misrepresented, based
on fictional software with absolutely no functionality. However for Tron
Legacy, significant thought was put in to designing all the software UI
used in the hacking scenes. It’s also been well documented, read more
here.
Juicicons
A newly released set of over 200 icons
available for download in both native .ai and .svg formats.
Style Manual
Although the name implies it’s a guide to design, it’s mostly a punctuation and grammar
guide. Still, useful for brushing up on all those little mistakes we all make from time to time.
Building | Free Font
Building is a newly released free font from Italian designer
Leonardo Gubbioni.
While the font has only the most basic character set, it’s nicely
designed and could be useful for custom design work as a basis.
Spotify (official) Redesign
Spotify recently rolled out a new design across all of its platforms –
web app, tablet & mobile to a darker, highly minimalist approach.
Get the full story over on TNW
here.
High Command
Do you know why the command key symbol on your mac looks the way it
does? I won’t spoil it for you. Susan Kare (designer for Apple in the
90′s)
shares her thoughts on the process.
McDonald’s Email Solution to No Images
You know when you send an awesome HTML email that looks absolutely
beautiful, only to find that email clients are blocking the images by
default? Take a look at this
clever solution from McDonald’s.
SVG Zoom Efect
In this
demo and tut, I show you how to create a simple SVG magnifying/zoom effect. If you’re interested in SVG it’s definitely worth checking out.
Android Wear UI Overview
With the newly released Android Wear OS, developers and designers
alike now have another platform to design for – Super Small. Here’s an
interesting read on the UI (width designers in mind) of the new portable OS.
Quo.js
It’s a strange name, I can’t really figure it out. Anyway
Quo.js is a light-weight JavaScript library for integrating more dynamic gesture control on mobile devices.
CSS Diner
Level up your CSS selector skills with this fun
web app that test just how good your CSS selections are. It’s based on selecting food and plates at a table!
A List of Style Guides, Brand Guidelines, and Front-End Frameworks
This could most definitely come in handy, worth throwing in your bookmarks. It’s what it says it is – a list.
CSS Font Stack
Although
CSS Font Stack didn’t actually launch last month, I only just found it. Traditionally I’ve always custom built my font stacks. However
CSS Font Stack provides a super convenient and reliable way to quickly grab them. Definitely worth keeping in your bookmarks.
World Of Swiss
Not everyone likes scroll jacking. However, even if you don’t there’s little room for hating on this one.
World Of Swiss is a promotional page with an amazingly well executed scroll experience.
Beard Swipe
Out of all the techy April fools gags on the web this year, this is my favourite. I won’t spoil it for you though –
Beard Swipe.
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