Skip to main content

Tag: Colour

UX UI Website Examples

Creative / Development Inspiration 54

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week is a little more focused on UI design and development. And god damn they are pretty. Its all about those micro-interactions. On top of this, there are articles on Just In Time Design (it rhymes right!) and User Empowerment. Plus so much more! Enjoy this weeks design and development inspiration rundown!

 

Website Inspiration

BornFight

A digital agency that has been building websites and apps since 2009. Considering they have been doing it this long, I would have hoped the site would load slightly faster. However, it looks really good on desktop!

https://www.bornfight.com/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Design Dots

Another design and dev article curator. But this one is so much nicer. Build on Webflow, the auther only adds 5 pieces of content a day. Each from a different sector. Well worth a look.

https://www.designdots.co/

 

UI UX Interaction Design Week 16

A collection of UI and UX interfaces. Some great examples of websites done right.

http://gillde.com/ui-ux-interaction-design-week-16/

 

Building Your Colour Palette

An article on how to build a website colour palette. Well written, helps get the job done.

https://refactoringui.com/previews/building-your-color-palette/

 

User Empowerment Through Design

It’s not just about creating stunning visuals anymore, users are seeking whole experiences that make them feel more powerful and complete.

https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/empowerment-through-design/

 

The UX of Registration and Login

Two of the biggest barriers to entry. Registration and Login. If not designed right can lose a lot of users.

https://www.twotalltotems.com/blog/index.php/2017/12/20/the-ux-of-registration-and-login/

 

Mobbin

A collection of hand picked mobile design patterns that reflect the best in design. A definite bookmark.

https://mobbin.design/

 

Gestalt-Driven UX: The Patterns That Drive Our World

Gestaltism is a holistic philosophy that studies how humans recognize patterns and simplify complex, disparate information.

https://hackernoon.com/design-psychology-gestalt-driven-ux-64ac01cd257a

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Feather

Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24×24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability. Only loads the ones you need.

https://github.com/feathericons/feather

 

autoComplete

autoComplete.js is a simple pure vanilla Javascript library that’s built for speed, high versatility and seamless integration with wide range of projects & systems.

https://github.com/TarekRaafat/autoComplete.js

 

A bit of everything

Just In Time Design

Continuously delivering small iterations based on the team’s needs can transform the product development process. This approach shifts the focus away from highly-produced, out-of-date, difficult-to-maintain design, opening up the process to tighter collaboration and a higher standard of quality.

https://matthewstrom.com/writing/just-in-time-design.html

 

No I Don’t Want To Take Your Survey

In our industry surveys help with understanding the end user. The issue is how companies go about getting the information. Sometimes a survey on a website that interupts the user experience just isn’t the best way!

http://gerrymcgovern.com/no-i-dont-want-to-take-your-survey/

 

HolaBrief

Very few projects end up with exceptional results. HolaBrief makes it easy to ask all the right questions and nail your design brief every time. Built by designers, for designers.

https://www.holabrief.com/

Coloors - Colour Scheme Generator

Creative / Development Inspiration 51

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week was a hard week to work out what not to put in this design development rundown. There were so many great choices. A brilliant website inspiration, some great design based tools, and all the articles. Enjoy!

 

Website Inspiration

St. Phillips Homes

A development company, specialising in building homes in desirable locations. The site is fast to load, and has a sleek look and feel. A nice change from tech sites.

https://stphilipshomes.co.uk/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Coolours

The super fast colour scheme generator that looks pretty!

https://coolors.co/

 

Dribbles 404 Page

Sometimes users do get lost. Dribble has created an interactive 404 page to get them back on track!

https://dribbble.com/404errorpage

 

Confessions of a Flawed Designer

A comic on some bad habits this designer is trying to fix.

https://thedesignteam.io/confessions-of-a-flawed-designer-11746ff42675

 

Refill me

A brilliant real world example of UX. Each table has a small painted area where you put your glasses if you want a refill.

https://www.waveguide.io/patterns/else/entry/refill-me

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

30 Seconds of CSS

A curated collection of useful (and not useful) CSS snippets that you can understand in 30 seconds or less. Some really helpful ones, like a load bouncer or how to make a Circle.

https://30-seconds.github.io/30-seconds-of-css/

 

Easier Scrollytelling with Position Sticky

Use minimal CSS to produce an engaging story telling process, without the weight of JavaScript

https://pudding.cool/process/scrollytelling-sticky/

 

The Architecture No One Needs

Why don’t you use React?! Make it a SPA! Hold up, maybe a single page app isn’t the right call for this project…

https://www.gregnavis.com/articles/the-architecture-no-one-needs.html

 

Turbolinks

Originally built for Ruby on Rails apps (look at the BaseCamp example) this JS script makes navigating a site super speed fast. All by not reloading the page. Simples.

https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks

 

Lozad.js

On the same vein of speedy loading. Here is a 0.9kb lazy loader for images and iframes. No dependencies. One of the better packages I have seen.

https://github.com/ApoorvSaxena/lozad.js

 

A bit of everything

Only One Deliverable Matters

So much varied work goes into producing a digital product. Mock ups, sketches, user flows. This is all incredibly important. The documents that it generates are not. Remember what you are creating.

https://bigmedium.com/ideas/only-one-deliverable-matters.html

 

The Web Accessibility Introduction I Wish I Had

Hello past self. Here is why web accessibility matters to your job. Turns out web accessibility affects all users, not just thought with disabilities. Sort it out.

https://dev.to/maxwell_dev/the-web-accessibility-introduction-i-wish-i-had-4ope

 

How (properly) Wasting Time at Work Increases Productivity

Our workaholic culture and the business epidemic tend to villainize time-wasting behaviours during work — like leisurely lunches and web browsing — but research proves that breaks can enhance your performance, on many levels.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-wasting-time-at-work-properly-increases-productivity-76272d651ef0

 

Pitfalls of Running A/B Tests

This is something close to my heart. I am a bit advocate of testing all data you can lay your hands on. However, remember to consider all the results…

https://medium.com/joytunes/the-pitfalls-of-running-a-b-tests-4da7141960d7

 

My First Taste of Grav

I have been looking for alternatives for small site development systems for a while now. I came across Grav. These are my first thoughts.

https://thoughtsandstuff.com/first-taste-of-grav/

Web Character from Pub and SVG

Creative / Development Inspiration 50

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This is the 50th Creative and Development Inspiration rundown. That is almost a year of finding best practise articles, and not updating my site to have SSL (I only sorted it yesterday, what a ballache). In any case, this week has been a great one for web articles. From best UX practices, to setting website goals, to infinite scroll, and back to web accessibility. This weeks design development rundown is an eclectic mix.

 

Website Inspiration

Franco Manca

Kicking this week off with the website inspiration. A website for sourdough pizza. Simple, easy to understand, with subtle (and not so subtle CSS animations). Someones websites don’t need to be astounding to do a great job.

https://www.francomanca.co.uk/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

UX Design Practices: How to Make Web Interface Scannable

Scannability is one of the most essential factors of website usability. We have so much content at our fingertips, more than as can consume. Due to this websites need to be designed in a way to get the information easily and quickly, so we can go back to Twitter.

https://uxplanet.org/ux-design-practices-how-to-make-web-interface-scannable-2010125c710e

 

7 Ways to Design For a Global Audience

How you design a website that doesn’t have a clearly defined target audience? Web Designer Depot walk through 7 different steps.

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/7-ways-to-design-for-a-global-audience/

 

User Experience: How to Improve Your Website UX with Humor and Cuteness

Building a website is all about your users. You need to be aware of your audience and you build your brand identity around them. There are thousands of ways to approach and enhance your website user experience. One of the strategies we are often presented with is using humor and cuteness added to your website style.

https://icons8.com/articles/user-experience-improve-website-ux-humor-cuteness

 

What is a Design Sprint

Taken from Design Sprint: A Practical Guidebook for Building Great Digital Products. This article breaks down how to maximise the chance of making something people actually want.

https://www.freshtilledsoil.com/what-is-a-design-sprint

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Mouth Expressions with Pug, SVG ad GSAP

Bringing some character to Codepen, Alessandro Falchi as created this brilliant animation that jumps between moods.

https://codepen.io/afalchi82/pen/OBjKyZ

 

Is Gutenberg the End or a New Beginning for WordPress?

I would argue yes, maybe, depending on the user. Iain from Delicious Brains has a lot of say on the issue. Well worth the read if you are a user of WordPress

https://deliciousbrains.com/wordpress-gutenberg

 

Stop Building Websites With Infinite Scroll!

I’ll be honest. I was surprised when I saw this article, as I had no idea people still developed sites with infinite scroll. Turns out they do. Please, please stop.

https://logrocket.com/blog/infinite-scroll/

 

Percy.io

Sold as an all in one visual testing solution, Percy takes screenshots of your site when a new version rolls out. If there any any issues, Percy will tell you!

https://percy.io/

 

Web Accessibility for 2019

Today’s content can consist of VR, animation, data visualisations, and video games. As well as the more standard HTML tags. This means a broken experience for those who rely on assertive technologies. How can this be changed moving into 2019?

https://blog.sourcerer.io/building-web-accessibility-in-2019-b4bf16ef5754

 

A bit of everything

 

Making Your Design Systems Dynamic

Components are not static. They resize and move with the page. So why are designers designing them as such? Is it due to the tools evolving from a print background?

https://uxdesign.cc/making-your-design-systems-dynamic-644cf1c7d33f

 

Uber’s Undoing Part III: Redemption

In Design and Development Inspiration 58 I covered the 2 part of this article. Here is the third. A real look at why Uber should get gone (they don’t know what is going on it seems).

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2018/10/24/ubers-undoing-part-iii-redemption

 

The Modern Web Design Process: Setting Goals

The first step to a successful website, is working out the point of the website. This seems like common sense, but apparently not.

https://webflow.com/blog/the-modern-web-design-process-setting-goals

 

User Research is a Team Sport

Big reveal research does not work. As in, one person going away and doing all the work, ending in a presentation does not allow the team to immerse in the user information. The team must be there from the start.

http://www.myddelton.co.uk/blog/user-research-is-a-team-sport

Mawla Banner

Creative / Development Inspiration 48

Robert Marshall 1 Comment

A focus on design systems this week, with a brilliant piece on Ubers rebrand, website inspiration, and micro nudges. Plus a few more in this weeks design development inspiration rundown.

 

Website Inspiration

Mawla – Mobile & Web Development Studio

Firstly, I love these bobble shapes used across the Mawla site. That, combined with the pastel colours makes it friendly, and welcoming. Lots of white space between sections allows the user to fully digest each point. And it works well on mobile!

https://mawla.io/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Uber’s Undoing Part I: Whipping Boy

Uber has been through so many re-brands, they don’t seem to know who they are any more. Eli pulls apart the company, and looks at the way their re-brands have seemingly had no grounding.

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2018/10/10/ubers-undoing-part-i-whipping-boy

 

A Guide to Colour Accessibility in Product Design

Accessibility is getting a lot of traction now, with more designers and developers trying to get the upper-hand. With that in mind, have you ever thought about colour accessibility?

https://medium.com/inside-design/a-guide-to-color-accessibility-in-product-design-516e734c160c

 

Micro nudge: a micro animation for behavioural change

A micro nudge is a well-timed small animation that prompts a user to complete a small task. This article includes examples from Instagram, and walks us through the process.

https://uxplanet.org/micro-nudge-a-micro-animation-for-behavioral-change-dd15ecd4fab3

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Building an Image Generator for the Number 1 Track on Spotify

DJ Snake, Cardi B, Selena Gomez, and Ozuna have released their new song, Taki Taki, into the world and it has quickly soared to #1 on Spotify’s Global Top 50. Lee Martin was asked to create a marketing concept. This is what he came up with.

https://medium.com/@leemartin/taki-taki-eb45d03a8fb1

 

Cross Browser Testing Cloud

LambaTest allows you to test your website or application across 2000+ browsers and operating systems.

https://www.lambdatest.com/home

 

A11Y Style Guide

This application is a living style guide or pattern library, generated from KSS documented styles…with an accessibility twist. A well build, well documented style library.

http://a11y-style-guide.com/style-guide/

 

 

A Collection of Design System Articles

I have recently become interested in design systems. The concept makes complete sense, allowing all stakeholders to understand the brand – as well as making future design much faster!

Designing Design Systems

Clearlefts Jerlyn walks through the process of designing a design system, and how they run workshops to encourage stack holders to work through pain points.

https://clearleft.com/posts/designing-design-systems

 

Design Systems and Agility

A piece extended from a talk at UX Australia on design systems and their importance. Who do they serve? What is the point?

https://medium.com/interactive-mind/design-systems-and-agility-part-1-of-2-b96c188acfca

 

Understanding Design Systems and Patterns

The concept of design systems is not new to creative industries, but it has only recently been picked up by the digital side.  This article breaks down what a design system is, and can be.

https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/design-system

 

A bit of everything

You can’t do human-first design without looking after your humans.

Our industry has a poor reputation of burn-out, long hours and stress. How can you keep moral high in the office?

https://perspective.despark.com/you-cant-do-human-first-design-without-looking-after-your-humans-726a0074834f

Creative / Development Inspiration 47

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

12 articles to help inspire you from last week. This website design and development inspiration has some great pieces on UX, a few website examples, and some more code snippets.

 

Have you ever considered that web performance goes hand in hand with UX, or why you should definitely user test. Well I have some thought piece for you!

 

Website Inspiration

Torch App

A simple site that works well on desktop and mobile. An interesting product as well. Love a bit of AR.

https://www.torch.app/

 

Poor Millennials

An article by Huffington post that walks you through the issues millennials have, using modern website techniques. Good work. Interesting read.

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

The product design tool for the day after launch

Site has gone live, but you have seen tweaks are needed. No need to write each one down and send to the developer. With this extension you can make the changes in the console and send with comments. Cannot believe its taken this long!

https://mod-dot.com/teaser/

 

Microcopy Inspirations

All those pages (like 404) that you don’t know how to style, or what copy to use. Well here you are.

https://www.microcopyinspirations.com/

 

Icondrop

One place for all your icons – easily used, easily passed on to the next user.

http://icondrop.io/

 

Understanding Design Systems

While it may seem like a new way of approaching digital workflow, the concept of a design system is not “new” to creative industries. At the core of any design system is a language of design patterns that solve common problems a designer might face.

https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/design-system

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

 When to use target_blank

Chris Coyier breaks down when you should, and shouldn’t use target_blank.

https://css-tricks.com/use-target_blank/

 

Random Colour Harmonies

Last week I showed you how Lyft had created a colour palette generator. Well here is another one!

https://codepen.io/meodai/full/RerqjG/

 

Google Maps stopped working? This could be why…

Google recently updated their billing model, and changed the way the APIs were set up. Here I outline how to sort that.

http://thoughtsandstuff.com/google-maps-not-working-with-api/

 

A bit of everything

Breaking the Deadlock Between User Experience and Developer Experience

We cannot talk about user experience, without also including performance. This article opens this issue up. Very interesting read.

https://alistapart.com/article/breaking-the-deadlock-between-user-experience-and-developer-experience

 

Getting to Yes — Convincing Stakeholders to Invest in User Testing

Those who understand the importance of UX know that design-centric companies have a higher ROI so including user testing in a design project comes as a no-brainer. On the contrary, unfamiliarity with its potential benefits means that many product owners don’t consider testing in the first place.

https://blog.maze.design/stakeholders-user-testing/

 

No Conversions? Here are 4 Reasons that Might Help

Getting users to convert can be a tricky one. This article highlights for places where your website might be falling down, and how to fix it.

https://www.cortes.design/post/some-traffic-but-no-conversions-here-are-4-reasons-your-page-is-not-converting-any-why

Card 2.0 Web Banner

Creative / Development Inspiration 45

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Persuasive design, portfolio redesign, and how to run a dev sprint. This weeks design and development inspiration rundown has a great selection of articles and code snippets to keep you up to date with last weeks tech.

 

Website Inspiration

Resn

A global creative digital agency. Although hard to work out how to get their contact details, I love this site! Clever use of JS animation and video.

https://resn.co.nz/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

How and why I redesign my portfolio every year

Lessons this designer learned after iterating their site design over 6 years.

https://uxdesign.cc/how-and-why-i-redesign-my-portfolio-every-year-bf3bba3833fc

 

Using persuasive design and triggers to increase conversions

Learn how to improve your conversion rate and increase sales by adding persuasive design elements and triggers to your eCommerce websites.

https://webflow.com/blog/using-persuasive-design-and-triggers-to-increase-conversions

 

Cards 2.0

100 symbols and elements ready for use in any UI. Really nicely designed, with a light modern look.

http://cards2.webflow.io/

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Prettier

An opinionated code formatter that makes your code prettier.

https://github.com/prettier/prettier

 

KY

Ky is a tiny and elegant HTTP client based on the browser Fetch API

https://github.com/sindresorhus/ky

 

Sal

A lightweight scroll libary. Just remember don’t overuse, as I explain in week 27.

https://mciastek.github.io/sal/

 

Brownian Gnats

A great JS animation (ish) example on random paths to create little animals. Although a very basic concept, you could built a lot on top of this.

https://codepen.io/DonKarlssonSan/pen/aJVxbO

 

18 Tips for Running a Successful Design Sprint

Development time is a precious resource. In order to be more efficient and responsive, product teams continuously try to use advanced techniques for product creation. One of the most popular frameworks that help the product team to achieve this goal is a design sprint.

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/09/18-tips-for-running-a-successful-design-sprint/

 

A bit of everything

Real Work vs Imaginary Work

How do you catch more problems in the uphill phase before they catch you later on in the process? The problem with uphill work is it ‘imaginary’.

https://m.signalvnoise.com/real-work-vs-imaginary-work-8bdb84a7d1da

 

The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing

Automated accessibility tests are a great resource to have, but they can’t automatically make your site accessible. Use them as one step of a larger testing process.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/09/importance-manual-accessibility-testing/

CSS Wizardry banner

Creative / Development Inspiration 41

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

A brilliant landing page example, common web design mistakes, pure CSS wizardry, and some great thought-provoking articles. This weeks design development rundown is a little more aimed at helping you consider your design and dev. For example, how did Facebook end up bad? Is Google Amp really the way forwards (no is the answer to that), as well as articles explaining the best way to design elements on your website.

 

Website Inspiration

Duda – Landing Page

I found this through clicking an advert on Facebook. Selling themselves as a WordPress replacement I was intrigued. I left having found a brilliant landing page. Simple, and effective, with nice use of CSS animation.

https://wp.duda.co

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Common web page design mistakes

16 well explained examples of the most common mistakes made in web design, with a focus on how to avoid these.

http://blog-en.tilda.cc/articles-website-design-mistakes

 

Waveguide – Design Knowledge Base

A curated, searchable base of design knowledge, UX/UI patterns and examples for research and inspiration. The goal is to help create a repository of referable concepts to help designers and developers build amazing, high quality products.

https://www.waveguide.io

 

Designing Charts – Principles every designer should know

Seemingly simple rules can be forgotten when overwhelmed with the larger project. This article steps though the correct principles for designing charts, and why.

https://uxdesign.cc/designing-charts-principles-every-designer-should-know-part-2-ce1e06af56fc

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Pure CSS Wizardry

A brilliant codepen by Julia Muzafarova. A wizard with potions making animals come alive. All with CSS. Love it!

https://codepen.io/miocene/full/mjLPVp/

 

Guess.JS

A selection of libraries and tools for enabling a machine-learning driven user-experience across the web. It uses Google Analytics to work determine which page the user is likely to visit next, and pre-fetches all resources required.

https://github.com/guess-js/guess

 

Carbon

Create beautiful images of your source code, right in the browser. Share directly from the platform.

https://carbon.now.sh

 

Creating the “Perfect” CSS system

A high level guide for designers and developers who write CSS, but want to be more strategic about building moderate to large scale CSS systems

https://medium.com/gusto-design/creating-the-perfect-css-system-fa38f5bcdd9e

 

Lazyestload.js

Only load images when they are in the view port, if you scroll past they wont be loaded. Only 350 bytes of JavaScript. I introduced Carl a couple of weeks ago, but that is a more general asset manager.

https://github.com/Paul-Browne/lazyestload.js

 

Fast Average Colour

A client side library to quickly get the images average colour. Not sure how much of a good idea this is to use on a front end, but it could be used on the admin side to save the colour in an input.

https://github.com/fast-average-color/fast-average-color

 

 

A bit of everything

Google AMP – A 70% drop in our conversion rate

Let’s talk about Google AMP. AMP stands for Accelerated-Mobile-Pages. It’s a technology Google originally introduced to get web developers to speed up their web pages for mobile devices and mobile networks. But in many ways it seems like great technology for any device or network. Who doesn’t want fast websites?

https://medium.com/the-set-list/google-amp-a-70-drop-in-our-conversion-rate-35fe3cb69c59

 

Everything bad about Facebook is bad for the same reason

In June 2016, Antonio Perkins unintentionally broadcast his own death to the world. It was a sunny day in Chicago, and he was sharing it on Facebook Live, a platform for distributing video in real-time, released just a few months earlier.

https://qz.com/1342757/everything-bad-about-facebook-is-bad-for-the-same-reason/

 

How to create a customer journey map

Understanding users’ behaviour and feelings is crucial when building a user-centred product. In this guide you’ll learn how to create a Customer Journey Map and how to apply it to any project.

https://aerolab.co/blog/customer-journey-map

bitmoji api output

Creative / Development Inspiration 34

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Website inspiration in the form of a Tech Venture, sexy background animations, use the Bitmoji API, and why you should go and get that money! This weeks Creative and Development Inspiration is slightly shorter than usual. Mainly because of my crippling 2 day hangover. However, I believe that the articles and links I have pulled together this week are still that top quality information 😉

 

Website Inspiration

Rocka

This tech venture builder has put together a really interesting website, using parallax in a really enjoyable way. The use of vibrant colours and subtle animations add to the effect.

https://rocka.co/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Cool Backgrounds

From the creator of https://cssgradient.io/, Cool Backgrounds is their answer to customised background images. Whether you need something for a social media background image, or hero image on a website, you might find something that works for you.

https://coolbackgrounds.io/

 

Interface Exploration: Depth and Color

An experiment in using depth and Colour to create a new UI style. An interesting article, worth a read.

https://blog.marvelapp.com/interface-exploration-depth-color/

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Bokeh Effect

A great background animation. The Bokeh Effect is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. This codepen takes that style, and makes it live.

https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/full/BxMQYQ/

 

Optic

AI Pair programming that automates those tasks you don’t want to do. Saves you time and helps with your workflow. From what I can see it is only build for JavaScript, but this isn’t a massive issue. ReactJS is getting so large this tool is a definite help.

https://useoptic.com/

 

Libmojo

Use the Bitmoji API with this tiny library to add customised Bitmoji avatars to your newest web project. Libmoji makes it easy for you to integrate Bitmoji avatars into your project without the need for having a Bitmoji or Snapchat account

https://github.com/matthewnau/libmoji

 

Don’t Use The Placeholder Attribute

The placeholder attribute contains a surprising amount of issues that prevent it from delivering on what it promises. This has been my believe for a while now, but here is someone smarter than me putting it into words.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/06/placeholder-attribute/

 

A bit of everything

Fathom

Web analytics, that is simple, trustworthy and open source. With the introduction of GDPR it is a perfect, non-bloated way to track your website usage.

https://usefathom.com/

 

Take that money

This isn’t my normal post, but it sits well within the design/dev world. It is something that really confuses me. How so many people don’t understand it all comes down to money ( “but Rob, I do it for love”. That’s brilliant, but love doesn’t put a roof over your head, not if you don’t live with your parents ).

http://www.erickarjaluoto.com/blog/take-the-money/

SVGator

Creative / Development Inspiration 32

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week has a very diverse range of links and articles. Some brilliant websites for inspiration, ranging from clean portfolios to more modern app landing pages. Some tit-bits to tickle the taste buds of web designs, and finishing it off with some development snippets. I hope you find something new in this weeks Creative and Development Inspiration.

 

Website Inspiration

I have been scouring the web for examples of websites to help get your brain moving in the right direction. This week I have found several great portfolio sites, as well as some nice, clean sales sites.

 

Dejan Markovic

Simple, clean website. But for some reason really stood out to me.

http://dejan.works/

 

Matt Farley

Simple and clean once again, but with a nice flow to it.

http://mattfarley.ca/

 

Cronhub

Cronhub is a CRON monitoring service. The website is clean, well broken down, and easy to find information. This can be very difficult to achieve.

https://cronhub.io/

 

Monetha

A deal maker based on Block chain. Monetha’s website is modern, and a great landing page for the app.

https://www.monetha.io/

 

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

 

7 Web Design Trends for 2018 – Don’t Fall Behind

Orana Creative have pulled together a must read guide for web design trends in 2018.  I wouldn’t say I fully agree, but they highlight some good points and it is always interesting to see what other people are pushing.

https://www.oranacreative.com/dont-fall-behind-follow-2018-trends-web-design

 

SVGator

Animate SVG easily. As simple as import, animate, export. There is no coding required. A very simple Adobe like interface for animating your SVGs.

https://www.svgator.com/

 

Payment Checkout Flow Animation

A beautifully designed checkout flow concept. The journey the user takes from selecting the item, to finally paying for it. An interesting use of micro-interactions and transitions between pages.

https://dribbble.com/shots/4689263-Payment-Checkout-Flow-Animation

 

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

 

Guzzle

I am probably a bit behind the times here, but I thought Id share as I have only just found it. A PHP HTTP client and framework for building RESTful web services. Now I know that more and more people are moving towards Node.js for this sort of thing, but I have a soft spot for PHP.

http://guzzle3.readthedocs.io/

 

Atomic CSS

Atomizer is a tool for creating Atomic CSS. Generate an Atomic stylesheet dynamically from the Atomic classes you’re actually using in your project (no unused styles!), or predeclare styles in configuration – it’s up to you. Atomizer is not opinionated, brings no CSS of its own, and integrates nicely with your favorite task runner.

https://acss.io/

 

tingle.js

aA minimalist and easy-to-use modal plugin written in pure JavaScript (We like modals here, also features RModal in Creative and Development Inspiration 30).

https://robinparisi.github.io/tingle/

 

The State of Changing Gradients with CSS Transitions and Animations

A well written article by CSS Tricks about CSS transitions and animations. The pitfalls and issues for working with these properties across many browsers (cough, IE, cough). Well worth the read.

https://css-tricks.com/the-state-of-changing-gradients-with-css-transitions-and-animations/

 

A bit of everything

How to Plan Website Design

Web design can generally be seen as what engages the users eye. What is pretty enough to keep them there. This is not true. What you really want to do, is engage the user and then convert them.

https://anartfulscience.com/How-To-Plan-Website-Design.php

 

Nike React

Creative / Development Inspiration 30

Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This is my first version of Creative and Development Inspiration (See the first ever Creative and Development Inspiration, we have come a long way), organised in a more understandable way. Rather than the blog being thrown together with no structure like in the past, I will be breaking each section up so you can go straight to what interests you. This also helps me go back and find that interesting link I found, for when I need it some point in the near future!

 

Website Inspiration

This weeks selection of websites that inspired me. I will always try to keep them relevant to design and development, but sometimes its just a nice website!

 

Audi is beta testing a new site

This new website for Audi simply and efficiently shows the models of each car. Granted, I haven’t tested it on mobile, but it looks great on desktop!

https://beta.audi.co.uk/models.html

 

Nike React

Nikes website for their React brand. Cleverly put together, a bit of fun as you build your own show.

https://www.nike-react.com

 

 

Designer Resources, examples and inspiration

Articles on the newest design concepts, why things should be done in a certain way, or just plain old sexy images. Always related to web, always meant to inspire.

 

WTF! (Whats the Flow)

If you don’t read anything else on this weeks Creative and Development Inspiration, read this! A great article on why User Flows are so important, and how they should be laid out. Too many people don’t follow this, and it leads to problems further down the line.

https://uxdesign.cc/the-biggest-wtf-in-design-right-now-87139f367d66

 

Why You Shouldn’t Use Bright, Saturated Colours for Backgrounds

If you’re using a bright and saturated colour for your background, you’re making it hard for users to keep their eyes on your page. Bright, saturated colours attract the most user attention. Too much of it in a large area overstimulates the retinas which can strain the eyes.

http://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-shouldnt-use-bright-saturated-colors-for-backgrounds/

 

 

Development Snippets and Samples

This weeks selection of libraries, code snippets and development inspiration. I will always try to include this section, and hopefully help you grow your projects.

 

RModal JS

A 1.2kb modal dialog box with no dependencies. All browsers seem to be supported, up from IE9, and it is Bootstamp and Animate.css friendly. Worth a look.

https://rmodal.js.org/

 

Keyframe App

Keyframes gives you a visual timeline to help you create, view, and run animations without having to go back and forth between your browser and editor. And it gives you the CSS when you’re done.

https://keyframes.app/

 

Nano JS

nanoJS is around 100 lines of code (0.6 Kb compressed) JavaScript library for basic DOM manipulation. It has jQuery like syntax and supports chaining.

https://vladocar.github.io/nanoJS/

 

Hybrids

A brilliant UI library for creating Web Components with simple and functional API

https://github.com/hybridsjs/hybrids

 

 

A bit of everything

You try so hard to categorise everything, and then you find an article that doesn’t quite fit, but is worth linking!

 

How not to write an error message

Discover all the ways the internet’s most well-meaning messages can go horribly, horribly wrong.

https://webflow.com/blog/how-not-to-write-an-error-message