Best Design Tool
This new design tool came out of nowhere. Drama is surprisingly robust. You can easily create complex animations using keyframes and connect scenes to create interactive prototypes with events. Drivers allow you to create interactions with drag gestures. And you can morph layers between artboards a la magic move if your layers are called the same. I’m impressed! I recommend testing the Beta and judge for yourself.
Favorite Design System
The public visual identity of the City of Chicago. It’s a comprehensive, equitable, cost-saving system for City communication and for public use to show civic pride. I love that includes everything from flags, city seals, accessibility guidelines, and UI elements.
Favorite Add-On
Notion pages built by their team and community. You can duplicate any page with one click so you can make it your own! You can find templates to get you started for 2020 too!
Favorite Stock Photo
These are headshots that are created from scratch by AI. These are people that don’t exist—kinda scary, actually. All images can be used for any purpose for free. You can filter by categories and tagged database of headshots.
Favorite Illustrator
Mechi is a fantastic graphic designer and illustrator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently works as the brand designer at Stripe and a print designer at Increment magazine — a software engineering magazine. Her illustrations, heavily influenced by anime, have characters draped in bright and vibrant colors, drawn with elegant light strokes. Dope stuff.
Favorite Free Resource
Free project management software that is great for freelancers, students, families, and personal projects.
Best Book
Shape Up is for product development teams who struggle to shape, build, and ship. Written by the innovators behind Basecamp. The book gives teams language and specific techniques to address the risks and unknowns at each stage of the product development process. I've started using their principles on a project and it's been fantastic!
Favorite Course
Ableton does it again by creating an interactive crash course of music-making lessons. No prior experience or equipment is required; you’ll do everything right here in your browser. You’ll learn about using midi to create beats, chords, and melodies. In case you missed it, their last course on Learning Synths was also amazing.
Favorite Free Illustrations
100 awesome illustrations during 100 days of illustration challenge made by Vijay Verma. You can download all illustrations completely free and use these to design landing pages, mobile app or presentations.
Favorite Case Study
After noticing inconsistencies, quirks, and discrepancies in their product, the team at Slack decided to work on a new design system. In this article, they share how they centralized standards and documented the bits and pieces that make Slack. They call it Slack Kit.
Favorite Portfolio
An insane WebGL portfolio by creative developer Bruno Simon. You use a truck to navigate a field where you’ll be able to see some of his work, play bowling, jump in ramps, and destroy things. Buckle up, turn the sound ON, and get inspired ASAP!
Most Fun Site
This site is the embodiment of horrible design practices. It’s a game that challenges you to use boxes, forms, buttons, and pop-ups in a horrific way that will, for sure, infuriate you. Give it a try. Hate me later.
Most Fun App
Be careful. If you’re like me, you’re gonna find playing with Patatap addictive… this web app turns your keyboard into a music instrument. By pressing any letter on your keyboard, you’re gonna hear weird sounds with beautiful simple animations playing on the screen. Turn up your volume and start jamming!
Coolest App
Poolside FM
Poolside FM is a retro digital oasis for the summer. The music, the style, the videos — everything on this site is fantastic. The vibe makes you feel as if it’s 1987, and you’re laying back by the pool on a hot summer day. I also recommend just listening to their Soundcloud playlists, in case you’re on the road.
Favorite Typeface
Eczar is a calligraphic serif typeface by Vaibhav Singh. It’s available for free on Google Fonts. The family offers five weights, giving you a wide expressive range. I especially like the heavier weights for display purposes.
Best Animations
Check out this collection of Lottie animations from some of the coolest animators out there. You can test your animations made with Bodymovin and perfect them here. I love projects that collect open source files and make them available for anyone. I truly believe that sharing is an act of love!
Favorite Game
Yes, I’m recommending a kid’s game. Why? Because it’s so damn fun! You get to vacuum, slam, and blow ghosts inside a haunted hotel to rescue your friends, Mario, Princess Peach, and the different toads. Each floor has different atmospheric music and a ghoulish décor theme like a concert hall, a disco, a museum, and a film set. The graphics, bosses, animations, and puzzles will keep you playing. I recommend using the co-op mode with your little nephew/daughter/son/niece!
Favorite News
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a tweet that the platform would no longer allow political advertising on its platform. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Dorsey tweeted, in a thread explaining the reasons why. This move comes a week after Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled on Capitol Hill as he defended FB’s controversial policy about not fact-checking most political ads. Yo!
Other Stuff:
Favorite Movie: Marriage Story
Favorite Podcast: The Daily
Favorite Show: BoJack Horseman Season 6 (part 1)
Favorite City I Visited: Mexico City
Favorite Song: Salted Caramel Ice Cream, Metronomy.
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