Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Every Friday, we’ll be sharing a round-up of what’s happening in the Design Industry, such as new digital product announcements, platforms being launched, unique peer projects, interesting experiments and much more. Follow along as we keep a pulse on exciting news in design each week.
Here’s our recap for the week of August 2nd through 8th, 2014.
1. Affinity Designer
If you’re looking for a new vector design app, then check out the brand new Affinity Designer for Mac. It’s currently in a free beta, and might be the next biggest thing that folks who are bored with Illustrator might want. It exports to .PSD, and has integrated file support for .AI, .PDF and .SVG files.
2. Social Rank
Social Rank is the easiest way to identify, organize and manage your followers on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to find folks following you who have huge followings or valuable connections.
3. Virgin Site User Testing Results
Luke W. shared the results of a booking comparison test taken by users who viewed the old and new Virgin Airlines websites. All users viewed the old site first before seeing the new one, and the 45 tests varied by device (15 desktop, 15 tablets, 15 phones).
4. Sketch for Print Design
Read through this post by Peter Nowel, in which he shares how he’s using Sketch for print design projects. Although Sketch wasn’t intended for this use, Peter manages to find a way.
5. Google Wallet
Google launched a new way to send money to your friends and family through your Gmail account. Available in the Google Play and Apple App stores now.
6. Layer Tennis Returns
Layer Tennis is returning this fall with a full season of live matches, presented by Adobe Creative Cloud. To kick things off, there will be a live double-header of exhibition matches on Friday afternoon, August 8th.
7. FontBureau Input
Input is a flexible system of fonts designed for code by David Jonathan Ross. If offers monospaced and proportional fonts – all with a larger range of widths, weights, and styles for richer code formatting. It’s free of charge for private use.
8. Simplify WP-Admin
Shared by CodeinWP, enjoy this article on how to simplify the WP-Admin into a more friendly version for clients.
9. 4 Layers of Design
Read through these short snippets about how to position yourself to have great design thinking.
10. Navdy
Want to know what driving in the future feels like? Then pre-order Navdy, a digital display system that sits on your dash and relays speed and navigation info, as well as other data from your smart phone.
11. 2014 Logo Trends
Have you seen the latest logo trends report by LogoLounge? It’s packed full of thematic groupings of identity design from this year.
12. CodePen’s CSS
Chris Coyier posted an in-depth review of his CodePen app’s CSS structure.
13. Wunderlist 3
It’s here! Wunderlist v3 launched this week, and it’s full of excellent upgrades. I’m not sure there is a better to-list app on the market.
14. OpenBrand
Take your creativity out of the box. OpenBrand makes it easy to store all of your files, examples and specs in one organized location, and is a powerful mockup rendering engine that helps with superb delivery. It’s built into Photoshop and Illustrator, which is super helpful for making the transition. Sign up for free and give it a try.
15. Semplice
This is the best WordPress approach for a design portfolio. It includes an innovative WP backend solution for editing any element on any page, and allows users to change fonts, make images go full width with responsive support, and much more.
16. Word Mark It
A nifty web page that helps you choose fonts. Type a word or phrase into the box, and browse iterations of the word in all of the fonts that you have available on your system. Then, use filters and tools to get to your favorite ones.
17. Art Lifting
Art Lifting is a platform that uplifts your local community while giving you options to decorate your home or office. It empowers homeless, disabled and other disadvantaged individuals through the celebration and sale of their artwork.
18. Drawar: Master iOS Design
A pay what you want educational course on designing for iOS.
19. Foursquare Redesign Article
After having recently shipped the latest Foursquare with the design team, Sam Brown posted about how they designed and engineered the latest version from the ground up.
20. A Book Apart: On Web Typography
The newest addition to the A Book Apart collection, On Web Typography, was written by Jason Santa Maria and offers tons of typographic education. Learn how to wield type with care and wit: how to evaluate typefaces, consider technical constraints, create flexible type systems, and put together your own collection of favorite faces.
21. WeightShift Redesign
The San Francisco based studio run by Naz Hamid called Weight Shift got a classy website redesign this week.
22. iOS Fonts
Browse and test drive all font options available for use in iOS projects according to device and operating system version compatibility.
23. Make 8-Bit Art
If you loved paint as a kid, then you’ll dig Make 8-Bit Art, a browser app that helps you draw stunning pixel art and then save it out. Made by Jenn Schiffer.
24. Office Lovin’
Browse through some of the hippest office spaces of design and tech companies across the world.
25. Shopify Redesign
The popular eCommerce platform just launched a redesign of its website.
26. Vox OSX App
Enjoy a next level listening experience with Vox App, available on the App Store. It compiles your songs in iTunes and all many other popular services such as Grooveshark, last.fm, sound cloud and more.
27. 31Three Redesign
The tiny (but mighty) design studio run by Jesse Bennett Chamberlain called 31Three got a brand new website.
What Did We Miss?
That does it for all the great design industry links we found this week. Join the conversation by adding interesting sites or resources you found below.
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