Design

If you've had your ear to the ground in the app world, you'll have heard of David Dobrik's new retro-feel photography app Dispo. People are pretty excited about it, and rightfully so. But is the interface addictive enough? Will users be willing to wait until the next day to see their photos once the novelty wears off? And is Dispo good enough to rival Instagram? Let's take a look. What Makes Dispo Unique? Dispo's icon -

Visual Designer Maxime Rabot has created a fantastic Figma Community resource in his quick and accessible guide to basic typography and why it matters. As typography for beginners resources go, it's well worth your time. A snippet of a handy infographic in 'The Basics of Typography' A joy to read

Font pairing is a skill almost every kind of designer will have to use at some stage. But a lot of us weren't specifically trained in typography! So where do you start? Thankfully, Jack Qiao's fantastic AI-powered font pairing tool fontjoy.com is a wealth of free inspo for amateurs and professionals alike. How Do You Us

When naming your product, app or business, we all know to go for something, short, snappy and concise. But where do you go from there? How do you narrow down your options to something that's not just easy to say and iconise but something that gives the right feeling? Today, I'm going to give you some key tips on how to name an app (or anything you want!) with confidence. 1. Vowels and Consonants A word's unique "vibe" comes from much more than just its definition and connotations. It'

A unicorn designer is defined as someone skilled in design, visual design, and coding. While they're very sought after, they are usually looked down upon by other designers because they're seen as avoiding being a specialist in anything. Here's why that shouldn't be the case. I recently discussed the nature of Unicorn Designers with some peers. And I could see pretty quickly that the consensus among Interaction and Prod

Figma, the collaborative design and prototyping tool, has yielded great success as a slick (and free) Adobe XD and Sketch alternative. And this year, its features and UX are being upgraded like never before. So let's have look at what's new in Figma in 2020. The

Picking website colours is something every designer struggles with. But there are some great resources out there to help. Here's a curated list of excellent and easy-to-use sites that could prove invaluable to your next project. Happyhues.io Happyhues is one of my go-to websites when looking for a new colour palette. While its options are quite limited compared to the other sites listed here, the way it shows the real-world application for each colour more than makes up for it. Th

Variable fonts have been officially supported by most browsers for quite a while. However usage of them didn't start to pickup until very recently. Here's a run down of how they work, and why you should start using them now. What are Variable Fonts? While a standard typeface comes with different files for weights, italics and other styles, a variable font is a single file that allows you to control its weight and other properties through variables. In short, variable fonts are highly cus

Before studying game design at Dundee's Abertay, Dmitrii Gruzdev sealed his first professional gig with Gaijin Entertainment. Meriting luck, drive, and a confidence in his interests, he tells ironeko about what lead him here; his advice for aspiring designers; and the rift between university and real world experience. Dmitri secured a job at Gaijin Entertainment after showing

People will put up with all manner of design sins when settling for a period tracker. And it wasn't until I tried Apple's in-built cycle-tracker that I realised just how dire the situation on the app store was. So whats the big deal? The Importance of a Good Mobile Period Tracker Every friend and family member I know who menstruates uses a period-tracking app. And unless they're into tech, they generally settle on the first or second thing they find in the app store. This is... fine... But we deserve better. So why don't we hold

React Spring is a fantastic animation tool, but it's not the most straight forward. In this article we'll go through how to build an infinite React Spring carousel. Edit 8/9/2020: I've made some significant improvements to the carousel script in this article. These include: Autofitting the carousel to its container Back and Forward buttons More clear options Better logic Before we go any further let me show you what the final product of an infinite react spring carou

It's harder than ever to find a mid-range phone in android or iOS that does everything you want it to. But why? Let's analyse the smartphone market in 2020 and go through the best phones for the year. All Out of Options I had a Oneplus 3 for years and I loved it. It was sturdy, beautiful and surprisingly powerful for just £309. When it broke suddenly last year I found myself in a real pickle of indecision over how to replace it. I quickly learned that in the years while owning my Oneplus, the mid

Having proved steadfastly popular since its inception a decade ago, Duolingo shows no signs of slowing down. So how does it keep us hooked? Duolingo's presence as the world's leading language-learning app is undeniable. In fact, according to their LinkedIn page, the app boasts 300 million users. That's not a number to be sniffed at. If you've tried Duolingo (and if you're even a little into languages, you probably have) you'll have noticed just how easy it is. Once

I love my job, but let's be honest, that daily commute gets a little boring and Spotify can only take me so far. I started looking for weird music just to fill my time, staring out the bus window to the increasingly dark winter mornings That is until one day when I opened Spotify and the first suggestion on my homepage wasn't an album or a daily playlist, but a podcast called StartUp. The genius behind "StartUp" Gimlet Media's Startup Podcast If you think of

Thanks to sincere investment in great design, the UK has managed to transform what could have been a complicated process into a breeze. If my name hasn't already made it obvious, I'm not from the UK. Specifically, I come from Ferrara, a small-ish city in northern Italy. With Brexit approaching (apparently), I had to make sure I actually had the right to stay and work in the UK. I put off this very important task for a long period, expecting it to be a bureaucratic nightmare. And considering the state of most UK applications, you

Facebook Messenger falls into some common dark mode UX pitfalls, here's how to avoid them when designing. Recently, the Facebook Messenger app added dark mode support. And although it went through months of beta-testing, it doesn't look like a lot of work went behind it. While this is disappointing, it does give us a good case study on how not to design your dark mode. Why does this matter? The importance of dark modes Nothing makes me happier than apps o

Much of front-end design is simply finding interesting ways to display elements. One element type that requires particular care with regards to this is the unordered list. Sadly though, as you probably know, unordered lists are rarely pretty. They're a great way to display quick information, don't get me wrong. Visually, however, they're generally terrible. This works perfectly well You can clearly read my points But it's kind of bland How do I make my lists more interesting? <