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PLAYGROUND COLOR SWATCHES

A curated collection of stunning colors that can be used to create user-friendly component-based systems for theming and color inspiration. It includes more than 10 color themes and over 80 color swatches.

LAYERS.TO

Layers is a website where you can share your work, connect with other designers, discover jobs, and get hired.

ARC - BEND YOUR TYPE!

A Figma plugin that allows designers to curve text upward, downward, or into a circle.

MASSIVE BOOK EXPLORES THE VIBRANT HISTORY OF HOW WE CATALOG COLOR

Color Charts is a book about the tools people have developed since the 15th century to organize and catalog color. With over 200 color charts, it explores how painters, naturalists, doctors, and industrial designers have cataloged colors throughout history.

PIONEERING TABLET MAKER REMARKABLE’S OSLO HEADQUARTERS IS A SPACE FOR ‘BETTER THINKING’

Designed by Oslo-based Grape Architects, reMarkable's new workspace offers a unique collaboration and individual focus environment. Across eight floors, the renovated headquarters include breakout areas, focus zones, and even a Japanese Zen garden-inspired area. The central campus library's multipurpose space can hold up to 550 people under 7m ceilings and features art installations, reading nooks, and lamplit desks.

THE SUPERB DYSTOPIAN ILLUSTRATIONS BY MAD KOBRA

Dominican Republic-based artist Mad Kobra creates unique cyberpunk art using vivid colors, gritty textures, and bold lines. A design expert for well-known companies like Nintendo, Lego, Discord, and Adidas, he draws inspiration from Japanese aesthetics, pop culture, movies, video games, and vintage anime, especially the 1988 masterpiece Akira.

FROM ALEXANDERPLATZ TO ZOOLOGISCHER GARTEN: THE TYPEFACE FOR BERLIN

The city of Berlin has a new alphabet.

UNVEILING THE INFLUENCE OF COGNITIVE BIASES ON DESIGN DECISION-MAKING

Personal biases influence design decision-making - recognize and mitigate these biases to create more inclusive, effective, and innovative designs.

SCROLL-DRIVEN ANIMATIONS: YOU WANT OVERFLOW: CLIP, NOT OVERFLOW: HIDDEN

overflow: hidden shouldn’t be used in scroll-driven animations because it creates a scroll container. overflow: clip should be used instead because it hides overflowing content without creating a scroll container.

YOUR REFERRAL LINK - https://tldr.tech/design?ref=2613930

MARCUS LEMONIS OFFERED $10,000 TO REDESIGN OVERSTOCK’S NEW BEYOND LOGO ON SPEC. HERE’S WHAT HE GOT

Last month, Beyond’s board member Marcus Lemonis did something unconventional — and generally frowned upon in the design community: he called on social media asking for designs on spec, promising an award of $10,000 for the best design. Hundreds of submissions rolled in from the masses on social media, ranging from the bland and basic to the strange and absurd.

ELON MUSK HINTS AT POSSIBLE X PARTNERSHIP WITH MIDJOURNEY

Elon Musk hinted at a potential partnership between X and AI image generator Midjourney to enhance content creation on the social media platform, indicating transformative prospects for user experience with AI-generated content. This collaboration could place X at the forefront of integrating AI into social media and further blur the lines between human and machine creativity.

PEERING THROUGH LENOVO’S TRANSPARENT LAPTOP INTO A SCI-FI FUTURE

Lenovo introduced the ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop at Mobile World Congress, a concept device featuring a 17.3-inch MicroLED screen with up to 55% transparency aimed at showcasing futuristic technology with practical applications still under exploration. Alongside the innovative transparent display, the concept includes a flat-touch keyboard that doubles as a drawing tablet, reflecting Lenovo's effort to blend sci-fi aesthetics with functionality. The company is still seeking impactful real-world applications for the technology.

‘I’M FEELING GASLIT BY MY OWN COMPUTER’: WHY A SMALL CHANGE BY MICROSOFT WAS A BIG JOLT FOR SOME USERS

People are reacting badly to Microsoft’s sudden change of default font. Although the change was announced in July last year, many Microsoft users were surprised when the new default font, Aptos, started rolling out to hundreds of millions of users in late December.

CARD SORTING VS. TREE TESTING

Card sorting and tree testing are complementary research methods that serve distinct purposes when designing an effective navigation and content structure. However, there is a major difference between the two: card sort studies help shape information architectures while tree-testing studies evaluate them.

TEN HEURISTICS TO SIMPLIFY DESIGN DECISION-MAKING

Designing a product is a complex process that involves many decisions. Fortunately, industry wisdom can simplify the decision-making process. Trust the expertise of those who have come before you, relying on their findings to act as heuristics for navigating complexity.

BREAKPOINTS

Preview a responsive layout inside a Figma frame and share an animated prototype. It works even without the opened plugin window. Anyone on your team can resize the frame without the installed plugin.

THE BEST NAVBARS ON THE INTERNET

A collection of the best navigation designs from leading websites to fuel your inspiration.

SHORTCUT MASTER GAME

Learn Figma keyboard shortcuts or test what you already know with this Figma-built game.

THE REBALANCING OF DESIGN MANAGEMENT

Designers need to get off the bench and take on a little more of that old Creative Director energy: get in the details, push our teams to take one more pass at things, try something totally weird that probably won't work, and challenge and inspire their peers in engineering and product.

APPLE’S WEARABLE IDEAS INCLUDE SMART GLASSES AND CAMERAS IN YOUR EARS

Apple's future wearable lineup may include AI-powered smart glasses and AirPods with cameras. The smart glasses will resemble AirPods but will have more sensors, AI capabilities, and longer-lasting batteries. As a step toward something similar to Meta Ray-Bans, these glasses will have a camera and an AI assistant users can talk to, but no display.

POSSIBLE NEW SUPERMAN LOGO DIVIDES FANS

James Gunn's upcoming 'Superman: Legacy' Superman logo will likely be simplified and minimalist. The logo appears to be inspired by the flat design trend, with similarities to Superman's costume in 1996's DC's Kingdom Come comic book series. While fans enjoy the reference, some are concerned that it barely resembles an 'S'.

MAKING OF TRUE MULTI-BRAND DESIGN SYSTEM

A detailed case study of building an advanced design system for true white-label products with full control over colors, typography, and visual styles.

MAKE SOMETHING WONDERFUL: STEVE JOBS IN HIS OWN WORDS

In this free and beautiful book, you'll find a collection of Steve Jobs's speeches, interviews, and correspondence, giving you a glimpse into how he lived and worked. It includes his perspective on his childhood, Apple, Pixar, NeXT, and return to the company that started his journey.

VIRTUAL STAGING AI HELPS REALTORS DIGITALLY FURNISH ROOMS WITHIN SECONDS

Virtual Staging AI helps Realtors stage a house virtually, allowing them to turn an empty room into a bedroom, living room, office, playroom, and more in seconds. The platform's AI model recommends the best-fitting furniture based on the Realtor's preferences by analyzing a room's 3D structure and determining its floor, roof, mirrors, and doors.

YOUR REFERRAL LINK - https://tldr.tech/design?ref=2613930

UNSPLASH+: NEW LOOK, NEW CONTENT

Unsplash+ celebrated its first birthday with a dynamic rebranding initiative with award-winning brand agency Collins. In addition to its revamped identity, the company added new collections and brought more curators to improve its premium content. The new visuals follow the most searched themes.

WINDOWS IS GETTING ITS OWN MAGIC ERASER TO AI-MODIFY YOUR PHOTOS

Microsoft has added AI selection photo erasers to its Photos app with Generative erase. It will backport all of the AI editing capabilities in Photos to Windows 10.

BRINGING NEW EMOJI TO WINDOWS 11

Windows new emojis are the next iteration of the flat emoji introduced in 2021. Adding shadows, light, and more color to make them look 3D and implementing them as a hybrid color font meant that the team behind this emoji update had to alter their approach to designing color fonts.

WHAT IF MISSING A CONNECTING FLIGHT WASN’T AWFUL?

It can be frustrating and stressful to miss a connecting flight. Reconceiving the same situation through a design lens could result in a much better user experience and potentially better business for airlines.

CREATORS VS. ARTISTS

Legendary Japanese animation film director Hayao Miyazaki's work was recently reinterpreted by AI, leading to an exciting discussion of the blurring lines between creators and artists. The threshold for calling oneself a creator is shallow today. The real artists are the ones who come up with original ideas and do something unique, whether they're using AI or not.

EMPATHY FOR COLLEAGUES: WHY UX DESIGN IS A LEADERSHIP SKILL

Designers can build new ways of working by turning user-centered design methods inwards — if we can give up our Superman myth. Designers aren’t the only ones who think they are being misunderstood; they’re not the only ones being empathetic towards users.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN PLATFORM

Modify allows designers to generate, animate, and more without switching between apps.

VISUAL CONTENT CREATION TOOL

Artboard Studio is a graphic and motion design tool with automation features and an extensive content library.

FONTONIC

Fontonic enables designers to change a website's fonts with the ones installed locally on their devices. Changes are reflected on every website page and saved even after the browser tab is closed.

THE ELEVATOR TEST

Even though prototypes are essential in design work, they should never be treated as permanent. In the elevator test, prototypes are smashed using elevator doors. The lesson is that prototypes are tools to improve your final product. Stay attached to them and focus on the learning process they enable.

DESIGNING WITH INTEGRITY: THE ETHICAL DESIGNER’S HANDBOOK ON DARK PATTERNS

Pursuing innovation and engagement at all costs can easily lead to dark patterns - deceptive design tactics that manipulate users into doing stuff they don't want to do. This kind of manipulation leaves a trail of frustration, distrust, and negativity. This post explores the prevalence of dark patterns and how to avoid them using ethical design principles as a guide.

HOW TO PUT YOUR UX ROADMAP TO WORK

A planning master doc can be an effective hub for anyone. Designers can take the lead in preparing the UX roadmap. They should keep their roadmap accessible and up-to-date, review and revise it as needed, coordinate with the team when planning, and use it to anticipate resourcing spikes.

EVERYONE'S OBSESSED WITH THIS UNUSED FORD LOGO DESIGN

During the 1960s, Henry Ford II enlisted Paul Rand, the famed graphic designer who had created logos for IBM, ABC, and UPS, to modernize the logo and its script. Users on Reddit and X are now praising the sleek and fantastic design, which retained the original's essential features but used a more modern, even-stroked lettering.

WORLD’S OLDEST UNCHANGED BRAND CHANGES LOGO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER 140 YEARS

For over 140 years, Lyle’s Golden Syrup has featured an interesting logo on its tin: a lion’s carcass surrounded by bees. The product was recognized by Guinness World Records for having the world’s oldest branding and packaging. For the first time since the 1880s, Lyle's Golden Syrup is undergoing a major redesign to appeal to a 21st-century audience.

NENDO DESIGNED THE PERFECT OBSESSIVELY ERGONOMIC FORK FOR EATING CUP NOODLES

It's not easy to scoop noodles with the standard fork that comes with cup noodles. The fork's angle does not sit right, making it un-ergonomic and difficult to scoop. Nissin and Nendo created a piece of cutlery that is obsessively ergonomic, designed after hours of user observation to ensure a seamless noodle-eating experience.

YOUR REFERRAL LINK - https://tldr.tech/design?ref=2613930

DYNABOARD IS JOINING FIGMA

Dynaboard, a platform that aimed to streamline the process from idea to production, has announced its integration into Figma, a popular tool among designers and developers worldwide. The company expresses excitement about continuing its work within Figma's ecosystem as it appreciates Figma's innovative features and creative atmosphere. Dynaboard will cease its services on April 30.

GOOGLE MESSAGES INTRODUCES 'DOUBLE TAP TO REACT' FEATURE THAT MAKES RESPONDING A LOT FASTER

Google Messages is introducing a new feature in its beta version that allows users to double-tap on a received message to send a quick thumbs-up reply. This feature simplifies responding to messages and removes the need to search for emojis. Long-pressing on a message will bring up options to copy, delete, or react with emojis. The feature is expected to roll out to all users soon.

MCDONALD'S TURNS ITS LOGO UPSIDE-DOWN IN INGENIOUS NEW ANIME BRANDING

McDonald's is launching a new campaign that rebrands itself as "WcDonald's" with upside-down arches. Inspired by its appearances in various anime shows since 1981, the campaign includes limited edition items with exclusive packaging, such as the "Big Wac," and a collaboration with Studio Pierrot to produce anime episodes and manga. McDonald's aims to embrace anime culture and engage with its fans creatively through this initiative.

FIGMA’S ONLY INTEREST IS REVENUE, AND IT’S GOING TO ERODE THE DESIGN CULTURE

Figma never cared about the design community. By ignoring its own UX problems for years, it normalized ignorance towards customers’ needs and bad design patterns, spreading its bad influence on a whole generation of designers.

IN PRAISE OF BUTTONS – PART TWO

Apple started the “touch = good” trend with the iPhone in 2007. Makers of all sorts of devices started replacing physical buttons with touchscreens or touch-sensitive elements. This trend led to thousands of products being made, including some that were simply unpleasant or outright infuriating to use.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 3.0 IS HERE

GenAI can build a synthetic partnership layer into every product/service by mimicking the human support layer that the digital transformation removed. Rather than being alone on their journey, customers will be continuously assisted by an AI partner. A company seeking differentiated value for customers will have to increase the capabilities of its AI agents to solve more customer problems.

DEAD SIMPLE SITES

No overly animated content, scroll jacking, or excessive storytelling. Just most minimal websites on the web.