Performance Max enables advertisers to access all their Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. The tech giant announced Performance Max's generative AI features at Google Marketing Live earlier this year and now it is rolling them out as a beta to all US customers. Based on the performance data of previous campaigns, users can create new text and image assets in just a few clicks. Google Ads will also feature AI-powered image editing capabilities that enhance generated and existing assets. The invisible SynthID watermark will be applied to all generative AI images created in Google Ads.
Several factors should be considered when enhancing buttons, especially the many ways they can manifest to users. This article includes best practices for covering states, defining button sizes, their typical anatomy, and button types you should consider.
German type foundry Dinamo collaborated with art and design studio BNAG to create a new dot matrix font that works hand-in-hand with its new line of spontaneous metal furniture brackets.
Figma has introduced FigJam AI, a suite of generative AI tools for its collaborative whiteboard app FigJam aimed at streamlining the design process by generating templates for common tasks such as flowcharts and meeting plans. The tools, including features for sorting ideas and summarizing content, are currently in open beta and free for all users.
YouTube’s latest AI experiments include a new chatbot that’s designed to give you more information about a video you’re watching. The conversational AI tool aims to answer your questions about a video and can also recommend related content. It can also quiz you on a topic if you’re watching an educational video. The experimental feature has been announced alongside another AI tool that aims to organize a video’s comments into topics.
As a premium stylus for writing, sketching, and digital painting, the S Pen Creator Edition goes above and beyond the $59.99 S Pen shipped with Galaxy Tab S9. According to Samsung, this is its most advanced S Pen yet. The stylus will compete with Apple's Pencil, which has a loyal following of iPad creatives. The S Pen Creator Edition is only available in white, doesn't need charging, and has just one button to control creative applications.
Designers have to be visionaries, but nothing can be promised—only proposed. We must identify challenges, ask honest questions, and problem-solve with a systematic yet open and passionate mind to serve us in the quest to design well for the future. As we learn from each project, each other, and evolving technologies, we can ultimately design with more efficiency, less ambiguity, better ethics, and a continual sense of artful wonder.
Confusion is one of many results of misunderstandings. Misunderstandings erode team trust, separate team members, and produce waste. Often, they are based on inaccurate assumptions and unrealistic expectations. This one-pager with ten sections will help you avoid misunderstandings and gain a better understanding of the design problem at hand, clarify the design process, and highlight overlooked critical aspects.
2023.11.08·smart-interface-design-patterns.com·3 min read·TLDR Design Typescale is a visual calculator that allows you to experiment with font size, scale, and different web fonts to find the right typographic scale for your next project.
Pebblely removes product image backgrounds and adds another from a stock of your choice or based on a prompt.
3Dicons is a free set of three-dimensional icons created in Blender and rendered with a few color options.
Starting new projects can be stressful but there are things designers should focus on to make beginnings easier. Managing information overload by keeping a rolling document of notes and finding and achieving small wins in the very first few weeks are great ways to get started. However, these may lead to a lot of stress so self-care should be prioritized and regular communication with key people on the projects should be established.
The screens you design for your product can have as many as five states: ideal, empty, error, partial, and loading. It is equally important to consider the transition between them. Your users might be confused or surprised as new states appear and disappear without transitional elements.
Two teams are involved in this battle—designers and engineers with Midjourney-familiarity and professional illustrators. This article provides insights and quickstart tips for Midjourney.
A clear definition of the problem begins with words, not images. Before you dive into the building process, you should draft a short list of product design principles. As you make design decisions, the more unique and definitive your values are, the more you'll use them.
As Steam celebrates its 20th anniversary, it's preparing to roll out a game-changing update. As the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, Steam's recent update includes a comprehensive facelift and several valuable additions, such as a handy notepad, a newly introduced toolbar, and an integrated web browser. Platform evolution over two decades demonstrates the importance of identifying users' pain points, prioritizing features, and detecting bugs.
Midjourney’s latest update launched on the evening of Nov. 1, 2023. Called the style tuner, it is arguably the most important update yet for enterprises, brands, and creators looking to tell cohesive stories in the same style. That’s because the new style tuner allows users to generate their unique visual style and apply it to any and potentially all images generated in the application going forward.
In an update to how YouTube caters to teenagers, the company today said it's changing how certain types of content are recommended to teenagers. Specifically, content recommendations for videos determined to be problematic if repeatedly put in front of teens—videos related to body image and non-contact social aggression—will be limited.
According to leaked details, Apple will include the Action Button on the base iPhone 16 model. In contrast to the current physical button on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, the new button will provide feedback via the Taptic Engine. A second button called the Capture Button may be introduced soon. It will be capacitive and, as its name implies, could contribute to the camera system.
It happens to the best of us — we lose our spark, feel stuck, become risk-averse, and lose our passion. It's a bit like a long-term relationship that's run into the sand. However, rather than a relationship with a person, it's our relationship with creativity itself that's in trouble. When that happens, talk to others, find the type of work that motivates you, get involved in a community, and stop comparing yourself to others to help find that spark again.
The Drumming Gorilla ad from Cadbury was one of the world's best ads, mainly due to its emotional impact on audiences. Using AI in a designer's workflow today can be challenging because these tools are biased towards standardization. Cadbury's epic ad offers valuable lessons to designers on how to take advantage of the enhanced efficiency provided by artificial intelligence without sacrificing creativity.
Every business is an app, and every app feels the same because every designer has the same resume, follows the same process, graduates from the same program, uses the same tools, and scrolls the same Dribbble feed. Design is now about tangibles, measurables, and deliverables instead of intuition and ingenuity. Even companies that claim to be "design-driven" extensively use dashboards and metrics to guide their designers.
Vectorpea is an online vector editor that lets you edit Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, and Sketch files.
UXsniff is an AI-powered tool that autonomously analyzes session recordings and identifies abnormal click patterns.
Durves lets you create and customize curved point design patterns and export them in SVG or PNG.
There's a big delusion in the design industry: that the correct design is knowable without building anything. Delaying building is delaying design because building helps you find the right design. Instead of always preparing hi-fi mockups, designers should work in sync with developers, stop fearing low quality, ensure that the work is well-discovered and well-shaped, and they should help developers stop fearing rework.
Shipping large user interfaces can take much time and effort. The modular approach makes it easy to build UIs that are robust, scalable, and flexible. Throughout this guide, you will learn about Component Driven User Design, its benefits, resources, and tools for implementing it.
It's been over a year since Adobe's agreement to buy Figma and the platform is still trying to figure it out as an independent company. Dylan Field, cofounder and CEO of Figma, believes that the design tool will have a much more significant impact on how work gets done in the future. The acquisition of Diagram, a five-person startup building AI Figma plug-ins such as Magician, might provide clues about what's next.
The Designing for Disaster series explores how design can be used to prevent, mitigate, and recover from natural disasters as climate change gives rise to more extreme weather events.
An affordance is what someone can do with an object. When you see a well-designed product, the perceived affordances should indicate how to use it.
Layering multiple gradients that include transparency can produce some pretty cool and surprising effects, especially when combined with custom CSS properties.
IDEO’s CEO Derek Robson announced a global meeting in October. The company is set to lay off around 125 employees by the end of the year, amounting to about 25% of its global workforce. This is the company's second round of layoffs for 2023, with a total reduction of 32% in headcount for the year. In addition to the layoffs, IDEO is closing its offices in Munich and Tokyo and downsizing in several U.S. locations, London, and Shanghai.
Google Password Manager for Android is set to receive a visual overhaul, aligning with Material Design 3 guidelines. The update will split core features into three tabs and replace the '+' symbol with an 'Add password' button in the Search bar. Google continues to improve its Password Manager to compete with top password managers, offering features like biometric authentication and cross-platform sync.
NASA has launched a new app for both iPhone and Android that makes it easier to spot the International Space Station (ISS) in the night sky. The app provides information about when and where to see the ISS, including its brightness, duration, altitude, and direction of travel. It also offers an augmented reality feature to locate the ISS in the sky and provides access to news and information about the ISS and space exploration.
Designers can use AI to increase their productivity, improve the quality of their work, and enhance their skills. An essential element in getting full value from AI is to include a heavy dose of human judgment in the workflow. This is for three reasons: humans must select ideas suggested by AI, hallucinations can be convincing, and bias lurks in the training data. To get AI working, designers should provide ample context in their prompts, ask for multiple options, iterate on the output, and build a prompt library.
Feedback in the design profession is crucial but often challenging due to the reliance on remote communication methods like email and messaging platforms. Constructive criticism requires clear, objective language and thoughtful expression that cannot rely on tone or body language, making it essential to choose words carefully.
Interactions can be applied to high-fidelity UX maps to showcase user research and further engage with stakeholders. To make the UX maps easier to consume and more engaging, start with consolidating findings and data into a low-fidelity map. Then establish a visual design system, group key elements of your map by theme or type (e.g., videos, photos), create a structure using auto layout, add the content, prototype the desired interactions, test, and troubleshoot.
With this open-source checklist, you can plan, build, and grow your design system.
Specify works as a single source of truth for your design tokens and assets to facilitate brand consistency and collaboration across teams and products.
A growing icon library with a range of unusual styles. The icons can be filtered by round, straight, angled, or fluid pixel family, as well as by weight and category.
Icons are capable of enhancing the content that surrounds them, but they have to be self-explanatory for that to happen. We have icons for things we like (a thumbs up), things we can share (a box topped with an up arrow), and even for protection against malicious online attacks (a shield), but what are the options we have for representing “privacy?” A padlock, a detective, a Zorro mask, or a shield?
2023.11.06·smashingmagazine.com·14 min read·TLDR Design Among designers, a silent wave of standardization has been slowly but steadily engulfing the essence of our creativity, leading to what has been poignantly termed "The era of The Vanishing Designer." This phenomenon encapsulates the systemic shift towards a rigid, data-driven approach, overshadowing the whimsical charm of individual creativity that once was the hallmark of the design ethos.
Art and design historian Stephen J. Eskilson is releasing Digital Design: A History, the first book to examine how computer-aided design has impacted culture and society. Eskilson takes a broad view of digital practice and outcomes, looking at games, UX/UI, digital typography, prototyping, and more.
Despite AI's ability to produce technically competent designs and aesthetically pleasing images, it remains based on some median output dictated by whichever visual data it's been trained on. For creativity to indeed exist, it requires a greater degree of human involvement, intent, and authorship on the creator's part. Six designers explain how they built their own AI toolkits, their approach to using tech, and how they keep humanity in their work.
2023.11.06·wepresent.wetransfer.com·5 min read·TLDR Design Follow these patterns to make breaking down a design to get it ready for development easier: be clear on the outcome and opportunity, do it at the right moment, be clear on the end-to-end journey, work at the right fidelity, accept the chunks of work, don’t get disheartened when the design is being chopped to pieces, identify releases with outcomes, design for interim releases, and be prepared to move on even if the project is 80% complete.
With Google's new AI-powered Product Studio, merchants and advertisers can use text-to-image AI capabilities to create new product imagery by simply typing an image prompt. Additionally, the feature enables users to change the background behind a product image or make more advanced edits, such as placing a product in a specific setting. It can also improve low-quality images without reshooting. All Merchant Center Next users in the U.S. can now take advantage of the feature, as well as Shopify users using Google and YouTube apps.
LG Electronics envisions the future of modern homes to be smaller, smarter, modular, and highly energy-efficient, controlled by its ThinQ app. The LG Smart Cottage, a prefabricated home, showcases LG's premium appliances and energy-efficient heating and cooling solutions, with a sleek, contemporary design and integration of smart home features.
Since its launch in 1996, the Young Guns competition has grown to become one of the most prestigious awards in the world for young creatives under 30. The latest edition featured 85 finalists, including illustrators, animators, filmmakers, and art directors. The most innovative ones are highlighted in this article.
95% of users turn to reviews for information about how well a product meets their needs. Sadly, reviewing and rating UX often confuses and frustrates users instead of helping them. To improve these vital elements, you can display decimal ratings and total number of reviews, display a breakdown of the rating distribution summary by product attributes, allow users to mark helpful reviews, and even reward users for negative reviews.
You need to be more than just a great designer in 2023. You also have to be able to sell yourself, keep up to date with social media, maintain your website, be your IT, be your HR department, network like crazy, and somehow find time to eat and sleep. Start by defining your target audience and what you are offering them. Forget the number of followers on social media and connect with creatives in real life, treat yourself like a client, and use AI as a tool, especially for the parts you aren’t confident about.