Normally I don’t post about yet another Photoshop and Sketch friendly iOS UI set. But this is different; it’s made by the UI8 team, which already has a reputation and history around well done icons, wireframes, and general UI work (I own two paid web wireframe sets from them – the quality holds up.) Most importantly, it’s completely free as long as you provide an email address; it runs normally $78 on UI8’s own web site.
The Froont blog strikes again with a wonderful set of animated gifs that explain where web design started way back in the early 90s and where it’s going. The responsive web design animation is especially gorgeous.
Fascinating look into the Web Animation API over at Smashing Magazine. Unfortunate to see we’re at very early stages:
It will be some time before this API is supported across the board. With half of browser makers waiting to see how developers will use it and most developers refusing to use a tool that isn’t widely supported, the API faces a chicken-and-egg scenario. However, in an on-stage conversation with Google’s Paul Kinlan at Fronteers, I suggested that, were the API to be fully supported in a closed and monetizable system for web apps, such as Google Play, developers would be able to safely use it in a walled garden until it reaches maturity and fuller support.
I found these tips on the InVision blog a bit more centered around general productivity apps with Sketch more than centered to just prototyping. But the recommendations are all useful, especially those centered on duplicating and measurement (a.k.a. the option key is your best friend.)
The Tomorrow Lab’s Derek Johnson writes one of the smartest pieces I’ve read on why sudden interruptions (or last minute, poorly planned meetings) can wreck such havoc on a developer’s workflow:
Developers don’t wear headphones because we enjoy music more than anyone else, it’s because headphones shut everything out and give us the mental space we need to build a very complicated model…
…If you’re an interrupter and you get a terser response than you might have expected please don’t take it personally. We’re just aware of the model starting to loosen at the more precarious points and are getting frantic about the need to get back at work.
The smart slate of this post by Nicolas Bevacqua is how many different ways – YSlow, Webpagetest, Google PageSpeed – he tackles the same common problem: how do we automate our web performance measurements? Nicolas provides Gulp and Grunt plugins along with command line tools. The point here is simplification. Just start automating baseline performance in any way possible, as soon as possible. You’ll see a noticeable benefit for your web projects going forward.
Type Worship’s Jamie Clarke:
Over four years and across eight issues we interviewed 64 world-renowned designers1, including; Erik Spiekermann, Jessica Hische, Michael Bierut, Nina Stössinger, Mark Simonson & Seb Lester, plus owners of respected type foundries such as, Font Smith, Type Together and Process Type.
We’ve counted the number of times each typeface was selected and found consensus with the top 25.
The Dissolve’s Keith Phipps:
From a certain point of view, to borrow a phrase from a different movie, Star Wars isn’t an attempt to escape from Vietnam, but an attempt to recontextualize it, with the United States slotted into the role of the Empire, and the Rebellion standing in for the NVA and the Viet Cong. By the time the film reached screens, this source of inspiration was so deep in the mix—buried beneath everything from Joseph Campbell to Bruno Bettelheim to The Wizard Of Oz—that it hardly counted as subtext anymore. But it’s still fundamentally a story about revolutionaries standing up for what’s right, and its Vietnam-inspired origins complicate the notion that Star Wars was ever purely an escapist enterprise. No matter how long ago and how far, far away you set a story, the real world has a way of creeping in.
Of all the many influences on George Lucas for Star Wars, Vietnam wasn’t one that came to mind before reading Keith’s piece. Yet he makes a fairly persuasive argument.
I’ve linked to many RWD articles here, but this recent piece by Eric Portis in A List Apart is much more than another well written introduction to the subject. His logic and discussion around the new sizes attribute, an otherwise often confusing topic, is masterful.
The next time you’re in a discussion about typography, for a design or other context, have this handy resource by FontShop handy. It’s a nice refresher on a lot of basic terminology, from ascenders to x-height.