With tons of resources available on the web nowadays, getting the resource that works for you right off the bat can sometimes be a pain. Despite the mass availability of these resources, it should really not be a pain. That’s what I thought of when I curated these resources.
As a development oriented designer or design oriented developer (I don’t even know what to call myself nowadays 🙂 ), getting resources to satisfy my lust for aesthetic and functional design knowledge has led me fairly into digging for things that work, resources that generally would make my life easier as I design and even code.
For a brief intro, I am Fawale Timmy (get familiar), I am a User Interface designer with knowledge of frontend web development, maybe a lil backend too but let’s face front ;). I essentially design and develop functional and visually appealing interfaces for user consumption, yeah, you read right, for users alone. This means that I concern myself majorly with how the user feels while accessing my interface. Enough sweet talk, let’s dive in shall we..
Tools/Resources I use and personally recommend as a UI designer and Front end developer.
We’ll be splitting based on categories, in no particular order of course.
· Illustration
· Typography
· Colors
· Blogs & Newsletter
· YouTube channels
Illustrations
Okay, so we all agree that there are just some mad , eye popping illustrations we see sometimes and we just fall in love. While some are pretty useful and would look great on user interfaces, some are just what they are- ART. Yeah, so we have to choose carefully, but here it is, my top 5 picks for free and sometimes paid illustration sources on this webby web.
“ManyPixels offers unlimited graphic and web design services for a flat monthly fee. Get your personal graphic designer in a few clicks.”
– Humaaans
Humaaans is a library of vector based, free-to-use illustrations launched in late 2018 by Pablo Stanley, Design Lead at InVision.
Free icons of Illustration in various design styles for web, mobile, and graphic design projects. Available in png and vector.
– Freepik
Find & Download Free Graphic Resources for Creative Illustration.
365webresources.com is a graphic and UI/UX design community that aims to provide useful and popular graphic and web design resources for web designers
I expect you to know how important consistency is when you use resources, so getting libraries can actually help a lot. (I might be writing about that later, or maybe not)
Typography
Typography, being one of the pillars of design, is a very important factor when it comes to the aesthetic and communicatory function of your interface/design. Hence, choosing the right font for the right job or mood carries weight and these resources might just be the forklift you need to lift that weight (dry pun intended).
– FontPair
Font Pair helps designers pair Google Fonts together. Beautiful Google Font combinations and pairs.
– Fontjoy
Fontjoy helps designers choose the best font combinations. Mix and match different fonts for the perfect pairing.
Daily inspiration for creative people. Fresh thinking, expert tips and tutorials to supercharge your creative muscles.
Download Thousands Of Free Fonts For Windows And Macintosh From Fontsgeek.com
The world’s most comprehensive Webfonts supported free font archive. For designers and developers.
Colors
This is another pillar of design that proves a knot on the plank especially for beginners. These resources take the pain off the left side of your brain and offer you a palette on a platter; you know those painful eyesore combos that you use? Never again shall you use them.
Generate or browse beautiful color combinations for your designs.
Color Hunt is a free and open platform for color inspiration with thousands of trendy hand-picked color palettes
Free collection of color palettes ideas for all the occasions: decorate your house, flat, bedroom, kitchen, living room and even wedding with our color ideas.
Create color palettes with the color wheel or image, browse thousands of color combinations from the Adobe Color community.
Blogs & newsletters
The importance cannot be overstated; blogs and newsletters are like black and white mirrors into the heart of the writer (except some are not black n white). Here are some design oriented dev blogs/newsletters that will keep you informed and in form.
JavaScript and Web Development Tutorials.
UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience.
Daily inspiration for creative people. Fresh thinking, expert tips and tutorials to supercharge your creative muscles.
Design Shack is a daily source of helpful resources, articles, inspiration, tips, and tutorials for the design community.
An easy to follow design course for people who do amazing things. Receive a design lesson in your inbox each week, hand crafted by a design pro.
YouTube channels
Getting a YouTube channel is not a problem, I mean, there are loads of content creators out there, but getting THE YouTube channel, mehn, that is really something. Here are 5 design/development channels that have helped me personally and I’d recommend them any day for their educative and entertaining content
– Dev Ed
Final remarks
These resources as at the time of writing were my fav and most accessible resources, if you have lovely ones to share, kindly reach out I’ll be waiting to explore and most likely update the list. I sincerely hope anyone reading this finds it useful especially in improving their flow and ultimately their productivity.
Cheers,
tXmmi
1 Comment
Thank you.