Back to News Working in tech and design requires constantly keeping up with the latest techniques, tools, technologies, and industry news. Here are a few of the things our team found useful over the last week.
Design
Adding value to our client’s platform and brand
medium.muz.li
An interesting read on the process for developing illustrations and animation for brands. This article breaks down tasks such as choosing illustration styles with the client, drafting and adding illustrations into context with UI, and prototyping the animation with SVG and CSS.
— Adam P
Designer Slack communities
designerslack.community
A great list of (you guessed it!) designer Slack communities. You can find communities by location or specialization. A great way to get involved with groups you might not have otherwise come across.
— Anne
How typefaces influence you
fastcompany.com
A great little read on, as the title says, how typefaces influence us.
— Ian
Science confirms it: websites really do all look the same
fastcompany.com
Some food for thought on website similarities. There doesn’t seem to be a straightforward answer as to whether this is a good or bad thing.
— Anne
Sketch for print design
medium.com
Although Sketch wasn’t created for print design, there may be reasons you prefer to use it over traditional print software like the Adobe Suite. Here are some useful tips for preparing a file in Sketch for print.
— Anne
Tech
A May of WTFs: let’s hear about all the potholes, roadblocks, and roundabouts!
weblog.rubyonrails.org
Got a complaint about Ruby on Rails? The Rails team would love to hear it!
— Ian
Deno – A secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript
deno.land
Is this the successor to Node.js and the future of Javascript outside of the browser? Looks like it won’t be coming to React Native any time soon though, and it’s not (without a compatibility layer) going to work with NPM packages. Will be keeping an eye on this.
— Mark
Modern CSS solutions for old CSS problems
moderncss.dev
Solving the CSS problems of yesteryear with modern CSS techniques.
— Ian
Rebuilding our tech stack for the new Facebook.com
engineering.fb.com
It’s very interesting to learn how Facebook improved the experience of their site by reducing the CSS load by 80%, choosing to inline SVG files to reduce flicker, and various other technical optimizations. Some good learning for anyone working on the frontend.
— Mark
Second-guessing the modern web
macwright.org
Ever feel like there might be something wrong with SPA-ing all the things? You’re not alone.
— Ian