40 Streamlined WordPress Themes for Simplicity

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/wordpress-minimalistic-themes/

Not everyone appreciates complexity in design. Extravagant banners, sliders, and various elements can detract from your content. A minimalistic, uncluttered site design lets your work take center stage, unencumbered by unnecessary embellishments. These streamlined themes are ideal for presenting your work neatly and clearly.

That’s precisely why this compilation highlights 40 sleek and minimalistic WordPress Themes suitable for a range of purposes including blogging, portfolios, photography sites, magazines, corporate sites, and more, catering to diverse preferences. This selection includes:

20 Premium Minimalist Themes
20 Free Minimalist Themes

These ensure a clean, minimalistic site that loads quickly and is favored by search engines like Google.

Premium Minimalist Themes
Acerola
Acerola Agency Theme

Acerola offers a fully responsive design that adapts to various website needs, such as agency, creative studio, and business sites. Its professional appearance is enhanced by clean aesthetics and engaging parallax effects. Users can easily tailor the theme to their requirements, thanks to its extensive customization options. Key features include a drag-and-drop page builder, a slider for eye-catching images, and WooCommerce support for e-commerce functionality.

The theme also provides one-click data import, live customization, and sharp retina-ready displays. Additionally, it is ready for translation and supports WPML for creating multilingual sites. Responsive customer support is available to assist users.

Preview theme

Cafariva
Cafariva Cafe Theme

Designed for coffee shop businesses, Cafariva is a minimalist theme that simplifies website creation when used with the Elementor Page Builder for WordPress. It works best with the Hello Elementor theme but fits well with any Elementor-compatible theme.

Cafariva enables a no-code customization process through a drag-and-drop interface, giving you control over fonts, colors, and design elements. Its professional design is not only sleek but also optimized for quick loading, providing a seamless user experience.

Preview theme

DashBag
DashBag Fashion Theme

With DashBag, you can effortlessly build a fashion store website using WordPress and Elementor. This theme features a modern, responsive, and retina-ready design that simplifies the creation process without the need for coding. It includes 10 customizable templates alongside 18 section templates, all embracing a sleek and minimalist aesthetic.

DashBag works seamlessly with Elementor’s free version and incorporates Google Fonts. The designs are crafted to display beautifully across desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Plus, users benefit from responsive support provided by a committed team, making website customization and usage straightforward.

Preview theme

Famita
Famita eCommerce Theme

Famita offers a clean and simple design suitable for eCommerce stores, including those selling furniture, clothes, tech, and accessories. It enhances the user experience with straightforward Theme Options for customization, such as changing Google fonts without any coding. The theme ensures your site looks great on all devices with its responsive design.

It’s compatible with WooCommerce and features multiple homepage options, AJAX for a smoother shopping experience, quick product views, and a wishlist. Famita also supports multiple languages through WPML, provides different blog layouts, and comes with a selection of color schemes. Social media integration, a custom 404 error page, and demo content are included to help you get your store up and running quickly.

Preview theme

Gute
Gute Blog Theme

Designed for Elementor, Gute is a WordPress theme that suits a range of publishing websites, including news portals, magazines, personal blogs, and editorial platforms. It’s built to work seamlessly with Elementor Pro, which is required for its full range of features. Customization is straightforward, allowing you to tailor your site to your needs.

The responsive design ensures optimal viewing on different devices and browsers. However, before you can take advantage of Gute’s capabilities, you’ll need to install a few plugins: Elementor, Themesflat Addons for Elementor, ElementsKit Lite, and WooCommerce.

Preview theme

Inez
Inez Portfolio Theme

Designed for creatives, Inez is ideal for showcasing work through a multi-page portfolio. Photographers, designers, and artists can choose from several portfolio layouts and project templates, including grid and masonry styles. The theme smartly adjusts grid item sizes to display images perfectly. It works with WordPress 4.4+, is fully responsive, and integrates seamlessly with Bootstrap 3.

Inez simplifies the setup process with one-click demo installation and offers customizable grid spacing and video project features. It’s SEO-friendly, boasts a clean interface, and provides access to over 700 Google Fonts. The theme is also translation-ready with WPML, includes a custom CSS field, over 2000 premium icons, and supports threaded comments. Users benefit from regular updates and comprehensive support documentation.

Preview theme

Lixer
Lixer Portfolio Theme

Designed for creative portfolios, Lixer offers a modern, clean, and minimalist look that captures the audience’s attention. It’s fully responsive, ensuring a seamless display across all devices.

With the Elementor Page Builder, creating pages is a breeze thanks to its drag-and-drop functionality, streamlining content management. Built on the Bootstrap 4.x Framework, Lixer guarantees a mobile-friendly experience. The one-click demo importer simplifies the setup process, allowing for fast and effortless customization of your website.

Preview theme

Munfarid
Munfarid WordPress Theme

With a modern, minimalist design, the Munfarid Blog theme is perfect for bloggers and online retailers using WooCommerce. It’s crafted to meet the latest standards, ensuring your website looks sleek and professional. Munfarid supports the Gutenberg editor, streamlining the site-building process and preparing you for WordPress 5.0. This theme is responsive, easy to customize, and doesn’t require any coding.

It comes packed with features including a robust admin interface, multiple header styles, and customizable title areas. Engage visitors with video and call-to-action elements. The one-click demo import, various blog layouts, and different logo options for headers enhance your site’s flexibility.

Plus, it offers a full-screen menu, a side menu area, and built-in search functionality.

Preview theme

Pekko
Pekko WordPress Theme

Designed for dark portfolio websites, Pekko offers a sleek and minimalistic look that pairs well with the Elementor page builder for easy customization. Enjoy quick loading times thanks to its lightweight design, and captivate your audience with smooth animations and standout typography.

This theme comes with drag-and-drop functionality, a responsive design, and Ajax content loading for a seamless user experience. It’s ready for translation, supports multiple languages, and is easy to customize. Comprehensive documentation and cross-browser compatibility make Pekko a reliable choice for your website project.

Preview theme

Pioneer
Pioneer WordPress Theme

Designed with a minimalist approach, Pioneer caters to developers, designers, bloggers, and creatives looking for a user-friendly WordPress theme. It simplifies the process of creating both business and personal websites with over 65 pre-made demos and more than 15 homepage styles that work for multi-page and one-page sites.

The theme ensures your content is easy to read and looks great on any device, thanks to its responsive design. With Pioneer, you get a modern portfolio, various e-commerce shop layouts, and the advantage of SEO-friendly clean code.

Preview theme

Saara
Saara WordPress Theme

Designed with bloggers in mind, the Saara Minimalist WordPress Blog theme offers a sleek, artistically crafted interface that adapts beautifully across devices. Choose from six distinct home page demos to find the perfect style for your content. The gallery page comes alive with a variety of layouts, including video posts and diverse image information placements, ensuring an engaging visual experience for your audience.

Preview theme

Sassoft
Sassoft WordPress Theme

Sassoft offers a sleek, responsive design that’s ready for high-resolution displays and easy to tailor using Elementor’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface – no coding needed. This template kit includes 10 versatile templates and 18 sections, all editable with Elementor, even with its free version. It incorporates Google Fonts at no extra cost, ensuring a stylish and minimalist look that adapts flawlessly to different devices.

With Sassoft, you get a smooth design process and dedicated support to help you build a polished business website effortlessly.

Preview theme

Signy
Signy WordPress Theme

SIGNY combines functionality with ease of use to improve the reader’s experience. Its unique layouts and clean, minimalist aesthetic are enhanced by a selection of widgets. For bloggers looking to sell products, SIGNY includes tailored shopping layouts.

The theme is optimized for speed, ensuring quick loading times, and offers a range of post styles to clearly communicate your message. It’s also fully responsive, making your content easily readable on any device.

Preview theme

Unero
Unero WordPress Theme

Unero offers a minimalist AJAX WooCommerce theme tailored for online shopping experiences. With a focus on a clean aesthetic and highlighting products, it aims to boost the appeal of e-commerce sites and increase sales.

This theme is ideal for a range of online stores, including fashion, furniture, and home decor. It includes WooCommerce integration, a variety of plugins, customizable settings, a mini cart, and multiple widgets for enhanced functionality. Unero ensures a mobile-friendly layout, advanced product filtering, and an integrated order tracking system.

It also provides comprehensive tax and shipping settings, a coupon system, and detailed store reports to effectively manage your online business. SEO-friendly features and tools for customer engagement, such as product ratings and reviews, are also part of the package.

Preview theme

Zuka
Zuka WordPress Theme

This theme simplifies the process of building a unique website with its 10 diverse demos that can be combined to your liking. You can choose from over 10 header layouts, and various footer and blog designs.

It includes a range of portfolio and testimonial layouts, a ‘coming soon’ page, and one-page website support. The theme is ready for high-resolution displays, speed-optimized, and compatible with right-to-left languages and maintenance mode. Customization is a breeze with its robust admin panel. It comes bundled with premium plugins such as Slider Revolution and WPBakery Page Builder. Y

ou can set different logos for different site versions, and it’s equipped for custom post types and social sharing. The theme offers extensive page options, including parallax backgrounds and Google Maps. A child theme is provided for safe updates, and the package includes demo content with real images.

Preview theme

Moleez
Moleez WordPress Theme

Enhance your online store with Moleez, a minimalist WooCommerce theme that puts your products front and center.

Ideal for fashion, furniture, and decoration e-commerce sites, Moleez comes with a mobile-friendly design and an intuitive page builder powered by Elementor. Enjoy the convenience of a built-in mega menu, multiple header and footer layouts, and premium features like advanced navigation and product variation swatches.

With WooCommerce integration, Moleez streamlines the selling process, offering AJAX product filters, quick view options, and an Ajax Canvas Cart for an improved shopping experience. The theme also boasts a one-click demo importer, endless category layouts, free shipping thresholds, catalog mode, instant search autocomplete, a “Buy Now” button, 360-degree product views, Instagram shop features, and adaptive images to speed up loading times.

Preview theme

Free Minimalist Themes
Activello
Activello Blog Theme Demo

Activello offers a minimalistic design for bloggers, ensuring a mobile-friendly experience with its Bootstrap foundation. It features a clean layout enhanced by high-quality graphics, custom widgets, and a fullscreen slider to showcase your content with style. Ideal for food, travel, and fitness blogs, this theme works seamlessly with key WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce and Yoast SEO.

It’s built with SEO in mind, boasting quick load times and a search engine-friendly structure. The development team encourages user feedback and suggestions through their support forums or X to continually refine the theme.

Preview theme

Astra
Astra Theme Homepage

Astra caters to a wide range of websites such as blogs, portfolios, business sites, and e-commerce platforms. Its design focuses on speed and efficiency, boasting a minimal frontend size of under 50KB for faster load times. The theme enhances your site’s visibility on search engines with built-in Schema.org code and AMP compatibility.

It works seamlessly with popular page builders like Elementor and Divi, allowing for easy customization. Astra supports WooCommerce, adapts to any device, and is ready for right-to-left language use. You can also translate it into various languages. Expand its functionality with premium add-ons and benefit from consistent updates. Created by Brainstorm Force, Astra provides a reliable base for building your website.

Preview theme

Blocksy
Blocksy Theme Layout

Blocksy is a fast, lightweight WordPress theme built for high customizability and seamless integration with the Gutenberg editor. It enables users to craft a wide array of website types, from business and e-commerce to education, dining, and blogging. With support for leading page builders such as Elementor and Beaver Builder, users enjoy a smooth website creation experience.

This theme is optimized for mobile devices, ready for translation, and designed with SEO in mind. It works perfectly with WooCommerce to help boost your sales. Keep in mind, for optimal performance, it’s best to use Blocksy with modern browsers, as it may not function well on older ones like Internet Explorer 11.

Preview theme

Blog Way
Blog Way Theme Design

Designed for bloggers, Blog Way offers a simple and clean aesthetic. It adapts seamlessly to different devices, perfect for blogs, travel sites, informative content, and lifestyle coaching. Customize your site’s colors to match your brand, and take advantage of the author profile widget and social media links to connect with your audience.

Plus, with WooCommerce compatibility, Blog Way is ready for e-commerce use.

Preview theme

Bricksy
Bricksy Block Theme

Bricksy offers a modern block-based design for WordPress users, free of charge. It combines traditional aesthetics with a user-friendly structure. You’ll find a range of block patterns in the demo, all customizable with a simple drag-and-drop editor. This feature makes it easy to arrange and tweak elements to fit the requirements of your project.

Preview theme

IKnowledgeBase
IKnowledgeBase Theme Demo

Designed for crafting Knowledge Base, Helpdesk, Wiki, or FAQ websites, this WordPress Theme emphasizes simplicity and speed. Its minimalistic and responsive design guarantees smooth operation on mobile devices. Organizing categories on the homepage is straightforward, and user-friendly navigation is enhanced with breadcrumbs. A custom widget also allows for easy navigation within categories or specific posts, improving the user experience.

Preview theme

Intuitive
Intuitive Business Theme

Intuitive caters to corporate and business websites with a user-friendly interface and a responsive design that adapts seamlessly to all devices and browsers. Customization is a breeze, even for those without coding skills, thanks to features like Featured Content, Slider, Hero Content, Portfolio, Services, and Testimonials that elevate your site’s functionality and look. This theme suits a range of websites, from corporate to blogs and portfolios, and is translation-ready to reach a global audience. Intuitive provides a simple yet professional solution for establishing your online presence.

Preview theme

Minimalist Blog
Minimalist Blog Theme

Designed for bloggers who cover topics ranging from travel and personal stories to technology and fashion, the Minimalist Blog theme offers a user-friendly experience with straightforward customization options. Its minimal and elegant design ensures a clean, modern aesthetic that looks great on all devices, from mobile to desktop.

With a focus on content presentation, this theme also prioritizes SEO efficiency for faster loading times and an improved user experience.

Preview theme

New Blog Jr
New Blog Jr Theme

With New Blog Jr, your articles shine in a clean and straightforward layout. This minimalist WordPress theme is a free child theme derived from the parent theme, New Blog. It focuses on simplicity, ensuring your content is the star of the show. Check out the demo to see it in action.

Preview theme

Nokke
Nokke Agency Theme

Designed for agencies, portfolios, personal sites, and online stores, Nokke offers a minimalist aesthetic that emphasizes content. With the Elementor page builder, users can easily craft custom layouts through intuitive drag-and-drop. This theme comes with a variety of home page designs, headers, footers, a mega menu, and a product builder for a tailored online presence. Customize your site with a selection of color schemes, widgets, and animations, all manageable via a customizer panel.

Nokke’s clean and professional look is perfect for establishing customer trust and highlighting products, all while maintaining a user-friendly experience.

Preview theme

PortfolioX
PortfolioX Theme Demo

Portfolio X offers a sleek, minimalistic design ideal for crafting a professional portfolio. This premium WordPress theme responds seamlessly to different devices, ensuring your work looks great on any screen. It’s a perfect fit for freelancers, designers, developers, photographers, and other creatives looking to showcase their talents

. Additionally, it’s well-suited for personal blogs, business sites, and online stores. While the core theme is free, enhanced features and dedicated support are available through paid upgrades. Portfolio X is regularly maintained, with the latest version 1.0.6 released on September 21, 2023, and it requires PHP version 5.6 or higher. Currently, it powers over 300 active installations.

Preview theme

Pure
Pure Portfolio Theme

Experience a clean and elegant online presence with the Pure WordPress Theme. This theme is perfect for showcasing portfolios or blogs, providing a modern and professional appearance with a minimalist design. It emphasizes content with a well-structured layout, capturing visitors’ attention on the essentials. Enjoy a fast and flexible website, thanks to WordPress’s powerful features.

The theme includes a dropdown menu, customizable header, and a grid portfolio layout with filter options. It supports various blog styles and comes with sleek typography, an About Page, and a 404 Error Page. Check out the Live Demo to see the theme in action.

Preview theme

Simple ResponsiveBlogily
ResponsiveBlogily Theme

Designed for bloggers, journalists, and writers, Responsive Blogily caters to a range of topics from entertainment to lifestyle. It’s SEO optimized with clean coding for quick load times. This theme provides plenty of space for Google Adsense and other advertisements.

It works seamlessly with Beaver Pagebuilder, making it easy to craft business portfolios, landing pages, and single-page websites.

Preview theme

SKT Minimal
SKT Minimal Theme

Embrace simplicity with SKT Minimal, a WordPress theme that boasts a clean and minimalist aesthetic. Perfect for interior design, architecture, photography, and creative portfolio websites, it also fits the needs of software, consulting, furniture, digital content, and infographic sites.

With over 120 pre-designed templates, this theme integrates seamlessly with Elementor, allowing for swift website construction. It’s user-friendly and includes detailed documentation for effortless setup.

Preview theme

Square
Square Business Theme

Square responds fluidly to all devices and web browsers, ensuring a mobile-friendly experience. It leverages the WordPress Customizer for real-time edits, catering to business, corporate, digital agency, blog, portfolio, photography, and magazine websites. With WooCommerce support, it’s ready for online sales and plays well with multilingual plugins such as Polylang and WPML.

It also meets RTL and Retina display requirements, boosts search engine visibility, and integrates with community plugins like bbPress and BuddyPress. Square comes ready to deploy with a previewable demo.

Preview theme

Suffice
Suffice Theme Layout

Designed for a range of websites such as business, construction, food, apps, gyms, magazines, one-page layouts, photography, and portfolios, Suffice is a WordPress theme that combines style with functionality. It comes with more than 10 ready-to-use starter sites, making it easy to get your website up and running quickly.

Preview theme

Superb eCommerce
Superb eCommerce Theme

Superb eCommerce caters to online stores of all kinds, from shops to boutiques. It works flawlessly with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, and is compatible with major block, widget, and page builders. This theme features a clean, minimal blog for content creators and supports the sale of both digital and physical items.

It’s fully responsive, SEO-optimized, and GDPR compliant, offering local font support. With Superb eCommerce, setting up a dropshipping affiliate store or marketing products via affiliate programs is a breeze, making it suitable for a wide range of markets, including fashion and interior design.

Preview theme

Superb Pixels
Superb Pixels Theme

Superb Pixels caters to bloggers, journalists, and content creators with its sleek and simple design that emphasizes imagery and text. While it’s presented as a food blog theme, it’s suitable for a range of topics including lifestyle, health, travel, and fashion. This user-friendly theme is great for beginners and facilitates content sharing.

It’s fast, SEO-friendly, and ready for monetization with AdSense and affiliate marketing. For e-commerce enthusiasts, it integrates with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, and it’s compatible with major page builders. Superb Pixels also complies with GDPR for user data protection.

Preview theme

VW Minimalist
VW Minimalist Theme

Designed for writers, bloggers, and businesses seeking a professional online presence, the VW Minimalist theme caters to a broad spectrum of content, from fashion critiques to technology discussions. It’s ideal for agencies, freelancers, and personal coaches. With its responsive design, users enjoy a seamless experience on any device or browser.

The theme incorporates modern features such as CSS animations, sticky posts, and Call To Action buttons for enhanced user engagement. Built on the reliable Bootstrap framework, it ensures secure and efficient HTML code performance.

Users can easily customize their sites with the intuitive control panel and extend functionality with plugins like Contact Form 7 and WooCommerce for e-commerce capabilities and improved interaction.

Preview theme

The post 40 Streamlined WordPress Themes for Simplicity appeared first on Hongkiat.

Beyond The Hype: What AI Can Really Do For Product Design

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/08/beyond-hype-what-ai-can-do-product-design/

These days, it’s easy to find curated lists of AI tools for designers, galleries of generated illustrations, and countless prompt libraries. What’s much harder to find is a clear view of how AI is actually integrated into the everyday workflow of a product designer — not for experimentation, but for real, meaningful outcomes.

I’ve gone through that journey myself: testing AI across every major stage of the design process, from ideation and prototyping to visual design and user research. Along the way, I’ve built a simple, repeatable workflow that significantly boosts my productivity.

In this article, I’ll share what’s already working and break down some of the most common objections I’ve encountered — many of which I’ve faced personally.

Stage 1: Idea Generation Without The Clichés

Pushback: “Whenever I ask AI to suggest ideas, I just get a list of clichés. It can’t produce the kind of creative thinking expected from a product designer.”

That’s a fair point. AI doesn’t know the specifics of your product, the full context of your task, or many other critical nuances. The most obvious fix is to “feed it” all the documentation you have. But that’s a common mistake as it often leads to even worse results: the context gets flooded with irrelevant information, and the AI’s answers become vague and unfocused.

Current-gen models can technically process thousands of words, but the longer the input, the higher the risk of missing something important, especially content buried in the middle. This is known as the “lost in the middle” problem.

To get meaningful results, AI doesn’t just need more information — it needs the right information, delivered in the right way. That’s where the RAG approach comes in.

How RAG Works

Think of RAG as a smart assistant working with your personal library of documents. You upload your files, and the assistant reads each one, creating a short summary — a set of bookmarks (semantic tags) that capture the key topics, terms, scenarios, and concepts. These summaries are stored in a kind of “card catalog,” called a vector database.

When you ask a question, the assistant doesn’t reread every document from cover to cover. Instead, it compares your query to the bookmarks, retrieves only the most relevant excerpts (chunks), and sends those to the language model to generate a final answer.

How Is This Different from Just Dumping a Doc into the Chat?

Let’s break it down:

Typical chat interaction

It’s like asking your assistant to read a 100-page book from start to finish every time you have a question. Technically, all the information is “in front of them,” but it’s easy to miss something, especially if it’s in the middle. This is exactly what the “lost in the middle” issue refers to.

RAG approach

You ask your smart assistant a question, and it retrieves only the relevant pages (chunks) from different documents. It’s faster and more accurate, but it introduces a few new risks:

Ambiguous question
You ask, “How can we make the project safer?” and the assistant brings you documents about cybersecurity, not finance.
Mixed chunks
A single chunk might contain a mix of marketing, design, and engineering notes. That blurs the meaning so the assistant can’t tell what the core topic is.
Semantic gap
You ask, “How can we speed up the app?” but the document says, “Optimize API response time.” For a human, that’s obviously related. For a machine, not always.

These aren’t reasons to avoid RAG or AI altogether. Most of them can be avoided with better preparation of your knowledge base and more precise prompts. So, where do you start?

Start With Three Short, Focused Documents

These three short documents will give your AI assistant just enough context to be genuinely helpful:

Product Overview & Scenarios
A brief summary of what your product does and the core user scenarios.
Target Audience
Your main user segments and their key needs or goals.
Research & Experiments
Key insights from interviews, surveys, user testing, or product analytics.

Each document should focus on a single topic and ideally stay within 300–500 words. This makes it easier to search and helps ensure that each retrieved chunk is semantically clean and highly relevant.

Language Matters

In practice, RAG works best when both the query and the knowledge base are in English. I ran a small experiment to test this assumption, trying a few different combinations:

English prompt + English documents: Consistently accurate and relevant results.
Non-English prompt + English documents: Quality dropped sharply. The AI struggled to match the query with the right content.
Non-English prompt + non-English documents: The weakest performance. Even though large language models technically support multiple languages, their internal semantic maps are mostly trained in English. Vector search in other languages tends to be far less reliable.

Takeaway: If you want your AI assistant to deliver precise, meaningful responses, do your RAG work entirely in English, both the data and the queries. This advice applies specifically to RAG setups. For regular chat interactions, you’re free to use other languages. A challenge also highlighted in this 2024 study on multilingual retrieval.

From Outsider to Teammate: Giving AI the Context It Needs

Once your AI assistant has proper context, it stops acting like an outsider and starts behaving more like someone who truly understands your product. With well-structured input, it can help you spot blind spots in your thinking, challenge assumptions, and strengthen your ideas — the way a mid-level or senior designer would.

Here’s an example of a prompt that works well for me:

Your task is to perform a comparative analysis of two features: “Group gift contributions” (described in group_goals.txt) and “Personal savings goals” (described in personal_goals.txt).

The goal is to identify potential conflicts in logic, architecture, and user scenarios and suggest visual and conceptual ways to clearly separate these two features in the UI so users can easily understand the difference during actual use.

Please include:Possible overlaps in user goals, actions, or scenarios;Potential confusion if both features are launched at the same time;Any architectural or business-level conflicts (e.g. roles, notifications, access rights, financial logic);Suggestions for visual and conceptual separation: naming, color coding, separate sections, or other UI/UX techniques;Onboarding screens or explanatory elements that might help users understand both features.If helpful, include a comparison table with key parameters like purpose, initiator, audience, contribution method, timing, access rights, and so on.

AI Needs Context, Not Just Prompts
If you want AI to go beyond surface-level suggestions and become a real design partner, it needs the right context. Not just more information, but better, more structured information.

Building a usable knowledge base isn’t difficult. And you don’t need a full-blown RAG system to get started. Many of these principles work even in a regular chat: well-organized content and a clear question can dramatically improve how helpful and relevant the AI’s responses are. That’s your first step in turning AI from a novelty into a practical tool in your product design workflow.

Stage 2: Prototyping and Visual Experiments

Pushback: “AI only generates obvious solutions and can’t even build a proper user flow. It’s faster to do it manually.”

That’s a fair concern. AI still performs poorly when it comes to building complete, usable screen flows. But for individual elements, especially when exploring new interaction patterns or visual ideas, it can be surprisingly effective.

For example, I needed to prototype a gamified element for a limited-time promotion. The idea is to give users a lottery ticket they can “flip” to reveal a prize. I couldn’t recreate the 3D animation I had in mind in Figma, either manually or using any available plugins. So I described the idea to Claude 4 in Figma Make and within a few minutes, without writing a single line of code, I had exactly what I needed.

At the prototyping stage, AI can be a strong creative partner in two areas:

UI element ideation
It can generate dozens of interactive patterns, including ones you might not think of yourself.
Micro-animation generation
It can quickly produce polished animations that make a concept feel real, which is great for stakeholder presentations or as a handoff reference for engineers.

AI can also be applied to multi-screen prototypes, but it’s not as simple as dropping in a set of mockups and getting a fully usable flow. The bigger and more complex the project, the more fine-tuning and manual fixes are required. Where AI already works brilliantly is in focused tasks — individual screens, elements, or animations — where it can kick off the thinking process and save hours of trial and error.

A quick UI prototype of a gamified promo banner created with Claude 4 in Figma Make. No code or plugins needed.

Here’s another valuable way to use AI in design — as a stress-testing tool. Back in 2023, Google Research introduced PromptInfuser, an internal Figma plugin that allowed designers to attach prompts directly to UI elements and simulate semi-functional interactions within real mockups. Their goal wasn’t to generate new UI, but to check how well AI could operate inside existing layouts — placing content into specific containers, handling edge-case inputs, and exposing logic gaps early.

The results were striking: designers using PromptInfuser were up to 40% more effective at catching UI issues and aligning the interface with real-world input — a clear gain in design accuracy, not just speed.

That closely reflects my experience with Claude 4 and Figma Make: when AI operates within a real interface structure, rather than starting from a blank canvas, it becomes a much more reliable partner. It helps test your ideas, not just generate them.

Stage 3: Finalizing The Interface And Visual Style

Pushback: “AI can’t match our visual style. It’s easier to just do it by hand.”

This is one of the most common frustrations when using AI in design. Even if you upload your color palette, fonts, and components, the results often don’t feel like they belong in your product. They tend to be either overly decorative or overly simplified.

And this is a real limitation. In my experience, today’s models still struggle to reliably apply a design system, even if you provide a component structure or JSON files with your styles. I tried several approaches:

Direct integration with a component library.
I used Figma Make (powered by Claude) and connected our library. This was the least effective method: although the AI attempted to use components, the layouts were often broken, and the visuals were overly conservative. Other designers have run into similar issues, noting that library support in Figma Make is still limited and often unstable.
Uploading styles as JSON.
Instead of a full component library, I tried uploading only the exported styles — colors, fonts — in a JSON format. The results improved: layouts looked more modern, but the AI still made mistakes in how styles were applied.
Two-step approach: structure first, style second.
What worked best was separating the process. First, I asked the AI to generate a layout and composition without any styling. Once I had a solid structure, I followed up with a request to apply the correct styles from the same JSON file. This produced the most usable result — though still far from pixel-perfect.

So yes, AI still can’t help you finalize your UI. It doesn’t replace hand-crafted design work. But it’s very useful in other ways:

Quickly creating a visual concept for discussion.
Generating “what if” alternatives to existing mockups.
Exploring how your interface might look in a different style or direction.
Acting as a second pair of eyes by giving feedback, pointing out inconsistencies or overlooked issues you might miss when tired or too deep in the work.

AI won’t save you five hours of high-fidelity design time, since you’ll probably spend that long fixing its output. But as a visual sparring partner, it’s already strong. If you treat it like a source of alternatives and fresh perspectives, it becomes a valuable creative collaborator.

Stage 4: Product Feedback And Analytics: AI As A Thinking Exosuit

Product designers have come a long way. We used to create interfaces in Photoshop based on predefined specs. Then we delved deeper into UX with mapping user flows, conducting interviews, and understanding user behavior. Now, with AI, we gain access to yet another level: data analysis, which used to be the exclusive domain of product managers and analysts.

As Vitaly Friedman rightly pointed out in one of his columns, trying to replace real UX interviews with AI can lead to false conclusions as models tend to generate an average experience, not a real one. The strength of AI isn’t in inventing data but in processing it at scale.

Let me give a real example. We launched an exit survey for users who were leaving our service. Within a week, we collected over 30,000 responses across seven languages.

Simply counting the percentages for each of the five predefined reasons wasn’t enough. I wanted to know:

Are there specific times of day when users churn more?
Do the reasons differ by region?
Is there a correlation between user exits and system load?

The real challenge was… figuring out what cuts and angles were even worth exploring. The entire technical process, from analysis to visualizations, was done “for me” by Gemini, working inside Google Sheets. This task took me about two hours in total. Without AI, not only would it have taken much longer, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach that level of insight on my own at all.

AI enables near real-time work with large data sets. But most importantly, it frees up your time and energy for what’s truly valuable: asking the right questions.

A few practical notes: Working with large data sets is still challenging for models without strong reasoning capabilities. In my experiments, I used Gemini embedded in Google Sheets and cross-checked the results using ChatGPT o3. Other models, including the standalone Gemini 2.5 Pro, often produced incorrect outputs or simply refused to complete the task.

AI Is Not An Autopilot But A Co-Pilot

AI in design is only as good as the questions you ask it. It doesn’t do the work for you. It doesn’t replace your thinking. But it helps you move faster, explore more options, validate ideas, and focus on the hard parts instead of burning time on repetitive ones. Sometimes it’s still faster to design things by hand. Sometimes it makes more sense to delegate to a junior designer.

But increasingly, AI is becoming the one who suggests, sharpens, and accelerates. Don’t wait to build the perfect AI workflow. Start small. And that might be the first real step in turning AI from a curiosity into a trusted tool in your product design process.

Let’s Summarize

If you just paste a full doc into chat, the model often misses important points, especially things buried in the middle. That’s the “lost in the middle” problem.
The RAG approach helps by pulling only the most relevant pieces from your documents. So responses are faster, more accurate, and grounded in real context.
Clear, focused prompts work better. Narrow the scope, define the output, and use familiar terms to help the model stay on track.
A well-structured knowledge bas makes a big difference. Organizing your content into short, topic-specific docs helps reduce noise and keep answers sharp.
Use English for both your prompts and your documents. Even multilingual models are most reliable when working in English, especially for retrieval.
Most importantly: treat AI as a creative partner. It won’t replace your skills, but it can spark ideas, catch issues, and speed up the tedious parts.

Further Reading

“AI-assisted Design Workflows: How UX Teams Move Faster Without Sacrificing Quality”, Cindy Brummer
This piece is a perfect prequel to my article. It explains how to start integrating AI into your design process, how to structure your workflow, and which tasks AI can reasonably take on — before you dive into RAG or idea generation.
“8 essential tips for using Figma Make”, Alexia Danton
While this article focuses on Figma Make, the recommendations are broadly applicable. It offers practical advice that will make your work with AI smoother, especially if you’re experimenting with visual tools and structured prompting.
“What Is Retrieval-Augmented Generation aka RAG”, Rick Merritt
If you want to go deeper into how RAG actually works, this is a great starting point. It breaks down key concepts like vector search and retrieval in plain terms and explains why these methods often outperform long prompts alone.

10 “Fresh” Design Trends We Shamelessly Stole From the Past

Original Source: https://webdesignerdepot.com/10-fresh-design-trends-we-shamelessly-stole-from-the-past/

Every “fresh” design trend you love is probably stolen—from Soviet posters to 80s neon, from Bauhaus to Blade Runner. We’re not inventing; we’re remixing. Here’s the proof that today’s hottest web aesthetics are just yesterday’s styles in shinier packaging.

Setting the Stage: Inside the Process of Bringing Christian Fleming’s Work to Life in Print, Web, and 3D

Original Source: https://tympanus.net/codrops/2025/08/14/setting-the-stage-inside-the-process-of-bringing-christian-flemings-work-to-life-in-print-web-and-3d/

A detailed, behind-the-scenes look at how theatrical design, visual storytelling, and creative collaboration shaped this multi-format project.

Designer Spotlight: Clarisse Michard

Original Source: https://tympanus.net/codrops/2025/08/15/designer-spotlight-clarisse-michard/

A peek into the creative world of Clarisse Michard, a Toulouse-based web designer crafting playful, custom digital experiences with Okey Studio.

Yotpo Review: My Verdict for 2025

Original Source: https://ecommerce-platforms.com/articles/yotpo-review

Yotpo is one of the most popular ecommerce marketing platforms, offering a full suite of tools to boost trust, retention, and sales — from reviews and user-generated content to loyalty programs, SMS marketing, and subscriptions.

I’ve spent weeks testing Yotpo across multiple online stores to see whether it truly lives up to its reputation.

In this review, I’ll walk you through Yotpo’s features, pricing, pros, and cons, as well as how it stacks up against its competitors.

By the end, you’ll know whether Yotpo is the right fit for your ecommerce business.

Why You Can Trust This Review

I’ve managed ecommerce websites for over 10 years and have tested dozens of review and loyalty platforms, including Judge.me, Loox, Stamped.io, and Okendo.

For this Yotpo review, I tested its integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, trialed both free and paid plans, and compared performance across live stores.

I’ve also pulled in the latest independent case studies, conversion data, and user ratings from sources like G2 and TrustRadius.

This means you’re getting an honest, up-to-date, and evidence-backed assessment — not just marketing fluff.

Yotpo Pros & Cons

ProsConsAll-in-one platform with reviews, loyalty, SMS, and subscriptionsHigher pricing compared to niche competitorsIntegrates seamlessly with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerceAdvanced features locked to higher tiersBoosts conversion rates through social proof and UGCSetup can be complex for multi-feature useLoyalty and referral tools proven to increase repeat salesCustomer support can be slow at peak timesStrong visual UGC capabilities for ads and product pagesSome learning curve for full customization

Quick Summary: What I Like and What I Dislike

What I Like

✔️ Combines multiple marketing tools under one roof — no need to juggle separate providers.
✔️ Review widgets look professional and load quickly, improving customer trust.
✔️ Loyalty and referral programs are robust and easy to configure.
✔️ SMS marketing has above-average click-through rates compared to email.
✔️ Seamless integration with ecommerce platforms and marketing tools like Klaviyo.

What I Dislike

❌ Pricing can be prohibitive for smaller stores, especially if you only need reviews.
❌ Visual UGC tools require more manual curation than some competitors.
❌ Setup for multiple modules can take several hours if you want advanced customization.

Go to the top

My Experience With Yotpo

When I first signed up for Yotpo, the onboarding process was straightforward. I connected my Shopify store in under five minutes, and Yotpo automatically pulled in my product catalog.

This meant I could start setting up review requests immediately without manually importing product data.

The platform then guided me through a setup checklist, which included:

Customizing my review request email.

Choosing a display widget style for product pages.

Connecting my Instagram account for visual UGC.

Activating the loyalty program module.

What stood out to me was how connected Yotpo felt to the rest of my marketing stack.

For example, I could automatically send collected reviews to my Klaviyo flows or run Google Shopping ads with star ratings showing — without extra work.

Go to the top

Yotpo Features – In Detail

Yotpo is not just a review tool. Here’s a closer look at its main features, how they work, and my testing notes.

1. Reviews & Ratings

This is Yotpo’s flagship feature. It automatically sends review requests after purchases via email or SMS, and lets customers submit text, photos, and videos.

Testing notes:

The default email template is clean and mobile-friendly, but I preferred customizing the colors and CTA buttons to match my brand.

Photo and video reviews significantly boosted my conversion rate on high-ticket products.

Review moderation tools made it easy to approve, reject, or request edits without hassle.

Best for: Increasing trust and SEO visibility through fresh, authentic content.

Extra insight:
One thing I appreciated during testing was the ability to segment review requests based on customer type. For example, I could send different follow-up questions to first-time buyers versus repeat customers, which resulted in more specific and helpful feedback.

This level of personalization isn’t common in many review platforms, and it made my review content more relevant and persuasive for future shoppers.

2. Visual UGC

Yotpo can pull in user-generated content from Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. You can tag products and display these posts in on-site galleries or use them in ads.

Testing notes:

The Instagram integration worked flawlessly and let me request usage rights with one click.

I noticed a 25% higher engagement rate in my Facebook ads when using real customer photos instead of stock images.

Extra insight:
What stood out most here was how easy it was to repurpose UGC across multiple channels. Once I had rights-approved images, I could drag them straight into my product page galleries, homepage banners, or even email campaigns.

This cut down on my content creation time and gave my store a more authentic, customer-driven feel without having to hire photographers or designers.

3. Loyalty & Referrals

Yotpo offers customizable loyalty programs with points, tiers, and referral rewards.

Example setup:

5 points per $1 spent.

$10 credit after 1,000 points.

$15 reward for referring a friend who makes a purchase.

Testing notes:

I saw a 12% lift in repeat purchase rate after 60 days of running a loyalty program.

Referral tracking was accurate, and customers appreciated instant credit notifications.

Extra insight:
The dashboard for loyalty analytics was another highlight. I could see not only how many customers were joining the program, but also which reward types motivated them most — whether that was percentage discounts, free shipping, or store credit.

This allowed me to adjust my incentives over time, making the program more profitable without giving away unnecessary value.

4. SMS Marketing

Through its acquisition of SMSBump, Yotpo’s SMS marketing is now fully integrated.

Testing notes:

My abandoned cart campaigns had a 27% click-through rate — far higher than my 4% average for email.

Back-in-stock alerts drove rapid conversions for limited products.

Extra insight:
I also tested Yotpo’s SMS segmentation, which let me create targeted lists based on purchase history, location, or engagement level. This meant I could send exclusive early-access messages to my VIP customers or promote local events to customers in a specific city.

The level of targeting made my SMS campaigns feel more personal and less like generic blasts, which improved engagement and reduced opt-outs.

5. Subscriptions

Ideal for consumables like coffee, supplements, or skincare.

Testing notes:

Setup was simple, and customers could easily pause or skip shipments from their account page.

Predictable recurring revenue helped with inventory planning.

Extra insight:
What I liked most was how subscription offers could be embedded directly into the regular product page without feeling intrusive. Customers saw a clear choice between a one-time purchase and a discounted subscription, which encouraged sign-ups without adding friction.

Plus, the subscription analytics gave me a month-by-month breakdown of churn rates, helping me identify products that needed better retention strategies.

Go to the top

Pricing: How Much Does Yotpo Cost?

While Yotpo doesn’t list fixed prices for all plans, here’s the general range based on my research and conversations with other store owners:

Plan TierMonthly Cost (USD)Key FeaturesFree Plan$0Basic reviews, limited requests per monthGrowth Plan$15–$119More review requests, photo reviewsPrime/Pro Plan$199–$499+SMS, loyalty programs, advanced analyticsEnterpriseCustom pricingAll features, full customization, dedicated support

Value assessment:
If you plan to use at least two of Yotpo’s modules (e.g., Reviews + Loyalty), the pricing can be worth it. If you only need reviews, cheaper options like Judge.me may make more sense.

Extra insight:
From my conversations with merchants, many say the key to making Yotpo’s pricing work is to measure results closely within the first three months.

By tracking revenue from loyalty members, SMS-driven sales, and UGC-based ads, you can determine whether the higher tier plans justify their cost. Without this data, it’s easy to feel like you’re paying for features you’re not using to their full potential.

Go to the top

Yotpo vs Competitors

FeatureYotpoJudge.meLooxStamped.ioOkendoReviewsYesYesYesYesYesPhoto/Video ReviewsYesYesYesYesYesLoyalty ProgramYesNoNoYesYesSMS MarketingYesNoNoNoNoSubscription ToolsYesNoNoNoNoPrice (starting)$15$15$9.99$19$19

Where Yotpo really stands out is in the depth of integration between its features.

For example, reviews collected through Yotpo can feed directly into loyalty campaigns, and UGC can be repurposed in SMS promotions without leaving the platform.

Most competitors offer these tools separately, which can create a fragmented marketing process and require additional manual work to connect the dots.

Go to the top

Case Studies & Data Highlights

Lumin Skincare: 37% revenue boost after integrating Yotpo reviews and SMS.

BigCommerce merchant: 161% increase in repeat purchase rate from Yotpo Loyalty.

Yotpo benchmark: Products with reviews convert 3.5x more than those without.

SMS campaigns: 20–35% CTR compared to industry email average of 2–5%.

These results aren’t guaranteed for every store, but they highlight the potential impact of using Yotpo’s tools together rather than in isolation.

In my testing, the biggest revenue jumps came from brands that actively encouraged customers to join loyalty programs after leaving a review, creating a seamless loop of engagement and repeat purchases.

Go to the top

Final Verdict – Is Yotpo Worth It?

If you’re running a small ecommerce store and just need reviews, Yotpo might feel overpriced.

But if you’re looking for a centralized platform to manage reviews, loyalty, SMS, and subscriptions, Yotpo is one of the strongest options available.

The real value comes when you use multiple features together — for example, collecting reviews, feeding that content into ads, rewarding repeat purchases, and retargeting via SMS. That’s when the ROI starts to become clear.

For brands doing $50k+ per month, Yotpo can easily pay for itself. For smaller stores, start with the free plan and upgrade when you can take advantage of the extra features.

Ultimately, the decision comes down to scale and strategy. If your store is growing fast and you’re ready to invest in a platform that can handle multiple marketing channels in one place, Yotpo offers the tools to match that ambition.

But if you’re still testing product-market fit or running on a lean budget, starting with a lighter toolset and switching to Yotpo later can help you avoid unnecessary costs in the early stages.

The post Yotpo Review: My Verdict for 2025 appeared first on Ecommerce-Platforms.com.

Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (July 2025)

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/designers-developers-monthly-07-2025/

As always, we’re keeping an eye on the latest tools making life easier for our fellow developers. In this post, we’ve picked some handy open-source tools made for developers like you, whether you’re working with AI, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, or Node.js.

These tools are simple to try, fun to explore, and can make your coding life a lot easier.

Without further ado, let’s explore the full list.

Click Here for More Resources

.no-js #ref-block-tax-74163-1 .ref-block__thumbnail {
background-image: url( “https://assets.hongkiat.com/uploads/thumbs/related/tag-fresh-resources-developers.jpg” );
}

Click Here for More Resources

Check out our complete collection of hand-picked tools for designers and developers.

OpenCodeAI

OpenCodeAI is a terminal-based AI coding assistant that works with over 75 AI models. It can understand your code through Language Server Protocol (LSP), helps with refactoring and suggestions, and runs commands directly in your terminal. It’s fast, customizable, and designed to fit naturally into your coding workflow.

OpenCodeAI terminal-based coding assistant interface

Models.dev

Models.dev is an open-source, community-driven directory of AI models that helps you compare specs, features, and pricing across providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, and Google. It lists key details like token limits, context size, and costs which makes it a handy resource for developers, researchers, and teams choosing the right model for their needs.

Models.dev AI model comparison dashboard

PHP MCP

PHP MCP Server is a modern PHP SDK for building MCP servers to allow AI tools like ChatGPT to interact with your PHP app. It uses PHP 8 Attributes, supports multiple transports such as HTTP, SSE, stdio, and runs efficiently with ReactPHP. Designed for PHP 8.1+, it’s fast, flexible, and production-ready.

PHP MCP Server code implementation example

Palmr

Palmr is a secure, open-source file-sharing app that allows you to upload and share files with password protection, custom links, and access control. It has no tracking, no limits, and built with modern tech and actively developed. A perfect solution for those who want to share files privately and securely.

Palmr secure file sharing interface

Pino

Pino is a fast and lightweight logging library for Node.js that outputs structured JSON logs. It’s built for performance and is great for production use, making logs easy to parse and integrate with monitoring tools.

Pino Node.js logging library demo

VSCode MCP

This page is a hub for discovering Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers you can use with Visual Studio Code. These MCP allows AI agents in VS Code connect to external tools like GitHub, Figma, Playwright, and Sentry as well as enabling actions such as testing apps, fetching data, or editing files. It’s a great resource for developers looking to enhance their coding experience with AI.

VSCode MCP integration features overview

Doppar

Doppar is a fast, modern PHP framework inspired by Laravel, focused on simplicity and performance. It offers routing, ORM, caching, and other essentials, and supports PHP 8.3. A great alternative framework for building clean, scalable web apps.

Doppar PHP framework features showcase

OpenAI Cookbook

OpenAI Cookbook is an official GitHub repo from OpenAI that provides practical examples and guides for using the OpenAI API. A helpful resource for developers looking to integrate and make the most of OpenAI models with ready-to-use code and tutorials.

OpenAI Cookbook code examples preview

Databag

Databag is a fast, lightweight, self-hosted messenger built for privacy and low-resource environments like the Raspberry Pi Zero. It offers a responsive UI, unlimited user accounts per node, and is open-source with active development on GitHub. An ideal alternative platform for personal or small-group messaging with full control over your data.

Databag messenger app user interface

Speedtest Tracker

Speedtest Tracker is a self-hosted app that monitors your internet speed and uptime using Ookla’s Speedtest CLI. It runs in Docker, logs download/upload speeds, ping, and packet loss, and shows trends with graphs.

You can set alerts via email, Discord, or other channels when performance drops. A great tool for keeping tabs on your internet connection’s health and performance.

Speedtest Tracker dashboard with graphs

What’s new in DevTools 136-138

“What’s new in DevTools 136-138” by Chrome for Developers highlights the latest DevTools updates in Chrome. New features include faster workspace setup and better CSS debugging like support for corner-shape, calc(), and var().

The update brings improved AI assistance that can now keep styling changes, use screenshots in prompts, and help explain performance traces. Chrome 138 also adds helpful visual indicators for DOM issues right in the Elements panel.

Chrome DevTools new features showcase

Gemini CLI

Gemini CLI is a command-line tool from Google that brings Gemini AI models right into your terminal. It can help you speed up your work by automating tasks system, generating codes as well as content using plain language, or simply chatting with the AI.

Google Gemini CLI tool demo

Mixpost

Mixpost is a self-hosted, open-source tool for scheduling and managing social media posts across platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok. It supports team collaboration, post customization, video content. I think it’s a great solution for businesses and individuals looking to streamline their social media presence while keeping everything in-house.

Mixpost social media management dashboard

Effect

Effect is a TypeScript library for building reliable, high-performance apps with strong type safety. It handles async tasks, errors, and side effects using a functional approach, with built-in support for tracing, metrics, HTTP, SQL, and more. A powerful tool for developers looking to create complex applications.

Effect TypeScript library code example

OpenSaas

OpenSaaS is a free, open-source starter template for building full-featured SaaS apps fast. Built with React, Node.js, Prisma and includes the essentials like auth, payments, and analytics out of the box. A great stack for developers who want to launch modern, scalable SaaS products quickly without starting from scratch.

OpenSaaS starter template features preview

OCRFlux

OCRFlux is a fast, open-source tool that converts complex PDFs and images into clean Markdown. It handles multi-column layouts, tables, and equations with high accuracy, supports English and Chinese, and runs locally on consumer GPUs or via Docker. A great tool for processing reports, receipts, and structured documents.

OCRFlux PDF to Markdown conversion

Filepond

FilePond is a flexible JavaScript library for building sleek, accessible file upload components. It supports drag-and-drop, image previews, async uploads, and handles files from various sources. It’s easy to customize and integrate into any web app with adapters for React, Vue, Angular, and more.

FilePond file upload component demo

Pomposer

Pomposer is an experimental tool that acts as a smarter wrapper around Composer. Inspired by PNPM, it aims to avoid repeated downloads of the same dependencies, speeding up installations and saving disk space. While it’s still in beta development, Pomposer shows promise for streamlining PHP dependency workflows.

Pomposer PHP dependency manager interface

Redis Insight

Redis Insight is a free, official GUI for Redis that helps you explore, debug, and optimize your databases. It supports all Redis deployments and offers features like visual data browsing, an advanced CLI with auto-complete, AI-powered query assistance, performance insights, and real-time stream monitoring. It’s a powerful tool for both new and experienced Redis users.

Redis Insight database management interface

Docker macOS

This project allows you to run macOS inside a Docker container using KVM virtualization. You can access the macOS instance via a web browser, customize CPU, RAM, and disk settings, and even pass through USB devices.

It supports macOS versions 11 to 15 and can be run via Docker Compose, CLI, or Kubernetes. It’s an ideal tool for testing macOS apps on non-Apple hardware like Linux or Windows.

Docker macOS virtual machine interface

The post Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (July 2025) appeared first on Hongkiat.

Discover the work of a digital artist who blends personal influences with striking utopian fantasy

Original Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/art/character-design/discover-the-work-of-a-digital-artist-who-blends-personal-influences-with-striking-utopian-fantasy

Our 2D artist of the week Jessica Liu explains the inspiration behind five of her favourite character illustrations.

Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl has sparked an orange investigation

Original Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/design/branding/taylor-swifts-the-life-of-a-showgirl-has-sparked-an-orange-investigation

Swifties are ablaze with theories.

Exciting New Tools for Designers, August 2025

Original Source: https://webdesignerdepot.com/exciting-new-tools-for-designers-august-2025/

Our roundup of exciting new tools for designers is a smorgasbord of options, from open source editors to artificial intelligence tools are designed to speed up creative workflows. Most of the tools hitting the market right now include some AI elements, but we do have one “anti-AI” tool featured.     Here’s what’s new for designers. […]