Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/DvSNkb1g8rg/apple-wonky-send-button

Some design flaws are obvious. They smack you in the face immediately; everyone tears down the designer, and the project either gets redesigned or fades into oblivion. Other mistakes are just small enough for most people not to even notice, but once pointed out they can't be unseen. It's like have a tiny pebble in your shoe you can never get rid of. 

What's the point of this long-winded introduction? Someone has spotted that the Send button in Apple's Messages iPhone app is very slightly wonky. Behold:

The thoroughly unwanted PSA came from Anh, and it will surprise precisely no one to hear he's an interface designer. Having announced it on Twitter, he unwittingly opened the door to other fastidious designers pointing out myriad other tiny interface flaws in iOS app icons.

Bjorn pointed out that the play circle in Spotify isn't really a circle at all, but an oval.

Noel Cornell flagged up this glaring error:

Product designer Donnie Suazo shared flagged up this blue-one-black monstrosity within the Maps app. 

Ugh. Take a look at the full thread here, if you're feeling brave. Of course, some are making the point that optical illusions are often used in design – and sometimes a technically 'perfect' design looks wrong to the eye. Case in point, this massive debate surrounding Google's 'incorrect' logo. It doesn't make it any less irritating once you've spotted the inconsistency though, does it?

If this hasn't put you off Apple products forever, take a look at our guide to making the most of the Apple Black Friday sale. 

Read more: 

Apple’s 2020 MacBook and iPad Pros could feature all-new display techSurface Pro 7 vs iPad ProWhy Apple's rumoured iPhone SE 2 feels like as BIG disappointment

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/0GTfSBx3ldc/11-pro-web-design-tips-for-an-attention-grabbing-business-website

Is your business website appealing to your target audience? Are you getting lucrative outcomes with your website design? Is your brand growing time and again? The answers to these questions can be discovered without spending thousands of dollars on experts and updates. Frequently. there is a situation when you develop a visually-appealing website, but it […]

The post 11 Pro Web Design Tips for an Attention-Grabbing Business Website appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/10/10-spooky-designs-to-get-you-inspired-this-halloween/

Is the eerie spirit of Halloween haunting your designs? Find spooky inspiration in these ten ghoulish illustrations, videos, and photos.

From Polish artist Piotr Jabłoński’s off-kilter and unnerving fantasy paintings to Caley Hicks’ cutesy take on Halloween themes, you’re sure to find something here to get you in the spooky mood.

Looking for spine-chilling photos, graphics, and video clips to use in your projects? Don’t miss our ultimate curated Halloween collection.

1. Día de los Muertos by Shutterstock contributors

Taking place just after Halloween on November 2nd, 2019, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican holiday held to remember the deceased.

Viewed by Mexicans as a day of celebration rather than sadness, colorful costumes, parades, and sugar skulls are prominent features of the holiday. Families gather at the grave of the departed to leave offerings and say prayers, aiding their loved one in their spiritual journey.

Imagery surrounding Día de los Muertos is vibrant and theatrical, giving Day of the Dead-themed designs an otherworldly feel.

Explore the Shutterstock contributors’ Día de los Muertos video collection.

 

 
 

 
 

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2. Fantasy Dreamscapes by Tithi Luadthong

Inspired by horror, fantasy, and science fiction, illustrator Tithi Luadthong conjures up immersive and deeply compelling dreamscapes that tell intriguing stories.

The digital impressionist injects his images with a sense of dynamism and movement, transporting the viewer to a multitude of action-packed horror-themed scenarios, from a zombie apocalypse to a cave inhabited by a horned demon.

Read more about Tithi’s creative process in this interview with the Bangkok-based artist.

Explore the artist’s full collection of horror- and Halloween-themed content here.

Image by contributor Tithi Luadthong.

Image by contributor Tithi Luadthong.

Image by contributor Tithi Luadthong.

3. Halloween-Themed Curated Collection by Shutterstock

Whether you’re planning a Halloween party, creating a seasonal social media post, or designing a hair-raising webpage, the Shutterstock Halloween curated collection features everything you could need to realize your petrifying project.

From trick-or-treat portraits to ghostly collages, discover a wide range of images to suit every mood and every design this autumn.

4. Animal Halloween Portraits by Kimberly Petts

Horror isn’t for everyone when Halloween rolls around. The holiday is just as much an excuse for indulging in some fun and frivolity.

Shutterstock contributor Kimberley Petts loves to give her animal portraits a spooky yet light-hearted twist. With an air of old-world painting styles, her images manage to balance a somber setting with witty subjects. We especially love her Rembrandt-influenced portraits of her two German Shorthaired Pointers, Branston and Twiglet.

Discover more portraits of pets getting into the Halloween spirit.

Image by contributor Kimberly Petts.

Image by contributor Kimberly Petts.

5. Supernatural Concept Art by Piotr Jabłoński

Polish concept artist and digital painter Piotr Jabłoński has a cult following for his beautiful yet often disturbing images. His expertly executed digital illustrations see him turn his hand to depicting dark forests filled with mystical creatures, fantastical battle scenes, and freakish humanoid characters.

With a meticulous eye for detail, Jabłoński’s images explore themes of horror, the supernatural, and general weirdness. His ability to blur the lines between normality and fantasy in his subject matter makes his images not only unnervingly beautiful to look at, but unforgettable too.

Images by Piotr Jabłoński.

6. Cutesy Spooks by Caley Hicks

Florida-based illustrator Caley Hicks, aka There Will Be Cute, looks to vintage children’s illustrations to inform her adorable, retro-tinted drawings and patterns. Influenced by the golden age of Disney, Hicks applies her cute and perky drawing style to a range of seasonal subjects. With Halloween a favorite subject, Hicks depicts black cats, pumpkins, and headless horsemen in a midcentury-inspired palette of burnt orange, cream, and charcoal black.

With fans able to purchase cushions, phone covers, and even shower curtains from her online shop, this talented artist has honed a versatile style that works just as well in the home as it does on screen.

Images by Caley Hicks.

7. High Fashion Halloween by SunCity

Halloween is a great excuse for getting dressed up and transforming yourself into a vampire, witch, or black cat. For the more fashionably-inclined, it’s also the perfect occasion to showcase your fabulous makeup skills.

Shutterstock contributor SunCity takes an ultra-stylish approach to the Halloween theme, casting his subject in dramatic colored lighting and experimenting with skeletal makeup, shadows, and blurring. The final result is a high-fashion take on the spooky holiday. These photos would be perfect for giving a Halloween-themed magazine layout or poster a high-fashion twist.

Image by contributor SunCity.

Image by contributor SunCity.

Image by contributor SunCity.

8. Carved Vegetables by Tough Slate Design

Who knew a fig could be so frightening? Kiev-based creatives Tough Slate Design gave this Halloween promo campaign for Le Silpo Specialty Grocery store a quirky twist using that most humble of foods — fruit and vegetables.

Carving frightening faces into turnips, peppers, and olives, then photographing them against a seasonal orange background, created a foundation for their “Treat-or-treat!” campaign. The idea behind the posters? With Le Silpo offering a wide range of delicacies in-store, it seemed bland and unoriginal to use a traditional Halloween pumpkin.

Striking the perfect balance between cute and creepy, the final poster is a lesson in discovering an unusual and offbeat angle for a seasonal campaign.

Poster design by Tough Slate Design for Le Silpo Specialty Grocery store.

9. Wall Art by Syda Productions

Simple cut-out shapes made from paper or card can be transformed into stylish and striking works of art with the right concept in mind. Here, Shutterstock contributor Syda Productions turns his hand to collage-style displays of swarming bats. Set against a minimal backdrop, the result is perfect inspiration for style-conscious decorators looking to add a touch of seasonal spirit to a home or office setting.

Why not try creating and photographing your own Halloween collage creations? Decorate a lonely wall with a flock of black crows or flurry of spider webs to conjure a spooky spirit on a budget.

Image by contributor Syda Productions.

10. Contemporary Tarot Cards by Theo Boquet

Fortune-telling is deeply connected with the Halloween season. A display of tarot cards across a dining table at a Halloween party is not only a decorative flourish, but is a lovely way of bringing a touch of mystery and spirituality to your event.

These modern and minimal tarot cards by Lille-based graphic designer Theo Boquet offer an ultra-stylish alternative to traditional tarot cards. The collage style mixes black-and-white figures from popular culture and artistic masterpieces with pops of vivid blue and yellow ink.

Boquet’s design is a great example of applying contemporary style to traditional subject matter, to create a hip fusion of old and new.

‘Tarot de Marseille’ card designs by Theo Boquet.

Creating a Halloween-Themed Design?

Discover frightening photos, kooky graphics, and supernatural video clips to use in your projects with the Shutterstock curated Halloween collection.

 

This post originally appeared on the Shutterstock blog.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Shutterstock –]

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/6FdF6zUL8wk/

The advantage of prototyping is that it allows designers to prove or disprove their concepts. Also, to fine tune their designs. And it can demonstrate how the final product will work once production is completed. Prototyping tools are used to simulate application flow, to test performance, and create a user experience.

In practice, designers use a variety of prototyping tools. Their capabilities range from simple to advanced.

Tools that support design handoff are relatively new on the scene. The available choices are still somewhat limited. Several tools that support both prototyping and handoff are described in this article.

When a tool of this type is right for your project’s workflow, it make’s life that much easier. And any one of the 5 presented here can easily make that happen.

1. Overflow

Preparing a design for product development purposes is seldom an easy task. Taking a design and presenting it in the form of a beautiful user flow diagram isn’t always that much fun. Not only are these diagrams traditionally hard to build, but they can also be a pain to update and maintain.

Part of the problem lies in that, until recently, a tool that explicitly specialized in user flow diagramming for designers hasn’t existed. Essentially one that makes it easy to connect between visual screens to illustrate the bigger picture.

Overflow changed all of that. Overflow is the world’s first user flow diagramming tool specifically tailored for designers; a tool that will significantly accelerate your user flow design diagramming process. You can sync your designs from Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD, upload images and add shapes and connectors to create interactive user flow presentations that tell the story behind your design work.

Overflow is available on MacOS for a 30-day free trial. A Windows version is expected to follow at a future time.

2. Webflow

With Webflow, you can prototype anything from a website dashboard to a mobile app, and you can do so using fully-functional forms and real, dynamic content. That’s more than most prototyping tools allow — but there’s even more to come.

Because with Webflow, you can actually skip the handoff. It enables you to take your finished prototype and move right into the build and launch phases, creating a completely custom, production-ready website without any need for coding. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding is done for you.

When it’s time to launch, world-class hosting is available. It’s lightning-fast, hassle-free, and doesn’t involve any of the usual, cumbersome setup.

Plus, you can build your website or app from scratch, from a template, or by using any of a large array of community-created UI kits.

In short, Webflow is a single tool that could make much of your current toolkit completely obsolete. And who wouldn’t rather be using fewer tools?

3. UXPin

UXPin is a prototyping tool created to help reduce the time spent on design and development. Fewer tools, faster collaboration, shorter time to market. Manage design tasks, create a prototype that perfectly mimics the real product, collaborate on iterations, and hand off the project to the development team – all from one tool.

The perfect solution for both professionals and those who are just starting in design. Try the free plan and scale if need be.

4. Avocode

You can use this platform-independent tool to automate your project’s design handoff workflows, import and share design versions with team members and stakeholders, and turn Sketch, PSD, and other file formats like XD, Figma or Illustrator into code.

Avocode syncs and stores your design files in the cloud and helps you keep those files correctly versioned and organized; and you don’t have to prepare your files upfront in any way.

5. Savah

With Savah at your fingertips, it’s easy to create an end-to-end journey for your web or mobile app projects. This is not your typical prototyping and design collaboration tool in the sense that it does much more than help you build a prototype.

Savah promotes collaboration and team feedback. And it also has a built-in design workflow and approval system that can immediately speed up your project’s design phase. Savah is free to use for solo designers.

Looking for an ideal prototyping and handoff tool?

While there’s certainly no shortage of tools and techniques for building prototypes, finding what you need can be a challenge. Simply because what you need depends on the task at hand, making that need a variable.

You could choose blindly or simply throw your hands up in despair, but you don’t have to do either. Just take the following into account when it’s time to make a selection:

The tool should make collaboration and information sharing easy.
It should have a shallow learning curve and be easy to use.
It should serve you well for low-fi prototyping, medium-fi prototyping, hi-fi prototyping, or if need be, all the above.
And, the price should suit your budget.

You also want to look at the pros and cons of any given tool, whether it’s for prototyping or design handoff, taking into account the following criteria:

Fidelity: How well does the tool support visual and interaction design?
Consistency: Does it have the necessary features to ensure design consistency in your work?
Accuracy: Does it enable you to strictly adhere to your organization’s “source of truth”?
Collaboration: Does it make collaboration and co-design activities easy to perform and manage?
Developer Handoff: What processes does it follow to generate specifications and assets for developers?

Remember, you’re not looking for the “best”. You’re looking for a tool that will do the job and do it well without placing any bothersome constraints on you or on your design.

Conclusion

You can save a ton of time and avoid a certain amount of grief by staying up to date with the latest tools and techniques. That includes prototyping tools and most certainly handoff tools. The handoff tools are a recent addition to a web designer’s toolbox.

Some tools can be used for virtually any project, unless or until they become obsolete. Usually you need to consider the task at hand when selecting one. The ability to work on a given platform or any platform should always be considered. Also, a possible need to integrate with other design tools should be considered.