Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/the-second-coming-of-the-productivity-tool/?utm_source=rss

I’ve been testing a range of information management and Second Brain tools this year, from Bear to Notion to Obsidian.

In most of these cases, I’ve tried the apps before or used them for years. This year, I’ve endeavored to settle on my selections, commit, and get the workflows sorted out. I’ve been doing this with other mainstays in my system like TextExpander (a snippet manager) and Alfred (a powerful launcher) as well. Seven months into the year, I’m confident that this effort has been fruitful.

Managing complexity without compromising it has always been interesting to me. My first gig with meaningful traffic was as a Lifehack writer in the mid-2000s. I’ve gorged myself on and become disillusioned by my quest for software holy grails more times than I can count. This quest is even a hereditary calling of sorts. As a kid, car conversations with my father compared the merits of Grandview and Lotus Agenda, or how much you could get done with an Atari Portfolio on the train (an incredible amount, said with Viticci-esque passion). He taught me spreadsheets by having us log our jogging metrics on a Macintosh Portable. This is not a very portable device, for the record:

I’m sure his heart still lies with an obscure 90s app called DayInfo — along with his data from that era, no doubt.

This impossible but driving need to Reach Clarity has, for better or worse, entrenched itself within my own brain.

Between then and now, information management and productivity software wandered in the wilderness. As a species, we have mastered the art of the list app. We have put more effort into this endeavour than the moon landing and the Large Hadron Collider combined. Nothing has impeded our ability to imagine new ways of being reminded about the things on the list.

And yet the list has remained an unsatisfying — although not impotent — tool on its own. Lists are bad at context, yet we know that actions are meaningless without strategy. So, we’ve tried to brute force systems that provide context through lists. Folders of lists. Areas of responsibilities full of lists. The Today list, tomorrow’s list, Someday/Maybe, lists in kanban boards and listicles of list tips, tricks, and apps. Brain-dump into your big list and schedule a weekly review to sort that into your little lists. In this wilderness, lists have been our manna.

For much of the last five years, I used a Bullet Journal-esque Markdown file to manage my tasks. It felt like a private stance of rejection against the pandering, posing performance art of productivity pornography.

It felt good. It was a productive time.

This isn’t an uncommon progression for the knowledge worker, whether you’re a developer, writer, or you sell a Memberful subscription to your clarinet lessons. Well ahead of the curve, Gina Trapani, founding editor of Lifehacker, became a todo.txt proponent. We’d all been let down by the failure of software to do what we had hoped it would do. We wanted it to connect the strategic and execution contexts for our lives, bridging the divide between the two so we could move forward with purpose. Instead, we had lists.

Until the last few years, that is, when something broke loose and the fundamentalist rigidity around structure began to fall away. Notion created the momentum here. It cracked the tough UI problems of mixing free-form content tools with the power of the database. Airtable pushed the spreadsheet into new territory. Its API is in the wild, giving us a glimpse at how much you can achieve when you can connect these engines to your data. A veritable horde stampedes over Notion’s social media manager every day, begging for an API timeline.

I love the tools in this new wave of productivity software. I’ve used Notion personally for a few years and have been rebuilding SitePoint’s editorial workflow on it over the past month or two. For me, Notion is a holy grail.

Freedom from lists: a mirage, 2020

Sure, there are frequent moments of frustration. It’s so close to being unstoppably powerful – if only we had the API, or more powerful formulas and relational interactions. But these frustrations are borne of seeing the unfulfilled potential, rather than feeling stifled by inherent limitations. That’s an exciting shift.

For all its anti-structure, Notion is best when you know how you want to structure your life, team, project, or data. It gives you all the tools you need to design workflows and dashboards that will be most useful for your use case. It is flexible to the extreme, but not the ideal free-wheeler.

There’s another important side of information management. The ideal tool looks different when you want to build an organic body of knowledge. These tools should help you create context between discrete units of knowledge. They should help you do so rapidly without excessive structural overhead. The most valuable features are seamless interlinking, fast search, universal capture, and simplicity.

In recent years, people like Christian Tietze have shared how they build digital zettelkastens with apps like nvALT. This concept has driven the wave of new apps built around these needs. In broad strokes, it’s an atomic database of all the information you acquire and deem worthy of saving. It grows and – this is the key – forms connections with the rest of your atomic notes over time. Similar thinking is at the root of the Second Brain concept.

There are a few apps bringing this style of information management into the future. The most famous is Roam Research, which I have not tried myself. Obsidian is another option that works well for developers. It’s also great for people who otherwise deal with a lot of code (like me – as an occasional developer, but primarily as an editor of content about code). Obsidian stores notes in local, plaintext Markdown, and you can use your preferred sync method.

Obsidian’s formatting options

It handles code blocks well, and offers features like Vim mode and a graph view of your note connections. For developers, the ideal tool should also be able to serve as a code snippet manager. Obsidian has what it takes, and you can extend it with plugins to make up for functionality you miss.

My friend Joe Previte recently posted a Twitter thread about these tools which introduced me to a new option, Foam.

I decided to experiment with Foam by @jevakallio today.

Here is a thread with my notes 👇🏼

— Joe Previte (@jsjoeio) July 1, 2020

If the ideal knowledge manager should be able to replace your snippet manager, wouldn’t it be ideal if you could drive it from the app you write code in?

Foam takes its cues from Roam Research — no surprise — but it’s built on Visual Studio Code and GitHub. Like Obsidian, it isn’t bound to the cloud, but unlike Obsidian it’s truly free and open source.

The way in which it is extensible differs, too. As Joe notes, the ability to work with Code’s multitude of extensions gives Foam a powerful leg up. This is truer the more the use case applies to developers. Compare the options available in Code versus Obsidian’s built-in search, Vim mode, or GitHub integration. As with Obsidian, you can write your own extensions (if you’re a Premium member, you can access this VS Code book from Wiley to learn how).

Obsidian is the batteries-included option and it’s a good one. If you want absolute control at the expense of time, Foam offers it. Conversely, VS Code’s popularity means there are more off-the-shelf workflows to use with your other tools.

While I manage my life in Notion, I manage my writing with Git. That happens beneath a layer of proprietary apps like Ulysses, and I’m uninterested in moving the writing process itself to Code. But it does make this approach appealing for my notes.

We’ve gained so much power in our tools that you can almost replace a raft of apps with two. Are we far from seeing structured and unstructured information management apps collide? I don’t know, but for clarity’s sake it may be best that they don’t. Perhaps that’s how my brain works, and the app that does it all for you is taking shape in a repo somewhere.

But for the first time in a long time, I’m enjoying the quest for the holy grail again.

This editorial was originally published in the 23 July 2020 issue of SitePoint Weekly. To get the freshest resources, stories, and exclusive content for web developers, designers, and digital creators in your inbox each week, sign up here.

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Today we have a gigantic set of the latest and greatest web designs for you to keep you inspired! The striking difference between many of these designs shows an interesting trend: individuality.

Celebrating uniqueness and showing identity is big again and now it’s time to explore novel typography combinations and color themes. Just look at this diverse set! Are you getting excited yet? I certainly am!

Hope you enjoy this collection and get a big creative nudge to experiment with something new

Kaleidoz

Mav Farm

The Papestielliz

Thibaut Foussard

Dunderville

Yourra!

Patrick Heng

Fabrizio Milesi

Fjaka

CreativeCrew

makemepulse

Better Half

Hazelight

Andreas Antonsson

Anastasiia Afanasieva

Synchronized

Radiant

REDNECK

Kieran Baybutt

GT Flexa

Craig Reynolds

The Roger

SUMI

Mailchimp Presents

Jacob McKee

Strapi

AnnaTwelve Fragrances

Salon Bon Vivant

GlobeKit

Ali Ali

Yolélé

The post Inspirational Websites Roundup #17 appeared first on Codrops.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2020/08/3-essential-design-trends-august-2020/

Do the lazy days have you longing for a new design technique to try? You are in luck.

This month’s collection of essential design trends is packed with functional ideas to spruce up design projects. And all of them are fairly easy to accomplish and will give your project a modern – or intentionally old-school – look.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

Angles

There are so many ways to add and use funky angles in design projects.

An angle with a color-block can be a great way to help add a place for a text element on top of an image or video to help ensure readability. Use a color for the angled element that contrasts with the background and text overlay for a striking visual or use a color that matches the background for a more subtle feel.

Another bonus for using angles in the design is that they can help create a distinct eye-tacking pattern from one part of the screen to another to help create visual focus. On a smaller, more vertical screen (such as a mobile device), large angles can even serve a pseudo-split screen purpose and create a way for text and other elements to stack in more vertical orientations.

Angles can come in all different degrees and sizes. There aren’t a lot of rules with how to use them. The common factor is that they make the design easier to understand.

Alternatively, angles can be an independent design element that really has nothing to do with function or adding a text layer. That’s exactly what Aviaja Dance does with their design. The main use of angles comes from the fun “A” in the logo. It’s the main visual on the homepage above the scroll and is rotated in other locations throughout the design.

The next two examples use color-blocked angles.

Dantia uses a small blue angle in the top corner to anchor the logo against video that uses a lot of different colors. This way the logo is always visible. Small triangles are used as bullets throughout the design to further emphasize this shape.

Adige Design uses a large angle in a color that almost fades into the background to almost split the screen in half – part text, part visuals. This is a popular and effective use of an angle to enhance readability and add visual finesse.

Overprint Effects

While overprinting is a print design technique, the visual it creates is popping up in plenty of digital projects. It’s a cool look that creates additional colorways and almost always has a funky vibe.

When a design uses overprint, one color “prints” over another forming a mixed shade from the two hues. It has a certain elegance because as a print technique, it is often reserved for special projects.

That same feel comes through in digital design as well.

Sweet Punk uses a fun overprint with a bright orange circle and black and white image to create a lot of contrast in an interesting color effect. What makes it stand out even more is that the overprint slide is just part of a bigger set of moving images. It stands out because of the color choices and technique.

Kriya Konsulting uses a small overprint feature in a graphic to create a focal point away from text. The effect is subtle and with color and lines inside shapes, it gives you a lot to look at. The overprint graphic is just one of many circles on the screen that come together for a full effect. The interest of the overprint area serves as a starting point for the eye, which moves to other circular elements and text on the screen.

Dystopian Creatives uses an overprint effect in a quick animation as the site loads and then in several locations on the scroll. It’s so subtle that you might miss it if you aren’t looking thanks to a pretty bold overall aesthetic.

Turn of the Last Century Typography

Tall, skinny, modern-style typefaces are in. Bonus points for using this trend in a way that evokes feelings of the roaring 20s (1920s that is).

These font styles seem to mimic media posters from the era. While most of these typefaces fall into the category of modern serif, there are some sans options that create a similar feel.

The primary commonality is the use of extremely tall x-heights, and strokes with distinctly variable thick and thin options. Most of these typefaces are rather condensed as well.

Note how each of these examples takes a different approach.

Better Half uses a modern serif with a dramatic x-height. Note the use of upper and lower-case letters for the headline. It brings attention to the high-drama of the typeface.

Chiara Luzzana takes the opposite approach with an all uppercase character set and mixes outline and filled lettering. The text is somewhat reminiscent of the title credits from “Stranger Things” with dual throwback vibes to the 1920s and 1980s. (Proof that everything that was popular once comes back around again.)

Synchronized Digital Studio goes another way entirely. While the text and design has a similar feel, they do it here with a modern sans serif. Note that the x-height is still quite tall and there are vast differences between thick and thin strokes.

Each of these compact, yet bold typefaces are used to create a dominant visual. That’s the beauty of this style – the typeface is the art thanks to so much visual interest. There’s also the added bonus that these condensed styles allow for higher character counts without getting visually overwhelming. (So, if you need to use a long word at a large size in the main headline, this could be a viable option.)

Conclusion

Design trends that are fun (and functional) are some of the best. Using angles can make it easier to incorporate text elements that are easy to read, overprint effects add flair and a bit of an old-school feel, and turn of the last century typography feels modern and fresh with a hint of 1920s flair.

Any of these design elements can be applied to websites without a complete overhaul and make a great refresh for the dog days of summer and beyond.

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The June edition of the New Yorker has been released, with a cover devoted to the history of violence inflicted on black people in the United States. Entitled 'Say Their Names', the powerful illustration features George Floyd, the US citizen recently killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. It shows his body imprinted with images of individual victims, placards, scenes from history and pertinent symbolism. 

Kadir Nelson's cover art is interactive and can be explored on the New Yorker's website, which describes the feature as a "closeup examination of the artist’s latest cover, in which the murder of George Floyd embodies the history of violence inflicted upon black people in America". As you click through the page, you find out the individual stories of the 18 black Americans featured.

The New Yorker cover is a powerful tribute to George Floyd and other victims of police brutality

Prominent activists such as Martin Luther King JR and Malcom X – who were both assassinated in the 1960s – are included in the piece, and other victims include seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and twenty-two-year-old Stephon Clark, who were both killed in their own homes in the last decade. The final annotation included in the interactive feature is the story of an escaped slave – known as Gordon – whose image was circulated as a key part of the abolitionist movement because of the shocking lacerations on his back.

Nelson has depicted moments of historical significance too, including the March from Selma, and the Tulsa Race Massacre, while the 'I Am A Man' placard reflects the protest signs carried by sanitation workers during the Memphis strikes. 

The mostly monochrome piece is interlaced with blue Periwinkle, which represents the millions of black people who died as slaves in the USA. Periwinkle was often used as a burial flower, and was often the only sign of a burial plot in the case of the resting place of many slaves.

Nelson is well-known for his work depicting African-American history and culture. His work is often featured on the cover of the New Yorker, and he has also created cover art for National Geographic (see it above), Ebony and Marvel, amongst other publications. Nelson is one of the many creatives standing up in the fight against racism, in response to the killing of George Floyd and support of the protests currently taking place globally.

Read more:

Designers create public document listing black-owned studiosBanksy reveals brilliant plan for Bristol’s toppled Colston StatueBrands show support for Black Lives Matter

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2020/08/how-to-integrate-ai-into-your-toolset/

Artificial Intelligence is the use of computers or machines that have been created to work and react like humans. Some of the computers that have AI, are designed to include speech recognition, and learn user behaviours so they can predict activities or decisions before they happen.

AI creates a bridge to a new kind of interface, making work processes easier for businesses and customers alike.

Why is AI Important?

There are constant AI technological advances being made, so why not make the most of them and start integrating them into your toolset today? Read on to find out just why AI is important and how you can benefit from it in your work too.

Lower Costs

By integrating Artificial Intelligence into your toolset, you can stand to both save and earn more money. AI will leave you spending less time on various aspects of website management and development, freeing some of your time up and allowing you to finish websites faster. It will also leverage your set of skills and allow you to build greater sites that people will be willing to pay more money for.

Improve Customer Experience

Artificial Intelligence can be used to analyse data in much more depth than the human eye, so will greatly improve the customer experience. It will allow a more personalised and streamlined experience that users will be grateful for. By integrating AI into your toolset, you will soon learn about certain trends and patterns that AI picks up and utilise this with future sites you build, as well as being able to make suggestions to improve the customer journey on the site.

It’s The Future

With so many devices in our everyday lives tuning in to AI, it’s important websites are no different. Just look around many homes and you will likely see a device such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home. Phone’s have Siri or Bixby and many laptops have AI systems such as Cortana. As our technology continues to develop, websites need to do this too. Soon we will expect everything to be integrated and be able to control websites in a similar way to our AI devices with voice control and recognition.

How To Integrate AI Into Your Toolset
Chat Bots

One popular example of AI that is integrated into many different websites now, is the chat bot. A feature on a number of major sites, chat bots allow customers to ask and receive answers to questions without an employee having to take time out of their day to answer menial questions that they get asked all the time. The use of AI cuts out the middleman and recognises certain phrases and words to give the most relevant and comprehensive answer.

The first chatbots used to rely on simple, pre-programmed conversational pathways, but these had disappointing and often irrelevant results. More recently they use sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) systems which are a lot more complex and don’t follow just a scripted path, but allow for more meaningful conversations.

Sketch to Code

If you’ve just started in web design, or there are certain elements you are still learning about, AI can help with “sketch to code”. This clever piece of AI can transform a handwritten note, sketch or diagram into a valid HTML mark-up code that maintains itself. This can work from something as simple as a new design for a quote system, to something more complex.

Background Systems

AI can work in the background of a site in the run up to events and collect key aspects such as website analytics. Once this data is complete, the AI can take final instructions from you such as the content, theme and color preference and create a design from scratch that it thinks will perform the best due to the intelligence and knowledge it has been gathering in the background.

Voice Recognition

Back in 2012, the W3C Community introduced the Web Speech API specification with the aim of enabling speech recognition and synthesis in modern browsers. At present, Google Chrome is the only browser that has introduced this, however there is a HTML5 Speech Recognition API will allows JavaScript to have access to a browser’s audio stream and to convert it into text.

It’s important to get up to speed with voice recognition API’s as it’s predicted voice control will be huge in the future. If populating websites, think about how people speak and be sure to include some long-tail keywords that sound more natural. This will help those sites to rank when voice control is adopted more widely.

Adobe Sensei

Adobe Sensei is an AI and machine learning framework that is powering Adobe tools. It is a handy option to add to your toolkit to manage and work on your files.

If you are sourcing images for a website in Adobe Stock, there are over 100 million assets to sift through. Adobe Sensei uses AI and deep learning to understand what exact objects are within an image as well as deeper components such as the aesthetic quality, composition, color palette and even the emotional concept behind the images. This means it can quickly find the image most matched to your needs, saving you hours of time you would have spent sorting through to find the image you want.

Yossarian

Yossarian is a great tool that allows you to craft mood boards. With an aim to generate new ideas faster, it cites itself as “discovery with a twist.” Yossarian uses AI when creating mood boards to return “diverse and unexpected concepts” that share loose associations with what you have searched for, allowing you to be more creative. It will source different ideas and inspiration around what you are searching for, including many you might not have thought of associating with your initial search term.

Brandmark

If you create logos and design templates within your work, Brandmark logo maker is a great AI tool to add to your library. They cite themselves as the most advanced AI logo design tool on the market at the moment. Whether logo creation is something you currently offer, or something you are looking to do, this AI tool can make it easier.

Autodraw

Autodraw is another useful tool you can use for design jobs, where you draw a rough sketch and it will turn it into a neat graphic. This is a handy one to use in association with the concept of sketch to code above. It pairs the magic of machine learning with drawings to help you create professional looking graphics and visuals, quickly.

Featured image via Unsplash.

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