Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/v91bae7rM8Y/

Apple is well-known for their incredible design prowess and easy-to-use products. Their technology is a designer’s best friend, so it’s no surprise that we often follow in their footsteps.

It’s also why you can find so many re-creations of Apple’s style on the web. Use the code snippets in this collection for both inspiration and to further your learning.

Menu Redesign

See the Pen Apple menu redesign by Daniel Gooß (@daniel_gooss) on CodePen.

The Apple.com menu is well known by even the youngest web designers. It’s been around for years and has always had such a unique style.

This snippet takes the Apple navigation menu and restyles it using CSS3.

The design is mostly the same, but it includes some different hover features and a custom search menu. But since this is a demo, the links don’t actually work. You’d have to do some editing on this one to make it fully functional.

Messages Waiting Animation

See the Pen Apple Messages “Waiting” Animation by Maxwell Antonucci (@max1128) on CodePen.

Anyone who’s used the Apple messaging app should be familiar with the speech bubble icon. It pops up whenever someone is typing and it’s got a pretty slick animation.

Developer Maxwell Antonucci rebuilt this animation in full with just pure HTML and CSS. You can see the final result in this pen.

Note that this does use Pug for HTML compiling and Sass instead of CSS. But you can always compile down if you can’t read those frameworks.

Either way, this is a brilliant snippet for learning how to design animated graphics using CSS.

Apple-Style Mobile Menu

See the Pen Apple style mobile menu by Andy Leverenz (@justalever) on CodePen.

Beyond the main desktop navigation is Apple’s mobile responsive menu.

This uses the typical hamburger icon and it’s found on most all devices. If you want to re-create this in HTML5, have a look at this free snippet written by Andy Leverenz.

If you click the hamburger icon you get a neat little animation effect, plus the menu actually slides down onto the page. How cool is that!

iOS iMessage in HTML5

See the Pen iOS9 iMessage Responsive HTML5 by Jojo Jonah old (@jojojonahold) on CodePen.

Earlier I mentioned the speech bubble animation from Apple’s messenger app. But with this snippet you can actually build the entire iMessage mobile app using HTML5 and some raw JavaScript.

All of the JS code runs on jQuery – so it’s super easy to edit. Not to mention that the final demo is so darn sleek and really does feel like the real iMessage app.

While I can’t imagine that this would be useful outside of a practice project, it’s still fun to play with.

MacOS + Browser

See the Pen MacOS + Browser by Liam (@Lierrmm) on CodePen.

Speaking of fun practice projects: get a load of this one replicating a full MacOS dashboard in your browser.

You can hover the dock icons to get that traditional Apple animation, or even click the Chrome app icon to open up a mock browser window.

And somehow this pen only uses 55 lines of JavaScript to get it all working.

This is definitely a sweet project that you’ll really appreciate in full view.

Apple Watch Radial Chart

See the Pen Apple Watch Radial Chart by Mark (@xna2) on CodePen.

Apple’s smartwatch broke new ground in the tech space. It also created a whole new interface for consumers to learn.

If you like the Apple Watch animations, then have a look at this snippet on CodePen. It features a custom animated watch face with the radial chart design.

These are fairly common features with many Watch apps, but you never see them in the browser. Well, until now.

Apple Style Toggle

See the Pen Apple Style Toggle by Adrien Bachmann (@AdrienBachmann) on CodePen.

Ah, the classic on/off switch. This first gained popularity thanks to iOS and it really stuck around thanks to Apple’s original design.

In this pen by Adrien Bachmann, you’ll find a basic switch design with HTML/CSS code. It runs completely free of any JavaScript, which is a huge accomplishment by itself.

Not to mention that this snippet is clean and truly does match the Apple-style of animation. You can change the size, color and animation style with ease.

It’s a brilliant way to bring some Apple design into your own web project.

Pure CSS Apple Keyboard

See the Pen Re: Apple Keyboard in pure CSS. by Joey Anuff (@januff) on CodePen.

While this snippet may not be as useful on a real website, it’s certainly a fun project to study.

Developer Joey Anuff created a full CSS-only keyboard modeled after the Apple keyboard.

It does use some JavaScript to support click events dynamically. So you could delete the JS and still have the exact same keyboard in your browser.

This was designed as part of a CSS coding challenge and I have to say that Joey hit this one out of the park.

Search Boxes

See the Pen Search Box inspired by apple by M. Mulia Maulana (@molenmaulana) on CodePen.

We’ve all seen the Apple search box on their main website and in the mobile App Store. It’s got a common theme with rounded corners and a single magnifying glass icon.

This snippet on CodePen recreated the Apple search bar in full.

You’ll notice that there’s actually a couple variations here: a light one and a dark one. These stand out on their own and you can use them to blend into practically any website.

History of Apple.com’s Navbar

See the Pen The History of Apple.com’s Nav Bar in CSS by DBM (@dbm) on CodePen.

This last one is quite a doozy and a fun trip down memory lane.

Take a look at this pen and scroll through some of the designs. You’ll find a huge compilation of every Apple navigation menu dating back to the late 90s.

So many designs, so many crazy gradients. All from one tech company that has left quite a mark on the design space.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/05/take-control-of-wordpress-with-new-elementor-pro-2-0/

Elementor 2.0 is an innovative approach to site building in WordPress that lets you customize any part of your site, with absolutely zero coding knowledge.

A plugin rather than a theme, this flexible approach means that you can use Elementor 2.0 to manage your site design, and unlike some WordPress site builders, you won’t be tied to a particular theme; Elementor 2.0 works with almost any WordPress theme from any vendor, as well as custom themes.

Build everything on your WordPress site exactly as you want it, without having to switch themes to find the right functionality, or pay a developer’s fees to personalize your template.

A Comprehensive Site Builder

There are dozens of different theme builders that will allow you to change the layout of your static content, but they nearly all tie you to fundamental elements of the theme, such as the header, or footer. Elementor 2.0 is designed to free you from that restriction by enabling the customization of those hard-to-change elements such as your header.

Using intuitive tools that enable you to build your site in a familiar WYSIWYG style, Elementor 2.0 is one of the simplest ways to make these changes, all the while confident that the code underpinning your design is robust and properly implemented.

All of this functionality was available before, but reserved for those coders who knew how to drill into the WordPress codebase. Elementor 2.0 puts the power to customize your site in your hands.

Intuitive Workflow

Elementor 2.0 has been crafted for speed. To make changes, simply install the plugin and you’ll find the Elementor option added to your dashboard menu, and you can now create new templates at will. Everything works instantly, giving you control of your site in a few clicks.

To speed up the editing process Elementor 2.0 features theme element widgets, such as an author box, a site logo, or a featured image; these and other elements can be combined to rapidly develop real-world WordPress solutions. To build templates, either start with one of the pre-designed options and customize it to suit your site, or build entirely from scratch.

All of Elementor 2.0’s code is fully responsive, meaning that you can create a design and be confident that it will look exactly as you intend on any device. You can even create premium features like a sticky header—an essential component of modern UX—so that your menu will follow users up and down the screen as they scroll.

To see your design live, all you have to do it click the ‘publish’ button and choose the conditions under which your new element should appear.

Conditional Elements

One of the features of Elementor 2.0 that we like the most is the conditional option: Once you’ve finished designing an element for your site, you can choose the conditions under which it will be displayed.

Let’s say for example that you want to design two headers: one for your main site, and one for your blog; Elementor 2.0 allows you to create them both and set them so that they will appear on the right pages; even when you’re creating repetitive UI elements you can apply them intelligently.

Create different footers for your site and blog, or a unique footer for your contact page, or even different designs for personal blog posts and professional blog posts. The biggest benefit to conditional elements is that you retain control of what elements appear when.

Design Dynamic Content

Many pages on your site, your home page for example, are static pages. Your blog posts however—the part of your site that WordPress really excels at creating—are dynamic. Dynamic pages pull content in from your database, so you can’t always be sure what that content will be.

The challenge this creates is that while static pages can easily be previewed in your WordPress dashboard, dynamic pages cannot, and each dynamic post could significantly affect your design. Elementor 2.0 solves this issue with an innovative preview option that really should be built into the WordPress core: With Elementor 2.0 you can choose which post content to preview a page with, giving you an unprecedented overview of your design right in the dashboard.

As well as elegantly handling static pages and dynamic posts, Elementor 2.0 allows you to create archives like category pages and search results, even a custom 404 error page; all the control you need to manage a modern WordPress site.

Conclusion

You shouldn’t have to choose between the freedom to switch themes and the ability to modify your site; with Elementor 2.0 you don’t have to.

Fresh to the market, Elementor 2.0 is a significant advancement in the control WordPress developers have, enabling them to edit almost any theme with ease, and with absolutely zero coding knowledge.

Not only is Elementor 2.0 a boost to creativity, but it’s a boon to timetables too. Delivering site-wide changes in a fraction of the time it would take to hand-code them could give you the competitive edge you need.

With a unique visual approach to theme building, Elementor 2.0 opens up new possibilities for WordPress professionals.

 

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

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/ylbFrgFgus8/typography-logos

Of all the decisions you need to make when starting a business, designing your logo is the one you need to get right. Your logo is your first impression, and we all know the importance of those. Choosing the brightest or the busiest may seem like a good idea initially, but study after study has […]

The post The Top 10 Best Typography Logos appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tympanus/~3/_7neVZ70Fl8/

Today we’d like to share a little grid layout with you. We use CSS Grid and a playful hover effect on the grid items which are composed of different wildly placed elements. When an item is clicked, we slide in a content preview overlay and animate the grid items out and the preview items in. For the animations we use TweenMax by Greensock.

The demo is kindly sponsored by monday.com: Get your team on the same playbook!. If you would like to sponsor one of our demos, find out more here.

Attention: We’ve made this layout with modern browsers in mind.

Here’s how the grid looks like:

The content preview overlay looks like this:

We hope you enjoy this little layout and find it useful!

References and Credits

TweenMax by Greensock
Images from Unsplash.com
imagesLoaded by Dave DeSandro
Cross icon designed by Freepik

Grid Layout with Motion Hover Effect and Content Preview was written by Mary Lou and published on Codrops.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/hesNXZlK2a8/how-to-excel-at-everything

Product design, packaging design, branding and book publishing are all well-established disciplines, filled with plenty of specialist, single-focus agencies. So for a relatively small studio to excel in all of them at once is rather impressive, but Here Design has managed it.

East London agency Here is also notable in the male-dominated realm of creative directors in that two of its three co-founders are women. Driven by a shared passion for creativity in all its forms, Caz Hildebrand, Kate Marlow and Mark Paton continue to fly the flag for multidisciplinary design. We asked Paton and Marlow to tell us more…

How was Here Design founded?

Mark Paton: We didn’t have a written ethos, or any precise definition of what to do. We just shared a broad interest in food and drink, and sharing knowledge. Caz wanted to do furniture design; Kate was interested in textiles; I was doing other things. Initially it was about sharing infrastructure. We had an accountant in common, and just wanted a nice, creative environment to work in. It was really unstructured.

Kate Marlow: It was 12 years ago now. We left our respective jobs: Mark and I were in branding; Caz in publishing, in book design. We wanted to work together in a small environment, designing for brands we believed in. 

As Mark says, there was no master plan, no big idea. We got on well, and had a shared ethos about what good ideas were, and how to articulate them.

How did the studio evolve?

MP: It’s been super-organic, and a huge learning curve: we’ve had to learn about all of decisions we should have made at the beginning. Early on, we pitched to rebrand an organic food shop, and surprisingly we won. That suddenly gave us a body of work that we were working on together, which crystallised the nature of the studio and how we could share our experience. 

KM: As it went on, we got more jobs in than we could cope with just three of us. So, we slowly employed people to help us and it grew very, very slowly. For a very long time, we did all our own project management, finance, everything. We were the receptionists too.We learnt what we could and couldn’t do very well. Thankfully we now have experts in areas like finance, and a head of studio. They do a much better job than we ever did.

Here has published several books including a playful book on punctuation entitled This is Me, Full Stop

How have you structured the agency?

MP: This year we’ve employed a new tier of designer in the studio: design associates. We have four now, each with a portfolio of clients.

We’ve struggled a bit to create a structure without being very hierarchical. We don’t buy into certain job titles. For us, it was important to create our own definition. T

he design associates will take more of a lead on certain projects, while the partners focus on developing the business, thinking about new sectors, and also some smaller projects. It may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but we still want to design, so are happy to pick up speculative work that’d be a burden for the studio to do.

Here’s rebrand of Barcardi taps into the brand’s rich heritage

Have you struggled to stay hands-on?

KM: No, in fact we’ve probably struggled to be hands off. We need to learn to do that more, so the other designers can work their way up. 

We’re passionate about all our projects, and as partners we lead teams and are really collaborative with the design associates and senior designers, right through to the juniors. 

How have you stayed multi-disciplinary?

MP: We have had conversations about whether we need to specialise, but I think part of what makes Here interesting is that we work on such different topics. We very pragmatically believe that if a designer works across a book, a pack, an identity and a digital application, they will become a better designer. 

Here translated the physical geography of the streets around adidas Originals stores into architectural models

How do you choose who works on a project?

KM: Sometimes, one of us is just a really good fit for a client. That might be based on personality, or previous experience – or it might be that one of us actually hasn’t got much experience in that field, and that’s what we find exciting. They could come up with things you wouldn’t necessarily think to do, because they don’t know that genre so well. 

Do you work with external collaborators?

MP: A lot is done in-house. At college you didn’t have the option to commission someone: you had to get your paints out and do it. We advocate the guys having a go, but there are instances where it’s beyond us, so we commission out. But the lion’s share of illustration, for instance, is done in-house.

It’s partly a cultural choice: it’s nice to have people making marks and creating images. It makes for a richer experience.

Here created a beautiful wooden display box for Balvenie whisky 

How do you attract and retain the right talent?

MP: From the moment we started in Caz’s kitchen, we recognised the importance of the moments that weren’t designed. Making lunch together was a bonding experience, which sounds a bit cheesy, but it was important. 

We came from quite ordered environments, and wanted it to feel more homely and casual. When we were lucky enough to design this space, a creative kitchen was the first thing we set up. On a Friday, everyone tries to have lunch together and different people cook. 

The strength of the studio is the people within it. It’s not really us as partners – we are not necessarily the embodiment of the company. We’re just kind of trying to create a way of working that everyone can benefit from. 

Recognising people and allowing them to flourish –almost autonomously – is another thing that happens here that maybe doesn’t elsewhere. A junior designer can come in, be given a live project and see it through. We review things democratically too, so there’s an opportunity for everyone to speak up. I think that openness, and the fact that the opportunities are quite apparent and quite quick, makes people stick around. A lot of people have been here for a long time – we’re very lucky.   

This article originally appeared in issue 277 of Computer Arts magazine, the world's best-selling design magazine. Buy issue 277 or subscribe to Computer Arts.

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