Costly Freelance Design Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/S5kuOVUc_iY/

While being a freelance designer can be an incredibly fun and fulfilling career, it’s not without its downsides. Chief among them is that it can place those of us who aren’t experienced businesspeople into a position of having to make critical decisions. Worse yet, it’s very possible to make the exact wrong choice in any given situation.

Making the wrong choice could be as harmless as ordering the wrong paper stock on your new business cards. Or, it could be serious enough to cost you a small fortune in money, reputation or both.

Truth be told, I have made costly mistakes over my time in business (their depths go far beyond this list). I can tell you from experience that it’s not very fun. But thankfully each mistake has provided me with a learning experience. So now I’m going to pass those lessons on to you. Hopefully, they save you from having to learn the hard way.

Unauthorized Use of a Copyrighted Image

There was a time when the use of images on the web was just a matter of saving one and then doing whatever you wanted with it. It probably wasn’t smart then, but it’s really not a good idea now. With copyright trolls looking for literally the slightest excuse to send you a hefty bill for unauthorized use of an image – you’d better make sure that you have clear rights to use it (including ones that clients provide).

It’s bad enough if this happens with your own website. But it’s a whole other kind of terrible when it happens to a client’s site – and it was you who posted the image. It puts you on the hook financially and makes you look the fool (I won’t comment on any personal involvement on this one).

The Solution
Scrutinize any image you download from the web. If it’s from a stock photo site (free or premium) ensure that the license allows you to use the image for your intended purpose (commercial, for example). Some license agreements even include limits as to the image’s size when used on a website. With free images, look for the CC0 type of license. That allows you the freedom to use the image in both personal and commercial projects.

Failure to Put Agreements in Writing

Knowing that you are running a business, working without at least some form of a contract is an invitation to get stiffed on payment. For your consideration, a personal anecdote:

For a long time, I relied on the goodness of people when starting new projects. Amazingly, it worked out quite well for a number of years. Then I got burned. I started a project without getting the standard deposit – even though I knew better. And when the relationship soured, I lost out on that check. While I could have gone through the legal process to get it straightened out, in this case it was good enough just to be able to walk away from a bad situation.

The Solution
When a new client wants you to work on a project – get the terms agreed to in writing. If you usually require that a client provide a deposit, you’ll want to make sure that they know you won’t start work until you have it in your hands. It doesn’t mean that you’ll never have an issue with payment or other related troubles, but at least you’ll have it down on paper.

Taking Responsibility for Things You Shouldn’t

This one will come back to bite you over and over. And it’s especially difficult because we so often say yes to things (out loud or in our heads) in the early part of our freelancing career. But usually, the pain really starts later – well after you’ve decided that you no longer want to do a specific task.

I can share an example of this from my own experience. Over a decade ago, I had agreed to administer a promotional app on a client’s website. Essentially, it was there to send a birthday coupon out to folks who signed up to their mailing list. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not the way I did it.

Since I didn’t have anything to tie directly into their email list that would trigger the sending of a message, I instead rigged up this ridiculous system for manually adding users to an app that would send out those coupons. Because of my foolishness, I manually checked the mailing list for new subscribers and added them to a separate coupon app – for years.

This, along with a sprinkling of other short-sighted decisions took up a great deal of time that really could have been better spent. The frustration was compounded by the less-than-ideal setup.

The Solution
Think long and hard about taking on things you really don’t want to do before saying yes. You could be living with the consequences long after. Oh, and automate everything you can!

Failure to do Your Homework

The last costly mistake in our roundup can really cost you – as in tons of time and lost revenue. It’s the failure to do enough research to provide an accurate cost estimate for a project. And the real kicker is that this sin is just as easy to commit when quoting a from-scratch website or a redesign.

So often, we see cases of “scope creep” work their way into our projects. It’s those seemingly little things that turn into a huge mess. But part of that might be because we didn’t ask enough probing questions at the beginning of the process. If we’re not on the same page with our client, we might be in for a surprise.

When it comes to redesigns, we might do a cursory scan of an old site thinking that there’s nothing major lurking underneath (especially so if a prospective client hasn’t mentioned it). So, instead of clicking through a bunch of content – we assume it’s all the same. Only when we begin working on the project do we find that key element we missed. At this point, it’s probably too late (or at least too awkward) to go back to the client and ask for more money.

The Solution
The key here is to be as thorough as possible when reviewing an existing website or going over project requirements with your client. Reviewing a website should be simple enough. It’s a matter of clicking through each and every link to see what’s there. If there’s something you don’t quite understand – ask questions. And, when going over project requirements, it’s not enough to just know what functionality the client needs. It’s also important to find out how they expect the whole process to work and any data portability needs they may have. The more information you collect, the more accurate your estimate will be.

Learning as You Go

If you’ve never been in business before and all-of-the-sudden find yourself running one, you’re bound to have some missteps. That’s a natural part of the process. As a designer or developer, we’re often focused on what we do best. Sometimes the other job requirements aren’t as apparent until something goes wrong.

The good news is that most mistakes are correctable – if not outright preventable. The best way to avoid these situations is to really think things through. Take time and review the pros and cons. Think about how a decision may impact you a year or two down the road. Over time, you may find that doing things this way will become easier. And both your bank account and sanity will be the better for it.


Deploy Fault Tolerant, Load Balanced Web Apps on Alibaba Cloud

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Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/deploy-fault-tolerant-load-balanced-web-apps-on-alibaba-cloud/

This article was originally published on Alibaba Cloud. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

High Availability (HA), Fault Tolerance (FT), and Horizontal Scale Friendly (HSF) are equally important to functionality for web applications to run and succeed today. Existing or new web applications should be designed and provisioned with such underlying architecture. Fortunately, you can easily and promptly deploy the aforementioned architecture in the Cloud era today (compared to the on-premises bare-metal machine era)!

However, this flexibility comes with a caveat – how do you choose the right cloud provider? We are spoiled for choice and it can be really challenging (and hectic!) when evaluating and choosing the right one.

This post is intended to discuss and provide a walkthrough on deploying web applications on Alibaba Cloud from the ground up, including HA, FT, and HSF. Throughout this post, I will briefly introduce several services and tools provided in Alibaba Cloud. Yes, briefly! If you wish to learn more about particular services or tools, please visit the Documentation Center. In addition, this post will highlight the concerns and considerations when deploying such services.

WordPress is used as the demo web application that would be deployed on Alibaba Cloud in this post. The same deploying principle shall apply to many other web applications. This post is not intended to discuss on WordPress configuration at all. It shall not (and not able to) serves as reference for WordPress configuration. There are tons and tons of good resources out there regarding best practices on WordPress administrative.

1. High-level Architecture

Like many other web applications, the demo web application consists of an application layer (WordPress) and a database layer (MySQL).

Goal: Ultimately, we want an always-on web application (WordPress)!

In order to achieve such a “simple” goal, the demo web application must be deployed with the following minimum requirements:

A single main site.
A minimum of two physically separate WordPress instances on each site for redundancy and load balancing purposes.
Auto-spawning the other WordPress instance when the existing instance stops or experiences a failure.
The database instance (MySQL) must also be running in redundancy mode. It should automatically failover to the active standby instance when necessary.
Centralized dataspace. Shared resources must be accessible and available to all running WordPress instances. For example, a document uploaded by a user via WordPress should be synced across all running WordPress instances.

Fortunately, Alibaba Cloud provides a list of services and tools for us to fulfil these requirements. In this post specifically, we’ll utilize Cloud DNS (DNS), Auto Scaling Group (ASG), Server Load Balancer (SLB), Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Relational Database System (RDS), Object Storage Service (OSS), and Object Storage File System (OSSFS) tools to achieve our goal. The high-level architecture diagram for the deployed WordPress would be as following:

2. Deployment Procedures

We’ll briefly introduce the components shown in Figure 1.0 before diving into each individual configuration. As stated earlier, you would have to refer to other sources such as Alibaba Cloud online documentation for detailed explanation. The following table summarizes the description and usage of such components according to our deployment context:

Table 1: Cloud Components in Demo Deployments

Site / Region
Geographical area of the data center
1. Site for deployments

Zone
Physically isolated data center within a region
2. Used for redundancy purpose for Database

Cloud DNS
Domain name resolution and management service
3. Purchase new Domain Name4. Route traffic to WordPress instance

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
Virtual isolated network built for private usage
5. To group and separate resources6. To setup security control7. Assign network IP range

VRouter
Virtual routing table
8. To configure network route for provisioned resources

VSwitch
Segment virtual networks into subnets
9. To separate resources into group within specify Zone via subnet

Server Load Balancer
Distribute traffic to instances according to configured profile
10. To load balance (round robin) request among provisioned WordPress instances

Auto Scaling Group
Automatically adjust computing resources based on scaling configuration
11. Serves as watchdog to maintain the defined healthy running WordPress instances

Elastics Computing Service (WordPress instance)
Compute and process unit provided by Alibaba Cloud
12. To install and run WordPress. This is the application layer of demo deployment

Relational Database Service (MySQL)
On-demand managed database service
13. The DB for WordPress application

Object Storage Service
High availability and fault tolerance object storage
14. Centralized storage for files/objects uploaded by user via WordPress application

The workflow below describes the general steps involved in deploying a web application on Alibaba Cloud.

2.1. Identify Service Region

It’s important to decide on the region where an application should be deployed. The general considerations shall include the following:

Cost: The mother of all considerations. Yes, the cost may vary according region.
Service availability in the region? It’s not uncommon that some regions provide additional services that aren’t available in another region — you have to test to find out!
Main target users’ geographical location. It’s definitely better for user experience if the application is physically closer to the customer, resulting in shorter latency.
Rules & Regulations. Is it legally OK for the application to be hosted in the selected region?
Number of Availability Zonez. Occasionally, we need to improve application availability by deploying redundant applications in a different zone. Since I’m based in Southeast Asia, I will be looking at the Singapore and Kuala Lumpur data centers. At the time of writing, “Asia Pacific SE 3 (Kuala Lumpur)” has only a single zone while “Asia Pacific SE 1 (Singapore)” has dual zones.

After consideration, we’ve decided “Asia Pacific SE 1 (Singapore)” will be the main region for our demo deployment.`

2.2. Plan for Network Configuration
I. VPC

We have to consider the number of nodes that might potentially be running in the deployment. Each running node is subject to one private IP, and we don’t want to end up running out of private IPs for nodes in the future!

There are three type of CIDR blocks allowed by Alibaba Cloud for a VPC: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16. According to Alibaba Cloud documentation, the first & last three IPs of CIDR block would be reserved by system usage, and hence the maximum number of private IPs for each CIDR block are:

10.0.0.0/8 = 16777212 (16777216 – 4)
172.16.0.0/12 1048572 (1048576 – 4)
192.168.0.0/16 = 65532 (65536 – 4)

You may also wonder, why don’t we just use the biggest CIDR block allowed to avoid potentially running out of private IP in future? The following might help you to reconsider that thought:

Bigger CIDR block may increase the complexity when dealing with IP-related configuration, such as subnet creation, route configuration, security group configuration, and etc.
If the above is not a valid show-stopper for you, then consider this: “VPC peering (interconnect)” with other VPCs doesn’t allow overlapping CIDR block. In other words, it’s not possible to peer with other VPC once you using 10.0.0.0/8 as CIDR block!

After consideration, we’ll use “192.168.0.0/16” for our demo deployment as there will only be a few running nodes within the VPC.

II. Subnet

In Alibaba Cloud, VSwitch could be used to further segment the VPC CIDR block into a subnet with a smaller CIDR block. The general consideration for segmenting subnets includes the following:

Logical grouping of instances according to functionality. E.g. grouping the application in one group and RDS in another group for easier maintainability. For example, disabling a group of instances by deleting VSwitch attached to the group.
Simplify security group profile configuration. Security rules based on the subnet CIDR block level rather than the individual instance’s IP are cleaner.
Enable Auto-scaling and Server Load Balancer monitoring and actions on a specific subnet.
Redundancy on resources. It’s possible to seamlessly failover to a different subnet that’s based in a different zone when the existing subnet’s zone encounters failure.

After consideration, we’re grouping WordPress in one subnet (192.168.1.0/24) and the RDS instance in another subnet (192.168.2.0/24).

2.3. Configure Firewall (Security Group)

Network access at the instance level could be limited via Security Group in Alibaba Cloud. The Security Group Rule configuration could be very granular, up to the per-protocol, per-port, per-client IP level. Hence, to avoid unauthorized access to the instance, we need to consider the following:

Always comply with least privilege practice. Restrict access to the required client only.
Intranet or/and internet connectivity. You can use Security Group to create a “private subnet” (no internet usage) by only allowing access for inbound intranet. In addition, a NAT gateway could be used to allow the instance in the private network to access outbound internet services.

Since we are running WordPress on Linux instances, we would at least allow an inbound rule for Port 80 (HTTP) and 22 (SSH) in Security Group. Besides that, all outbound traffic would be allowed since there’s no specific requirement on that.

2.4. Configure the Application Layer

This could be the trickiest and most uncertain decision we have to make when deploying web applications. As stated earlier, this post will not discuss an application’s capacity requirements and hence, choosing a proper instance type is out of scope of this post. Anyhow, the following considerations may assist in deciding on an instance type generally:

Always start with the Pay-As-You-Go model if you have no idea on the instance type performance nor the actual capacity requirement. This pricing model allows you to experiment with different instance types freely without a lock-in period.
You have to understand the nature of the to-be deployed application’s constraint. Is the application CPU-bound or IO-bound? You have to answer that in order to determine a proper instance type with the best cost efficiency.
Deploy with one step down instance whenever possible. If an application’s capacity requirement could be satisfied with a ‘X’ instance of a instance family type Y, it might be better if we deploy the application with two one step down instances (e.g. X/2) from the same family type for the same amount of workload. This will increase the availability of the application. For example, we can still process 50% of the workload if any the X/2 instance goes down compared with 100% downtime if the X instance is down. Of course, this approach is subject to the design and usage of the application.
Decide on other usage parameters e.g. network type, network bandwidth, operating system image, and etc. accordingly.

Since this is a demo deployment without any real production usage, we’ll go for the lowest (cheapest) ECS instance configuration. For example: General Type n1: 1-core, 1GB, Ubuntu 16.04 OS, Ultra Cloud Disk 40GB, and 1Mbps network bandwidth.

2.5. Configure the Database Layer

Generally, we have to decide between using self-managed DB instances (self-install DB at ECS instance) like what we usually do for on-premises solutions, or using fully managed RDS DB services like ApsaraDB. Again, it’s out of this post’s scope in comparing or benchmarking the two variants of database services. These guidelines may assist in choosing database variants generally:

Do you have available resources for managing and operating database instances? The management and operational tasks may include backing up data files, OS/DB patching, access control on the host machine, etc. If the answer is no, then maybe a fully managed RDS DB is preferable.
Do you need a dedicated database instance? If your database is small and the workload is minimal and able to co-exist with the application (e.g. in the development environment), perhaps the self-managed variant is preferable due to cost efficiency.
Do you need access to the underlying host for the database instance? For example, if you need to perform specific OS/DB configuration for performance-tuning purposes, then the self-managed variant shall be employed.
Does the fully-managed database service provide the DB type that you required? If no, then the answer is straightforward, go for a self-managed DB variant.
If you are concerned about possible cloud vendor lock-in, then you might want to avoid the fully-managed variant as some RDS implementations could be cloud vendor specific.

Since there is neither manpower to maintain the demo database nor any specify DB configuration, we’ll deploy the demo DB with ApsaraDB RDS – MySQL. In addition, this variant allows us to make a redundancy (active standby) database easily (with just a click!).

2.6. Identify Centralized Storage

Eventually, there could be multiple concurrent WordPress applications running on physically separate ECS instances. Each instance might generate and store certain files/image/media resulting from users’ operations. Obviously, objects that are generated by any instance would have to be synchronized across all other running application instances. One of the approaches to achieve this mentioned synchronization is through centralized storage. Objects generated shall be synchronzied to centralized storage and followed by synchronization between centralized objects and other running instances. Additionally, the centralized storage must always be available and any failure of any instance shouldn’t impact the availability and durability of centralized storage.

Alibaba Cloud provides a couple of fully managed services which could serve as centralized storage:

Object Storage Service for objects: It’s ideal as centralized object storage due to the guaranteed high availability (99.9%), scalability, and fully-managed nature. Specifically to this demo deployment, each running WordPress instance shall sync with a dedicated common Object Storage Service’s bucket. By employing such a syncing mechanism, all the running WordPress instances would have an identical set of created objects.
ApsaraDB Redis for application state: Sharing state (e.g. shared value, parameter) among running instances is possible via fully-managed ApsaraDB Redis.

A dedicated bucket in Object Storage Service would be created and used to store objects created as a result of user operations. All running WordPress instances shall sync with the relevant bucket for the list of created objects.

2.7. Plan for HA, FT, and HSF

To achieve HA, FT, and HSF in Alibaba Cloud, a web application shall be fundamentally designed as stateless and horizontally scalable. Any dependent application’s state or data shall be decoupled from the web application and migrated to centralized storage as discussed in the earlier section.

Services listed below could be employed for deploying a HA, FT, and HSF web application:

Cloud DNS: It’s possible to configure ‘A’ record types for instances hosted in different regions. It’s really useful during failover scenarios whereby an ‘A’ record of a standby instance could be enabled with one click, resulting in network traffic diversion to the standby instance.
Auto Scaling: It can be used to auto-spawn instances in a desired Zone when running instances go down or become unhealthy.
Server Load Balancer: This service would provide a health check on configured instances and report their status to the Auto Scaling service for further action. Besides that, this service would also load balance workload among running instances.
ApsaraDB RDS: RDS MySQL provides the multi-zone availability feature with just a click. It will really ease the effort required to provide HA and FT for the database.

The demo deployment will utilize DNS to route traffic to WordPress instances, Auto Scaling to ensure a minimum of two running instances in each region, and Server Load Balancer to provide a health check as well as to load balance workload. Last but not least, the Multi-Zone availability feature on RDS MySQL is enabled to provide HA and FT for the database.

2.8. Testing and Run

To test the HA and FT behavior, we may stop a running ECS manually and observe the action triggers by the auto-scaling service. If the auto-scaling has been configured properly, a new instance would be spawned automatically. Besides that, we may also manually turn off the RDS DB instance to observe the Multi-Zone redundancy failover happening. The best thing is that these actions are automatically handled by the respective services without any manual intervention. Shown below is our deployed WordPress:

Continue reading %Deploy Fault Tolerant, Load Balanced Web Apps on Alibaba Cloud%

How to Improve Your Data Privacy on Facebook

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Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/how-to-improve-privacy-on-facebook/

This guide will tell you how to make necessary changes in your Facebook privacy settings to protect your data on this social network.

The post How to Improve Your Data Privacy on Facebook appeared…

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

20 Responsive Image Galleries and Slideshows (2018)

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Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/free-responsive-image-gallery/

If your website is image-heavy i.e. a portfolio or photography website etc., then there are two things that you’ll be needing the most – photo gallery plugins to help you better manage…

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

Web Design Concept for National Geographic

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/WA-MUeAUKs4/84688

Web Design Concept for National Geographic

Web Design Concept for National Geographic

abduzeedo
May 04, 2018

Andriy Bata shared a very stylish web design concept for the National Geographic web site. It features pretty trendy style, with a clear grid system and very minimal. The imagery provided by the topics that National Geographic covers makes things a bit easier. Overall it’s a nice study of web design, but in my opinion it fails on very important aspects, especially accessibility. Some texts feel just too small and with very little contrast from the background. I think any web designer out there should have the duty to create experiences for all and if you take in consideration that the tools and technology allow us to do that, we should not sacrifice function for the form.

Web design concept

 

web design


10 Free Icon Sets for Ecommerce UI Design

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/iC2TElFqUGg/

Designing an ecommerce site is not like any other web project. You have to think about branding along with user experience and marketing based on the design. It can be quite difficult to say the least.

But there are lots of free resources you can use to make your job easier. Icon sets, for one, are a lot of work to design. You can save hours (even days) worth of time by using a free icon pack instead.

The sets below are all totally free and come in a variety of styles. If you’re looking for ecommerce-related icons, you’ll find plenty to dig through in this list.

All the Icons, Fonts, Web Templates & Design Assets You Could Ask For


DOWNLOAD NOW

54 Ecommerce Icon Pack

54 Ecommerce Icon Pack

First up is a massive 54-set icon pack featuring simple line icons that will work well for typical ecommerce features.

This set was created by designer Virgil Pana and released for free on Dribbble. The entire pack comes as a PSD file and it really is one of the better ecommerce sets out there.

I like this particular style because I think it can easily blend in with any website.

The minimalist line style is very common and so it’s worth trying – regardless of what project you’re building.

Simple Green Icon Set

Simple Green Iconset

Here’s one more freebie pack hosted on Dribbble with a focus on beautiful green icons. Although, technically the color scheme can be altered with a few clicks in Illustrator.

Designer Pavel Kozlov created this pack of 40 free ecommerce icons and released it to the world a few years ago. Yet, the icons are just as relevant today as ever before.

To download a copy you’ll need to visit the Gumroad page. Typically items on Gumroad cost money, but this pack is actually 100% free.

If you want to give Pavel a tip for all his efforts, you certainly can. But it’s not a requirement to gain access to these lush green icons.

Flat Vector Shopping Icons

Flat Vector Shopping Icons

Another really popular trend is flat design. This has been applied to everything from mobile apps to websites and yes, even icons.

Take a look at this vector icon set featuring 80 different shopping icons. Some are colored, some are just plain line icons, but they’re all super easy to use and customize.

You can nab the pack as static PNGs or as vectors in AI/EPS format. And they’re free to use on commercial projects. Just note that the license requires a simple link back to the original website.

Shipping and Ecommerce Icons

Shipping and Ecommerce Icons

The online marketplace EpicPxls includes some really high-quality resources. It’s a great place for designers to release premium and free assets to the world – all while building a following for their work.

Take a look at this icon set created by EpicCoders. It’s been downloaded well over 2,000 times and it’s really quite unique.

One glance at the style and you’ll see what I mean. It feels vibrant, almost cartoony, yet not over-the-top.

This pack should work great for minimalist sites, along with any ecommerce shops that match the color scheme.

Hand-Drawn Icons Set

Hand-Drawn Icons Set

It can be tough designing a page with hand-drawn elements. But they do add a certain creativity into any website and that goes double for these free icons.

The entire ecommerce icon pack is focused on hand-drawn elements. From gift box icons to little shopping baskets and checkout features, all the graphics you’ll need can be found in this set.

I would recommend using this set for a landing page design rather than a checkout UI. You may have difficulty getting these icons to blend naturally for a checkout interface, but they would grab attention on a web shop’s homepage.

Credit Cards Pack

Credit Cards Pack

No ecommerce website is complete without credit card icons.

If you are designing a shop that accepts credit cards then have a look at these free CC icons released on Dribbble.

Designer Guy Levin created 9 different credit card icons – all in one Adobe Illustrator file.

They’re super clean, easy to customize and will blend anywhere on your page.

Linear Ecommerce Icons

Linear Ecommerce Icons

I do love my line icons, so they make plenty of appearances on this list.

The Pixlov website released their own pack of free linear ecommerce icons following this exact style. And the pack is just phenomenal.

You wouldn’t think 33 icons would amount to a whole lot but this set has plenty of designs to pick from. I just wouldn’t recommend them for a checkout screen, as it seems more suited for a landing page or a “features” page about the store.

These could also work well in your own newsletter to push your products even further.

Noun Project Ecommerce

Noun Project Ecommerce

If you aren’t familiar with The Noun Project, you should definitely check it out. The website curates a ton of free icon packs from around the web and from many designers worldwide. There’s a lot to go through, but for this post I would like to suggest the ecommerce collection, made by Anton Scherbik.

They are the simplest of simple line icons. The pack includes several great choices, like checkout bags and cart icons in a variety in styles.

Checkout and Delivery Icons

Checkout and Delivery Icons

The Codrops blog is simply amazing. They regularly publish high-quality tutorials with freebies you can use for your own projects.

One example is this checkout icon set created by EpicPxls.

It comes with 35 unique icons that have a fill effect that you just won’t find elsewhere. The fill colors ever-so-slightly hang outside of the line work, which is probably the first thing you’ll notice.

This set definitely provides a unique twist.

Customized Icon Set

Customized Iconset

Last but certainly not least is this awesome icon set by Graphicboat.

These icons won’t necessarily fit in everywhere. But they can draw attention fast and get people curious to learn more about your shop.

I’d say these icons would fit best in a header background, in a “features” page, or maybe somewhere near your CTA button.

That’s the list! If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, feel free to search Google for more. New freebies come out every month, so you never know what you’ll find.


15 Inspirational Examples of Minimal Web Design

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

Considering that the current philosophy of UI design is “less is more,” the expected rise in popularity of minimalism has reached an all-time high amongst web designers, especially in the last couple of years. But, perhaps unknowingly, its appeal to users has also grown.

The principles of minimalism in web design are that a website (and other mediums as well) should be stripped down to their bare bones, while carefully making use of whitespace and improving readability with clearer typography. When implemented correctly, the result will allow users to focus on what’s truly important without being distracted by non-essential elements.

While this may sound easy, it can be difficult deciding what the truly important elements are and what’s little more than decoration. It can also be risky. Accidentally removing a seemingly innocuous element could be deemed critical by the user and could result in the wrong message (or worse, no message at all) being delivered to your target audience.

minimal web design Rotate

Source: Rotate°

If you think about the logistics, it makes sense that minimalism appeals to users: the less fluff on the site, the less you have to think about. When there are just a few links or blocks of text, and the point of interest is directly in front of you, you can let your mind rest for a bit – relax, and the website will spoon feed you just what you need.

This collection features fifteen websites that have been designed using the minimalistic principles mentioned above. Some of the sites have also been influenced by many of the popular web design trends we have seen over that past year or so, like flat design, yet still retain a look and feel that can only be described as minimal. Here are the beautifully designed sites:

minimal web design McKennaJones.co.uk

Source: McKennaJones.co.uk

minimal web design Good Cop Bad Cop

Source: Good Cop Bad Cop

minimal web design Ballet BC

Source: Ballet BC

minimal web design Ava Sessions

Source: Ava Sessions

minimal web design Cropmark

Source: Cropmark

minimal web design Mike Guss

Source: Mike Guss

minimal web design Inside Discovery

Source: Inside Discovery

minimal web design GSArora

Source: GSArora

minimal web design Seedlip

Source: Seedlip

minimal web design The Outpost

Source: The Outpost

minimal web design We Ain't Plastic

Source: We Ain't Plastic

minimal web design Tim Brack

Source: Tim Brack

minimal web design Hatch Inc

Source: Hatch Inc.

minimal web design The Nero Design

Source: The Nero Design

minimal web design Ruslan Siiz

Source: Ruslan Siiz

minimal web design Elastique

Source: Elastique

minimal web design Chapter 3

Source: Chapter 3

Finshed

Minimalism isn’t the miracle solution that you can slap on every single project. There’s a time and place for everything; the time is now, but you need to carefully decide the place.


Why Passion Is a Key Ingredient to Freelance Success

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/KBj_JBR5GhI/

Have you ever thought about why you became a web designer?  It’s one of those questions that may not have entered your mind because, it’s just who you are.

Recently, I’ve given some thought to my own path to where I am now. As a high school senior in 1995, my family subscribed to an unlimited dialup internet service. Previously, internet service had been metered by the likes of AOL and so I had been extremely limited in how much time I could spend online. But with the arrival of unlimited access, it literally opened up the world.

I mention this because, without that slow-as-a-snail dialup account, I may never have started to play around with HTML. And I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to learn Photoshop or any other graphics program.

Those items helped to spark a creative passion that I didn’t know I had. Thankfully, even through some ups and downs, it’s something that I still have over 20 years later.

Passion Led Us Here

Where Passion Begins and Ends

Creative fields like web design require a certain amount of talent. But to really succeed, I’d argue that passion is just as important.

Anyone who’s read a Dilbert comic or watched The Office knows that these fictional employees have a dearth of passion for what they do. While the stories are made up, the almost-robotic way the characters go about their jobs is something very real and relatable.

If you’re a designer who acts similarly in your daily grind, it’s hard to imagine that you’d be very creative. No, design requires a real passion to do things the right way. Without it, your work is going to suffer.

However, those who decide to take on the challenge of becoming a freelance designer often face a stark reality: There are days where it’s really hard to conjure up any passion for what you’re doing. And it’s not very surprising.

When you consider the amount of added responsibility you take on while running a business, it can weigh on you. Finances, client relations and all the stress that goes along with the gig is enough to drain anyone of excitement.

And, just like in the more creative parts of your job, facing each task with dread or ambivalence is a recipe for failure.

Where Passion Begins and Ends

Finding Passion and Purpose in Your Business

How, then, can we become passionate about the day-to-day challenges of freelance life? Let’s take a look at some fairly simple things you can do:

Embrace Reality
As it turns out, neither life nor work is 100% fun all of the time. So it makes sense to set realistic expectations when it comes to running a business. There are going to be days that, simply put, are going to stink like a closet full of rotten eggs. But, each day is an opportunity to get those creative juices flowing again.

Find a New Muse
Being creative in and of itself can stir some passion. In my own career, I’m happiest when doing design work or writing. But we can’t spend every moment on those tasks. So it’s up to us to find other things that create some mojo. It might be finding a new niche or service to offer. Or, spend some time on a different aspect of your business that brings out your best. Feeling as though you’ve done a great job can be enough to keep you going.

Learn Something
Another possibility here is to learn a new skill. Study up on that new JavaScript framework you’ve wanted to use or find a new tool to increase productivity. Just the act of learning can make things more fun. You might even find that you just can’t wait to apply this new knowledge to a project and show off your skills.

Challenge Yourself
Creating goals and challenging yourself to top them is a great way to stay in the right frame of mind. Set a goal for how many new clients you want to book in a month or even how many blog posts you want to write. Whatever it is, you’ll have something positive to focus on. Just remember to keep your goals realistic!

Don’t Overdo It
Working yourself too hard is one of the biggest soul-crushing activities for a freelancer. This is especially tough when you’re extremely busy and have deadlines to meet. But there are also times when you simply need a break. Take some time away from your desk and your phone. It can give you a more positive perspective on life.

Finding Passion and Purpose in Your Business

Make Your Work Mean Something

Finding passion in what you do will put you on the right path towards a successful freelance web design career.  The key to developing it is in finding purpose in each day – even the bad ones. How you find it is really up to you.

For instance, if you don’t have enough clients, maybe your purpose can be in making contact with a new prospect. If you’re buried under a mountain of work, you might find purpose in reaching little milestones each day.

That purpose leads to passion, which will shine through to everyone you work with. And when others can see how deeply connected you are to your work, it not only makes them want to work with you but also sing your praises to others.

The result is that your business starts to build momentum. Keep it up and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a successful career.


The New Gmail – Material Design and 8 New Features

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Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/new-gmail-material-design-and-features/

Gmail has received a major update recently, which brings the beautiful material design interface to our favorite email provider. That is not all, it introduces many requested features to help…

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

The Best Adobe XD Mobile App Freebies for UI Designers

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/UB0KOAQ3OgM/

Adobe’s XD program is a direct competitor to Sketch. And while XD is still pretty new it’s catching on like wildfire.

If you’re thinking of trying Adobe XD, you can sign up for the beta and see what you think. If you really like the program, you might even keep it long term, and for that, you’ll probably want some design assets to play around with.

I’ve curated a handful of Adobe XD freebies already released on the web. All of these are editable just like PSD freebies and there’s a lot of variety to pick from.

All the Mobile UI Kits You Could Ask For


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Wires for Adobe XD

wires adobe xd wireframe

The Wires Kit for Adobe XD is perhaps the best wireframing kit out there. It was designed specifically for designers by Kyle Galle, a very skilled designer in his own right.

You can grab the Wires kit for free and reuse it for all your UI projects. It comes with a massive collection of 170 mobile templates, 90 website templates, 240 different page elements and over 170 custom icons.

And yes, all of that is 100% free to download.

iPhone X Mockup & iOS 11 GUI

iphonex ios 11 xd gui

Whenever there’s a new iPhone launch you can bet designers are hard at work releasing UI kits to match. With this new Apple device GUI it nails two kits in one: the newer iOS 11 GUI along with a mockup for the new iPhone X.

It all comes in one massive Adobe XD file created by designer Jason Chuang.

The pack includes tons of sample screens that you can rework and style to suit your own application. Not to mention many of these elements should work for iOS 10 and older.

UI Prototype Screens

ui prototype screens freebie

Talented UI designer Gabriel Cambreling released these prototyping screens for general download. And they’re a great starting point for tinkering in Adobe XD.

These prototypes cover the bases for most of the screens you might plan for a mobile app. List views, login pages, maps, sliding responsive navigation along with other general page designs.

Spoon + Fork iOS UI

spoon and fork gui xd

Now for a more detailed UI kit check out the Spoon + Fork set created by Aprylle Ricafort.

This works like a mobile iOS food app with custom icons, graphics, and a beautiful color scheme. All the elements are 100% vectorized so you can resize them and rework everything if you want.

Anyone looking for a full UI kit for Adobe XD should definitely grab a copy of Spoon + Fork and keep it saved for project work.

Mobile E-Commerce Checkout

ecommerce cart xd freebie

Ecommerce shopping is huge and growing every year. A solid interface is required to increase conversions and you’ll see this mostly in the Mobile E-Commerce Checkout.

The freebie comes with 15 unique line icons and it’s fully open source including all the Google webfonts. Plus this interface basically covers the line of every page you’ll need for a trustworthy shopping app.

Piggy Bank App

piggy bank app freebie

This delightful little piggy bank app UI was released for free by designer Caio in late 2017. It’s one of the newest freebie kits on the web and it’s certainly a simple design.

This probably won’t help you prototype an entire working app, but it will help you learn the XD interface.

Check this out if you’re brand new to Adobe Experience Design and want a simple freebie to mess around with.

Facebook Messenger Bot UI

facebook messenger app gui

The Facebook Messenger app is pretty cool and lets you connect with people wherever you are. It also comes from one of the largest tech companies in the world known for designing great interfaces.

Vladimir Tatarovich’s Facebook Messenger Bot UI is a free UI kit designed around simple app interface screens.

This doesn’t exactly mimic the Facebook messenger but instead tries to rebuild using their existing style. A great starting point for designing your own mobile apps.

XD Mobile Apps

xd mobile app freebie

Here’s another pack dedicated to mobile app GUIs although this one’s a little more generic. But while the styles don’t match a particular brand, these styles are still incredibly useful.

The kit comes with dozens of custom screens including dynamic elements like graphs, checkout pages, audio/video players, ticket purchasing screens and user profiles(plus a whole lot more).

Glancing over this app UI kit you may think it’s just another simple freebie.

But this is by far one of the best freebies you can nab to mess around in XD.

Voice App Concept

voice app freebie

If you do want something real simple to get started with XD try downloading this voice app GUI by designer Ashwin Merle.

It only comes with a few screens, but they work with custom vector elements and some pretty cool text effects to boot.

Walkthrough Screens

walkthrough screens

Digital walkthroughs are crucial to the onboarding process and you should always try to work this into your applications.

If you’re looking for some XD inspiration take a look at this walkthrough screen pack that offers 5 free guided GUI screens built solely for XD. The kit is naturally 100% free and it’s a cool way to gather ideas for your app designs.

Messenger UI Kit

messenger gui kit freebie

Mobile networking is huge and messengers are crucial to every networking app. Whether you’re designing one yourself or just building a practice project, you can learn a lot from this messenger UI kit.

Designer Egor Kuznetsov released this for free and it serves a great purpose for XD users who wanna play around with messenger interfaces.

This kit offers dozens of screens and while the text is in Russian you can always change that with a bit of XD magic.

Bamb UI Kit

bamb ui freebie xd

It was tough finding quality UI kits but I think the Bamb UI really takes the cake.

No doubt this is one of the most complete UI kits you’ll find for Adobe XD. It comes with a specific design style for colors, gradients, typography, and spacing for mobile app GUIs.

Not to mention this thing is totally free, so it’s a great asset for screwing around with XD.

Wallet Mobile App

xd freebie wallet app

Banks and credit card companies usually offer mobile apps for banking on the go. If you’re working on a project like that you might grab a copy of this wallet app GUI kit for Adobe XD.

It comes with quite a few different screen styles for news, account balance info, and for moving money around. This one’s designed around a Bitcoin wallet but you could rework the style to fit anything.

So these are just my top picks for XD freebies, but new ones come out every few months.

If you have time to search around I highly recommend browsing through the free Adobe XD files on PSDDD.co to find more.