A jam packed edition this time with loads of highly anticipated releases, plus some hidden gems and early versions of tools to keep an eye out for. I sorted them in sections this time, to make it easier to go through!
Some love for typography in design from the Sketch front. You can now play around with variable fonts or adjust specific OpenType features on your text layers. Or even more… ↓
Variable Color Fonts are quite impressive. This article goes in depth on how you can leverage the power of variable fonts to create responsive illustrations. There are some nice examples in there to make you better understand how Variable fonts work in general.
This Sketch plugin fixes a messy document by assigning shared styles automagically to all of your unstyled layers. It does this based on similarities with the styles you’ve created, even if there not exactly the same. Clean it up!
Is this gonna be the “Github for Designers™”? Figma introduced a new platform, where designers can share their documents. I think it’s super powerful and a step in the right direction to enable designers to share more, and ultimately improve our profession. A great example why this is so powerful, is this iOS 13 kit by Juan Arreguin.
Magic Move from Keynote, now in Figma. There were already some specialized prototyping tools like Principle, Flinto, or Flinto that allow you to position an element on two artboards/frames/screens, and let the computer transition between them. But now, this is right inside Figma. I’m impressed.
This new tool by Meng To’s team lets you customize the style, colors and border of static & animated icons and illustrations. Browse through hundreds of assets in a nice grid view, and export to React, SVG and Lottie code.
With the newly upgraded IconJar you have even more power over organizing all your icon sets, and export or drag-and-drop them to any app you want. It supports both SVG and icon fonts. A must-have in my opinion!
This is a tool to keep an eye out for. It’s just a prototype for now. But the possibilities seem so powerful, that I really only hope it gets shipped sometime. With this tool you design an iOS app in real time. Meaning, you actually use existing native UI components and link them to data, and other screens to build the app. Sign up to stay in the loop!
Color contrast is an important aspect of accessibility. Good contrast makes it easier for people with visual impairments to use products, and helps in imperfect conditions like low-light environments or older screens. This article goes in depth on how the Stripe team came up with a color palette that fits their brand, is beautiful, and still accessible. Unfortunately no tool (yet?) to play around with. I hope they will release more of this to the public soon.
Tweet
Share