Popular design news of the week: May 4, 2015 – May 10, 2015

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Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

20 Snippets for Things You Never Thought were Possible with CSS

 

Modern minimalism in web design is the right choice

 

Wwwhere – a curated list of tools and resources for people who make websites

 

In 2015, your homepage is not just a homepage

 

100 high quality free photos with CC0 license

 

What Killed The Infographic?

 

Responsive Design Best Practices for Big Projects

 

15 clever redesign concepts of big brand logos

 

Templates Are Dead: 5 Ways Scalable Design Will Change The Way We Build Websites

 

We Owe Designers An Apology

 

Star Wars at Amazon

 

Google+ Collections: Google+’s answer to Pinterest

 

Colour: Scroll around and find your perfect colour

 

Funky experiments in responsive design

 

Touch Pianist

 

Interactive meditation: 60 seconds to clear your mind

 

If Facebook Got Rid of Everything You Hate

 

Illustrator vs Photoshop

 

Site design: The boat – An interactive graphic novel

 

This Restaurant Made Special Plates for Smartphone Food Photos

 

What is hiding in the negative space of Microsoft’s new Edge browser logo?

 

How dude you look? A homage to Microsoft’s How-Old.net

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top designer news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Comics of the week #286

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Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Very distinctive

 

Is anybody bringing doughnuts?

 

Nice touch

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

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Designing patterns: the biggest web trend of 2015 so far

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2015 has inherited a lot of trends from previous years, there’s been a steady evolution of ideas — Flat Design into Material Design for example — but nothing as revolutionary as Responsive Design.

However, we are starting to see trends that feel fresh, either through new treatments or because they’re genuinely new ways of approaching old problems. The most widespread of these so far, has been the use of patterns in web design.

Patterns serve a variety of purposes, from communicating a brand value, to adding motion to an interface, to enlivening the simple blocks of color that flat design favors. And the use of patterns, although not scientifically categorizable, falls into one of five broad and inter-related categories… 

Generative patterns

The combination of design and code that makes up the Web has meant that it was always going to be a fertile environment for generative art, and designers working with mathematics. From the earliest days of the Web designers were experimenting with particle systems, but in recent months we’ve seen an increasing emphasis on particles existing within a more formal pattern. These geometric patterns are a natural evolution of the form, thanks to the fact that it relies so heavily on design units and code loops.

What’s really new is that, in 2015 we’re increasingly seeing businesses adopt these kinds of pattern as an integral element of their brand.

 

Data patterns

Business’ ongoing preoccupation with the concept of big data, is increasingly being visualized as patterns, despite the fact that big data is very unlikely to yield a shell-like pattern. This idea of simple mathematical forms being found amongst complex data is inextricably linked to the idea of knowledge, power, and insight. Companies that want to appear to have a unique understanding of an abstract concept like to employ the metaphor. 

This, coupled with the growth of SaaS (Software as a Service) when businesses are selling not a product but an abstract concept, has lead to a rash of sites featuring the kind of pattern that a kid with a Spirograph would be proud of.

 

Craft patterns

2015 has been tipped for some time as the year that analog crafts make their way back into design portfolios, and patterns are playing a big role in that.

Whether they’re geometric, or more organic, patterns that break the digital mold emphasise a craft skill and speak to design authenticity. The key with this type of pattern is the variation in repetition, which adds a warm, human element to the design.

 

Animation patterns

Patterns don’t simply repeat visually. For years designers have been looping animated GIFs to create a repeating pattern over time. This technique is increasingly being used in conjunction with SVG to produce epic, engaging animations that are still practical on a mobile connection.

The repetition of this kind of pattern varies, from a looping background to a series of animations running together at different rates to create an infinitely changing pattern of movement. In 2015, as mobile continues to grow, looping SVGs provides a practical way to enliven an animation without compromising on speed.

 

Grid patterns

Patterns have always been an integral part of Web design, as witnessed by the fact that we could tile a background in CSS before we could position an element.

In the last year, we’ve started to see designers playing with traditional patterns, and especially the grid, to enliven designs. Elements are placed outside of a formal grid, but follow the same pattern of repetition. or the grid itself is highlighted with the color blocking favored by Flat Design aficionados.

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Infographic: The history of Photoshop

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Love it or loathe it, it’s impossible to dispute the impact Adobe Photoshop has had on the design world. Over the last 25 years it has edited billions of images, and along the way has made itself the byword for image editing.

Photoshop has its critics, especially within the web design industry, who feel that Photoshop doesn’t offer a flexible enough workflow for responsive design. Other designers swear by it, for sheer processing power. The PSD to HTML industry is certainly on the wane, but the PSD format itself is still going strong; with rival applications failing to find traction, Photoshop is likely to be around for some time to come.

To celebrate a quarter of a century of bitmap brilliance the team at ClickInks.com have put together this timeline of Photoshop’s illustrious history. How many of these versions did you use?

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