#41 - Design and prototyping at Dropbox
Hey folks,
Here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this week.
Design and prototyping at Dropbox #
Dropbox has been one of my favourite product since day 1. Not just because it’s an awesome tool but for their approach to design, use of illustration and focus on sharing what they know.
Design systems at Dropbox looks at how their choice of tools is evolving from Sketch to Framer.
“While it’s great to present work in a sanitized format, it’s also important to remember that those scenarios don’t actually exist. In fact, a user’s environment is usually a busy, distraction-prone space.”
This lead to desktop prototyping to emulate real situations where a user might have a cluttered desktop. Quite a fresh angle on prototyping.
Bits and pieces on CSS #
Just starting out with HTML and CSS is a useful collection of articles and videos. I recently sent this to my younger brother since he’s just getting into it.
30 seconds of CSS — A curated collection of useful CSS snippets you can understand in 30 seconds or less.
How we adopted CSS Grid at scale is a great practical use case of Grid. It’s also packed full of resources.
Jen Simmons on How to Write CSS That Works in Every Browser.
A crowdsourced typeface #
These Swedish kids designed a typeface to celebrate their neighbourhood. I’ve always loved the idea of crowdsourced type design. I’ve been planning on doing some Krink marker type for a while. This has massively inspired me to get on with it.
You can see the full typeface here and download it for free.
Insanely helpful tools #
Buffer is about to launch Instagram direct scheduling which is going to make life so much easier! It’s only for business profiles for now and supports single images only. No video or multi-image posts.
Ever wanted to know the tech stack used on a website? Wappalyzer does exactly that. Scroll down to ‘technology lookup’ to test it out. It’s pretty cool.
My Git workflow is still pretty basic, I’m always having to google things when it get’s complicated. First Aid git is an awesome collection of the most searched for git questions. As it grows I can see this becoming a super handy resource.
Here’s a great website launch checklist. If you are planning on launching a new site soon it will help iron out inconsistencies before you launch. In fact I even use a checklist for this email. It really helps with consistency. Before I hit send I run through a launch checklist on Trello to make sure I haven’t missed anything.
RIP Stephen Hawkin #
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”
For your ears #
I let youtube do it’s thing and found myself on this Detroit house mix.
P.S — I just finished Key Person of Influence. Find out what I’m reading right now on Goodreads.