6 Inspirational Design Articles to Elevate Your Thinking

 What do all successful designers have in common? The ability to approach complex challenges with simple, yet innovative solutions. And while we all have our own techniques for problem solving — from team brainstorming sessions to step-by-step formulas — sometimes we need to approach our work from an entirely different angle. Here, we’ve rounded up 11 inspirational design articles from creative thought leaders around the web. Spanning everything from app interactions to modern web design monotony, these reads are sure to help you see age-old problems in a new light.

Material Design Wallpaper WALLPAPERDNA-3-300x169

1. How to Design Happiness

Mark Wilson | Fast Co. Design

This article explores the three psychological stages of human happiness: anticipation, experience, and memory. Wilson uses lessons from a SXSW puppy experiment to show how designers can methodically reconstruct one of our most complex emotions.

2. Why Good Storytelling Helps You Design Great Products

Braden Kowitz | Google Ventures

We’re all familiar with the importance of storytelling, but few resources explore the detailed relationship between storytelling, product design, and user experience. Here, Kowitz explains how story-centered design improves both the efficiency and effectiveness of product teams.

3. Unintuitive Lessons on Being a Designer

Julie Zhuo | Facebook

Influential designer Julie Zhuo details eight humbling, yet realistic lessons she’s learned in the past ten years. More self-help than design tutorial, this Medium post introduces essential truths that can help all of us create better work.

Material Design Wallpaper WALLPAPERDNA-3-300x169

4. Microinteractions: The Secret of Great App Design

Nick Babich | UX Planet

What does it take to create a best-selling app? Perfectly-timed microinteractions, or so says Nick Babich. See how these tiny, often-overlooked details can have an enormous impact on emotion –and learn how to incorporate them wisely.

5. 5 Ways to Use Design Thinking in Your Everyday Routine

Michelle Polizzi | Brandfolder

Whether you’re a small agency or a full-fledged enterprise, design thinking should play a role in your daily work. Accompanied by a handy infographic, this post explores how design thinking can be harnessed to devise out-of-the-box ideas, and find a greater purpose in your work.

6. From Fledgling To Founder: How Designers Can Push Their Creations Into The Real World

Mathias Jakobsen | Smashing Magazine

Designers have a special advantage when it comes to entrepreneurship, and this Smashing Mag read explains it all. In addition to the economic and branding benefits of design-focused companies, Jakobsen walks us through the three stages of “design founderism” in an easy-to-grasp blueprint.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Biggest and Most Authoritative Library of Open-Source UX Design Resources

Open-Source, Open-Access Literature The democratization of design knowledge is at the very heart of our mission. That’s why—over 19 years after we started—we will never stop bringing leading designers, bestselling authors, and Ivy League professors together to create open-source, free-to-access textbooks on UX design. This is the world’s most comprehensive compendium of design knowledge, made available to everyone around the world. The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed. The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed. Free textbooks written by more than 100 leading designers, bestselling authors, and Ivy League professors. We have assembled our textbooks in a gigantic encyclopedia, whose 4,000+ pages cover the design of interactive products and services such as websites, household objects, smartphones, computer software, aircraft cockpits, and what have you. Name an item of design interest, and you'll probably find it discussed inside. Table of Contents 1 In
Read more

Want to Learn Graphic Design? 8 Tips & Tricks for Beginners

  For many of us, the thought of high school conjures memories of ample notebook doodles. Hand-drawn bubble letters, pictograms, and stick-figures would decorate homework, tests, and papers -- and teachers, of course, were constantly asking us to knock it off. And so, most of us did, perhaps because we figured out that we just weren't that good at drawing on paper. But when some of us were in high school, we didn't yet have the numerous digital options for "drawing" our ideas. But now, machines can help us bring them to life -- and it's become a career path for many people. Graphic design is something that marketers can always benefit from learning, even without a formal education. In those cases, we enter a world of do-it-yourself education, with repeated recommendations like, "learn Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign," or, "read a book about basic design principles." And as much as those help, learning fundamentals, navigating new tools, an
Read more

Introducing Ultimate Gray and Illuminating: Pantone's Colors of the Year for 2021

Image
  There is   strength in optimism . Or at least that's Pantone's proposal for 2021: a color story that combines vitality and fortitude. The resilience we'll need to overcome 2020's challenges and the vivacious energy that will inspire us to do it. In selecting Ultimate Gray and Illuminating (Yellow) as their colors of the year for 2021, Pantone hopes to convey a mix of temperance and warmth. In the last few years, we've gotten used to seeing a single hue as Pantone's Color of the Year. Perhaps as evidence of our conflicting emotions, this year's color pair invites us to embrace the value of our differences. Creatives' reactions to this choice are divided, to say the least. We're used to adding white to create tints, gray to create tones, and black to create shades. Many use gray as a tool to precisely  reduce  chroma, or neutralize colorfulness; so seeing it as one of 2021's most influential color picks creates mixed feelings. However, regardless
Read more