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In this issue:
Tools: Colorbox
Tools: Xcode 11
Illustrator: Nico 189
Illustrator: Brigitte Cronje
Tutorial: Creating an Illustration Library
Tutorial: Animating with Flipaclip
Resource: Smarter Patterns
Resource: Product Disrupt
Thoughts: The Ten-Percent Myth
This newsletter was originally sent on 09/23/2019.
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Colorbox—Tools
Colorbox is a tool to produce color sets with accessible contrast ratios between text and background. You can set the number of steps, and change the saturation, hue, and luminosity values of the start and end. Lyft’s design team open-sourced this excellent app. 🎨
Xcode 11—Tools
Xcode 11 brings SwiftUI, a new framework with design tools to enable a new way to build user interfaces. You can drag-and-drop elements to construct and edit your views. It also has a library of controls and modifiers that make it easy to create complex interfaces. It’s a cool tool to try if you want to get your hands into iOS development.
Nico 189—Illustrator
Nico is a freelance designer and illustrator from Milan, Italy. He gets influence on his minimalist style from his background of graffiti, characterized by clean-cut lines and geometric shapes. His primary focus is illustrations for magazines and international brands with clients like Adidas, Fortune, and Fast Company.
Brigitte Cronje—Illustrator
Teacher by day and artist by night, Brigitte finds inspiration from people and nature. Pets, people, plants, and swans — all that life is about.
Creating an Illustration Library—Tutorial
In this video, I share my process to create an illustration library with components that you can mix-and-match. In the tutorial, I use different tools to create a hand-drawn system. I hope you enjoy it.
Animating with Flipaclip—Tutorial
In this other video I show my process using Flipaclip to create a simple animation of a muffin (although in the video I keep saying cupcake.)
Smarter Patterns—Resource
Smarter Patterns is an interaction pattern library that provides solutions for common AI challenges. Even if you’re not interested in AI stuff, the site can be a pretty good source of inspiration.
Product Disrupt—Resource
A list of resources by Darshan Gajara, a product designer. You’ll find designers to follow, email lists to subscribe to, inspiration, and other resources.
The Ten-Percent Myth—Thoughts
You’ve probably heard the myth that we only use 10% of our brain capacity. It makes for a good movie plot; what if we were to use the other 90%? Would we get paranormal superpowers? It also makes us feel good about ourselves — we have an untapped potential! Unfortunately, there’s no evidence for this. Different brain imaging techniques, like PET scans, show that the vast majority of the brain isn’t just inactive when used. While we use particular parts for different functions, any complex activities or thought patterns will use many parts of the brain. Just as how we don’t use all of our muscles at one time to do something. We also don’t use all of our minds at once for everything.
The origins of the myth are not clear. Some say that it might have started at the beginning of the 20th century. It likely has many sources. It’s a myth generally misused by self-help gurus and movie writers. It’s disappointing that we might not develop psychic abilities any time soon, though.
“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them.” — Andy Bernard
Hola, I’m Pablo Stanley, a designer who sometimes also writes comics. Every week I email this newsletter. I share a list of design-related gems, including inspiring work, cool typefaces, people to follow, articles to read, tools to try, and job opportunities. If you give me your email address, I’ll spam you every Monday with this stuff.
