UX Design Resources
Resources that are Helping me Through UX Academy
As I make my way through my UX Academy course by Design Lab, I’ve come across some pretty sweet resources that have helped me along the way!
I wanted to document these precious links so I can always refer back to them later (although I do already have them bookmarked, this is mostly for you all!)
Let’s get started :)
Font Pair
This website helps to pair Google Fonts together. The sweet part? It’s FREE! What’s valuable about this site is being able to find and use fonts that are compatible with browsers — wouldn’t it suck to use a font from Type Kit only to realize it’s not web compatible or only some people could read it? Yeah, Font Pair helps solve that problem!
Give it a go here: http://fontpair.co/
Adobe Color CC
Having to come up with color palettes and style tiles were a pretty daunting task for me as a new Designer. The endless possibilities, all the bright colors, all the muted and neutrals, the monochromatic, analogous, etc.
Adobe Color CC makes it easy to find colors that work well with each other and gives you the option to choose different color rules.
You can also upload a photo and create a color palette from that! Pretty awesome, right?
Try it out for yourself here: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
Sneakpeekit
Through my laborious efforts of sketching and digitizing my wireframes, I needed a better way to wireframe and sketch. A fellow student sent this URL our way in Slack. It’s Printable Grids for Design Wireframing.
I came up with the nifty idea to print a bunch of these and get them bound at a print store (which I haven’t gotten around to yet, oops). I have a dotted Moleskine notebook, but I don’t love it for wireframe and sketching — I use it mostly for my Bullet Journal!
I think it would be awesome to laminate these pages and create reusable whiteboarding session pages! What do you all think?
Get grid crazy here: http://sneakpeekit.com/
Mobile App Design Patterns
Through UX Academy, there were a number of resources given to us to understand and become inspired by design patterns.
Here are the ones I loved and bookmarked:
- http://inspired-ui.com/
- http://www.mobile-patterns.com/
- http://ui-patterns.com/patterns
- http://www.uxarchive.com/
High Resolution Stock Photos (FREE)
Finding the right photo to complete a mock up design can set the tone between good and best. Here are some sites I’d recommend for some free stock photos!
- https://unsplash.com/
- https://www.pexels.com/
- http://foodshot.co/
- https://pixabay.com/
- http://finda.photo/
Storyboarding with Pixton
For one of our assignments in UX Academy, we were required to create a storyboard for our product, InstaShop. Many of my fellow students were using this easy to use storyboarding tool called Pixton.
Take a look at the storyboard I created:
It’s a nice tool to create visually appealing storyboards. I don’t know if I’d use it at a stakeholder meeting, but it was definitely a fun tool to use for our assignment!
Get storyboarding here: https://www.pixton.com/my-home
Branding & Logos
This is a specialty that I’d love to get into and build more skills in. It’ll take time, but I’ll get there!
Brand New
This was a resource suggested by my mentor, Kieran Black. I had questions about how to get into branding and how to understand appropriate colors and design for a client.
Brand New provides opinions on corporate and brand identity work; it details old logos vs new logos and provides an analysis of the two.
A useful resource for those interested in branding changes: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/#.WE_-zeYrJPY
Logojoy
This is a resource I actually came across while surfing the Twitter-sphere. Logojoy is an AI-powered system that create logos based on styles, colors, and icons you choose. I gave it a try for my creative brief from Design Lab and got some inspiration for what to do with my logo when I start creating a mock up of my prototypes!
You can purchase logos if you find one you like, but I personally would use it to gather inspiration and ideas! It seems like a great starting point for designers looking to create a logo.
Try it out here: https://www.logojoy.com/
Final Thoughts
The journey to switching careers into UX Design has been rewarding, challenging, and fun. I love finding new resources to help me along the way as I’m getting started in my design career.
Let me know what you think of these resources and if you have any suggestions for me!
Happy Designing, peeps!
