Technique Deep Dive #1: Mesh Gradients
5 reasons mesh gradients are flexible & powerful · 12+ beautiful mesh gradient examples from around the web
Creating a Standout Design Portfolio: The Ultimate Guide
The 4 most-common portfolio mistakes · Homepage best practices · How to create a great project case study · 10 example portfolios, annotated & explained · Top sites for creating your portfolio
37 Easy Ways to Spice Up Your UI Designs
Illustrated tips for making your UI and web designs more visually interesting · Backgrounds · Borders & dividers · Shadows · Text · Other techniques
Identifying Fonts: the Complete Guide
How to identify fonts in websites · in PDFs · in mobile apps · in images
15 Tips for Better Signup / Login UX
Mobile patterns · Form field validation · Autofocus · Microcopy · Error messages · Error prevention
Free Font Alternatives: The Ultimate Guide
Free, high-quality alternatives to: Apercu · Avenir · Circular · DIN · Futura · Gotham · Helvetica · Proxima Nova · Times New Roman
The Step-by-Step Guide for Pairing Fonts
Typeface & brand · The power of subtlety · Letterforms & legibility · Rules of usage
100 Things a UX/UI Designer Should Know
The craft, the tools, the relationships, the ethics, the psychology.
The iOS 17 Design Guidelines: An Illustrated Guide
iPhone design guidelines for UI elements, typography, navigation, design patterns, and more · Downloadable resources · iPhone Figma template
The 3 Most Common Logo Design Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
What symbol to pick · On colors · Size and detail
iOS vs. Android App UI Design: The Complete Guide
Overview of main differences · Navigation & organization · Controls and paradigms · Typography · Other platform standards
4 Rules for Intuitive UX
Obey the Law of Locality · ABD: Anything But Dropdowns · Pass the Squint Test · Teach by example
The 3 Laws of Locality
Where to put controls in your UI designs · Conceptual and physical areas of the interface · Styling controls that are distant from what they control
The #1 Way to Spice Up Your Designs (And Create a More Cohesive Brand)
How to make a design look professional · Tying a UI design together · Shapes vs. colors as motifs
Why Beginning Designers Don't Need to Learn Grids, Type Scales, or Color Theory (and other “Designer Dogma”)
Grids in a world where no screen ever stays the same size · The golden ratio is not the answer · Adjusting colors like facebook · Pick-a-number fatigue
3 Pro Tips on Alignment
The right edge of left-aligned text · Centering is still aligning · Hanging punctuation and friends
5 Practical Exercises to Learn UI Design (For Free)
Designing vs. reading about design · Building your gut instinct · Learning from the pros · Developing a working knowledge of fonts · Style tiles · Putting it all together
UI Tutorial: Scheduling App Redesign (in under 10 Minutes)
The squint test · Don't make a good design on accident · The CRUD strategy · The law of locality
The King vs. Pawn Game of UI Design
Using a chess exercise to create better UI · Matching typography and color · Principles of lighting and shadows · Matching icons and typography
UI Tutorial: Redesigning a Mobile Login Screen in 4 Steps
A step-by-step redesign of a login screen · Covers a handful of design tips and tricks for you to use in your own redesigns
Font Sizes in UI Design: The Complete Guide
Font size guidelines for iOS (iPhone and iPad), Material Design, and web (mobile and desktop) · Principles of choosing font sizes · Further reading
Picking Colors for Your Data Visualizations
Multi-hue palettes · Single-hue color scales · Divergent (two-hue) color scales
The HSB Color System: A Practitioner's Primer
Hue, saturation, and brightness, explained · Color variations with hue · Adjusting visibility with saturation · Black vs. white · HSL vs HSB
6 Ways to Justify Font Choices in Your Designs
Branding and adjectives · Historical usage and inspiration · Fonts have features too · Superfamilies and workhorses
UI vs. UX: A Concise Explanation
You would think there's a clear, accessible definition of this somewhere. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it.
The Reframe Technique
Analyzing your process to beat tricky interface problems · Local vs. global maxima of design solutions
Color in UI Design: A (Practical) Framework
The importance of color variations · Darker vs. lighter variations · Analyzing the real world · The Rules (in HSB) · Luminosity · The Way of Color
Copywork: The Ultimate Way to Rapidly Improve Your Design Skills
Getting inspiration from top designs · Adding to your UI bag of techniques · What I've learned from copywork · Frequently asked questions
7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI – Part 2 (2024 update)
How to safely overlay text on images · Making text pop – and un-pop · Only use good fonts · Steal like an artist
7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI (2024 update)
Light comes from the sky · Black and white first · Double your whitespace