Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Every Friday, we'll be sharing a round-up of what's happening in the Design Industry, such as new digital product announcements, platforms being launched, unique peer projects, interesting experiments and much more. Follow along as we keep a pulse on exciting news in design each week.
Here's our recap for the week of October 4th through 10th, 2014.
1. Tabletop Whale
Made with love by designer Eleanor Lutz, Tabletop Whale is an original science illustration blog filled with charts, graphs and animated imagery. Eleanor publishes every two to three weeks.
2. UX Companion
A handy glossary of user experience theories, tools and principles — all in a tidy little iOS App. Download in the App Store.
3. Julien Douvier
Fall in love with these cinemagraphs from Julien Douvier. Sure, they are sweet animated gifs, but since they’re made with high-end photography, we’ll be ok with calling them cinemagraphs.
4. Adobe Max Announcements
Adobe announced new efforts to bring its ever-growing suite of mobile apps to be in line with its desktop apps. Ranging from vector to raster to video mobile editing apps, Adobe is empowering creative folks to make awesome stuff on the go. They’re also updating Photoshop CC (2014) and many other apps too! Personally, I’m really excited about Adobe Illustrator Draw for iPad — which lets you create freeform vectors from your tablet.
5. Colorful Gradient
Haven’t had your fill of gradient hues? Then check out this handy Tumblr that automatically offers up 48 fresh gradient palettes a day.
6. Gifbook.io
Print your animated gifs as real paper flip books.
7. Project GIFV
A platform-wide upgrade to automatically convert uploaded GIF files on the fly into the MP4 video format.
8. Strip
Strip is a less intrusive responsive lightbox.
9. Project List
A new, lightweight project management dashboard that tracks the stuff that matters most to the progress of your product. Built by JD Graffam.
10. Design Shots
Design Shots is a new way to browse Dribbble shots on your iPhone.
11. The Pocket Drone
Of course you want a tiny flying robot that you can fold up and put in your pocket.
12. Your ultimate guide to Minimum Viable Product
Read a concise article about what’s needed to conceptualize and strategically launch your startup idea as an MVP. Includes great examples too.
13. Flexible.gs
Download a flexible grid system with fluid grid gutters. The future!
14. Creative Mornings: Ben Pieratt
Watch Ben’s Creative Mornings NYC chapter talk on why failure is a matter of perspective.
15. JibJab Messages
Created personalized animated gifs with your friends’ faces, filters and meme-style text, and send them to your friends! Download the iOS app today.
16. Sketchnote Army Call to Arms
Want to make sketchnotes at conferences on behalf of FiftyThree (makers of Paper) and get paid for it? Then you’ll want to check out this recent solicitation on Sketchnote Army for digital artists!
17. Pin Picks
Pinterest started curating its own content with its new weekly collections called Pin Picks. The account already has over 200,000 followers, and the collections are beautifully put together.
18. FlexSense
A transparent, self-sensing deformable surface. This is a pretty cool research prototype by the folks at Microsoft Research.
19. Extending Photoshop
A collection of methods, plugins and ideas to help you design for web efficiently and effectively.
20. Litmus Builder
Streamline your workflow with this web-based email editor.
21. Plastc Card
Plastc brings all of your credit and debit cards into one sophisticated device. It’s got a touchscreen that gives you easy access to multiple cards in one!
22. Full Page Screen Capture
Use this handy Google Chrome plugin to take full webpage screenshots with just one click!
23. Flarums: Forums Reimagined
Back this project by Toby Zerner on Kickstarter that reimagines how awesome it would be to merge forums and email. Toby presents his ideas on a beautiful, open-source forum software built for the modern web.
24. Guardians of the Galaxy Pre-Movie Art
Browse a collection of fantasy concept art that's produced to shape the feel of the Guardians of the Galaxy film via Atomhawk Design.
25. Bezier Curves: Under the Hood
Take a peek under the hood to see how computers draw cubic Bézier curves, as used in design and motion graphics programs.
26. GitHub Student Developer Pack
The best developer tools from GitHub are now free for students!
27. Squarespace 7
Squarespace introduced version 7, a completely redesigned set of creative tools that makes getting started easier than ever.
28. A List, A Fart
Enjoy this silly site that parodies the popular A List Apart platform.
29. Emoji Brush
Draw with emojis like never before.
30. TrailType
Browse a growing collection of typographic signage from parks and trails.
What Did We Miss?
That does it for all the great design industry links we found this week. Join the conversation by adding interesting sites or resources you found below.