I recently came across an article titled “Web typography is broken. Here’s how we can fix it”. A mix of emotions rushed through me while I read through it. I realized that the biggest argument Tom was making in the article was that web typography is broken because type doesn’t sit perfectly on a baseline grid.

1. They’re Smarter Than You Think
2. They Have Other Things To Do
3. They Have a “Doing Mode”
4. They “Satisfice”
5. They Don’t Use Your Software The Way You Intended
6. They Rely On Patterns
7. They See What’s There
8. They Lie
9. They Don’t Know What’s Possible
10. If You Improve Their Lives, They’ll Love You
11. They Blame Themselves for Mistakes When It’s Your Fault
12. Their User “Experience” Is Based On Far More Than Your Website

It has come to my attention that one of the more noticeable traits in my design work is my willingness to use what is perceived to be an excessive number of typefaces. I’ve seen countless articles written on typeface pairing and systems, and nearly all of them push towards using fewer families in any given design. I’ve seen similar comments made towards my own work, implying that they are pleasing despite the number of typefaces they use.

How’s it going, compadres? This month’s roundup hand-picked from all across the web includes icons, design assets, illustrations, vector artwork, UI kits, some really cool code snippets, fonts, templates, some awesome tools, and much much more.

Create beautiful apps with modular and customizable UI components.

Flexbox cheatsheet

There are two basic questions you need to ask yourself at the start of any UX project. Let’s break it down.

WHAT DOES THE USER WANT?

WHAT DOES THE CLIENT WANT?

DESIGN FOR THE USER
Have you come across designers who seem to design for other designers, but not for the end user? I know I have. I’ve also come across designers who design for the client instead of the end user. And, if we’re going to be completely honest here, I’ve also come across designers who design for their own ego exclusively. It fills me with cringe.

4-Second Rule
If you want users to stay on your app, don’t use spinners for processes that take longer than 4 seconds to load. A research study has found that most users’ tolerable wait time is 4 seconds. This means that their behavioral intentions begin to change after 4 seconds.

Today we want to share some neat grid navigation effects using jQuery. In our examples we will show you ten ways how to navigate through a set of thumbnails. We’ll take a look at some of the possibilities and how to apply the effect.

Digital experiences are emulating real life more and more every day. This may seem counterintuitive, considering the hate that rains down on skeuomorphic visual design, but there’s a lot more to emulating real life than aesthetics. Interface designers can emulate real-life physics and movement on a digital screen. This type of motion is becoming more common, which is why it’s becoming easier for people to understand computers. We’re not getting better, the interfaces are!

Menu -> X transition

In a way or another, pretty much everyone has used Bootstrap at least once. Millions of websites, prototypes, and themes for well-known CMSs (such as WordPress) are based on Bootstrap. The framework is simple to install, easy to use, and incredibly time-saving. It's built on high quality HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that allows you to create good-looking designs with a minimal effort.

Here are 8 fantastic projects to train your coding muscles! The goal is to build each app with whatever technology stack you prefer. Keep it conflict free, use whatever you want!

Today you’ll learn how to use gradients for a website in Adobe XD through a very useful tutorial.

Always decide on a light source. This will help you decide which are the lighter and darker areas in the gradient.

Chris Gannon:
Personally I prefer and use the Asset Export panel. It's quicker, produces cleaner SVGs and is more flexible (drag and drop several assets and it will export them all separately; drag and alt-drop several assets and it will export them as one).

1. Use color and weight to create hierarchy instead of size
2. Don’t use grey text on colored backgrounds
3. Offset your shadows
4. Use fewer borders
5. Don’t blow up icons that are meant to be small
6. Use accent borders to add color to a bland design
7. Not every button needs a background color

In my opinion the greatest inspiration for finding great natural gradients is nature. Specifically, the sky. It’s most basic colours are blue and red, but in truth, it’s so much more than just that. Subtle changes in hue emulate waves, the irregular and imperfect clouds simultaneously both ruin and enhance the big picture, and should the sun ever rise or set, the whole thing is thrown into complete disarray, that, while one would think would ruin the experience, everything still sets into a perfect harmony. I have never seen a sky that didn’t somehow inspire me to feel something bigger than all the artists of our civilization have ever managed to create.