1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I’m a designer from Brazil currently living in Oakland, California. I moved to the US in 2011 when I got an offer from Google. Since then, I have been working for them. Before that, in 2006 I founded a personal blog that ended up growing more than I’d ever planned. Abduzeedo started as a side project and it has always kept that status, it is a blog where I can share things that inspire me. Over the past 10 years, a lot has changed and with that, the blog has evolved as well.

2. How did you get into design? Was there a pivotal point in your life when you decided to become a designer, or was it a gradual process?

My background is industrial design, and I think the reason I got into design was because I was always curious. I also have to thank my parents, especially my dad for always nurturing a sense of curiosity in my brother and me. Then, when i got my first computer and discovered some early graphic software, things became much clearer for me and this led to my desire of creating things using my computer as a medium. Of course, when I chose industrial design, to my surprise, I had to learn to do things without the computer first. I got a bit frustrated, but that was a sign of my naïveté. Now I really appreciate those days and what I learned.

3. What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on so far?

I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on so many cool projects. It is hard to pinpoint one. I always try to put myself in very uncomfortable situations so I can learn the most. Of course this inevitably has resulted in some awful mistakes, but that’s the only way to gain experience, in my opinion. But to answer your question I will say Abduzeedo because it is my personal project and the one I’ve run the longest.

4. How did Abduzeedo start, and where do you see your publication in 10 years from now?

Abduzeedo started after my design studio in Brazil got robbed. We left for lunch and when we came back our studio was empty. All of our equipment was gone. For me it was even worse because that day I decided to back up my files so I lost all my backup discs as well. It started as a backup system, way before the cloud was something. There was no Dropbox, iCloud or Google Drive. I used a server and the blog to backup files in which I would write little tutorials so I could remember how I did certain things in photoshop. It ended up taking off, luckily.

After 10 years I’ve seen quite a lot of things. The blog reached its peak in 2009-2010. It was really massive the amount of traffic it was getting. Since then it has been on a decline but I believe it is more a filtering process. The web became much bigger and the long tail is simply huge. There’s a lot of information and ways to get it. That ended up fragmenting the blogosphere in terms of traffic. My goal is to keep running with Abduzeedo until the point it doesn’t make more sense for me.

5. You probably get this question a lot, but what is like to be a part of a company like Google? Do they really have slides in their offices?

Google is an amazing company. I have learned so much in so many ways. From all the incredibly amazing people to the scale of the projects and how to design for billions. It’s much more challenging indeed. The company’s culture is also incredible and we do have slides in some of the offices.

6. What’s the most interesting project you’ve had on Google?

I got the chance to work on quite a few projects, from Google Search to the most recent one that is Google Play Music. Each one with their particular challenges and requirements. I cannot get too much into the details, but designing for a very broad audience is always a big task and that really gets me motivated.

7. Where do you see the graphic design industry going? What is going to be next year’s graphic design biggest trend?

I feel that the industry is moving towards simplicity. I cannot speak too much about graphic design, but in terms of user interface we see this evolution quite clearly. From the beginning of mobile UI with the iOS and now you can see how much simpler the visual design became. There’s a constant movement towards reduction. The challenge is to do that without losing user’s understanding of how to use the software. As the audience gets more mature and savvy, it allows us to experiment more with this type of exercise.

8. Aside WebDesignLedger, where do you get your inspiration from?

More and more I try to find inspiration from the physical world. With the overload of information online I sort of started to lose my capacity to pay attention to the small little things that are so inspiring in our quotidian lives. From nature to books and architecture. There’s so much out there to be seen, and the most beautiful thing is that it’s unique to your eyes and brain to process that.

9. What are your current hobbies? What are you most curious about right now?

I became a father a little over 9 months ago and right now my hobby is to be a father hah! It takes most of my spare time for sure but it’s just awesome. I also have been learning to prototype in native Android with Android Studio. I feel that the design community focus so much on iOS and there’s a huge need for Android as the main mobile OS>

10. Tea or Coffee?

Coffee.

Read More at Interview With Fabio Sasso – The Founder Of Abduzeedo

Does this little moment strike fear into your heart?

Now forevermore, the spell checker won’t catch that misspelled word. Fear not, you can fix it.

When this happened to me recently, fortunately, Dave Bolger told me how to fix it.

@chriscoyier If you are on OS X you can easily delete those ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary edit in text editor, log back in to reload.

— Dave Bolger (@davebolger) November 4, 2016

I just popped open that file from the command line quick with:

$ sublime ~/Library/Spelling/LocalDictionary

This is what I found at the time:

Ugghkh. Look how many dumb ones I have.https://t.co/phMPlYEJpq pic.twitter.com/Bt9rWiISuh

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) November 4, 2016

Another great one!

@davebolger @chriscoyier Good to know. Thanks. All good here, though. pic.twitter.com/ponFmalJEK

— (((terrified))) (@sailcode) November 4, 2016

If it’s not obvious, delete the words from that file you don’t want the spell checker to think are spelled correctly anymore, save the file, and you’ll be all set.

If you do it, did you find any weird ones in yours?

---

Clearing Accidentally “Learned” Words from macOS Dictionary is a post from CSS-Tricks

Love the hand-lettering trend, but don’t have the time to learn? Then you’ll love this awesome deal from our sister-site MightyDeals.com: For a limited time you can download 42 professional-grade script fonts, for only $9!

You can never have enough script fonts, especially when each one is packed with distinct personality. These 42 high-quality fonts from Mellow Design Lab are drawn in a diverse range of styles, and come complete with OpenType features, like ligatures, alternate characters, and swashes.

Perfect for any design that requires a personal touch, from wedding invitations, to T-shirts, to hero text.

The extended license means you can use these fonts on as many personal or commercial projects as you want. The regular retail price of this huge bundle is $748, but for a limited time you can get them for just $9, that’s a saving of 99%! Or, get the Desktop and Webfonts together for only $12!

Head over to MightyDeals to download this incredible font bundle today.

Corals Font: A Modern Humanistic Family from Typetype – only $9!

Source

Happy new year! I hope you had a good start and can feel positive about what 2017 might bring. As mentioned in the last edition of the past year, I don’t like New Year’s resolutions too much, but I’d like to point you to something that Marc Thiele wishes for this year:

“So my wish then also is, that you reflect and ask yourself, if you want to post the text or maybe even just have another, a second look on the text you are about to post. Maybe you decide, that you don’t post it. Maybe this helps, that less negative posts and emotions are spread.”

The post Web Development Reading List #165: Starting The New Year With Browser News, Container Architecture, And React “Aha” Moments appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

Winter means getting out your scarf and a cozy hat to brave the cold — if you’re located in the Northern hemisphere that is. For all those occasions when your projects may need to get dressed up a little, we are happy to present to you the free Clothing Icon Set created by the design team at Creativebin today. The set includes 40 icons with everything ranging from shirts, pants and dresses to a blazer, hat and even a scarf. Available in nine styles and four formats (AI, EPS, SVG and PNG).

Please note that this icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. You may modify the size, color or shape of the icons. No attribution is required, however, reselling of bundles or individual pictograms is not cool. Please provide credits to the creators and link to the article in which this freebie was released if you would like to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else.

The post Freebie: Clothing Icons (9 Styles, AI, EPS, SVG, PNG) appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

15-0343 TCX, also known as “Greenery,” is the name of the color of the year by Pantone. After having chosen pink and blue in the past year, I’m a little surprised to see a somewhat muddy green in 2017.

Pantone: Color as a Political Statement

Pantone likes to issue statements. These statements are always delivered in the language of color. As such, political and social thoughts are behind the election of each year’s color.

This is What Pantone Has to Say:

“While Serenity and Rose Quartz, the Pantone Color of the Year 2016, expressed the need for harmony in a chaotic world . . . Greenery bursts forth in 2017 to provide us with the hope we collectively yearn for amid a complex social and political landscape. Satisfying our growing desire to rejuvenate, revitalize, and unite, Greenery symbolizes the reconnection we seek with nature, one another, and a larger purpose.”

Of course, this is a sympathetic interpretation of the election of Greenery. And it’s true that Greenery looks great within the context of the objects that Pantone wants you to associate Greenery with. Look at the following video from this post.

Greenery Brings Back Spring

The color is meant to make the early spring appear in front of your mind’s eye; the time when leaves and grass are still light green since they are so young. This is the time in which nature reinvents itself every year, rejuvenating itself to get to work with newfound power. Who would want to shut themselves off from that?

On the other hand, there’s the color in itself. When looking at it without any context, as a pure color, it doesn’t have the unrestrictedly positive effect it wants to represent. I find the color to be muddy, not really fresh, almost gross, like the cabbage soup that I had to eat way too often as a child.

Using Greenery, toxicity or atomic incidents can be illustrated just as well. In contrast to Serenity and Rose Quartz, Greenery is not entirely positive. You can probably tell that I don’t agree with the choice unconditionally. Then again, nobody forces us to use the color just because it’s the color of the year…

Two of the most common ways to organize website content these days is by using cards and lists. Each has its own pros and cons. Whereas lists have been around since the early days of the web, card-based design has only recently become a force to be reckoned with and one that’s increasingly a popular choice for content organization.

Cards and lists are unique ways of displaying content, which means they are better and worse, respectively, for specific situations. The key for web designers, of course, is understanding when exactly using each one affords users a better user experience. The answers just may surprise you and cause you to look at design principles a bit differently.

Here, we explore when it’s appropriate in web design to use cards versus lists and vice versa.

What’s a card? What’s a list?

To help us understand when using a card or list is more appropriate for UX purposes, it helps us greatly to first understand what each is and what each does (or is supposed to do).

A card is a container that displays various bits of related information, from which users can get even more information. While it’s still a product of flat design, it’s more properly classified as being Flat Design 2.0 since it usually does have light 3D effects like drop shadows to indicate clickability. 3D effects like that visual depth function as the signifier to users, telling them they can click for further information.

Interestingly, there’s something of a dichotomy with a card since it usually resembles an actual playing card both in shape and size. This is suggestive of the out-of-date skeuomorphism, where graphical elements resembled actual items.

A list is a page where a user’s search criteria or browsing habits takes them. The listing page essentially features a number of various candidate items or entries. Therefore, a list has to facilitate efficient and quick eye scanning for proper UX. This is an important distinction that helps us differentiate when a list is more appropriate than a card, in terms of usability.

When to use cards

Now that we know the key differences between cards and lists, it’s easier for us to know with confidence when using each is appropriate in web design.

For information browsing (as opposed to searching)

Cards make it hard or even impossible for users to easily discern the ranking importance of content. For instance, cards provide no obvious information about the order in which content should be viewed on a page since the outline/borders of cards all look similar. Certainly, basic eye-tracking research always suggests that users first begin with content on the top and left of a page, but lists make it way more intuitive for users to follow along with this fundamental way of absorbing online content.

That’s why using cards for browsing huge collections—like those on Pinterest, for instance—is ideal. When you’re just browsing search results on Pinterest, instead of determining in what order to view it, the infinite scroll of card-based results makes browsing attractive, fun and easy. Whenever you see something interesting, you can immediately click on the card for more info. It’s instant gratification.

For groupings of diverse items

Depending on the app or program you’re using, you’ll eventually encounter a one with a dashboard that uses card-based design to make it easy to differentiate between various types of content. This is an example of the strength of cards to quickly allow users to identify the different types of content they’re managing.

Since cards use borders to establish visual boundaries, they’re ideal when it comes to grouping disparate elements.

When to use lists

Lists can be a bit more straightforward than cards, perhaps because they’ve been around longer in web design. As a result, it tends to be easier to determine when to use them well.

For efficient eye scanning

Lists are preferred when users need to quickly search for something they want on a site, as when they’re perusing the search-results page after entering their search terms. Lists that are vertical and where one element sits on one row above the next help to focus the user’s eyes much better than cards, as lists are fixed whereas cards don’t sit in fixed positions in rows.

For smaller screens

Simply put, cards take up way more real estate on the screen. This makes their use on mobile devices and some tablets problematic because it forces users to scroll down on the page to see more choices sooner than when lists are used. Since a list’s elements just sit in short rows down the length of a page, users can see more choices without having to rely on short-term memory (which those looking at a card-based design would have to do when they start scrolling down to see more elements).

As soon as your design demands that users remember choices further up on the screen, they’ll start to encounter cognitive load, which harms UX. Cognitive load means your brain has to work harder to remember something while it’s still processing additional, new information. This in turn leads to slowing down the speed of tasks and, potentially, complete abandonment of a user task.

On my smartphone’s App store app, app categories are organized into a neat, vertical list that displays eight items on one page, without me worrying about having to scroll down to see more and remember the earlier choices. If this had been done in a layout with the much bigger cards, I’d have only been able to see a few choices at most, hampering my UX.

Cards vs. lists

Cards are simply an organizational system to display bits of related information that’s linked to additional information deeper into the site navigation. They’re great for letting users browse lots of information and for grouping items.

Lists are pages that show search results and entries that are candidate items matched to the search query. They’re ideal for organizing similar content into vertical alignment.

Remember this vital distinction between the two, and you’ll be organizing content masterfully with great design.

LAST DAY: Create Professional Product Screenshots with Smartmockups – only $14!

Source

Here’s an incomplete list of analytics tools I’ve personally used: Google Analytics, Alexa, Gauges, FullStory, NewRelic, and Woopra.

Perhaps you’ve used some others? Mixpanel, Heap, KISSmetrics, Rollbar?

They are all different and do interesting and valuable things for our businesses. Integrating them means integrating their third-party JavaScript into your site. What if you want to add one or remove one? You’re back in the code making all those adjustments. And heaven forbid one of them updates its API…you’re on the hook for integration maintenance indefinitely.

Enter Segment.

Segment is the data hub that routes your data directly to these analytics tools (and hundreds of others, for advertising, data warehousing, CRM and others). You’re still using your favorite tools, but you only have to integrate Segment into your site or apps. Segment then sends all the appropriate data to the other tools.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

Analytics for Lazy Developers is a post from CSS-Tricks

The 100 most hearted Pens, Posts, and Collections on CodePen from the past year have been calculated and posted!

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

The Most Hearted of 2016 is a post from CSS-Tricks

Kayce Basques wrote an excellent interactive tutorial that explores how to debug JavaScript with DevTools. Kayce looks into a number of techniques and options that I was completely unaware of and, as he notes in the beginning of the tutorial, if you’re still using console.log to find bugs in your code (like me) then this article is written just for you (also me).

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

Get Started with Debugging JavaScript in Chrome DevTools is a post from CSS-Tricks