Our friends over Figma have recently wrapped their first conference titled: 'Config' that happened in San Francisco, California. With more than 1000 attendees, they announced several key products shall we say enhancements to help us designers work faster, enable product teams to collaborate as one team, and give the entire design community more ways to share. We took the liberty to share some of these new features, some are actually very coo. Shall we?
As the CES 2020 is wrapping up, what was your favorite announcement of the entire week? Unfortunately, we were not planning to go to Vegas this year, but I was able to watch and read a couple of announcements on social media to see how it went. Let's just say that the unveiling of Mercedes-Benz the VISION AVTR definitely caught our attention. I mean just take a look at the concept car.
We are sharing some news that is quite pleasing and proud at the same time. For two reasons, first is seeing a Canadian brand EQ3 who is a furniture company that freshly expanding to the US and recently establishing a new flagship located in NYC. Built from scratch, and giving an affordable retail price for Canadian design for our everyday home life.
I am a little bit lost of words as I am writing this article. As you have probably have seen in the news or on social media. The beloved country of Australia has been experiencing its worst #bushfires since the end of summer. We are not going to share what the images of what country is facing at the moment, you can probably see them everywhere. What we want us to do and together.
Holiday's over (for some of us 👋) and time to get back to the grind. Now the feeling that you had a couple of restful days, you got to hang came back home for the family, hang out with friends or/and even had a chance to travel for the occurrence. Now it's time to kick off the new year and restart all over. So what you have been missing from the social feeds aside from all the selfies, group selfies, kids photos and etc. What you have been missing, what's the latest on the 'latest'? Well, we have put together a round-up for yourself, mostly to inspire you.
Well it is November 2019 and carmakers from Tesla didn't hold back and introduced the Cybertruck. What was your first impressions? At first, I didn't like the design (still don't) but it definitely looks straight out of the 1982's Blade Runner which is pretty dope if you ask me.
The kind folks from Procreate have announced their 2019 art winners where they challenge artists to explore the concept of ‘Contrast’ in all its complex shades, and light, of meaning. With ground-breaking canvas the resolution, 136 incredible brushes, and more. Procreate is a solid application that allows artists and digital creatives to do enhance their day-to-day workflow. You should definitely check out this year's lineup of winners and take part in the community if you wanna share your work and learn from others.
It's always inspiring to see our friends, from the industry, creating and making cool stuff to inspire others. It's a reward that we will never take for granted and we will will always be supporting. We are featuring the book release of our dear friend Radim Malinic and his Book of Branding.
Today, Adobe released an update to the Creative Cloud for Mobile app enabling all 17,000+ Adobe Fonts included with Creative Cloud to be downloaded and installed for use for the first time in iOS 13.1 apps supporting custom font APIs. Creatives can discover, manage and install any of their favorite Adobe fonts in just a few swipes.
The infamous #designtwitter have its own share of ups and downs. Recently one designer had quite a dramatic turn of events during the announcement of his new product that could totally change our workflow. Coming back, It brings the question back 'What's the importance of 'Open Design'?. What I mean is how does the community values its own principles through sharing, connecting, learning and simply being 'open source'. It's a huge topic and we all have our own opinions on the matter.
Adobe XD has shared their August Update and it's packed with updates for CSS Code Snippets in Design Specs, Improved Integration with Photoshop, and a New Frontier for XD Plugins. Their biggest update is obviously the completely new way to use 'plugins' within the 'Plugins Panel'. It's also enhancing the integration with other apps like Photoshop. They also improve the 'Component bounds' to help you create experiences faster and easier. We shared a couple of their updates here on ABDZ, let's check them out.
Another great design tool Artboard Studio have just released 'Delicè', a brand design concept as a free and customizable series of templates can be used on their platform. For those, you never heard of Artboard Studio, we have featured them before on ABDZ as 'The last Mockup Creator tool you will ever need.
The kind folks from Webflow have just released their kickass and free comprehensive course that teaches you how to succeed as a freelance web designer. It doesn't stop there, it's going all the way from first of all 'getting the clients', 'proposal research', 'pricing your work' and a lot more.
The awesome lads from Mission Workshop have shared with us the release of their latest backpack. Introducing the Rhake WX, a waxed canvas laptop backpack built to hold everything you need for work, play, and the occasional overnight. Purpose-built pockets designed for your laptop computer, iPad, phone, power chargers, keys, sunglasses, and water bottle. Yes, water bottle!
Figma shared their latest updates and I have to admit. They are killing the game! ⚡ I am a big fan and it has definitely sped our workflow at ABDZ. This monthly update includes GIFs in prototypes, Figma plugins (coming real soon!), Text improvements within one click and more. Some are big and others are smaller enhancements BUT it overall this design tool is getting better and better. If you haven't tried Figma yet, I strongly advise you to give it a try. Like now!
Our good pals from Tendril is a design-driven animation, VFX and digital innovation studio based in Toronto, Canada. We have featured their work before on ABDZ and it's always a nice surprise when they are sharing new work with us. Their latest awesomeness they shared is Tendril's production partners collaboration with Psyop & PARTNER, an agency behind the marketing efforts for VIZIO.
I don't if you have ever noticed but we have an ABDZ Store. It has been established since the last redesign in goals to serve a 'marketplace' of items we review on the blog and also initiatives we create. They are a few things in works at the moment but for now, I wanted to share an update on the new items added the store. In this update, I added my series of presets titled: Osore which are 'Lightroom' presets you can purchase to create your own perspective of Cyberpunk. It has been quite a successful initiative so far!
If you have been following the news from SDCC which is the Comic-Con International happening in San Diego, California. Marvel took everyone and shared a social media blast about 'Phase 4'. We all knew this announcement will be coming but I didn't expect to be this huge along with surprises. What was your most surprising announcement? I am pretty excited for the next Thor especially knowing it's going to be Taika Waititi returning as Director.
Hasselblad shared the news on commemorating the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. They publicly and proudly share this celebration on their role as the cameras chosen by NASA for space photography, it's a historical moment of the first humans on the Moon. In honour of this moment, Hasselblad launches the limited 907X Special Edition, which includes the 907X camera body and CFV II 50C digital back, both in matte black with commemorative “On the Moon Since 1969” anniversary text. Let's check it out.
It's #WorldEmojiDay! To celebrate this visual digital language that changed the way we communicate, Adobe shared it's Emoji Trend report that can be viewed here. It's basically the results from a survey they conducted with 1,000 users and you will be surprised by some of its results.