DesignWoop

10 Useful Sass Mixins for Modern Developer

Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world. I’ve been using Sass for quite sometime and found out that mixins are something any front-end developer would enjoy and take advantage of saving time and being more efficient.

A mixin lets you make groups of CSS declarations that you want to reuse throughout your site. You can even pass in values to make your mixin more flexible.
It save quite a lot of time and helps developers ensuring that the code is not redundant and organized nicely.

I recommend using Compass as they have many built in mixins that simplify developers work.

By: Jake Rocheleau
July 24, 2014
Freebies, Photoshop

30 Freebie PSDs for Music Player Interfaces

Digital mp3 players are much more common nowadays on more devices containing tremendous amounts of storage space. Aside from the typical iPod-style music device there are many websites and 3rd party mobile apps which offer a unique audio player experience. Designers and developers are constantly working to make better interfaces which are easy and fun to use.

To get started with your own audio player it may help to check out some designs already available online. This gallery contains 30 free music player interfaces as PSD graphics. You can download and play around with any of these freebies and even customize them for your own ideas. This is an excellent way to learn more about Photoshop and the general concepts behind GUI design.

The Mac operating system is used by millions on laptops and iMacs around the world. Each program for OS X uses an app icon which can be resized in the dock(among other locations). This means icon designers need to create multiple icon sizes for each OS X application. The level of detail is often exquisite and these icons are nothing short of a masterpiece.

This gallery contains 35 Mac OS X app icons created by designers on Dribbble. Many of these apps have gotten published onto the App Store, while others were just created for practice. A few icons even include a free PSD download if you’re into that kinda thing. But regardless of your operating system these icons are truly exceptional and easy to appreciate from a designer’s point of view.

29 Checkout Interfaces for eCommerce Web Design

What good is any eCommerce website without the expected payment & checkout page? This step often gets the most focus from customers who want to ensure their information is correct. The input fields should be easy to use and nothing should be too cluttered or congested.

Reducing confusion during checkout will help to expedite the process so that you get more satisfied customers who feel safe with their transactions. Take a peek at the examples from this gallery to find other ideas related to checkout forms. These designs might even give you the urge to redesign your own checkout process! Not to mention you can learn a lot about online payment systems by putting yourself in the shoes of a customer.

Sometimes designers make better redesigns of the product than the original products are. Let’s talk about apps. In the internet we can found thousands of great examples when redesigned icon, logo or the whole design looks much better than original one. Some of designers just like to test their skills, others are creating designs and expecting for new job opportunity.

In this collection you will find some amazing redesigns of your favorite apps like Facebook, Viber, Instagram and others. All of the redesigns was taken from most crowded home of designers Dribbble.

We spend a lot of time daily updating our status on social media apps, taking pictures of things around us and playing games. Surely we could use these smart devices for something smarter and productive.

There are many apps which can help you with daily tasks. Starting with design and photoshop, saving and sharing your documents and also for some inspiration. Smartphones can be biggest distraction and best helper in the same time.

Everything will depend on how you choose to use it. I want to suggest 15 Free apps that can really boost your productivity and inspire you as a designer or even as freelancer. Smartphones and tablets became part of our everyday life.

10 Free and Super Useful Photoshop Plugins

Adobe Photoshop is incredible software that powers majority of the creative businesses and individuals all around the world. It is being used by designers and developers collaboratively and has many handy functions. However, doing the same job for some time gets a little bit boring and you start looking for ways to optimize your workflow and become more efficient by automating or eliminating tedious tasks.

Photoshop community is very active in sharing tips and tricks, contributing with tutorials and handy Photoshop extensions known as plugins.

In the list you’ll find below I’ve collected most useful and free Photoshop plugins that will help you in the process of optimizing your workflow and making your work more efficient and enjoyable.

28 Photoshop Tutorials for Learning New Web Design Techniques

Some designers advocate skipping the Photoshop process and moving from wireframes directly into HTML/CSS. This is possible for smaller projects but not always advisable. Adobe Photoshop offers the best tools for testing color schemes, gradients, icons, and detailed page elements before moving the layout into your browser.

If you’re a little rusty in Photoshop then these tutorials should get you back into the groove. I’ve collected 28 web design tutorials centered around Photoshop techniques for designing typical page elements. Most are simple enough that you can follow along without much prior experience in the software. But even the more advanced tutorials can offer insights and help newcomers understand the digital design process.

By: Jake Rocheleau
June 24, 2014
All Posts

33 Mobile App User Interfaces for Smartphone Games

Digital gaming has become a tremendous marketplace since the original release of Atari and Nintendo. Nowadays modern iPhone or Android devices connect into their respective app stores where users can download new games to play. There is a slow but steady demand for these products in countries all over the world.

Programmers are one piece of this, but you can’t forget about UI designers. Artists get the process started by designing how the game should look and function on a touchscreen.

This showcase includes a handful of brilliant interfaces for mobile smartphone video games. If you’re thinking of designing your own mobile game UI then these screenshots would be fantastic to gather ideas or see how others designers approach similar concepts.

By: Jake Rocheleau
June 17, 2014
All Posts, Inspiration, iPhone, Photoshop

32 Animated User Experience Concepts for Mobile Applications

Artists on Dribbble like to publish their user experience ideas in the form of GIF animations. These interfaces are typically designed in Photoshop and then ported into After Effects for polishing. iPhone apps are the most common interfaces with a wide range of generic animated effects.

Although many of these designs have been created for the iPhone, most effects can be transferred onto any smartphone or tablet device. I’ve included the full GIF animation for each interface along with a link back to the original Dribbble shot. If you have any other unique or interesting UI/UX animations feel free to share with us in the comments section.