2015 was a year of grand redesigns and exciting changes in the startup world. Entrepreneurship has become more mainstream than ever before. Apple introduced Apple Watch and Apple Music (among a range of other new products), and Google finally updated their branding as well as presented the updated Chromecast.
Have you seen my book on design?
But these tech giants were not the only companies in need of a facelift. Can you recall any major branding updates?
As the first post of 2016, here are 17 excellent articles on design written in 2015. Enjoy!
Process & Tools
30 Best Websites to Learn Design and Development
This is a great write-up by Despreneur in which they list the top places for the aspiring designers and developers (and founders!) to learn the skills required to build an app or website. Highly recommended!
Using Sketch For Responsive Web Design (A Case Study)
This extensive post published in April 2015 fabulously explains all the benefits of using Sketch app for interface design and backs them up with real-life case study.
Sketch Keyboard Shortcuts and Tricks
Made by the famous designer and early adopter of Sketch Meng To, this article is the perfect resource to keep at hand when designing in Sketch app.
Marketing & Conversions
How To Use Images To Skyrocket Your Blog Traffic: A Case Study Of 100 Million Articles
This infographic made by Canva app and BuzzSumo demonstrates how valuable is visual content for social media and content marketing.
Our 8 Biggest Conversion Optimization Wins of 2015
Some of these ideas are winning! If you’re wondering what you should test next on your blog or website, read these mini case studies and what this company did to improve their conversions.
Gain More Customers with a ‘Content First’ Design Approach
Another case study that includes visual storytelling, positioning, user acquisition, and a ton of similar startup buzzwords. Just kidding, it’s a useful review of one studio’s process.
Branding
A thorough case study on the work professional logo design takes. The team from Tubik studio presented a number of different logo concepts and iterations.
Circling Ourselves: The Story Behind Asana’s Rebrand
Asana was one of the apps whose redesign echoed around the web for a while, and rightfully so. I really hope Trello’s next in line.
The 7-Step-Paul-Rand Logo-Test
Here’s a quick recap of a process that can help you evaluate whether your logo is good. Since the questions in the process are quite abstract, it can be helpful to read an explanation like this one.
The Story Behind Medium’s New Logo
Ah, yes! 2015 was also a year of Medium’s redesign, and more importantly, the long-awaited IFTTT integration. Read the story behind the rebrand here.
UX
This amazing multi-page mobile UI case study written by Michael Evensen describes the complex process of redesigning what is definitely the most well-known music interface in the world.
Designing a SaaS App “Create Account” Screen
In this post, Nathan Barry takes us through the process of reimagining the old design of his startup’s signup screen. Having recently become a new customer of ConvertKit, I was able to test it “in the wild”. I give it an A+.
Making Learning Easy by Design
I am ashamed to admit that it wasn’t until just a week ago that I first tried out the Primer app BUT BOY was I in for a treat! Google did a fabulous job of gamifying the experience and breaking up the information into bite-sized chunks.
How We Changed the Facebook Friends Icon
Interesting case study that uncovers the process behind the little details of icon design. After re-reading it, I went to check if Facebook actually displays a different world icon to us outside of the States, and found that it does … kind of.
#Facebook switches between two different views of Earth. #littlebigfails pic.twitter.com/Tn8liwp75p
— Heidi Pungartnik (@aShocka18) January 2, 2016
Design Theory
Canva’s Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing
This is a great post that provides a ton of value to newbie designers. It’s not a surprise that they’ve managed to get more than 50K shares for this guide!
This article by Justin Mezzell details how different colour settings affect their rendering and includes a number of nice gifs to support the point.
Entrepreneurship
How to Design a Pitch Deck: Lessons from a Seasoned Founder
Don’t include more than 20 words per slide and tell a story. Tons of value in this post, and I intend to read it again next time I’m preparing a presentation.
Read next: 13 Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Design Tools I Know
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