Design Resources

My sophomore year in college, I became really interested in design, and since Brandeis doesn’t offer design courses, I spent a lot of time reading articles online to learn about it. Currently, I have a bookmarks folder of all the articles I like, but I’m going to keep an updated list here so I can share it with others more easily.

I have split the list into several “types” of design, to make it easier to navigate. Favourites (AKA. 10/10 Would Recommends) are bold.

Web-Focused Design

Definitions

• Defining Design

UI/UX

• Hack Design Lessons – this should be higher up on the list because it’s hands down the best resource on here. The only reason I haven’t linked articles from this site is because I would be linking almost every single one.

• HH Design Resources – some overlap with this list

• 7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI

• U.S. Web Design Standards

• First Time UX

• Visual Hierarchy

• Google Metrics and Keylines

• Three Principles of UI Design for Developers

• Optical Adjustment

• Principles of UX Choreography

• UX Reading List – real books

Front End Frameworks

• Materialize CSS – my favourite CSS framework for large projects, I use this instead of Bootstrap

• Skeleton Framework – my choice when I need a small, responsive framework to build off from

• Pure CSS – another responsive framework I’ve been using lately

• Vue.js – my current favourite front-end javascript framework!

• Unheap – javascript plugins

• Paper.js

Web Accessibility

• Google Accessibility Audit - a Chrome extension for developer tools that allows you to run an accessibility audit :)

• Accessible Interface Design

• W3 Accessibility Standards

• Designing For and With Color Blindness

Graphic Design

Typography

• Typewolf – good for inspiration

• Lost Type

• Making Geometric Type Work

• Fontreach

Colors

• Coolers

• Adobe Color

• pltts

• How I Find My Perfect Color Pairings (blog post)

• Picking Colors

• Beyonce Palettes

• Impressionist Color Theory

Other

• Explaining Graphic Design to 4 Year Olds

Logos, Branding, and Product Design

• Aaron Draplin Logo Challenge

• Lance Wyman - The Monograph – good for inspiration

• 7 Step Paul Rand Logo Test – this article doesn’t use the best examples, but the ideas are good

• Package Design

• Sound Decision – audio branding

Photoshop/Illustrator tutorials

• Illustrator’s Pen Tool - The Comprehensive Guide

Art, Urban Planning, and Architecture

• Walking Bostonian – one of my favourite blogs, talks about urban planning issues in Boston

• The Amateur Planner – another Boston-centric urban planning blog

• Urban Kchoze – another urban planning blog with examples from many cities, very visual-focused

• Design Is History - history of art movements and notable artists

• The Future of Web Design is Hidden in the History of Architecture

Data Visualization

• Data Pointed – data visualization blog

Misc. but cool

• Teaching To See – an amazing documentary about design thinking and typography, one of my favourite videos ever

• Coding, Sounds, and Colors

• Glitchet – Glitch art resources and magazine

• Where I See Fashion (blog/inspiration)