Hey! It’s another monthly update of the links, resources, and other notable content more people should know about. Enjoy!
Useful Tools & Tricks
For Mac users, Tyke is like a bit of scratch paper that’s always available in your Mac menu bar. I use it many times a day – it’s a super handy place to jot down a quick note. Best of all it’s free – you can find it at tyke.app.
If you ever need to send something securely – like passwords or documents with sensitive data, Firefox Send is a free tool that’s end-to-end encrypted and really easy to use. Once you send the file, the link automatically expires. You can set the expiration anywhere from 5 minutes to 7 days or after a certain number of downloads. I’ve used it to send login info to clients – because that’s not the kind of thing you should be sending through email.
If you’ve ever tried to name something, you probably know it’s harder than it’s harder than it seems. Onym aims to make the process easier by collecting high-quality tools and resources for naming things. There are word generators, ideation tools, historical and cultural resources, and more.
If you use Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides on a regular basis, there’s a little-know, super-fast way to create a new file – just type sheets.new, docs.new, or slides.new in the URL bar of your favorite browser. Voilà, new file!
Good Reads
If you’re a designer at a massive, multinational company with a rich history of design innovation, but no cohesive design language – how do you establish one? That’s the challenge faced by IBM Creative Director, Mike Abbink and his team. So they started with… a typeface? How they built a design language with a font.
In the realm of user experience, creating consistently delightful experiences is the ultimate goal, but one of the biggest challenges. So when you’re ready to improve your UX, where do start? With a friction audit. And the team at Sequoia Design Lab have been kind enough to share their 10 steps to a friction-free app.
If you feel like you can’t keep up with the pace of change in marketing and advertising, you’re not alone. Magpie Marketing argues things aren’t changing as quickly as you’ve been led to believe, and focusing on fundamentals could be your competitive advantage.
