Looking for a few hacks to sharpen your designs? By adding a few extra resources, your talent can expand exponentially. With new design tools being released regularly, the possibilities are limitless. Everyone needs a few handy helps in their bag of tricks! Check out these four modern design resources and up your game today.
Quick Design
Want to learn design?
Quick Design is a platform that lists free design courses available online. From 3D and animation to cryptocurrency and “ethical hacking,” select free courses based on your skill as a beginner or expert designer. Step-by-step practical resources are available to a wide range of 3D, CAD software, and other industry-oriented specialists. As an additional benefit, you can follow other designers of your interest, which can help in networking or creative brainstorming.
unDraw
For quality illustrations that you can embed in your design, check out unDraw.
unDraw is an MIT licensed collection of quality, open license images that can be dropped directly into your favorite design tool. These thoughtful, elegant, and functional SVG images can be downloaded and customized in three easy steps:
- Browse or search to find illustrations to use for your design
- Change the color to match your palette
- Download the image to your clipboard and paste wherever you want
unDraw images can be used for free in commercial or personal projects without worries. Drop some into your print pieces, mobile apps, or whatever you can create!
UI Sources
Inspiration regarding design “flow” can be hard to find. Enter UI Sources. Launched in 2018,
UI Sources is a curated repository of motion design. To date, UI Sources catalogs around 500 interactions from apps that bring inspiration and strategic navigation options in everything from augmented reality, chatbots, in-app purchasing, and more.
UI Sources gives you tools to analyze product flows and features, and real design inspiration for your apps, web designs, or big-picture schematic print designs. This resource is extensive and can be used by designers, developers, product packaging specialists, and entrepreneurs of all kinds.
Absurd Illustrations
What to play around a bit? In a digital era, we sometimes need to interact with something more human to make us appreciate both the beauty and the imperfection of something made by hand. Download a set of surrealist illustrations for articles, landing pages, marketing materials, and more from
Absurd.design. High-quality images are available in a variety of formats. From here, you can craft a truly distinctive message with an illustration that’s available only to you.
Improve Your Workflow
Each designer has their own personal list of “aha” tools. Check out these four goodies and share the love with your colleagues too. You’ll enjoy using them to increase efficiency and to dazzle your best clients!