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Vacation Mode: On 😎| On design ressources

Well, hello there. This is past-tense Martin, because present-day Martin is on vacation and biking th
On My Mind
Vacation Mode: On 😎| On design ressources
By Martin Wiesemborski • Issue #12 • View online
Well, hello there. This is past-tense Martin, because present-day Martin is on vacation and biking through Sweden. Hopefully well-spirited and neither sun-burned to death nor soaking wet by too much rain. 
I hope no major news broke this week, and if so, you will have to wait for next week’s issue to read all about it.
To keep my weekly schedule, I prepared something for. A timeless piece. My ultimate cheat sheet. All of my design resources. 

Dicovery
Behance & dribbble
For inspiration, news and useful tips, I rely on heavily on Twitter and I will share with you some of my favorite accounts later. But another great source of inspiration comes from Behance.
Yes, I prefer Behance over dribbble. By a lot, actually. dribbble always seems to me to be this place where you show off half-baked, fun but absolute unrealistic work that often times looks totally generic. Wow, yet another sneaker e-commerce app.
To be fair, one of my favorite agencies in the whole world, ueno, gained a massive following on dribbble and actually profited heavily from posting their work on the platform.
But you just can’t find detailed case studies like this one or this on dribbble, only on Behance.
tl;dr: dribbble helps me get inspired and ‘dreamy’. Behance is great to understand the process behind the finished design.
Muzli
Another awesome platform to find new websites, designs and products is Muzli (owned by inVision). It’s a browser extension that shows you everything that’s relevant and new every time you open a new tab. You can customize the feed and add websites and topics you like.
Product Hunt
One website I added to Muzli is Product Hunt which used to be my 'new tab’ before Muzli. Product Hunt grew over the years to one of the most important places to promote your new… well, product. 'Maker’ can sign up and share their newest product which users can then upvote. Every day you can see the latest shit straight from Silicon Valley. It’s awesome.
Medium
Especially for UX but also for UI and design in general Medium can be a good place to catch up on the latest research, read some thoughts about industry related topics, trends and more.
Search
When you want to search for something specific, many of the examples above won’t work too well. In this case my go-to website is always awwwards. Browsing through the ‘Site of the day’ list is fun as well, but I really dig the many collections around topics and themes, like interactions on hover. Where else do you find such a well-curated list with awesome examples?
For more mobile and app specific design ideas I go to mobbin.design, where you can filter for specific patterns, elements and categories.
Design & Dev Twitter
As mentioned above, my main source for discovery is Twitter. Over the years I build up quite a list (or bubble if you want) of designers and developers.
Here are some of my favorites.
Design Twitter
  • Mike Davidson - VP @InVision - One of the ‘critical design leaders’ on twitter
  • Brian Lovin - Designer @github - Shares a lot of cool stuff
  • Andreas Strom - Product Designer @ottonova (I think) - Also shares cool stuff
  • Romain Briaux - Freelance AD and 3D-Artist - Creates the most amazing 3D illustrations
  • Nick Slater - Designer @lyft - Crazy talented illustrator
  • Steve Schoger - Started Refactoring UI to help developers design, which is really useful even for designers
  • Alex Münch - Product Designer @doist - Another German designer, who shares a lot of BTS of working at Doist
  • Jenny Johannesson - Design @ueno - works at ueno, what else do I need to say about her?
  • Dann Petty - Dan founded Epicurrence, a very different design conference which every year features a super cool website
  • Pablo Stanley - @inVision - Pablo shares a lot of his positive energy as well as little tutorials and side projects
  • Matt D. Smith - freelance designer - besides his a super sweet family and awesome-looking house, MDS is just a badass designer
  • Geoff Teehan - @Facebook - I mean.. it’s the Teehan of Teehan+Lax, what else is there to say?
  • Mike Monteiro - Runs his own design agency (Mule Design), talks and writes about e.g. ethics in design
  • Brijan Powell - Partner in crime with Artistide Benoist (see devs 👇🏻)
  • Ben Mingo - Freelance Visual Designer - The designer behind so many awwward SOTDS, it’s unbelievable
There are also many agencies and studios, which share their work and Twitter. But I’m too lazy to list them…

Dev Twitter (Frontend)
  • Julien Renau - Creative Technologist @Huge - Developing and sharing crazy, experimental stuff
  • Aristide Benoist - Freelance Developer - The sickest motherfucker out there. Self-taught only 2-3 years ago, one of the must successful developers @awwwards. So much amazing work
  • Martin Silvestre - Freelance Developer - the guy behind antoni.de and other great interactive websites
Podcast
Lastly, podcasts are a great way to move beyond the visual aspect of design and think more about the process and people behind it. There are so many great podcasts out there - here are the ones I listen to (as much as I can):
By Jake Knapp, author of Design Sprint and Make Time, and Jonathan Courtney, who runs AJ&Smart.
The Product Breakfast Club Podcast is the perfect podcast for those looking for a behind-the-scenes look at how products are designed, how product teams work and for those wondering how to make better products faster.
www.productbreakfastclub.com  •  Share
“Yo! is a celebration of great design and development online. The Yo! Newsletter curates quality new resources each week while the Yo! Podcast spotlights the incredible people building these resources.”
robhope.com  •  Share
“Named for the Swedish custom that eschews the ‘on-the-go paper coffee cup’ routine in favor of slowing down and catching up with colleagues and friends, the Fjord Fika podcast features unscripted conversations with key luminaries and thought leaders in technology and design. Each Fika conversation offers a fresh, honest look at all sides of innovation – the good, the bad and the ugly – and the impact on society.”
podcast.fjordnet.com  •  Share
“On the DesignBetter.Co Podcast, we chat with design leaders to uncover how they achieved success. Hear stories and insights from the best in product design.”
www.designbetter.co  •  Share
“99% Invisible is about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.”
99percentinvisible.org  •  Share
Books
This list would be too long, so here are just two recommendations of books I recently read and enjoyed:
Ruined by Design
Ruined by Design
The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it.
www.ruinedby.design  •  Share
Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery
Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery
This book is a guide to building a digital institution. It explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organisations pivot to this new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience.
public.digital  •  Share
Not satisfied yet?
No worries, the design team at evernote has you covered. evernote.design is not only the biggest collection of design resources I know but also very well curated.
That's it
So now you know all my secret (and not so secret) sources of inspiration and news about design.
I will be back with a regular (whatever this means for this weird newsletter) issue next week.
Until then, hej då 👋🏻
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Martin Wiesemborski

I'm a freelance UX strategist. Think of this newsletter as everything that is on my mind (hence the name): New and emerging tech and design trends, tools and ideas that I stumble upon and think are worth talking about.

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