Weekly Roundup: What’s New for Designers

On this week’s weekly roundup, we’re dropping a load of cool resources fit for designers and freelancers alike. But before we get into the heavy stuff, let’s fill our stomachs (yes stomach) with some awesome imagery.

For starters, check out the Foodie’s feed, a food photo journal that’s sure to get your taste buds snapping. All images are hi-res and free for personal or commercial use so this is perfect for finding images for placeholders. For type-aholics and designers, check out Typegenius, a new concept that shows you real life examples of the font which you love.

If you’re freelancing and need to track work time, check out my personal favorite, Toggl. It’s lightweight and does the job well. It even syncs with a multitude of services including Trello, Asana and Redbooth. Next two tools are for web designers, IM Creator for creating gorgeous websites easily, and Mockflow for those who need some customisation done.

Another personal favourite is a friendly to-do list app, Todoist. It’s got a pretty cool interface that works responsively on mobile to desktop that you can sign up for free to try it out. Lastly, a personal tool that I use to speed up my Photoshop process – find out more later in the article. Enjoy!

Foodie Feed

For anyone who’s into salivating all over the keyboard, have a look at Foodie’s feed. Created by Jakub from Prague, Czech Republic, this site gives designers amazing, free, hi-res images of…food! Put up images as placeholder for your restaurant website or app, all images are free for personal and commercial use. This is already on my list of great resources. Feast your eyes here!

Typegenius

This is my perfect tool for getting a quick overview on how a font face is used in an existing website. A little rudimentary at first, but the concept is boss! If you need to find a matching font with a site, head on over to this genius site.

Toggl

Although it’s been around for some time, Toggl’s been a great tool for teams and freelancers alike. We’re big on its reports feature and real-time tracking even offline. CLD regularly syncs along with Redbooth. If you need something lightweight, check out Toggl.

Mockflow

MockFlow is a web-based design tool that allows collaboration while perfecting user interface blueprints for websites and apps. Ideal for designers and developers, it helps visualize an interface, navigation and structure in a short amount of time. Get mocking!

Todoist

Claiming to be the most powerful to-do list, Todoist is pretty amazing in what it does. Synced with most major platforms, I generally like the clean interface and user flow of things. Sign up for a free account and test drive it free here!

IM Creator

For those of you who haven’t heard of IM Creator before, it’s going to change how you create websites, slightly. I’ve personally used them back in 2012 and liked that it was easy to drag and drop. So I can only imagine how much the platform and community has evolved since. If you need to create a web site that’s as easy as picking out a template, injecting content and publishing it to the world- look no further. Learn more here!

Open with Photoshop

Here’s a nifty little plugin that’s been on my plate for the past year. If you’re a designer and see an image on a site that you absolutely must touch up in Photoshop, just right click and voila! It opens up in Photoshop directly without the usual “Save to folder” process. It’s convenient and works on Firefox and Chrome! Test it out here