Design Blogs To Follow
As a designer, there’s countless websites out there to advice us, inspire us and guide us. Every designer I know has a few secret websites that they value as their treasure trove of inspiration. Over the years, Ive found myself visiting and revising too many websites, depending on their content and their need for my projects. There’s a few websites, however, that are exceptional reads to keep myself aware and watch out for design trends, releases and work. A few design blogs that bring significant changes to perception are:
Why: This is a relatively new blog that has endless resources on how to use canva. It doesn’t just end with multiple explorations and ways of implementing your projects on canva. Over the last few months, they’ve really expanded their scope to cover articles on UI/UX development and work. From advice on working remotely and optimising your at-home workflow to events for designers to network - they’ve got a wide range of content to aid you.
Why: This is the place for typography fanatics to stay updated and get information on things they might not be attuned to observing it. The design of the website of reminiscent of the pink paper posters we used to get stuffed between newspapers, a few years ago. Quite a few typographers recommended this website to me, citing it to be the hub for those seeking to improve their typographic eye.
Why: Adobe Create is a magazine thats features artists, advice, adobe hacks along with a lot of other design trend information on a weekly basis. They shine light on artists from every visual domain - photography, design, video, illustration etc and is a highly curated website to scout good work.
Why: Mirador is the image hunting work of Say What Studio, a graphic design duo based in Paris, France. They believe that inspiration is very personal and share the work that inspires them on this website. Their tastes tend to align with those who seek detailed by simple and aesthetically put-together work. Their curation is a breath of fresh air when you’re stuck with your own work.
Abduzeedo
Why: Abduzeedo is a collective of individual writers sharing articles about architecture, design, photography and UX. It was founded by Fabio Sasso in 2006 as a personal blog, later growing to become a digital publication with several writers from all over the world, working independently.
Why: Smashing is a curation of conferences, workshops and networking opportunities for designers everywhere. They have a vast and varied library of how-to guides that have taught me quite a few exciting tricks over the years. The case studies done, breaking down projects help understand the stages in a design project. This has aided in me being flexible with altering my work flow as per the projects.
Why: If you’re looking to know more about how you can support female designers, amplify their reach, give them more time in the spotlight, this is the page to discover them. Explicitly limited to covering female designers, as the name suggests, this website also publishes articles about the contributions of women to graphic design occasionally. It helps balance the scales and is an excellent source for inspiration for gender diversity.
Why: MP Ranjan was a force to be reckoned with. I was terrified of design when my mother was a student at NID and he would take me for walks around campus, occasionally making me sit on the terracotta cows (or were they goats?) so that I’d forget my fear. He made me see design as a part of life and for that, I am forever in his debt. This blog is authored by him. As the introduction on his page says, Indian design has permeated all 230 sectors of our economy and its power cannot be ignored. The blog is a space to explore issues and perspectives along with his observations over the years and across multiple experiences that can inform us as Indian designers.
Why: As the author of Design of Everyday things, as the Co-founder of Nielsen-Norman, as a design researcher at the Design Lab, Don Norman has endless lessons for designers willing to listen. He wears multiple hats and his blog is the culmination of all of these roles. There is such radical thought on his website that makes you go beyond designing and into the ethics, the philosophy and even the existential domains of products and ideas. It is a website to explore when you want to engage yourself mentally and expand the scope of your perspective on design.