If you are reading this article, you most likely have worked with a tech company or startup. You’ve noticed that this niche has its own rules. And you probably had to answer some hard questions. What’s the audience’s main treat? What’s the suited design style for tech clients? Do web design trends matter in this domain?
We gathered some answers to those questions that will help you in the future. We’ve also analyzed ten tech related pre-built websites. Using them will save you valuable time.
When Designing for Tech Companies, Following Current Trends is Essential
The educated Internet user will quickly decide if your website is hot or not. Trends are not only a matter of fashion, but using them transmits a message of freshness and coolness. Here are some of the most important trends that you should follow when designing for tech companies:
- Use Flat Icons – Drop the shadows, skip the gradients, and avoid the clever special effects. In other words, go “all Appleâ€. It’s the best way to engage your tech client’s clients – simple is best.
When working on a tech-related website, it’s all about fine touches.
- Use Bold Colors. You may have your favorite color schemes, but be prepared to let them go. Bold colors are hot for these types of websites. Look for color combinations that are fresh, dynamic, but not too noisy.
- Work on Your Own Data Visualization. Using data-driven elements needs to be your goal. Tech clients feel a need to communicate various types of data on their website. With data driven elements you can work on your own visualization schemes and not those that involve working with other software.
- Typography. in-browser fonts that are built for all screens, to be precise. Needless to say, an expressive, typography font should be delivered to all types of screens. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of trying to move up the ladder, through trying to demonstrate your work ethic to managers and coworkers. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, it’s not always easy to recognize when this pattern has gone too far and has taken a turn for the worse. No matter how talented you are, we all work with the same 24 hour day, so it’s important to have time to relax and reflect. Burn out is very real, and doesn’t help anyone, not you, not your company, not your mission.
What’s important is to identify the root cause(s) of your feelings. Is it that you’ve been pushing yourself too hard, or could it be that the work you’re doing no longer resonates with you?
If you’ve realized it may not be the actual workload itself, but rather, it’s the mission, the product, the career prospects, [fill in the blank], then it may be time to ask yourself whether you could see yourself being happier at a new job?
Once you’ve had an honest internal dialogue, then congratulations are in order! You’ve now taken the first step to getting back to that quality of life you deserve. Finding a new job that’s the delivers on exactly what you’re looking for presents it’s own challenges, but luckily there are a lot of tools out there which can supercharge your search, like Hired. Fortunately, the old days of sending out countless resumes are over.
On Hired, you’re empowered in your job search: one application can lead to exposure with thousands of companies, and instead of applying to them, they’ll actually apply to you, reversing the traditional process. Read the rest of this entry »
You have been chosen, exclusively, for Artifex Forge’s recent promotion to receive the Linocut Tool Kit at a savings of over 50% off. MightyDeals is dedicated to getting this unique tool kit into the hands of creators like you who will further the movement of reviving this ancient, beautiful, craft form. For only $9.00 (reduced from $19.00), you will receive 61 unique illustrator brushes, 10 different instant text effects, 10 patterns and 9 superior high-resolution scans for large designs.
Artifex Forge has made this discount available for a very short time with the savings promotion ending in just a few days so don’t wait. You can begin creating exclusive Linocut masterpieces only minutes from now with the quick, easy download. You can download the program immediately upon purchase and instantly have access to The Complete Linocut Took Kit.
This amazingly easy to use package provides a plethora of options that allows you to complete any Linocut design with easy and beauty. In working with Photoshop Smart PSDs the results of your creative talent are limitless. Linocut patterns induce feelings of nostalgia, fancy and fun and will ensure that whatever you choose to create with them is a one of a kind project that your viewers will become emotionally attached to. Get the Artifex Forge Linocut Tool Kit now at this amazing low price. Order before the promotion ends and get creating today!
Earlier this year, Cloudinary released the Responsive Breakpoints Generator to help developers automate the process of generating optimal sets of responsive image resources. This tool makes it easy to generate *resolution-adaptable* images – upload any high-resolution image to get the responsive image markup and an optimal set of resources to back it up.
The new version, just released, pairs Cloudinary’s smart-cropping features with the HTML5 `<picture>` element in order to dynamically crop images to different aspect ratios for display on different sorts of devices. So no matter what type of device your website is viewed on, the most important parts of the image that remain are front and center.
The Responsive Image Breakpoints Generator is free and open-source.
Read the rest of this entry »
Opentest is the fastest way for you to share knowledge and collaborate more easily through video. The seamless experience makes it perfect for: Walking a co-worker through a project, Bug tracking/QA (both web & mobile), Personalized sales demos, Customer support. Opentest let’s you do all that for free without having to worry about video storage, upload time, or recording time limits.
Requirements: –
Demo: https://www.opentest.co/
License: License Free
Airtable is not just a spreadsheet replacement, nor just a user-friendly database. Their mission is to democratize software creation by enabling anyone to build the tools that meet their needs. Creators and creatives around the world use Airtable to do everything from cattle tracking to filmmaking, and they have.
They think of it as a completely new medium for expressing and collaborating on structured information. Over 2 million bases have now been created by Airtable users, and your support has been crucial to our success from day one.
Requirements: –
Demo: https://airtable.com/
License: License Free
UI Movement started out as a newsletter that featured the best UI designs every day. The main real difference between UI Movement and other design inspiration sites, is that they focus exclusively on UI designs. Since the original, simple newsletter format, UI Movement has been updated to make for easier browsing and filtering. Each new design is tagged so that you can easily find the most popular design animations for whatever design element you’re interested in. For example, here you can see the most popular map design animations. UI Movement is build with Django on the back end and uses the Foundation framework on the front end.
Requirements: –
Demo: https://uimovement.com/
License: License Free
First of all, how exactly do you intend to present your design, or elements of it, to others, or test the UX? With a prototype of course, but there are also wireframes and mockups to consider. All three serve a purpose, but they are not one and the same. The problem is, the names are used often incorrectly.
So, let’s set things straight so you’ll know what to try and buy.
- A wireframe is a low-fidelity depiction of a design. A wireframe can say a lot about a design, but it is a static model. A wireframe cannot simulate a product’s look and feel.
- A mockup is one step up. A mockup typically provides much more information than a wireframe. Although interactive elements can be embedded in a mockup, it is a static representation. As such, a mockup is suitable for seeking feedback, but not for UI testing.
- A prototype is dynamic. A prototype will not only simulate the proposed end product, or certain functions of it. It will simulate the look and feel of the proposed design, and serve as a platform for usability testing.
Most designers create their prototypes in a three-step process.
1) They sketch out page flows. These show how a user might navigate the site or application.
2) They produce low-fidelity versions of each page which are individually tested for usability.
3) From lessons learned from testing, the high-fidelity, interactive prototype is created.
One of the following prototyping aids should be just the right solution for you.
Prototyping Tools that can Streamline Your Design Activity
InVision
InVision enables designers, developers and their teams to produce high-fidelity prototypes to review, refine, and user test their web and mobile product designs, all without requiring a single line of code.
This prototyping and collaboration platform is highly recommended by Forbes, who has designated InVision as one of the premier cloud companies in the world. InVision’s always-on platform turns static designs into interactive prototypes, speeding up the collaboration and feedback process, saving you valuable time and money.
The project management tools you need to share information while maintaining version control are there as well. Pixel-perfect prototypes, that have the look and feel of the final app or website you’re envisioning, can be built with ease. You can also conduct an unlimited number of usability tests with real users at no charge.
Sign up for a free trial today, and you’ll discover why over 2 million users have adopted this platform. InVision is driving design for some of the world’s smartest companies, including Twitter, Shopify, and LinkedIn. Now is your chance to design better, smarter products more quickly.
Pidoco
Pidoco is easy to learn and easy to use. It’s a nice solution for a team that wants to get rolling quickly. If click-through wireframes are what you need, or even a sketch, or a low-fi prototype, this tool gets it done, but where it really shines lies in the creation of fully-interactive UX prototypes.
Pidoco’s smart template feature offers a building block approach that allows your prototyping activity to move along at a rapid rate. Exports and specs is another useful feature. You can create specification documents to give to your team, or to your client for signoff, with the click of a button, and you can export your prototypes as PNG or vector files, or even as HTML.
Whether it’s for a website or an app, Pidoco can definitely speed up your design process and workflow, and deliver better designs at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
Design software shouldn’t bring people a sense of struggle, yet that’s exactly how the troublesome design software we grew up on made us feel. With their incredibly steep learning curve and counter-intuitive tools, they would deter our potential as designers rather than helping us to unleash it. We’ve all been there, and the frustration of having your creativity constricted by bad software can be overwhelming.
At Vectr, they know design connects people – they’ve experienced it firsthand – and they believe everyone should experience the almost indescribable feeling that comes from expressing your creative freedom through art and design. This belief drives everything we do. Vectr is a free graphics editor used to create vector graphics easily and intuitively. It’s a simple yet powerful web and desktop cross-platform tool to bring your designs into reality.
Requirements: –
Demo: https://vectr.com/
License: License Free
We are excited to bring your attention to the most recent update of Monstroid – a multipurpose WordPress theme packed with premade designs, tools for developers, plugins, and many other awesome features.
We have already featured Monstroid in one of our posts, and even hosted a giveaway. Today you have a unique opportunity to save 40% on this theme – learn the terms of the discount at the end of this post. Right now, we want to introduce you to what’s new in Update 1.1.3 for the owners of Monstroid.
5 New Child Themes to Choose From
In addition to 40+ existing child themes you receive 5 absolutely new designs suitable for a broad range of website topics. What these themes have in common is the professional code, attention to detail and rich functionality powered by numerous original Monstroid plugins. Check out all of them in our overview, or take a closer look at the entire gallery of child themes on the official website.
Hang Gliding
Hang Gliding is an image-rich WordPress theme with a full-width layout and a stick-to-top mega menu. The uppermost part of its homepage includes a large slider with a creative, minimalist navigation bar. The homepage itself is divided into separate content blocks, each serving its own specific purpose. Here you will find nicely designed company service lists illustrated with icons, contact forms, a timeline with the latest events covered on your website, social media buttons, and more. There is also a customizable Google Map, which can be used to indicate the location of your office to the clients.
LIVE DEMO | MORE INFO
Arch
Arch is a versatile responsive business WordPress theme created with architecture and real estate companies in mind. It boasts a wide responsive layout composed of flat and image-based content areas enhanced with various visual effects. You can change the color scheme or replace the images to make the design unique. This theme features clean lines, large fonts and buttons, integrated Google Maps and modern ghost buttons. The convenient menu is minimized into a hamburger button, and is supplemented with a back-to-top button. Read the rest of this entry »
