As always, the whole design team here at Briefbox HQ have been continuing to add to Good Finds, our curated list of resources and tools hand-picked to help you progress in your your design and illustration career.
In our most recent update we've got a new directory site for creatives to help you get exposure for your work, a lovingly curated library of app screens from big brands showcasing common UI patterns, and heaps more to help you stay inspired and updated on your journey to becoming a successful designer.
Let's take a break from all this intense heat we've seen lately and jump straight into some of the best resources we've found this summer so far!
1) Outside Directory
This is an open directory curated by Craig Oldham and Alice Fraser from Office of Craig, based in Manchester. Outside Directory aims to provide a collated resource for people looking to champion the creativity happening all over the UK, not just within London.
The directory is sortable by design discipline and location, and creatives can submit via the online application process easily to get featured in the ongoing collection. For creatives and up-and-coming designers this is an essential resource to get inspiration from other designers, studios and creatives to help overcome creative block.
2) Mobbin
Mobbin is the ultimate and largest mobile app design reference website in the world with 250k+ registered users and 60,000+ fully-searchable screenshots!
This comprehensive, hand-curated library of design interfaces from the best-in-class digital products helps product designers find relevant design inspiration and references with significantly less time and effort.
We're big fans of the library and reference this resource regularly when we're looking for UI inspiration and to get a feel for current UI trends. You can easily save your favourite screens, create collections, filter by pattern, by element and by colour which makes finding relevant inspiration or references a breeze.
3) Feather Icons
Feather offers a minimal concise set of Icons that can help make any product design project stand out from the crowd. With popular icon sets like Google Fonts & Font Awesome being used heavily across apps worldwide. It's great to use more unique icons when you can.
We're loving the minimal, slightly playful feel to the Feather set and if you look closely you may notice a few of these icons used around the Briefbox UI.
Feather is a collection of simply beautiful icons. Each icon is designed on a 24x24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency, and flexibility and is available for free below:
4) It's Nice That Podcast
Internationally renowned design publication; It's Nice That launches their brand new Podcast series which aims 'to hear the honest truth from people who have built careers out of their creativity'.
The all-new podcast kicks off with three episodes for you to get started with. These episodes feature three conversations with leading lights from the creative world: the renowned illustrator Christoph Niemann; the creative director of The New York Times Magazine, Gail Bichler; and the graphic designer and creative director Eric Hu.
The podcast is hosted by the editor-in-chief of It's Nice That; Matt Alagiah and seeks to encourage creatives to open up about their real experiences working in the industry. Having been lucky to be in the audience for a wealth of It's Nice That conferences and shows in years past, we're hyped to hear how the show goes down. There should be plenty of inside tips and industry knowledge to consume with this brand new podcast series!
https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/new-its-nice-that-podcast-launch-230222
5) Graphic Pie
Graphicpie.com is an ever growing collection of graphic resources, mock-ups, fonts, UI elements and helpful blog articles for designers. We like the fact that the collection offers plenty of free mock-ups and resources for designers and you can easily download the files without having to create an account or deal with interfering, annoying ads.
Always good to add more mock-up sources to your reference list. If you're looking for some help putting together case studies for your portfolio, then checkout Graphic Pie! :)
https://www.graphicpie.com/
6) Good Books
Introducing Good Books!— 8,500+ book recommendations from the most successful and interesting people in the world.
Imagine if you got all the most talented creators, makers, thinkers and philanthropists from across the globe to write a concise list of their fave books, and books that changed their lives or influenced their work or views. Well, that's exactly what Good Books offer and we can't recommend this resource enough.
That's just about a wrap of what's been added to Good Finds so far this summer, but don't worry, check back in with Briefbox HQ in early Autumn where we'll be highlighting more tools and resources curated with love for the design community!