Best of the web for Design and Web Development April 2023

May 1st, 2023
News

In this monthly roundup, we take a look back at the most valuable design tutorials and web articles published throughout the month of April. As the spring season kicked off, we saw some amazing tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator that we think you’ll love. From learning how to create a bingo flyer to exploring different ways to create metal textures using Photoshop, there’s something for everyone.

But that’s not all! The second half of this post features some fantastic blog posts that offer insights and tips for designers. We understand that being a designer can be challenging, which is why we’re excited to share some resources that can help you avoid burnout and stay inspired. In addition, we explore some best practices for creating a footer that not only looks great but also functions well.

So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this month’s roundup of the best design tutorials and web articles. We hope you find these resources as valuable as we do!

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Design tutorials

How to Make a Hollow Text Effect in Illustrator

Sometimes the simplest task seems extremely difficult once you start. Making a hollow text effect in Illustrator is one example. There are, of course, many ways to make this effect, but today I will show you a very simple method that will allow you to edit the text and change the colors. Once we finish the effect, we will make a Graphic Style out of it to use later over any other text (or graphic) you want.

How to Design a Bingo Flyer

Looking for a great way to promote your next bingo night? With this bingo night flyer tutorial, you can have a professional-looking bingo flyer in no time. No InDesign experience? No problem. This step-by-step tutorial shows you exactly how to design and customize your bingo flyer. Be the envy of your friends and colleagues with this easy-to-follow tutorial that will help you create beautiful bingo flyers in just minutes.

How to Make a Heart Shape in Illustrator Quickly and Easily

Making a simple heart shape in Illustrator may seem like a very easy task, but you may find a few difficulties when making this particular shape. You may face the problem of how to make the shape symmetrical, how to give the correct roundness, etc. Also, there are different methods to make hearts. You can use the Ellipse tool combined with a rotated rectangle, a rounded rectangle, and then make a straight corner, and reflect it. Or you can make it easy by following this tutorial where I will show you how you can make a perfect heart shape in less than 5 minutes and using a single rectangle.

How to Create a Terrazzo Pattern in Photoshop

Do you love terrazzo patterns and textures? In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a terrazzo pattern in Photoshop for all your design projects. I’ll explain everything in so much detail that everyone can create the terrazzo pattern, even those who have just opened Photoshop for the first time.

How to Create Metal Textures in Photoshop

In the following tutorial, I’m going to teach you how to create a metal pattern in Photoshop. You’ll create five different textures with Photoshop filters, gradients, and Blending Modes.

Web and Design articles

Fleet Management at Spotify (Part 1): Spotify’s Shift to a Fleet-First Mindset

TL;DR Instead of performing 10 major software upgrades to our infrastructure every year, what if we did 10,000 small ones? Across our entire codebase? That’s the idea behind Fleet Management: by building automation tools that can safely make changes to thousands of repos at once, we can maintain the health of our tech infrastructure continuously (instead of slowly and laboriously).

How To Avoid Burnout as a Designer

The secret formula to keep your sanity whilst kicking as*es.

How to deal with HiPPOs, the most dangerous opinions that jeopardize designs

The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) can often destroy a good design

Modern HTML email (tables no longer required)

The first point in MailChimp’s email development best practices guidelines is “code all structure using the table element”. The best practices listed by Cerberus, perhaps the most popular HTML email template, instructs “when in doubt, nest another table”.

Some Cross-Browser DevTools Features You Might Not Know

I spend a lot of time in DevTools, and I’m sure you do too. Sometimes I even bounce between them, especially when I’m debugging cross-browser issues. DevTools is a lot like browsers themselves — not all of the features in one browser’s DevTools will be the same or supported in another browser’s DevTools.