📝 Issue #442: Webdesign Toolbox, The Guide to Design, Editor X, Dark Ages of the Web, and more…

If you’re taking your first steps into the world of product design, then check out The Guide to Design from UX Collective. The tome-like site features nine chapters of free design education, from understanding the role of design in the modern world, to the job of a designers, to how to structure data effectively.

Webdesign Toolbox is a comprehensive collection of apps and resources for web designers. The human-curated compilation features almost 1000 different tools for web designers, UX designers, and web professionals. Search across 78 different categories from design communities, to customer experience apps.

UX Movement breaks down an old-but-still-good research study on the layout of primary, secondary, and tertiary menus that users are able to navigate most quickly. When it comes to a three-level menu there are distinct winners for both speed, least hesitation, and user preference; the result may surprise you.

Editor X is an exciting new tool from Wix.com, that ups the Site Builder game another notch. Sites built with Editor X are fully responsive, using CSS Grid to create elements that are fixed, fluid, and scaleable. You can even build complex e-commerce sites. Editor X is currently in beta with free trial access.

Do you look around the web and wonder why seemingly every site looks the same? This week we take a look at homogenization in design, and the four main factors driving it, from the way designers approach education, to the influence of design blogs, from the tools we use, to the user data we all share.

Dancing babies, Matrix-style backgrounds, and hit counters; Dark Ages of the Web is an awesome trip through the web tech of yesteryear, covering webpage “features” guaranteed to baffle millennials. The Apple-style gel button generator, and the sitemap (no, not the XML kind) are particular treats.

Anyone who’s coded a complex system will recognize the “Master and Slave” design pattern. There are many variations but they all come down to one process having total authority over the other. Elizabeth Landau reports on the current reexamination of the terms in the light of Black Lives Matter.

The D&AD New Blood Festival is an annual festival showcasing the best student design work across visual and interactive design. The 2020 event has just launched in digital form and runs from the 8th to 10th July, featuring webinars, online workshops, and a virtual exhibition. You can register online for free.

Are you looking for a dummy text generator that pays homage to the best film about time-travel released in 1985? Get instant recognition for your mockups with lines from Marty, Biff, Doc Brown, and Lorraine with DeLorean Ipsum; it’s so good, it’s inconceivable it took 35 years for someone to invent it.