📝 Issue #449: 20 Freshest Web Designs, The Future of Digital Typesetting, Conversational Design, Free Icons, and more…

Prepare for a range of dynamic communication roles in Northwestern University’s online master’s program in Information Design and Strategy. You’ll build the in-demand skills needed to drive user interactions, like user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and human-computer interaction (HCI). Choose from specializations in content strategy, data science and analytics, and learning design.

In the CSS box model, there’s almost always extra whitespace around text, that’s due to the typefaces’ leading, and leads to inconsistent vertical rhythm. This week Microsoft Design announced it’s sponsoring a new CSS specification to resolve the issue, as discussed in Ethan Wang’s comprehensive post.

Every month we roundup the 20 freshest sites released on the web in the previous four weeks. In August’s edition you’ll find an unprecedented amount of animation, lots of fine UI details, tons of color, some interesting new approaches to typography, and some experimental logos.

Heroicons is a set of carefully hand-crafted SVG icons from the makers of Tailwind CSS. The icons are MIT licensed, making them free for use on personal and commercial projects. 226 icons are currently included, in two different styles: outline with a 2px stroke, and solid fill.

99% of the web is text, and so typefaces are foundational in how we experience websites. Readability and legibility are essential qualities to look for when selecting a font, as is accessibility. Gareth Ford Williams’ excellent article explains 8 rules for selecting accessible typefaces.

When humans talk to each other, we instinctively collaborate to close gaps in our understanding; we adapt to each other’s point of view. The holy grail of interface design is a UI that adapts to meet its users half way. Meredith Castile looks at how conversational design is attempting just that.

Waitlist is a fantastic API that allows you to quickly and easily create a waitlist for your next product launch. Using gamification techniques it encourages users to spread the word of your launch for you. Waitlist is free for one endpoint and includes email support to get you up and running.

When it comes to designing a successful website, the starting point must be customer needs. Travis Jamison walks us through the process of creating landing pages that are customer centric, from consistent ad and landing page copy, to leveraging urgency, and providing social proof.

As the number of edge cases for our designs increase, so too do the number of bugs in our CSS. In this insightful article Ahmad Shaheed introduces the principle of just-in-case to CSS coding. It’s a practice that ensures your code is more robust, more flexible, and longer lasting.

Hashtags are a great way to discover content on social media, but how do you know which ones are used by professionals to share work and ideas, and which ones are less relevant? Brittany Anas has done the research for you and presents 36 essential hashtags from #uxjobs, to #uxprocess.