📝 Issue #457: Adobe Max Sneaks, Top New CMS Plugins, The State of CSS 2020, Creating Responsive Logos, and more…

Adobe MAX 2020 ran this week with a host of online presentations covering creativity, and Adobe apps. One of the most anticipated sessions was the Sneaks, a set of previews of upcoming technology in Adobe products. You can rewatch the whole session, as well as the highlights, on Adobe’s blog.

Plugins are an awesome way of extending the functionality of a site quickly. In the first of a brand new series we take a look at the best new plugins for a range of CMS. As you’d expect, there’s a strong emphasis on WordPress, but you’ll also find great new plugins for Craft, Shopify, and Joomla included.

Duolingo is one of the big success stories of the digital age, with 300 million registered users. The gamified language app is designed in-house, and in this fascinating reveal, Molly Long discovers how the dedicated design team works, from interactions between designers, to the unique challenges they face.

CSS Background Patterns is an awesome collection of free, pure-CSS patterns for use in projects. You can change the background and foreground colors, and modify the opacity and the spacing, to create the perfect pattern for your site. There’s a preview option, and once you’re happy copy the code with a click.

For a short while at the tail-end of the last decade chatbots were a huge trend, with some designers even electing to abandon traditional site experiences in favor of an AI-powered conversation. With the benefit of hindsight, Adrian Zumbrunnen reflects on his own chatbot, and explains why it’s been retired.

A responsive logo is a design that uses different, but visually similar elements to display an appropriate symbol on different screen sizes, or in different media. In this awesome practical guide Benjamin Oberemok walks us through the process of creating a responsive logo using a real client project.

Jam is a fantastic app that enables designer, developer, and stakeholder collaboration directly on your site. You can make comments, discuss potential changes, and even create and assign tasks. Jam integrates with tools including Slack, Jira, Asana, and Figma. You can request an invite to the beta now.

One of the biggest challenges for designers today is how to contribute towards a positive, inclusive future. In this honest, thought-provoking article Francesca Barrientos shares the questions she is asking herself, and the challenges she is discovering while changing her practice to power inclusivity.

CSS is constantly evolving, with new technologies breaking through regularly. The big names are Flexbox and Grid, but there’s a whole lot more too. The State of CSS 2020 survey has just launched, and you can help shape the direction of CSS, including the focus of browser manufacturers, by taking part.