📝 Issue #465: Exciting New Tools For Designers, Web Almanac 2020, 10 New Rules of Design, Stackprint, and more…

Design patterns, best practices, user expectations, these concepts form the ideal design solution for most products. But there are occasions when it’s OK for design to be less predictable, and even a little weird. Jason Brush delves into the odder side of design and offers a simple rule for when design can be weird.

Stackprint is an extraordinary SaaS that allows you to create your very own REST APIs, in the browser, with zero coding. The system is fully managed, API keys are built-in to allow you to control who accesses your data, and the API can be added to your frontend in a few simple steps. There’s a free plan available.

Even with the holiday season upon us, there are some great new tools and resources being released. Every month we publish this roundup of the most exciting new tools released in the previous four weeks, and the final edition for 2020 is packed with downloads, tools, apps, scripts, and some great free fonts.

If you’re planning to launch a product in 2021, you should check out LinearB. The system is an automated approach to maximizing developer resources. Simply point it at your Git and project systems, and it will intelligently analyze how your team is working. There’s a free forever plan for up to eight developers.

HTTP Archive’s Web Almanac 2020 is a thorough cross-section of the state of the web this year, with data drawn from over 7.5 million sites. Split over 22 chapters from JavaScript and CSS, to CMS and Jamstack, to compression and page weight, it’s a comprehensive survey with insights for anyone working on the web.

How do you improve your product design? Research, research, and then a little more research. UserLeap is an innovative SaaS that operates a continuous research policy, looking at your analytics and telling you not just what users do, but why they do it. There’s a free plan and you can sign up for early access now.

Stark is a plugin for Figma, Sketch, and XD that helps you design for accessibility. Stark checks elements of your design, such as color contrast, and makes intelligent suggestions on how to improve the accessibility. It’s a valuable tool with new features on the way. You can try it out for free now.

For more than a century, the ideal of modern design has been eurocentric, with designers with different perspectives left to conform, or left out in the cold. Mark Wilson talks to a dozen different designers to draw up 10 New Rules of Design intended to broaden aesthetic goals, and rejuvenate the industry in 2021.

Email is still the number one business communication tool on the planet, far outweighing web traffic, but despite this there’s little focus on enhancing email content. Lavender is an AI-powered browser plugin that aims to help you increase your open rate and quickly build a rapport. There’s a free plan available.