One of the most popular tools for screen design and illustration in the last couple of years has undoubtedly been Sketch, which became an important part of many designers’ responsive web design and mobile design and prototyping workflows.
However, an increasing number of other tools are becoming available. In this article, I will explore the first browser-based app to be viable in the... Read More
Today, being a designer is about much more than drawing beautiful interfaces in Photoshop or Fireworks. To properly design a website or application, a UI designer must understand the technology with which their products will be built; therefore, they must have a minimum set of front-end development skills. The World Wide Web is not static. Quite the opposite: It’s responsive, fluid, evolving... Read More
Many people know that Fireworks is a great tool for web design, prototyping and UI design. But what about icon design? Icon design is a very specific skill that overlaps illustration, screen design and, of course, visual design. An icon designer needs to understand lighting, proportions and, most importantly, the context of the icon itself.
The BBC published an interesting article about... Read More
A few weeks ago, I mentioned some of the best extensions that are currently available for Fireworks. Today, I'll cover some of the best tutorials and articles, as well as many freebies (styles, templates, resource libraries, and so son) that are available for Fireworks. All of them can (and will!) teach you how to use Fireworks in a better, more optimal way.
Again, in order to help you... Read More
Fireworks is an excellent UI design tool; however, Adobe decided to feature-freeze it back in 2013 and (at the same time) did not offer any replacement tool to its users. Nevertheless, since Fireworks runs fine today on the latest Mac OS X and Windows OS, and since it still offers a solid UI-design feature set, many designers continue to use it and rely on it daily.
For those of you who... Read More
One of the most powerful features of Adobe Fireworks is that you can extend its functionality. Almost anything you can do through Fireworks’ interface — and even some things that you can’t — can also be achieved by writing a simple JavaScript extension.
Fireworks extensions are of two main types: commands and command panels. If you find yourself repeatedly performing a tedious task, you... Read More
Working with people can be hard. But get it right, and you’ll be able to produce stunning work more smartly and quickly than ever before. With methodologies such as agile and lean influencing how design teams work, some interesting challenges lie ahead. Iterative and collaborative practices vary greatly across work environments and even projects, and they can, and most likely will, bring your... Read More
In the previous article in this series, I discussed our ideation and initial prototyping process. We covered details on how to use Adobe Fireworks to set up a responsive design wireframe, reusable components, prototypes and ways to share designs.
In this article, we’ll share how we used Adobe Fireworks in our iterative visual design process, along with other useful tips. Read More
I started with style guides like any other obsessive-compulsive designer: with the desire to make it simple to maintain and grow a design. Plus, knowing which component to use in a given situation is nice, too, right? Since making this a regular practice, I’ve found it’s been like having a nice combination of a CSS class and a pattern library all in one.
One of the first questions,... Read More
