What’s new for designers, October 2016

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers, we’ve included color tools, icon sets, automation tools, design tools, printables, Sketch plugins, and more. And as always, we’ve also included some awesome new free fonts!

Almost everything on the list this month is free, with a few high-value paid apps and tools also included. They’re sure to be useful to designers and developers, from beginners to experts.

If we’ve missed something that you think should have been on the list, let us know in the comments. And if you know of a new app or resource that should be featured next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman to be considered!

Color Library

Color Library lets you separate the colors in an image to print with colors other than CMYK (or RGB). Pick two, three, four, or five-color palettes.

Paperworks

Paperworks lets you keep all of your receipts, invoices, and payments in one place. It even automatically scans your inbox for things to add.

Kap

Kap is an open-source screen recorder that uses web technology. It’s easy to use and fast, plus it’s extensible.

Hero Patterns

Hero Patterns is a collection of repeatable SVG patterns for backgrounds on your digital projects. Select foreground and background colors prior to downloading.

Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai is a Chrome extension that acts as a personal assistant for your daily tasks. It has natural language processing to automatically identify and suggest relevant tasks.

Push by Zapier

Push by Zapier is a Chrome extension and app for building small, single-purpose workflows that live inside Google Chrome.

Disrupt Cards

Disrupt Cards are like a Silicon Valley-inspired game of Cards Against Humanity, with references and situations that will likely only make sense to those in the world of tech.

Internet Curated

Internet Curated is a collection of more than 100 resources on the web. There are collections for apps, design, business, development, inspiration, and more.

Mastodon

Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server that’s decentralized. It allows anyone to build a social network seamlessly.

Figma

Figma is an interface design tool that offers up real-time collaboration tools. It works for designing everything from icons to responsive layouts.

Break

Ever started a project and then realized 8 hours later you were still sitting at your desk, without taking any breaks? Break will remind you to take frequent breaks from your computer, which in turn increases productivity and reduces strain on your eyes, joints, and hands.

UI Movement

UI Movement is a curated collection of animated UI designs, including everything from chat to menus and more. You can also subscribe to their weekly newsletter to get the best UI inspirations delivered to your inbox.

React Color

React Color is a collection of color pickers from Photoshop, Sketch, Chrome, Github, and more.

FramerJS Club

FramerJS Club is a showcase of FramerJS prototypes and articles. There are examples of tools, inputs, modules, games, and more.

Open Color

Open Color is a color scheme for UI design that’s provided as CSS, SCSS, LESS, Stylus, Adobe library, Photoshop and Illustrator swatches, and Sketch palette.

Greyprint

Greyprint is a starting point template for icons, symbols, and glyphs. It includes pre-made styles (for Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch, and Affinity Designer) to speed up your workflow.

Affinity Designer 1.5

The newest version of Affinity Designer brings a host of UI, UX, and web design tools to the app, including tools for responsive designs.

Sneakpeekit

Sneakpeekit is a set of printable grids for design wireframing. There’s a precision grid, browser and grid, 2-up and 4-up grids, and more.

TheDirectory.io

TheDirectory.io is a directory of digital design agencies. It also includes tools to find a job at one of the agencies listed.

Sketchode

Sketchode is a Sketch plugin that provides graphical representation of any project, and aims to smooth the hand-off from designer to developer.

90 Free Line and Solid Icons

These 90 Free Line and Solid Icons are available for both Sketch and Illustrator. They include things like magnifying glasses, hearts, stars, message icons, and more.

The Vox Media Designer’s Toolkit

The Vox Media Designer’s Toolkit is a look a the tools the team at Vox uses most often to brainstorm, moodboard, design, prototype, and test.

Cat Ipsum

Need some filler copy? Love cats? You’re in luck with Cat Ipsum then!

Jpeg.io

Jpeg.io lets you convert any major image format (jpg, png, gif, svg, bmp, eps, psd, tiff, and more) into a highly optimized JPEG file.

Citysets

Citysets is a growing collection of free city-based icon sets. So far it includes, London, New York, Paris, and Sydney.

Ghostlab

Ghostlab lets you connect any number of browsers and devices for synchronized browsing. It automatically tracks changes to your local files and refreshes them on all connected clients.

Enformed

Enformed is an easy way to manage HTML forms, with no PHP, Javascript, or server-side coding.

TransparentStartups

Transparent Startups lets you see how much revenue a variety of tech startups are actually making on a monthly basis. It includes data from 39 companies, some you might not recognize, but also ones you probably will (Buffer, ConvertKit, etc.).

Qlutter

Qlutter is a collaboration tool for teams that helps you plan, measure, and reach you own long-term goals.

Community Bot

If you use Slack for communicating with a community, then you’ll want to check out Community Bot for your community management.

Google Noto Fonts

Google Noto Fonts is a family of typefaces that support all languages with a harmonious look and feel. It has multiple styles and weights and is available free to all.

Nomes

Nomes is a free font with stark differences between thin and thick stroke lengths that make it great for headlines, posters, flyers, and more.

Alva

Alva is a minimalist geometric font for posters and headlines, that solid character glyphs with accent lines.

Wild Youth

Wild Youth is a hand drawn brush script font that’s modern with a distinct influence of adventure and nature.

Devious

Devious is a handmade font with a simple, antique feel.

Cornerstone

Cornerstone is a straightforward modular font that’s perfect for sports-related or urban designs.

Monophone Grunge

Monophone Grunge is a fancy, vintage-style free font that’s great for headers and branding.

Buffalo

Buffalo is a free monoline script font with a vintage look and feel.

Humger

Humger is a free grunge sans serif display font. It includes uppercase, narrow glyphs and is free for personal and commercial use.

Hane

Hane is a free vector font that’s inspired by exciting city life, with architecturally inspired glyphs.

Cameron Chapman

Cameron Chapman is a freelance writer and designer from New England. You can visit her site or follow her on Twitter.