What’s new for designers, June 2016

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included new apps, JavaScript libraries, mobile dev tools, graphic design apps, blogging platforms, CSS frameworks, color resources, productivity tools, and much 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!

Proud

Proud is a time management app (iOS and Mac) made just for busy people. It acts like an external brain for your ideas and thoughts to help you remember what’s important.

Perma

Perma is a productivity app for teams or individuals. It has tools for planning and organizing, collaboration, discussion, and more.

Picnic CSS

Picnic CSS gives your native HTML elements a boost so that you don’t have to mix your presentation classes with your HTML. It’s entirely modular so that each part can be easily modified and tested.

Mega Boilerplate

Mega Boilerplate is a set of handcrafted starter projects that are all optimized for ease of use and simplicity. It can be used with Node.js, static HTML5 sites, Electron, and more.

Real Time Users

Real Time Users lets you add a real time user counter to your site in under a minute. You can have it displayed plain or styled.

Bench

Bench is an easy to use collaboration tool for teams. All anyone needs to join a meeting is a secret link. There are free and paid accounts.

Smock

Smock lets you mockup and emulate a website on a mobile device.

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark makes it simple to turn your ideas into social graphics, web stories, and animated videos, in just minutes.

Color Schemr

Color Schemr is a color palette generator that lets you create palettes, adjust opacity, preview how colors would look on a minimalist template, and more.

Colicious

Colicious is a great tool for finding colors to use on your next project. Just hit the space bar or click the screen to get a new color.

Illustrio

Illustrio is a library of customizable images for non-designers. You can customize the colors, text, and data for each one.

Pills

Pills is a tiny, responsive CSS grid. It’s mobile-first, uses the HTML5 Boilerplate head, and works with all modern browsers.

React D3 Library

The React D3 Library lets developers use D3 in React. It’s flexible, can be used with templates, and more.

Nicely Done

Nicely Done is a gallery of digital product inspiration. View by most popular, or by tags and categories.

Elementor

Elementor is a drag and drop live page builder for WordPress. It allows you to reach a whole new level of design with your WordPress pages.

Kickresume

Kickresume helps you create an outstanding résumé and cover letter in just minutes. It was created by designers, but approved by recruiters.

New VSCO

The New VSCO has a new design, with a seamless experience between editing and publishing, as well as more community features.

Hillo

If you use Trello, then you’ll want to check out Hillo. It lets you track all of the acitivty on your Trello boards at a glance.

Holmes

Holmes gives you fast and easy search inside a page. Search results are returned in real-time as you type.

Proppy

Proppy gives you beautiful, interactive proposals in an instant. It helps you stay organized, collaborate with others, and more.

Cucumbertown

Cucumbertown is a free food blog platform that allows you to unleash your creativity with simple recipe creation tools and more.

Dopamine

Dopamine offers a Reinforcement API that helps you hack user engagement and retention. You can deploy it for free in just minutes.

Messaging Design Kit

This Messaging Design Kit from Layer contains everything you need to create beautiful and functional rich messaging experiences.

TypeNetwork

TypeNetwork is a new model for type designers to develop, license, and use their typeface designs. It’s mission is to find and support the best type and publish it for the best designers.

Family.scss

Family.scss is a set of smart Sass mixins that help you manage the style of :nth-child elements.

Cutestrap

Cutestrap is a sassy, opinionated CSS framework, a tiny alternative to Bootstrap.

Discover.typography

Discover.typography is a collection of typographic inspiration from the designers at H&Co.

PixelSquid

PixelSquid is a powerful image library that lets you introduce 3D into your design workflow. You can download images as layered PSDs or transparent PNGs, or even use their Photoshop plugin.

Checkbox.css

Checkbox.css is a tiny set of CSS3 animations for your checkboxes.

CreateBrief.com

CreateBrief.com is an easy to use design brief template generator. Just answer the questions to create your brief, no sign up required.

Butler

Butler is a very readable serif typeface that comes with 14 different weights.

Star Full Inline

The Star Full Inline Font comes in a bold version for free (there are 7 other font versions available for sale).

Shelby Inline

Shelby Inline is a free inline font with rounded edges and a vintage feel.

Black Mask

Black Mask is a vintage-inspired all caps display font with a press style and texture throughout.

Bernier

Bernier is a free font that comes in three different formats: regular, shade, and distressed.

Bravery

Bravery is a free font with an art deco flair.

Haze

Haze is a free wet brush font with splatters all over its glyphs and a watercolor texture.

Magnitude

Magnitude is a free sans serif display typeface in light and bold weights.

Cameron Chapman

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