What’s new for designers, October 2015

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included lots of startup resources, productivity tools, educational tools, freelancing resources, JavaScript resources, podcasts, inspiration sources, CSS resources, 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](http://twitter.com/cameron_chapman) to be considered!

Fizzle

Fizzle offers online business training and a community of entrepreneurs for support. You can get one month for free, with monthly subscriptions for only $35.

Annex

Annex is a simple task tracking and productivity app. It’s not “smart”, doesn’t offer automation, and it doesn’t have AI, so it requires your attention (just like your productivity).

DayDeed

DayDeed helps you build habits to reach your goals. You can log things as you want, whether it’s daily tasks or weekly sessions, and use it just as a check-in or to measure your performance.

Zube

Zube is a virtual task board that lets you effortlessly manage your GitHub issues. You can sort, prioritize, and assign issues, and it offers both free and paid plans (as well as an open source version).

Symu

Symu is a fast way to collaborate with your clients on designs. Just upload your project for free, and then let your clients leave comments. Every comment then becomes a task.

The Freelancer Podcast

The Freelancer Podcast is a short, weekly podcast for designers, developers, and writers. It’s hosted by Paul Jarvis of Creative Class.

Webflow

Webflow is the world’s first visual CMS for building custom, dynamic websites. You can easily structure your content, create custom designs, edit right on the page, and more.

BoxBox

BoxBox is an upcoming design tool created just for screens. It implements reusable components, responsive design, and more.

Project Comet

Project Comet, from Adobe, offers a new way to design and prototype websites and mobile apps. It integrates directly with Photoshop and Illustrator, while remaining an all-in-one wireframing and prototyping app.

Adobe Portfolio

Adobe Portfolio lets you create a simple, beautiful portfolio showcasing your creative projects. It syncs with Behance and can be set up in just minutes.

Popmotion

Popmotion is a 12kb JavaScript motion engine with support for animation, physics, and input tracking.

Corpus

Corpus is a CSS toolkit that uses Flexbox for the grid and is heavily influenced by Basscss’s White Space module. It includes typography, buttons, forms, colors, borders, images, and more.

Vectr

Vectr is a free design app for print and web. You can download the desktop version, or use it right in your browser.

ContentTools

ContentTools is a small, beautiful content editor. It’s fully documented with an API for expanding its usage.

Rookie Guide: How to Convert iOS UI to Android

The Rookie Guide: How to Convert iOS UI to Android explains the differences in UI designs between iOS and Android, and how to convert from one platform to the other, while creating a cohesive look with each operating system.

Sketch Palettes

Sketch Palettes is a Sketch plugin that lets you save and load colors in the color picker.

Storehouse 2.0

Storehouse 2.0 is here, with a bunch of new features, including increased privacy control and without most of the social media features the original Storehouse included (but with plenty of options to share your stories by text, email, or social media).

VSCO Keys

VSCO Keys is an open source Adobe Photoshop Lightroom app for giving users a speed boost. It was a paid app originally, but is now open source.

Primer

Primer is a free app that teaches you marketing lessons from Google. They add new topics every week, and they use a learn-by-doing approach.

Land.io

Land.io is a free UI kit and landing page design for Sketch. It includes a fullscreen/modular hero image section, video player, pricing table, profile card, social sharing buttons, and more.

Stripe Relay

Relay, from Stripe, lets your customers buy products directly within other mobile apps. It lets you sell your products in a number of apps, including selling directly through Twitter, or in apps like ShopStyle and Spring.

Web Field Manual

The Web Field Manual has been updated, with an overhaul of their design and code sections. It includes resources, inspiration, style guides, and much more.

Medium

Medium has undergone a design overhaul, with a new logo design, new apps, and new features like mentions, editor updates, and a publishing API.

Alex

Alex lets you catch insensitive, incosiderate writing automatically. It picks up on writing that is gender favoring, polarizing, race related, religion inconsiderate, or otherwise unequal.

PageSpeed Insights

Google’s PageSpeed Insights gives you tools to make your website fast on all devices. Just enter your URL and click analyze to get started.

Twit Ninja

Twit Ninja is a set of tools for growing your Twitter following. It lets you find non-followers, build leads, find content, and more.

Growth Hacking Experiments Template

This Growth Hacking Experiments Template lets you try out growth hacking strategies that have been refined across more than 1200 startups. It breaks down everything into a step-by-step process for trying these growth hacks on your own projects.

Productivity Planner

The Productivity Planner, from the makers of the Five Minute Notebook, is a new way to plan your day and beat procrastination. Share their Kickstarter campaign and get a free PDF download of the planner!

Padlock

Padlock is a minimalist open source password manager. It places simplicity and usability above all else.

Accelerated Mobile Pages Project

The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is an architectural framework that was built for speed. The goal is to make it easy to provide mobile-optimized content everywhere.

Creative Tim

Creative Tim is a community of creatives with tons of free tools for building better websites. They have over 43,000 members, and have had over 60,000 downloads to date.

Linkdropper

Linkdropper is a resource platform for designers and developers. It includes blogs, tools, Twitter accounts, and more.

Glacial Indifference (free)

Glacial Indifference is a free, open source sans serif typeface that comes in two weights: regular and bold.

Genome (free)

Genome is a clean, open source typeface that’s proportioned for increased readability on screen.

HK Explorer Regular (free)

HK Explorer Regular is a sans serif typeface that was developed in tandem with Arca Majora and Glacial Indifference.

Ansley Display (free)

Ansley Display is a free slab serif typeface with a retro look. It’s designed for headlines and large type.

Stilu (free)

Stilu is a free sans serif typeface that comes in four weights, with italics for each. It includes a number of OpenType features, and is free for both personal and commercial use.

Arcadia (free)

Arcadia is a modern hairline font. It’s great for magazine titles, logos, and other display uses.

Simple (free)

Simple is a geometric display font with simple lines and unique shapes.

Pelmeshka (free)

Pelmeshka is an upbeat, funny display font that would be perfect for things like children’s books.

Gant (free)

Gant is a free handdrawn display font that’s classy and bold.

Devious (free)

Devious is a handmade display font with flourished alternates.

Cameron Chapman

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