What’s new for designers, September 2015

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included lots of color resources, startup resources, educational tools, email tools, JavaScript resources, icons, 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!

HTML Color Codes

HTML Color Codes is a color picker that lets you get HTML color codes, hex color codes, RGB and HSL values, and more. There’s also a color chart, if you’d rather not use the picker.

Framer Inventory for Sketch

Framer Inventory for Sketch is a plugin that lets you generate FramerJS prototypes. You can export states rather than screens, it’s faster than Keynote, and more.

Rucksack

Rucksack is a collection of CSS features like responsive typography and property aliases that’s built on PostCSS. It’s modular and lightning fast.

Chocolat.js

Chocolat.js is a jQuery free lightbox plugin. It’s light, responsive, and powerful.

Frontify Style Guide

Frontify Style Guide lets you create free style guides for your projects quickly and easily. You can include logos, images, color palettes, typography, and much more.

Music Emojis

Music Emojis are designed by Brazilian art director Bruno Leo Ribeiro. He’s created emojis for a variety of artists, including Aerosmith, Elton John, The Spice Girls, and Daft Punk.

iOS 9 GUI for Sketch

iOS 9 GUI for Sketch includes devices, icons, and keyboard vector images. It includes a ton of elements, and respects the latest Apple guidelines for iOS9.

Font Flame

Font Flame is like Tinder for font pairing. You’re presented with a font pairing, and can select whether you love it or hate it to see another.

Flinto

Flinto is a prototyping tool for Mac. You can create prototypes with simple tap-throughs to more impressive interactions.

UI Movement

UI Movement delivers UI design inspiration right to your inbox. You can also search or browse the site for ideas.

Bonsai

Bonsai offers free, bulletproof contracts. It includes simple e-signing and integrated escrow, too.

Bootstrap 4 alpha

Bootstrap 4 alpha has just been released, after a year of development. They’ve moved from Less to Sass, improved their grid system, added new customization options, and dropped IE8 support, among other new features.

Wake

Wake is a private space for sharing and collaborating on design work with your team. You can share screenshots and photos, explain and get feedback, and more.

Typeset.js

Typeset.js is a typographic pre-processor for HTML that doesn’t use any client-size JavaScript. It includes soft hyphen insertion, small-caps conversion, punctuation substitution, and many other features.

Color Hunt

Color Hunt serves up beautiful color palettes every day. You can also see popular palettes, or suggest your own.

Futuramo Icons

Futuramo Icons offers up a huge selection of parametric icons, including over 2500 free icons. There’s an app for instant search by size, color, style, or swatch.

Bumpsale

Bumpsale lets you create a button for selling something using incremental pricing. After each sale the price will increase by an amount you choose, and payments are processed through Stripe.

Kickstarter Stories

Kickstarter Stories is a cureated collection of the best Kickstarter interviews. All the recordings are ad-free and uninterrupted. You can subscribe for free on iTunes to get all 340+ episodes.

Mockerie

Mockerie lets you create interactive, instant mockups of your website or app on free stock photography. Just provide the website URL to see it mocked up on a variety of device images, then take a screenshot to share.

Designer Mill

Designer Mill features the best free design resources out there. They include templates, fonts, PSDs, icons, mockups, and tons more.

HoverCards

HoverCards is a Chrome extension that lets you preview social links before clicking on them. It works with links from YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Imgur, and Soundcloud.

Nectar Ninja

Nectar Ninja allows you to send website notifications via Twitter. Let users know of things like new features, downtime, or deals, with no signup required.

GMass

GMass is a mass email system for Gmail. You can create instant recipient lists, track opens, and personalize based on names and email addresses, among other features.

CoNomads

CoNomads lets you find like-minded freelancers and nomadic workers that you can co-live with. Just meet other digital nomads, make co-living arrangements, and then stay with or host others.

Fanchimp

Fanchimp lets you schedule your social media content in less time. You can add blogs, feeds, Instagram accounts, hashtags, Medium users and collections, and more as sources.

Javvy

Javvy teaches you to code in Java, right on your iOS or Android device. It includes over 150 interactive tutorials.

Small Business API

Small Business API lets you create an Uber-like business for anything, anywhere. Just set up your app or website to take orders from customers, and the Small Business API lets you pick a specific business to handle the request or let local businesses bid on it, and then the request is completed.

The “I’m a better designer” checklist

If you want to greatly improve your design skills, check out The “I’m a better designer” checklist. It’s a curated list of the best practices and characteristics you can follow to become a better designer.

Pure CSS Apple

Pure CSS Apple lets you generate Apple devices in pure CSS. Just specify the device type, width, and inner color, or generate a random device.

FlySolo

FlySolo is an easy way for designers to track their projects. It integrates with your favorite apps, while also organizing your projects, files, email, time tracking, and more.

Paradeiser

Paradeiser is an alternative to the hamburger menu for mobile. It’s only 1.3kb and pure CSS.

Byte

Byte makes it easy to create web pages to share as you like. They can link to each other and the web, and can be created on either your iOS device or your Mac (though that version is still in alpha).

Ashley Madison Avenue

With a tagline like “Creative careers are short. Cheat on your partner”, Ashley Madison Avenue is a hilarious spoof of the infamous dating site. You can browse profiles, or create your own.

Tab Counter

Tab Counter gives you realtime stats from any site with a simple bookmarklet. See activity on a Facebook page, real-time visitors in Google Analytics, upload or download time, and more.

Foxhole

Foxhole is a hand drawn sans serif font made using a Tombow calligraphy pen.

Synsis

Synsis is a futuristic display font from LRC Type Foundry.

Amsdam

Amsdam is a free sans serif typeface with circle details.

Yuleo

Yuleo is a unique distressed display typeface.

New Mexico

New Mexico is an uppercase display font inspired by classic Western films.

Soda Fountain

Soda Fountain is an all caps typeface inspired by 1950s soda fountain signage.

Madyson

Madyson is a sans serif typeface inspired by architecture. It’s free for personal use.

Frame

Frame is a free geometric display typeface.

Ikra Slab

Ikra Slab is a geometric slab serif typeface with low contrast, perfect for logos, headlines, and information design.

Handletter

Handletter is a handdrawn font from Sasha Koggio that’s free for noncommercial use.

Cameron Chapman

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