What’s new for designers, June 2015

In this month’s edition of what’s new for designers and developers, we’ve included lots of podcasts, design resource directories, lots of web apps, inspiration sources, productivity resources, new frameworks, WordPress resources, icons, 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!

estd.in

estd.in is a curated collection of inspiring and beautiful startups. See what’s out there or submit your own.

AppLandr

AppLandr makes it easy to create beautiful landing pages for iOS and Android apps. It puts the focus on marketing, saves you hours of time, and they offer 24/7 support.

SwiftIpsum

SwiftIpsum gives you all sorts of formatted lorem ipsum text for free. It includes plain text, headings, paragraphs, lists, and more.

GitHelp

GitHelp makes it easier to support users on your open source projects on GitHub. It makes it easier for developers to find solutions to their coding problems, as well as share their experience and connect with experts.

Bluenod

Bluenod lets you visualize your Twitter communities. You can quickly find influencers, target topic-related communities, visualize real time information, and more.

Tapglue

Tapglue makes it easier for developers to add a social layer to their apps. You can add a social graph and news feed in hours rather than weeks.

StartupBlink

StartupBlink gives you a map of startups around the world. It also offers maps of coworking spaces, freelancers, startup influencers, accelerators, and more.

Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat lets you create your own web chat. It was developerd with the Meteor framework and allows developers to build and evolve their own chat platforms.

ThemeBro

ThemeBro is a more powerful WordPress theme search engine. Use sliders to set the price range you’re looking for, and select options for the vendor, purpose, navigation, header, and more.

Invoice.to

Invoice.to is an incredibly quick and easy way to set up up and send an invoice. You can connect with with Stripe for easy payments, and then either send or print your invoice.

Startup Developer Jobs

Startup Developer Jobs is a job board for finding development jobs at startups around the world. You can also subscribe by email or RSS/Atom.

Lumen

Lumen, from Laravel, is a stunnigly fast micro-framework. It makes it easy to write fast services to support your Laravel apps, with almost no configuration.

Apple Watch Icon Gallery

This Apple Watch Icon Gallery showcases a ton of icons created specifically for the Apple Watch. There are also links to iOS icons and Mac app icons.

Curator 3.0

Curator 3.0 makes it easy to share and collaborate with your creative colleagues. It’s also great for creative presentations.

HazeOver

HazeOver is a productivity aid for Mac that lets you focus on your current task by fading out background apps.

Glyph

Glyph is a versatile, semantic SVG icon set that was designed specifically to be customized.

Material Icons

Material Icons, from Google, are perfect for Web, Android, and iOS projects. They’re open source, can be used in a variety of sizes, and come as an icon font.

The Killer WordPress Checklist

If you work with WordPress, then you definitely need to check out The Killer WordPress Checklist for your next project. It’s broken down into sections for easier use: pre-development, development, launch, SEO, security, and maintenance.

Stumbbble

Stumbbble is a fun way to browse designer portfolios, powered by Dribbble.

Custom vs. Template

This questionnaire helps you decide whether to create a Custom vs. Template website design. Just check off your requirements and it’ll tell you which option fits best.

Zoommy

Zoommy, for Mac, helps you find free stock photos for your projects. It gives you direct access to 18 different free stock photo sites in one place.

Sibbell

Sibbell is a notifications platform for developers that works with your GitHub account. It sends project release notifications straight to your inbox.

Makerbook

Makerbook is a curated directory of some of the best free resources for designers and other creatives. It has categories for photography, mockups, fonts, textures, video, audio, and more.

Pintsize

Pintsize is a Sass front end template that’s ideal for starting new web projects. It’s tidy file structure makes it easy to scale your projects efficiently.

Google Photos

Google Photos lets you keep all of your photos organized and easy to find. You can also store videos, and it makes editing and sharing easier.

Google Design

Google Design is the new home of Google’s design initiatives, including material design. It includes a blog, resources, and more.

Great Email Copy

Great Email Copy is a Tumblr blog that collects awesome emails from around the web. You can filter by type of tag, and it even points out why each email was included.

Do UI Kit

This Do UI Kit is a versatile kit for designing to-do apps. It’s remixable and retina-ready, and includes 130 screens, 10 unique themes, and over 250 UI elements. It’s free for Photoshop and Sketch.

The Accessibility Cheat Sheet

The Accessibility Cheat Sheet gives a huge number of guidelines for designing accessible content. It includes info on creating perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust designs.

Discourse

Discourse is a free, open discussion platform that includes just-in-time loading to eliminate pagination of conversations. It includes dynamic notifications, and works great with high resolution touch devices.

Monoid

Monoid is a free, open source coding font. It has an algebraic structure, and includes over 600 semi-condensed and distinguishable glyphs.

Qontra

Qontra is a free sans-serif font that works best for informative texts, headings, advertising, and more. It includes upper and lowercase characters, as well as numerals, punctuation, and symbols.

BSRU Bansomdej

BSRU Bansomdej is a display typeface that was inspired by contemporary Thai style. It comes in four weights and six styles, and works great for posters, headlines, and even body text.

Variane Script

Variane Script is a slightly condensed script font that’s free for commercial use.

Grunwald

Grunwald is a fancy display font with flourishes on the uppercase characters.

Yeah Papa

Yeah Papa is a free hand-drawn font that’s great for posters and other display uses.

Archivo Narrow

Archivo Narrow is a sans-serif typeface that’s designed for both print and digital platforms.

Unna

Unna is a soft and kindly serif font with intense contrast.

Fancy No Name Grotesk Bold

Fancy No Name Grotesk Bold is a fancy display font with a bit of a vintage art deco feel.

Royals

Royals combines a classic chape with edgy details to create an uppercase display font in two styles, both with italics.

Cameron Chapman

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