May 18th, 2012 Notes

Apps We Use: Kickoff

Since we started Yummygum we’ve been searching for the ultimate Getting Things Done (GTD) and project management app. We’ve tried Cultured Code’s Things, Metalab’s Flow, 37 Signal’s Basecamp and so on. All (web)apps had one or two really strong points but seemed to lack other functionalities. None of these apps offer the full range of functionalities we’re looking for in a project management app. Kickoff app seems to be doing a pretty good job at combining to-do lists with project management. Since about six months we’ve been using it, and we really like it. Here’s why.

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May 11th, 2012 2 Notes

Growl style: David Leatherman

A couple of weeks ago we blogged about Growl styles and listed 10 beautiful styles that you can download for free. We’ve always wanted to try and see what it would be like designing our own Growl style. We wanted to see if we could make something different than most styles. That’s why we made a textured style. We posted one on Dribbble a while ago, and now thanks to the wonderful Patrick van Marsbergen over at Mimbee who did the coding the Growl Style has now seen the light of day! We shall name it: David Leatherman (a little pun ain’t never hurt nobody)

Download the David Leatherman Growl style here

May 4th, 2012 1 Notes

Sweet16s - our new 16x16 icon set

It took us some time, but it’s finally here; our new 16x16 icon set called Sweet16s. We’ve started with a ten days introduction sale. This means Sweet16s starts at $24 (instead of it’s normal price which is $39).

Big shoutouts go to Johnathan Croom who did all the cool animation and took our design to the next level.

Apr 11th, 2012 2 Notes

10 beautiful Growl styles

We don’t have to convince any OSX user to install Growl, I think. What we really like about Growl is that it allows you to select a style (theme) for it’s notifications. It even allows you to create your own styles. Growl comes with about a dozen styles by default. But if you’re looking for more styles, here’s a list of of 10 sweet Growl styles.

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Apr 5th, 2012 4 Notes

ING Redesigned; Round 2

Just a couple weeks after our blogpost about a redesign for ING’s digital appearance, they released an iPhone app. It works pretty good and you can download it for free.

We love mobile banking and our experience with the ING iOS app has been smooth. But of course, there are a few things that we think can be better, especially in the design. Round 2.

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Mar 30th, 2012 2 Notes

Social (Photoshop) gradients

We’ve been busy designing quite a few webapps that involve social sharing. Often times we’re asked to design buttons, icons etc. to indicate what social service something is shared through. We all know a social service’s logo triggers recognition to users. Beside’s the logo’s shape, the use of the social service’s brand color helps in this recognition process. Since we found ourself color-picking the right social brand colors frequently we decided to turn these colors into gradients and share them with you!

Download the Photoshop gradients file here.

Mar 16th, 2012 3 Notes

Apps We Use: NameChanger

In this times Apps We Use post we’re bigging-up a little app called NameChanger. The app does exactly what you think it does; changing file names. Although NameChanger’s UI won’t win any beauty contest, we love it for it’s features.

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Mar 9th, 2012 9 Notes

Using keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop

Whatever business you’re in, productivity can make or break not only your profit but also your morale. In (web)design we’re constantly looking for little productivity boosts. One thing that has proven itself to be a huge productivity boost for us, is assigning keyboard shortcuts to frequently used functions in Photoshop.

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Feb 17th, 2012 3 Notes

Proper layer naming in Photoshop

Now we know there are already numerous blog posts on organizing your Photoshop layers. Most of these tutorial/blog posts talk about the need for using layer groups and how the layer structure should match the visual structure in your Photoshop file. What we like to point out in this post is the future comfort of proper layer naming on a micro level.

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Feb 1st, 2012 4 Notes

Apps We Use: Coda

Panic’s Coda, our favorite code editor
Since 2010 we’ve been focussing more on designing and front end development. And although we haven’t been doing a lot of back end development we still find ourself using Coda almost daily. 

We have tried alternatives like CSSEdit, Textmate and Espresso and they all worked nicely. There are however two features in Coda we think are pretttty, pretttttyy, prettyy nice that makes it a winner for us.

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Jan 19th, 2012 1 Notes

iconSweets DELUXE, only $8

We released iconSweets DELUXE this week. As you might know we designed iconSweets1 and iconSweets2 earlier. Both are huge minimalist glyph icon sets available for free. The free icon sets both excisted of psd files that contained all the icons. We had taken note of some people’s preference to have the icons available as separate PNG files, Photoshop Custom Shapes (csh) and as a font. That’s why we released iconSweets DELUXE.

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Jan 6th, 2012 37 Notes

Scaling Down UI’s

In our new portfolio you’ll find lots of scaled down UI elements. We chose to work with scaled down UI elements for various reasons. For instance; we think it allows us to let the visitor get drawn to that specific element e.g. when the original size is just too big to fit a small resolution screen. We wanted to share a couple of things we’ve learned through trial and error that could save you some time scaling down your own UI elements. In these cases we assume that you’ll be scaling your UI element down to about 50% of the original element in Photoshop.

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Dec 27th, 2011 119 Notes

Feature in Advanced Photoshop

Some time ago we received an email from Adam Smith from Advanced Photoshop, from the same guys who created Webdesigner Magazine that did an article on how to achieve a letter pressed effect like we have on iconSweets.com. This time we were asked for a spread dedicated to a studio profile on Yummygum.

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Dec 12th, 2011 19 Notes

One PSD in multiple windows

Dutch designer Jonno Riekwel once tweeted a great tip for working in Photoshop regarding designing detailed UI elements. He pointed out the option to open one Photoshop document and displaying it in multiple separate windows. This means you can align multiple windows next to each other (or above/beneath one another for that matter).

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Dec 9th, 2011 2 Notes

New Yummygum website

A couple days ago we launched our brand new website. At first glance there might not be a huge difference compared to our old website. That is probably because we’ve worked really hard to maintain the clean and minimalist look we had going on before. Truth is, there are a lot of tiny things that have changed. In this post we want to give you some insights on what and why stuff have changed.

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