May 2013
1 post
2 tags
6 Photoshop Extension & Scripts that improve our...
A lot of you designers out there probably already have these installed, but we still wanted to give these plugins an extra hat-tip as they greatly improve our process. We’ll be discussing GuideGuide, CSSHat, Pixel Dropr, Corner Editor & Enigma64, all great productity boosting Photoshop plugins.
1. GuideGuide
We’ve always been a bit inefficient when it comes to grids, as we...
April 2013
1 post
3 tags
Redesign Snapchat in under 10 hours
Snapchat has finally found his way to the Netherlands, at least in our social circle. We were intrigued by the concept and decided to see what the fuss is all about. For us, being designers, it was a terrible experience and we decided to redesign the app. If you’re reading this on an iPhone check out this quick prototype.
Exploring the User Interface
The first thing you see is the...
March 2013
1 post
2 tags
Why Sketch isn't for us (yet)
Sketch by Bohemiancoding seems to be the new thing to endorse and love. Quite a few designers are writing or tweeting about how wonderful Sketch is and summarize numeral reasons why you should leave the Adobe app and come to the young and hip side. While we believe there a few things in Sketch that are superior to Photoshop, we are not yet ready to switch.
Disclosure: We are a design studio...
December 2012
1 post
WhatsApp: Redesign
WhatsApp is one of those apps we always recommend to people that are new smartphone owners and it’s been a very popular app since it launched in 2009. It is however dying for an update, both the UI and the UX.
The Problem
The (iPhone) app is our go-to-app for chatting on our phones (besides iMessage), but we feel it lacks any personality in their UI. It’s all default iOS elements and while...
November 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Mini wireframing kit
Some time ago Jeff Broderick posted this cute little wireframe on Dribbble which intrigued us. We really liked the idea and wanted to try out working with the little wireframes too. One thing we noticed is that drawing all of those 1px, 2px and 3px lines to represent body text and headings was taking a lot of time. That’s why we decided to create a little font that exists of four –...
2 tags
Using style boards in the design process
In marketing / advertising / design it’s not at all uncommon to find people working with mood boards. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a mood board is a collage of all kinds of images, that basically serves the purpose of inspiration and style determination. For example, in the early stages of product or brand creation a mood board helps determine what feel the product or...
3 tags
Custom user style: Basecamp Next
We’ve been using the ‘New’ Basecamp for some time now for our client projects. We pretty much love it, yet there’s one thing that’s bothering us: the yellow hues. That’s why we use a tiny piece of CSS to override the ugly yellow hues and replace them with some nice blue hues. If you like you can apply our custom user style as well. Get our custom user styles...
October 2012
1 post
4 tags
2 Safari Extensions to spice up Dribbble
For most designers, a Dribbble account is indispensable. Showing off your work can attract new clients and perhaps even more importantly; it’s a huge source of inspiration. At Yummygum we love browsing and checking out what other designers are up to. We do think usability wise there’s room for improvement on Dribbble.com. Lucky for us there are people out there spending time...
July 2012
1 post
3 tags
Ticket, a beautiful Growl style
A while ago we made a list of Growl styles and even designed our very own Growl style named David Leatherman with our friend Patrick van Marsbergen. For David Leatherman, we got inspired by a Dribbble shot by the great Manu Gamero. And even though our Growl style doesn’t look anything like Manu’s, it did inspire us to try something else than the dime-a-dozen opaque black, rounded...
May 2012
3 posts
2 tags
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...
3 tags
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...
3 tags
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.
April 2012
2 posts
4 tags
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.
1. Framed by...
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.
General design thoughts
We feel...
March 2012
3 posts
3 tags
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...
2 tags
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.
We’ve used NameChanger a lot during the creation of iconSweets DELUXE, our premium huge icon pack. For iconSweets DELUXE, we had...
3 tags
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.
Needless to say; adding keyboard shortcuts only helps if...
February 2012
2 posts
3 tags
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.
When we say ‘future comfort’ we’re...
3 tags
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,...
January 2012
2 posts
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...
1 tag
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...
December 2011
3 posts
2 tags
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.
Being featured is a big honor for us given that Advanced Photoshop is one of the best...
3 tags
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).
Here’s an example of how we use it. Obviously the top...
1 tag
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....
November 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Darn you, iOS auto-correction!
This blog post is based solely on frustration from working with iOS’ Auto-Correction. We’ve been been fans of iOS and it’s features since it first launched, however we’ve always found the Auto-Correction in it’s current state holding us back from being productive.
Although Auto-Correction is meant to boost productivity, it’s just not working out like that… at least for us. The main reason...
3 tags
SuperSlicr: Ditch the Slice Tool
A superhandy action for Adobe Photoshop we’ve recently come across. Select the layers you wish to export (as a transparent PNG or JPG), use ⇧+F8 and you’re done.
Extremely sweet when exporting graphics for iOS apps. Get it at James Brocklehurst’s MightyMeta.co.uk and download it for free.
3 tags
Pretty Terminal
We rarely use OS X’s Terminal app, but we were recently forced to use it as we are working on a project that uses Ruby on Rails.
To make the experience a little prettier, we are now using Jeroen Seeger’s skin for Terminal. Download it here.
2 tags
Using Apple's Trackpad
Since September 14th, 2011 we’ve been using Apple’s Trackpads at the office. When Apple first released the Trackpad we were slightly sceptic but with the launch of Lion a lot of situations emerged in which the Trackpad would come in handy. As you probably know, in OSX Lion a lot of things are inspired by iOS. This shows in the ‘new’ inverted scrolling, Launchpad and the auto-hiding scrollbars....
October 2011
4 posts
2 tags
ING Internet Banking; Redesigned
We’re both long time customers of the DutchING bank (previously Postbank) and in general we like all their services. However, one of their services always kept bugging us; their web app for internet banking. It hasn’t changed much in the past couple years and we were constantly irritated by the terrible user experience and the outdated design. We decided to work on a redesign and perhaps create...
Bowtie Themes: Mist & Dark Mist
About a month ago our good friend Jeroen Seegers approached us with the cool idea to make our own Bowtie theme. We would do the design and he would do the programming. One month later we’ve made two variations on the same theme; a light theme called Mist and dark one called Dark Mist.
Download Mist or Dark Mist now!
1 tag
HEX Color Picker
How often do you use OSX’ Color Panel? If the answer to that question is sometimes or frequently, you should definitely check out HEX Color Picker. Although OSX’s Color Panel lets you insert RGB, CMYK and HSB color codes, we all know deep down that copy pasting a HEX code works best.
We use HEX color codes all the time in CSS & Photoshop, so why not use them for choosing colors in...
2 tags
Apps We Use: Byword
As you may know we’re huge Apple fanboys. It’s not just the hardware but also Apple’s OS and its enormous offer of beautiful designed apps that run on their machines. As business owners, we’re always on the look out for the best apps out there. And, as designers, we’re always looking for the most gorgeous apps out there as well.
We’ll start these series with Byword, the app we used for...
