Whether you like it or not, Christmas is fast approaching! Get out your credit cards and start shopping for Christmas 2018. If you have web designers and developers on your shopping list, check out this gift guide for web designers and developers for some top-shelf options.
Lynda Subscription
In the modern job market, everyone’s always brushing up on new skills. It’s a competitive marketplace, and if you want to remain successful, you need to be on your game. It’s also crucially important for web developers to be well-versed in modern web technology. As you might imagine, that moves about as fast as Buzzfeed. Even for an experienced designer, new techniques require new ways of thinking, as well as a little practice. Lynda is hands-down the best way to learn anything professional online, and a Lynda subscription will be vastly appreciated by newer developers and anyone on their grind.
Don’t Make Me Think
Don’t Make Me Think is a classic of user interface design. It should be a must-read volume for any web developer. There are crucial ideas inside that every developer needs to know, and we say that from experience. Good UI design is good design, and if you’re just blindly hoping to stumble into a good design, your work will be mediocre at best. Now is the time – it’s just come out in a mobile-aware new edition.
Desk Organization
Responsive Sketch Pad
This unique sketch pad is created to help developers design websites for both desktop and mobile platforms. If you don’t like this pad, UI Stencils has an awesome collection of similar gifts for web designers.
iPhone Stencil Kit
This iPhone Stencil Kit makes it easier for web designers to add UI elements from iOS into their hand-drawn wireframes. The stencil is up-to-date with the latest iOS icons. Give your hand-drawn wireframes some serious professionalism with accurate, appropriately placed icons. It’s the kind of thing that clients love.
Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit
This starter kit for Aurdino programming is the perfect way to get started making physical devices with some engineering know-how. It’s just like the Raspberry Pi, but runs on a different system. If you know someone already has an Aurdino, this package will keep compatibility with the existing devices.
Books
Smashing Magazine Books
Smashing Magazine is one of the best sources for up-t0-date design talk and tutorials. Periodically, they’ll bundle a number of their posts on the same topic into a printed book focusing on a particular area of web design. All of their published books are great, but we especially like Form Design Patterns. Since form design is often pushed off on to web developers, this book focuses on the UI and UX principles that are essentially to functional online forms.
Web Designers Idea Book, Vol. 2
Every creative person needs some inspiration from time to time. The best way to get that inspiration is to witness a craft done well. Seeing designs we might normally not think of can also help stimulate the creative process and provide new visual avenues to explore when they might have otherwise remained inaccessible. The Web Designers Idea Book is a great source for that kind of inspiration when it comes to web designers and developers.
The Field Notes Project Kit
Even if you work digitally, there’s still plenty to write down. The Field Notes brand has built up a reputations as one of the best notebook companies around. Their notebooks sport modern design touches right out of a Wes Anderson movie. Check out the Project Kit to introduce someone to the brand with a variety pack of their excellent notebooks.
Logitech MX Master Mouse
If you use a computer mouse occasionally, you’ve might have never really thought about whether it’s comfortable. Most mice really aren’t. They’re made of cheap plastic and designed for durability rather than ergonomics. Logitech’s line of computer mice are some of the best designs in the business, and the Logitech Master mouse is the best of the bunch.
Pantone Coffee Mug
Regular mugs can be drab and ordinary. Introduce some vibrancy into your friend’s life. There’s a whole line of highly-saturated Pantone products available on their website, and the Pantone coffee mugs are a classic. The come in a huge variety of actual Pantone colors, complete with color ID information.
CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Complete Starter Kit
If you’re in to messing with computers, the Raspberry Pi is one of the coolest hardware tools out there right now. It’s an extremely small computer that runs a shrunk-down version of Linux, so it can perform many of the same functions as full size computers. The small package dramatically expands where you use that computer, however, which has led to some pretty creative Raspberry-Pi-powered projects.
Wireframing Card Deck
If you’re not a decent artist, wireframing can often seem like more of a tedious chore than a creative brainstorming process. Sketchy wireframes work fine, of course, but they can be a little less than inspiring. With the wireframing card deck, you can place standard pre-made website elements to try out different designers. UXKits offers a number of web design card decks, so you can expand your set and create ever more complex layouts.
You might also be interested in the following posts:
From Websites to Business Cards: How to Unite Your Brand Identity with a Brand Guide
Design Persuasive Websites With These Basic Principles
An Introduction to Photoshop Selection Tools
The post 11 Christmas Gift Guide for Web Designers and Developers for 2018 appeared first on SpyreStudios.
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