The Second and Final Sneak Peek of Slides Framework
What’s up, everyone? It’s time for our second sneak peak of Slides and have even more details about this stunning project.
Slides Framework consists of 60 beautifully designed slides in Sketch, Photoshop and HTML/CSS/JS. Yes, we know it’s a huge number of slides. Choose the slides that look good for your projects and use them in a various combinations to create a presentation. Every slide is responsive and your site will scale flawlessly on any device.
One more cool thing - every slide and element inside it includes seamless and perfect animation. You can see how this works in the video below. And if you want to tweak any pre-designed animation, you can for an even more custom presentation design.
We have 11 templates to help you to get started quickly. You can base an entire website on it if you like. Just choose a template fits your needs and add your content. Slides is contains perfect and clean markup in HTML, CSS and JS.
There are a lot of useful classes in our markup to help you change animation, slide direction, colors and fonts, make sidebars, share, navigation and some really good stuff from our developers.
We know you want to make things fast. To help, we created Template Generator. This tool can help you make the work process simple and playful. You’ll be able easily combine different slides, choose different animations, customize how top and bottom panels and the menu will look and download HTML. (It’s a breeze.)
Slides was born to impress. If you have a product, startup or app you could use it to create a perfect presentation to show your idea in the most beautiful way. There is documentation and plenty of helpful examples to get you on board faster.
We can’t wait to show you Slides and we’ll release it very soon. Subscribe to our newsletter so you’ll be the first to know about this tool as it launches.
This summer we’re engaged in an interesting project and today have a sneak peek for you. It’s probably the most beautiful product we’ve ever made. We spent a lot of time finding the right balance of beautiful design, easy code and seamless animation.
Here’s a sneak peek video so you can start to imagine what is possible for you to do with Slides.
The idea for this product started during our presentation for Qards. We found that slides are the best way to showcase a product quickly and effectively. Then, we got plenty of emails from clients that would like to make a similar site.
Slides is created to show information about your startup or your business to customers fast. A customer’s first interaction with your product starts on a website. It’s important to surprise them from that moment. We tried to create such a product that we would like to use (and think Slides is just the answer).
We know you’ll be anxious to see the full version. Subscribe so you’ll find out first when Slides is launched.
Release v1.1 is a huge and global update with new useful features. We have redesigned Qard pretty much from zero for you to be able to do things you couldn’t imagine before. Completely new components Grid, Text, Cover, Feature…
Our Plans About the Future of Qards. What to Expect?
As you know we have released Qards a couple weeks ago. Right now we're gonna share with you some thoughts about future updates and new features you can expect.
We started this project with a minimal set of functionality which we made to be really cool, and we are gradually moving towards more growth possibilities for our product. We released this product very recently and right now we are putting in a lot of effort to improve it and add new features, which you will see very soon.
Qards is not all about how many components you have. It’s about how cool you can make your site be with this set of powerful components. In reality, less is more. A New Feature will only be developed when we have found way to do it in the best way possible, so that it’s convenient, concise and logical. That’s our goal while developing this product.
To keep you in the loop of things, we have decided to make a roadmap in which we will describe the new features of the upcoming updates.
Reorder Components
We will improve component reordering inside the page and will make it more convenient. Now you will not need to go to a separate page to do this. We have decided to reduce the thumbnail size and put them in a separate window where you can reorder all the components of the page with a couple clicks using arrows or Drag & Drop of thumbnails. The process of reordering the blocks will be much simpler!
New HTML & CSS Editing
We will be making this window more convenient for developers. You will be able to see a preview of the component and a nice editor for CSS and a separate one for HTML. We want the final result to resemble codepen. Coders will appreciate this ;)
New Grid
We like the idea of the Grid component. You can easily create a structure with columns and load your content into it. It can be a list of crew members or company logos, steps to a recipe, list of features of for your product and an additional menu. We love seeing the different ways you use this product to fit your needs.
In the upcoming updates you will be able to create new items inside the grid, change the number of columns on the fly, hide any elements not needed at the moment. The component also will have an interesting Fluid Grid parameter which will introduce a whole new set of possibilities in the current Grid.
Image
Very soon the component Image will be renewed and it will have many new features: change of the image size on the fly, drag & drop, zoom popup for small pictures, a possibility to add links to any image, aligning, and new preloading for images. You will also be able to create cool galleries with the uploaded images!
Cover
The cover will now have the possibility to change the layout in the fly, drag & drop of any image, a new color picker. In the future we would also like to add settings for the cover effects and loading the background video from YouTube.
Feature
There will be possibility to change the background of the component. As a background, you will be able to set color, gradient or an image. Just imagine all the cool variations of this component you will be able to get with this feature! You will also be able to change the layout of the components, hide the unnecessary elements and upload video instead of images.
New Powerful Text Component
A large amount of changes will happen to the Text component. You will be able to align text, change the style, create buttons. We have reworked the whole components and the main thing you will appreciate is the flow while working with text in Qards.
Global Settings & Page Settings
A huge amount of changes will be made to the settings in Qards. Now you will have 2 separate windows for settings - settings for the whole site and settings for a specific page. Here you will be able to change the preset styles for headers, paragraphs, link colors; you will be able to upload a favicon and add new fonts through TypeKit; create general background for any page, and much more.
Button Settings
You will be able to change each button using 4 parameters: button size, filled button or not, border thickness and border radius.
Stay in Touch!
Very soon you will be able to see new Qards with new features. Keep in the loop and subscribe to our journal so you don’t miss the updates. And of course, we would love to hear and feedback you might have!
An Easy Way to Use the Powerful Startup Framework with Generator
Our users really liked the cardboard blocks used in the presentation of Startup Framework. Many people wanted to buy those and use for a quick prototyping. Today we have something better than simple cardboard blocks.
About Generator
Today we want to present you a cool new tool that will help you visually create a prototype of your future website using the blocks in the framework. Now, creating your site with Startup Framework will be even more fun.
What is most valuable in the Generator is the ability to export the created prototype to HTML / CSS / LESS. Now all of this in more detail.
Drag & Drop any of the Blocks
In the left panel there are categories of all the components included in Startup Framework. After picking the category, you can select the component you want to use and drag & drop to the project area. You can click on the selected components in the menu, if its easier for you.
Reorder selected blocks if you want
You can change the position of any of your blocks by simply dragging them up or down.
Remove Blocks
If you want to remove any of the selected blocks, just drop them back to the menu panel.
Share with your partners
As soon as you have the result you were aiming for, you can discuss the created prototype with your partners or just share with your friends.
Export to HTML / CSS / LESS
A special feature Generator has is exporting the prototype to HTML/CSS/LESS. This feature is available for all customers of Startup Framework now.
Backstage
We have altered the Startup Framework presentation a little bit and now you can import any of the samples into Generator.
Here is a combination of a sign in form and some sort of “buy now” banner. There were so many ideas and thoughts how to show/animate these blocks but we decided to keep this one, because it’s looks original and “organic” in some ways. Organic is always good, right? :)
As of right now, Generator is under Beta. If you notice any bugs, make sure to let us know.
Startup Framework is Finally Updated to Bootstrap 3
We’ve all been waiting for this for a long time and we have finally released the first major update for Startup Framework. New Bootstrap 3 Grid, updated menu for mobile devices and video tutorials, as well as a large number of bug fixes. Now, about all of these in order...
About Update 1.1
Hey guys! We have been working hard to make this happen as soon as possible. And now we are happy to announce today’s update of Startup Framework. Finally we’ve upgraded to Bootstrap 3 and we will continue to develop this thread of updates. Our clients can download the new update from their accounts.
We strive to keep our product up to date and we try to do everything to develop it more. We are pleased to have released this update, as now we have more time to work on new features and content for Startup Framework. While you are reading this text, we almost have the next surprise ready for you and we will tell you about it very soon.
Meanwhile, we will tell you about the main features on the current update.
Bootstrap 3 Grid
Startup Framework now supports the Bootstrap 3 Grid System. We have updated all of the PSDs and HTML, CSS files.
Video Tutorials
The new updates comes with several video tutorials. In the near future we will be releasing some other ones too.
Updated Responsive Menu
We have completely revamped the code for the responsive menu for mobile devices. The menu is even better now!
Bugs Hunting
In this version we have fixed a huge amount of bugs and we will be doing so in the upcoming updates.
Hey guys! As you know, Startup Framework was finally released on Monday and we are glad that the release phase was a success. We really appreciate your feedback on our product, as it helps us make it better! If you still haven’t seen the presentation, make sure you watch it.
The work on the presentation wasn’t easy, but was an interesting process. What you see on the website is the third version of the design. We did the design for the presentation several times, then threw it away and started all over. But it was interesting and in the process of working on new versions we learnt lots of new things for ourselves.
We have shot a lot of the photos on the promo blocks, organizing a small studio at home. We laid around some white sheets of paper on the floor and placed the photo objects on them. We also used a Canon 5D Mark III camera with a EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lense and a tripod. After having shot the photos, we separated the objects from the shadow and placed them on a new background using Multiply blending option.
We thought it would be a good idea to give people the PSD file with the presentation. A lot of designers would be interested in looking at the source and maybe find something new for themselves, also find out what the presentation inside looks like. Make sure to share this PSD with your friends. We’ll really appreciate it!
Third Sneak-Peek of Startup Design Framework: Final
We are glad, that this product awaits thousands of people and now we can surely say that we have made Startup Framework really awesome. What we wanted to produce at the start of our way meets up our expectations and great efforts we made while creating such a large-scaled project.
Video
Here is a short part of the video we have shot for the presentation. We have passed through the whole process of video shooting — from concept up to editing and color correcting. We must say that video shooting is very interesting and we should surely tell you about how the shootings run already after the launch of Startup Framework.
We have created a product that will help designers, developers and companies to build a website for their startups not spending much time on it. There are a lot of different blocks and samples that will help you to create a perfect site for your startup. It’s simple!
We really appreciate your interest in this project and we do our best to take into consideration your opinions and feedbacks. We already have big plans for further development of Startup Framework and we are aiming to take Designmodo to the next level. Just a bit of patience and soon you’ll see everything yourself.
If you don’t want to miss the release of Startup Framework you can subscribe to Designmodo today.
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PS: Happy Thanksgiving Day, everyone!
Blog postStartup Design Framework First Sneak-Peek Blog postThe Second Sneak-Peek of Startup Design Framework
Every day, Designmodo is working to make Startup Framework better and soon you will be able to see it for yourself. In the meantime, we would like to preview a powerful part of this framework - samples. We’ll explain what samples are and how you can use those to build websites for start-ups in a short time.
The Structure of Startup Framework
The most important parts of the Startup Framework are Samples and the UI Kit that includes a set of different components. The samples consist of a set of 25 pages. Each of these pages you can use as-is or with new blocks from a UI Kit.
These Samples will guide you through and show how to use the blocks and give you the feeling on how to play around using the components in the website building process. Plus, it will save you time! You can decide whether to create your site using UI Kit blocks or samples.
To get started, you select the desired sample and build on the basis of its entire website. It’s that simple!
Sample #4
For example, let’s take a look at Sample #4. This page consists of different blocks that are taken from a UI Kit — header, feature blocks, content blocks and footer with address. You already have all the blocks you need to make your startup website.
And finally the biggest advantage we provide is that all of the blocks within samples are ready for markup (Less/HTML/CSS).
Many Variations for Your Design
Just imagine the number of information blocks you’ll have. There is almost unlimited mixing variations using these blocks while creating your startup projects.
All you need is just a business idea, beautiful copyright and promotional images/videos for your product.
Startup Framework will help you to find new and beautiful look for your site.
Don't Miss the Release Date
The release date is still a surprise. If you don’t want to miss the release of Startup Framework you can subscribe to Designmodo today.
Designmodo is offering you a first sneak-peek of Startup Design Framework. The first solution for rapidly creating a start-up is almost here. Just a year ago, we would have restricted ourselves to only design, but this is a full-fledged design framework based on Flat UI and Twitter Bootstrap.
Startup Design Framework contains components and complex blocks which can easily be integrated into almost any design. There are many components to consider when beginning a start-up. In this Design Framework, all of these components are made in the same style, and can easily be integrated into projects, allowing you to create hundreds of solutions for your future projects.
What even better is the package includes 25 ready-to-use start-up design samples. By choosing one of the 25 configurations of the future start-up, the process of creation is simple and easy. All the elements of Startup Design Framework are available in PSD and HTML5/CSS3 layouts.
The other product details are still top secret, but very soon you will be able to see the full presentation of our product. Subscribe to our newsletter to get updates first.
Designmodo has become an official partner and sponsor of the SmartWeb Conference.
Many famous speakers have been invited to participate in this conference:
Jonathan Snook – Writes tips, tricks, and bookmarks on his blog, Snook.ca. He has also written for A List Apart, 24ways, and .net magazine, and has co-authored two books, “The Art and Science of CSS” and “Accelerated DOM Scripting.”
Vitaly Friedman – Co-founder Smashing Magazine, a leading online magazine dedicated to design and web development. Vitaly is the author or co-author and editor of all Smashing's books. He currently works as editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine in the lovely city of Freiburg, Germany.
Carl Smith - Owner and founder of nGen Works. Smith runs an unconventional distributed team that works with businesses to redefine their identities and ideals. He has made a name for himself in client services by creating a new framework for how to get things done, and by enabling people to realign creative communities.
Bruce Lawson - Evangelises open Web Standards for Opera. He was previously content editor and technical lead for The Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority websites. He was a member of the Web Standards Project, and on the working group for the W3C Mobile Web Best Practice Guidelines.
Dan Rubin - Designer, photographer, and user experience advocate. Rubin speaks at conferences and teaches workshops around the world on various topics, and has worked with clients such as MailChimp, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Meebo, Geffen/Universal and IDEO.
Peter Gasston - Professional web developer. Gasston has worked for more than 12 years in varied environments, including agencies, start-ups and corporate, and is currently Creative Technologist at rehabstudio. He enjoys writing for sites such as Smashing Magazine and A List Apart, .net Magazine and on his own blog, Broken Links. He is also author of “The Book of CSS3” and “The Modern Web.”
Vasilis Dimos – One of the founders and Head of UX/UI at Skroutz S.A. Skroutz operates the biggest price comparison engine in Greece, and recently expanded the business to Turkey, employing more then 50 people with the majority being high-profile engineers.
Radu Chelariu - Art director at Busteco Global Brain, where his main focus is eCommerce design and development. A fan of flat skeumorphism, creator of the HTML5 Starter Pack and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop, Chelarui enjoys setting off on mad scientist experiments on his personal site, Sickdesigner.com
More details about the speakers and their reports can be found here http://www.smartwebconf.com/.
We will also try to continue supporting this type of conference in the future. We hope that you will be interested in this conference as well and find it useful.
Today, we would like to talk about the exposition WWDC 2013 that was 2 days ago in San Francisco, about the design of the new iOS7. I didn’t have any special expectations about what precisely would be shown at the exposition, so I even didn’t expect anything, and my opinion wasn’t one-eyed.
Expectations regarding the interface were all the same, something similar to Almost Flat Design. Even more so, everyone was convinced of the opposite - Apple know when to stop, have a sense of taste, and will not be under the thumb of trends and concepts.
Once we looked up to the design of Apple. Now, I really do not want novice designers to look up to it, although guidelines are already posted up hill and down dale.
Now, it is almost night, and I have put all my thoughts in order, the emotions of the day have calmed down, so I’ll start in order:
Application Icons
It remains unclear how it happened that the management of such a large corporation completely missed the point of having an adequate art director (I want to believe that John Ive did not have a hand in it) while working over such a responsible part. It seems that several inexperienced and young designers worked over the design at once, who in their turn did not hesitate to integrate their findings into it. Gradients of bright unharmonious colors, no nets, padding, or proportions, abundance of small parts, difference of styles, and a full lack of taste.
The camera icon looks as if it was pulled from a Corel Draw Cliparts disc found on a shelf. The calendar icon is still OK, but of course it could be much better. Then, we can see the Reminder icon with a strange set of colors and different thicknesses of the lines. Why was it necessary to add excessive detail, when there is an absolutely minimalist date icon next? In the bottom row, we can see the acid-bright color of the phone icon, the Settings icon with even more detail. What’s with the Safari icon? You need to try hard to make a safari icon like this. I have no explanation for this.
Even the simple calculator icon is very bad drawn. Black lines and white symbols on orange and gray backgrounds. The camera icon is also quite different from the simple version that we were used to see before. For example, the stupid viewfinder box on the left and the thin line on the right give the icon uncertain and unnecessary detail, thus complicating it.
From the time when the release of the new iOS7 was expected and until now, designers have been showing their assumptions regarding how a flat iOS7 interface should look like. Some of them look very dignified against the background of the current update.
Interface Icons
The idea was great - using wired-style icons for lightness and simplicity. It is a modern and interesting style, where you can show creativity. But in the set of icons from apple, all the lines appear to be uncertain, the proportions are not met, and there is no overall style. If you look through the eyes of an icon designer - it looks kiNda LiКe th1s.
User Interface
Some strange things are happening to the iOS7 interface. At once, Apple forgot about white spaces and padding's, all the windows in their interface look very overloaded, although the goal was to simplify and ease everything.
The Control Center interface now resembles to an Android device’s interface, icons are not perfect, the typography is sad, there are no padding’s, and absolutely no understanding. Simplicity and minimalism are not something where you draw the interface with lines in a mockup editor, and leave it as is, in the hope that the user will be grateful to you for it. This is not working.
Blurred Background
A separate word can be said about the Blur effect that has spread through the iOS7 interface. Instead of the simplicity expected by the designers, we have got mud and confusing smeared colored spots. For example, the flashlight icon seems to be enabled, and the camera icon appears disabled. In fact, this is the unblurred phone icon at the bottom.
When it would seem there is nothing worse, we can see on the bokeh screenshots circles on the background. Back in the 2000’s, I thought I would never see them again.
Conclusion
The design community clearly did not appreciate this creation, as testified by continued entries in their tweets. The interface design is very, very raw. It all looks like an unworked mockup, and we hope that this is just the result of haste and lack of employees with a sense of taste in the iOS department management.
We can laugh at it all, but it is not quite funny. Given the global impact of Apple, it looks like a real tragedy. Least of all, we would now like to see this concept move into our phones, and we would take it as a terrible flaw, which would have to be tolerated. We would like Apple to draw their attention to the overall indignation, acknowledge and correct their mistakes. At WWDC 13, there were a lot of good and clever updates of the iOS functionality, but with this design, it tastes like a mix of martini and raw fish.
We all love Apple devices, and closely follow their contribution to the development of technology. Over the last 10 years, Apple have changed our lives for the better, they have simplified and beautified complex things. We hope much that this grandiose company will take right decisions, and will continue creating products still surprising and delighting us.
Some thoughts about New York City and our working place in LES
It's been almost a year since we moved to New York. This city has a mad energy. Everyone we’ve met here has a gift to create something new, following technology, while self-improving at the same time. We are the same; we don’t stop at what we’ve achieved, and only move forward. We are sure that New York gives us force and constant inspiration.
The search for the office
For a while, we had worked at home, but a few months ago, after adding Edward to our team, we decided to move into an office. We wanted this to be an open space, with various, interesting start-ups and companies located there. In New York, there are a lot of these places, but we identified only 10 that were worthy of our attention. At first, we thought to seek an office in Brooklyn, close to home, but eventually continued our search in Manhattan. (We will tell you more about this in a future post.)
We finally chose Projective Space in the Lower East Side located at Allen and Grand Streets. Projective Space often hosts various events dedicated to IT, where famous start-ups and companies take part. This is great and allows us to easily meet new interesting people!
L.E.S.
Allen Street is in Lower Manhattan bordering Chinatown. The street is named after captain William Henry Allen, who commanded a Navy ship in the 1812 war. Here, the Williamsburg Bridge joins Manhattan to the Williamsburg borough in Brooklyn, where Edward lives.
There are many good restaurants, bars and coffee houses in the area. During the three months of our work, we have visited many places, and even drawn up a small list of places with tasty dishes.
