Agile Designers - New design coming soon!

We are working on a better design for Agile Designers:
- A sidebar give you a faster access to all the resources and features
- We've improved the design with a more clear, consistent and attractive layout

What do you think?

Any suggestions?

Agile Designers: 2 new amazing features!

We’ve just released 2 amazing new features:

1- Vote for new resources

Now, you decide which submitted resources are accepted on Agile Designers, by voting for it. If the resource get 5 votes, it’s accepted. Each resource get only 1 week to get 5 votes.. or to be rejected.

That’s a more transparent system, and it will make the submission process faster. We believe that a strict curation, and a picky selection of the best resources is the guarantee of a relevant directory.

We have tons of resources to discover. Vote now!

2- Create your Toolboxes

You can create your “Toolboxes”, your lists of favorite resources, and share it with the world, by tweeting it or sharing the Toolbox URL.

You can add your own comments for each resource, easily add resources… and if you are lazy and don’t add a comment, the resource description will be automatically used.

3 reasons to use Agile Designers

You are busy. You want to find the right resource in a snap—download it and use it instantly to complete your top-priority job!

There are thousands of great resources online. However, when you struggle to finish an urgent project, you have no time to waste browsing the web to find the perfect match…

How can Agile Designers help you find the best resources?

1 - It’s a visual directory

We, designers, are visual animals. Our memory is trained to remember visual elements: logos, color themes, layouts…

We were inspired by Zootool, the visual bookmarking service. We found that very often we don’t remember a resource’s name, but we do remember the website homepage or logo.

That’s why Agile Designers is based on screenshots that you scan faster than a textual list of links.

2- It’s a curated directory

It’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in an ocean of resources (especially the free ones). That’s why we are accepting only the best resources. Now you decide which resource are accepted by voting for it.

You, the designer, became the curator. You have the power to accept or refuse a submitted resource by voting for it.

The resources already accepted will be removed if they don’t have enough designers using it. For example, if after 2 months a resource only receives 1 vote, it will be removed.

To be efficient, our directory will stay lean; you don’t want to be overwhelmed by too many choices.

3 - It’s a ranked directory

We separate amazing resources from the inferior ones.

We built 2 tools to help sort resources:

•  An algorithm that calculates the resource popularity online, based on the traffic, the links to the resource, the tweets or Facebook “likes”, etc. This is an interesting clue about the resource quality. If tons of people tweet or link to a resource, it should be because it’s is an exceptional one.But it’s not always reliable… There are some resources that everybody talks about, but nobody uses.
•  That’s why we built a voting system that allows you to push for the best resources. That’s the most reliable system. We can clearly see the winning resources: Subtle Patterns, The Noun Project, Smashing Magazine, etc.

(Disclaimer: I give away and sell my own useful Resources for Designers :-)

Next steps?

Our goal is ambitious: make Agile Designers the first step of your resource search. We will strive to offer you all the best resources listed, make it easy to find and sort them and in the most meaningful way.

In the next weeks we will improve Agile Designers:

Done - You will become the moderator—voting on accepting or refusing submitted resources.

Done - You will be able to subscribe to a “Top Resources” newsletter. Each week you will receive the top 5 resources freshly added to Agile Designers.

Done - You will be able to create different toolboxes of resources, comment on each resource and share it. So as to create toolboxes like “Top resources for a Web Design Workflow” or “business I use everyday”…

Done - The submission process will be faster and easier with automatic screenshots of websites submitted. We know how busy you are! This process will guarantee a constant flow of great resources submitted.

And more to come… Any ideas to improve Agile Designers?

How can you help?

If you want to help us build the best resources directory:

• You can give us a feedback and propose ideas
• You can add new resources
• You can tell your friends or co-workers about it. The more users we have, the more reliable the ranking system is. You can tweet about us, ‘Like’us on Facebook, or +1 us with Google+.
• You can Vote for your favorite resources. Your vote helps separate the best resources from the average ones
• If you are a blogger and want to know more, I will be happy to answer your questions.Write me at vincent.lemoign@gmail.com, or tweet me at @webalys

Thanks!


A huge thanks to my great friend Mitchell Gould, the smart and passionate developer who coded Agile Designers, based on Ruby on Rails and a ton of gems with cryptic names. ;-) This could not have been done without you, Mitchell!

A huge thanks to our small, but growing, community of Designers, which submit us great resources!

Vectorian V2 Released - Creating Vintage Designs Is Now Easier Than Ever

I'm pleased and excited to announce the release of a totally revamped version of the Vectorian Vintage Pack:   The V2 Vintage Pack.

Check the new Vintage Packs on the vectorian website

A special “Thank You” goes out to all the designers who bought the original Vintage Vector Pack and my other product, The Minicons.  It was your excellent feedback which lead me to release a new and improved version.

The revamp started when a customer noticed some of the frame borders for Illustrator had little gaps between the borders and corners (see examples below). Being a perfectionist myself I knew I could clean these imperfections up.  That lead me to Brian Fuelleman, an Illustrator expert and a Vintage Vectors addict just like me.

Brian volunteered to improve the frame borders.  He did an amazing job!  He checked each one, fixed problems, added corners, improving a lot of aspects.  In addition he gave me a lot of good advice which lead to improvements and a higher level of excellence in other areas of my pack.
When Brian finished his work I thought it would take just a few more days to complete the updates, polish up some other details and ship the new version.

Boy was I wrong!

My work was just beginning.  It took me weeks to achieve this new version.
Why? As I made improvements in every aspect of this pack I saw the opportunity to add more and more stuff and add more value to the pack.

So what's new you may be asking...

See the new features 

Gap problems fixed

Corners added to every border brushes

265 new frame borders

New smart borders

70 new Vintage illustrations

New samples for inspiration

Check this list of improvements:

• All previous borders have been improved and are now easier to use (Thanks Brian!)
• All borders now have corners and can be used on a square or rectangular shape.
• 235 NEW Vector Frame Borders have been added.
• ”Smart Borders” have been added.  They are a new kind of border for more complex border designs.  They are based on the Illustrator's appearance panel possibilities.
• 70 NEW high quality Vintage Vector illustrations have been added.
• All the files have been reorganized to make recall and access easier.
• All ornaments and borders have been numbered to make it easier for designers to share with customers and designers.
• Catalogs in PDF for each main part: ornaments, borders, illustrations.  They are in A4 dimension, so you can print it and have a better way to browse it, get inspired and share.
• Improved the samples provided.  Samples are important to show the way to use the ornaments and to inspire you.  Almost all are historically accurate and picked from genuine Type Foundry catalogs.
• More samples!  I wanted to show the endless possibilities of the Pack for packaging, stationary and wedding invitations.  By the way, I'm sure you can do better than me, so if you created great designs with the Vectorian Pack, please mail it to me at vincent@webalys.com
• An improved manual, to be sure that you use the pack at 100% of it's possibilities.

Logo Design + WebDesign : Firebots

A minimalist but friendly style for the french company Firebots.

Website redesign : Vectorian

I was bored of this Vintage woody design. I wanted to show that these decorative ornaments can be useful not only to create Vintage design, but also for any modern creation.

So I radically changed the design for a modern, clear and slick style.

Also i saved some real estate on the page with the excellent and simple Slideshow plugin for JQuery : Slides

Last read: Designing Interface

"Anyone who’s serious about designing interfaces should have this book on their shelf for reference. It’s the most comprehensive cross-platform examination of common interface patterns anywhere."
Dan Saffer

I agree. Absolutely recommended to learn, or review, the most efficient design patterns.
A must have for web designers, and available in Kindle edition (I would prefer a PDF version though...)

Designing Interface Book website

Last read : Reality is broken

This book changed my vision of design, as 37Signals changed my vision of business some years ago with their book Getting Real.

“Reality Is Broken is the most eye-opening book I read this year. With awe-inspiring expertise, clarity of thought, and engrossing writing style, Jane McGonigal cleanly exploded every misconception I’ve ever had about games and gaming. If you thought that games are for kids, that games are squandered time, or that games are dangerously isolating, addictive, unproductive, and escapist, you are in for a giant surprise!”
Sonja Lyubomirsky

After reading it, I'm convinced that gamification mechanisms will be an important part of application/website design in the next years.

Learn more on the official Book website

New product launched : Vectorian

I've just launched a new personnal business : Vectorian

I spent weeks creating this new downloadable product providing hundreds of high quality ornaments.

I wanted a Vintage appearance, so I designed a layout inspired by old nineteenth century advertising : centered title, wood background, old paper poster...

Design for Magento e-commerce: Pullin Shop

I worked with Hitomi Studio, an e-commerce and Magento development expert, to polishing the design of the Pullin Shop.

We paid attention to every details to improve the conversion rate, and worked on some often overlooked page, like the 404 page or the search results.