Welcome to issue 34 of 🔥 Lit Design! I stumbled upon a bunch of interesting products and articles through the week. I’m curating the best of the past week every Monday. Enjoy!
Interesting Apps and Services
Choosy - I use Safari as my default browser and Brave for Google related apps like Documents, Sheets, Meetup etc. And there are many times where I don’t want to open a link in Safari by default. Thats where ‘Choosy’ comes handy and allows you to choose where you want to open the link. You can even choose default behaviour. Pretty nifty
Widgetly - If you liked Widgetsmith, you will like Widgetly as well. Gives greater control on styling your widgets and matching the colors to your iOS14 theme.
Filter Coffee - My favourite new Substack subscription by Tanvi. One - its called Filter Coffee, two - curates the best news, three - GIF game on point. Insta subscribe.
Interesting links / reads
A Rant Against Pretty App Designs - by Milkos Philips
Superficial app designs that follow the latest fads and blatantly ignore basic usability conventions, UX best practices, and fundamental principles of interaction design would most likely fail in the real world! Luckily, they usually don’t go beyond the generally ridiculous, self-parading fantasyland on Dribbble and Behance.
It’s a good read. What looks amazing on design with all the interactions and movement and amazing colors might not be scalable or implementable at all. Requires you to know the nuances of the platform and take a good call when you push design boundaries.
To become Invincible at Life : Create your own T - Jinay Savla
In today’s world, we are obsessed with passion. We want to do something that drives us, that makes us get up in the morning and jump out of the bed. We want to be inspired and in the process inspire others too. In a nutshell, we want to feel and live the way Steve Jobs did or MS Dhoni does or Roger Federer does or Elon Musk does.
So what stops you or me to achieving that epitome of peak performance? The invariable question of ‘How’ to reach there?
9 Common Traits In The Lives Of Stoic Leaders - by Stephen Hanselman
Stoic ethics were grounded in rejecting the valuing of external things and focusing instead on valuing our reason and choices in the pursuit of virtue (or human excellence) alone.
Good guiding principles
This look interesting
Ring Always Home Cam - a new way to look after the home and provide multiple viewpoints with one device. This autonomous indoor security camera flies your chosen, personalized paths so that you can easily check in on your home for peace of mind—like whether someone left a window open or forgot to turn the stove off. Check out the video here
Natural.ai - They call themselves the everything app. With their generative interface, you can book flight tickets, search for movies, book a cab, order food, everything - from the same interface. Slick website as well
A thing I made
Limitless - iOS 14 Icons - A simple weekend project that started with 24 icons to customise my homescreen just blew up and here I am at 168+ icons and counting. Absolutely love what people are doing for their unique aesthetic homescreen layouts.
You can get a base pack or custom icons for yourself - here
Hope you enjoy reading 🔥 Lit Design. Trying out a new referral program powered by friends at Nodal, along with a couple of fun rewards. If you enjoy reading the newsletter, please refer your friends using the button below - all you need to do is generate a unique link for yourself and share it on Twitter, WhatsApp or any other social platform. You will also soon be able to see a leaderboard of all the people you invite and for the rewards:
3 referrals - Hustle poster & wallpapers
15 referrals - Exclusive Mobile Wallpapers Pack from GoLimitless
25 referrals - Tee from Design Minimal
Hey Sonaal, are you writing more issues for 2021? Really enjoyed your cool picks.