New year … and so many new tools to be happy about. This month’s list is teeming with fun options as well as things to help speed up or enhance your workflows and creativity. Here’s what’s new for designers. Dessix.io We’re kicking off 2026 with a new tool for designers that helps you plan and […]
New year … and so many new tools to be happy about. This month’s list is teeming with fun options as well as things to help speed up or enhance your workflows and creativity.
We’re kicking off 2026 with a new tool for designers that helps you plan and envision thought processes. Dessix.io is a “thinking space” for creators. Instead of wrestling with prompts, you build context visually, making AI an extension of your own thinking, so you know what the AI knows, and it grasps your goals. Ditch the black box, accelerate your creation, and finally, take control. Key features of the tool include dynamic organization of diverse information blocks, a focused presentation that limits visible elements to 5-7 items, and real-time adjustments to the information environment for more productive interactions.
The Design Systems Repo is a human-curated map of how AI is already reshaping design systems, based on manual research and real production systems. It includes official design systems with AI guidelines, concrete patterns, builders, automation, readings, and job signals. Built after reviewing 500+ systems, it is open source, machine-readable, and focused on real impact.
It’s hard to beat the perfect animated icon set. ItsHover is a great set of editable React components with simple, effective motion baked in. It works seamlessly with Next.js, Shadcn, and modern design styles.
Love fun interactions? Here’s another one in Wink-Cursor. It’s a tiny React component that replaces your cursor with a playful emoji that winks when users click. It is lightweight and customizable, has smooth animation, and works across all apps.
HueBuddy is a tool geared toward artists who mix colors. It takes the guesswork out of matching and mixing colors, giving you accurate paint mix suggestions, fast photo analysis, and a simple, elegant design. Here’s how it works: Upload or snap a reference photo, pick the color you like, HueBuddy tells you what paints to mix and the ratios.
Imajourn is an interactive simulation sandbox that brings the physics of waves and sound to life. Whether you are an artist, a physics enthusiast, or a meditator, Imajourn offers a mesmerizing playground of light, motion, and geometry. Imajourn has moved from an open-source web app (Numatics) to a fully functional Apple App Store app with a new name and branding, and many new features, including an interactive wave sim, chladni patterns and cymatics, audio reactivity, a 3D particle sim, and presets.
DaisyUI is a Tailwind CSS plugin that helps you write less code and build faster with component class names and styles. It uses semantic class names to speed up development. And you get cleaner, neater HTML as a result.
Launch Shots is a practical tool for creators putting things in the Apple App Store and Google Play. This tool lets you create quick, beautiful screenshots of your product with templates, real device frames, and powerful editing tools. You get 3 free downloads every month, and if you need more, there’s a credit-based plan starting at just $1.
CreatorKit is a tool that creates your AI clone that you can use in videos quickly. Everything looks super realistic, and you can create videos faster with less production time.
Jitter is like Figma for motion design: It makes it easy to create animations for your videos, websites or apps, all in the browser. It’s easy to use. Start with a Figma import and then use actions rather than keyframes to create animations. Then export and use in projects. This tool has a simple free plan and paid options for more robust usage.
Remix is a next-generation, full-stack web framework that lets you focus on the user interface and work back through web standards to deliver a fast, slick, and resilient user experience. It’s designed to be fast, thanks to nested routes and parallel data loading on the server, which sends a fully formed HTML document.
This API uses AI to cleanly remove people, objects, text, or background distractions while preserving image quality and realism. It is a one-call API that provides a simple input and gets a clean output. It works on complex scenes — people, shadows, and clutter.
FrickFrack is what happens when video editing and social media have a baby. Every video you create is automatically transformed into a retro GameBoy-style masterpiece: 256×256 pixels, a nostalgic 4-color green palette, and that unmistakable lo-fi aesthetic that defined a generation. By limiting resolution, color, and duration, FrickFrack forces you to think differently. Every frame matters. Every movement counts. Ready to create something beautifully imperfect?
No more searching for memes. Make your own with Memingo! Turn images into memes in a few taps. Pick a template (or your own photo) and let AI generate a caption. It’s available from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
This one is just for fun. Vanderwaals is an Android wallpaper app that uses AI to learn your style and creates wallpapers just for you. You can upload one style you like and get 100 similar options. Plus, it is all open source.
Every generation of designers seems to rediscover the same paradox: the more information we can display, the less anyone can process. The web is bursting with pixels that compete for…
When Figma first revolutionized collaborative design, it promised something that sounded irresistible: true consistency at scale. Design systems became the new religion, and Figma was its temple. Tokens, components, variants —…
There was a time when design meant making something—actually making something. You’d open Photoshop (or, if you’re older, Illustrator 9), throw ideas on the canvas, and wrestle with composition, hierarchy, rhythm,…
For most of design history, a brand has been a fixed thing — a logo, a color palette, a tagline, a style guide locked in a PDF somewhere. The goal…
Every December, design Twitter fills with lists of “hot trends” that sound like buzzwords generated by an algorithm: “AI-native ecosystems,” “metaverse-ready experiences,” “contextual design synergies.” But the truth is, 2026…
Somewhere between the Dribbble boom and the personal-brand gold rush, design became performance art. We stopped making and started marketing. The loudest designers weren’t necessarily the best — just the most consistent at…