Feature Updates
Lesson Planner Update
Customizing your lessons has never been easier
We're excited to introduce a new set of improvements in our lesson planning feature for teachers:
- Download lessons to printable PDF
- Edit lesson plans to personalize and adjust to your needs
- Add a focus area when creating your lesson
- Access a dedicated page for saved lessons to easily access previous work
Create a Landing Page That Performs Great
Landing pages vs. front pages
A typical front page or website in general includes a full navigation bar with tons of links throughout the page linking to other pages or pieces of content. A good landing page should only have one link, or multiple links that all point to the same thing. Having one CTA on your landing page increases conversions because there’s less distraction—fewer equally appealing options to prompt your users into leaving your landing page.
Your brand’s front page has totally different goals. It should show off your brand’s personality, let people explore different features, find blogs and support articles, or even apply for a job. But they won’t necessarily purchase your product from the front page. And that’s why we need landing pages.
How Can Designers Prepare for the Future?
What does automation mean for designers?
It's hard to work on a product team that hasn’t automated some part of their workflow in the name of productivity. If machines can take care of the repeatable tasks and heavy lifting, designers can focus on doing more meaningful work. But how does this affect the way we use the work being created by machines?
Josh Clark, founder of design studio Big Medium, provoked the audience with this very question during his talk, ‘A.I. is your New Design Material’. Some of the most impressive advancements in recent technology are things like facial recognition, predictive text, and image search, all powered by machine learning. But it's important to remember—all of these technologies are still built on code. The upside is less room for error. No real emotions, expectations, or feelings get in the way of the job it was designed to do.
Building a Navigation Component with Variables
Starting at the atomic level
Framer allows you to create fully interactive and animated components, and even allows you to nest components within other components. We’re building a navigation bar component for a website that will contain two different kinds of nested components, with their own unique interactions. Our project will contain a Navigation bar that contains various nested components, namely five Nav items and one Shopping cart component. The design of our nested components, the nav list item and the shopping cart, will impact how we design our navigation bar. For this reason, an optimal workflow includes starting with the 'deepest' nested component and building up from there.
How to Create an Effective Design Portfolio
Types of design portfolios
Depending on the type of design work that you do, there are different portfolio formats that will be best suited for your needs. A design portfolio can be digital in the form of a website, slideshow, or PDF but it can also be analog in the form of a print book or poster.