I personally like the super minimal color palette and type with the use of motion to bring it alive BUT I don't get who this is for or how they'll use motion in reality. The motion graphics are fun but don't seem to fit into anything outside of this landing page.

Their copy says 'we're not Silicon Valley', but everything else says the opposite. This may not be accurate, but to me, Squarespace is for folks outside of the NYC and Silicon Valley tech ecosystems that have businesses to run and don't want to worry about managing a website. Trying to connect so deeply to a single city (whether it does that successfully or not) seems counterproductive.

This feels like Squarespace is trying to market to Squarespace, not their actual customers.

That's an interesting thought and could definitely be the case, especially considering they hired an outside agency for the original redesign but still need to make it their own.

It also seems like there are two competing approaches right now though, rather than a well-executed, more subtle version of the redesign.

Yeah, it's not at all surprising that it's being implemented more subtly.

There's a balance that has to be made between analytics-driven and intuition-driven approaches, but ideally that is a company-wide conversation rather than competing teams with different ideas. It almost becomes more about internal communication rather than the actual external branding.

Warning, novel incoming...

This is definitely something I've been thinking about lately. It's not perfect, but here's my system:

• Keep completely separate business and personal checking, savings, and credit cards
• All deductible business expenses go on my business credit card. All non-deductible business expenses go on my personal credit card.
• All expenses are auto-imported into my personal finance app, so I have a good idea of what I'm spending every month
• Automatically put 30% into a business savings account for taxes (varies by state/country)
• Keep ~20% in my business checking depending on how far subscriptions and other expenses are budgeted out
• Transfer the rest to my personal account (this then gets allocated to personal monthly expenses, paying off student loans, saving for travel, etc. )
• I like having ~2 months of living expenses in an emergency fund, but this greatly depends on your income, expenses, risk tolerance, etc.

I don't currently pay my self a monthly or bi-weekly paycheck, but it's something that is probably a good idea.

Client-wise, I'm more concerned about the initial scope/budget rather than steady ongoing work. If you find good clients and do good work, they will likely turn into longer-term projects anyway. Potentially trading higher income work for more steady work means you lose the time you could dedicate to more profitable projects or working on the business.

My biggest challenge right now is figuring out when to invest in my business (software, hiring a CPA, courses, etc.) vs. putting towards personal debt vs. building a larger emergency fund, etc. I have a clear picture of my personal and business finances, but I'm not sure of the best way they should interact.

The part where we talk about software, apps, etc.:

I'm using YNAB to track my personal and business income/expenses. It took a little while to get set up, but it now gives me a pretty good picture of my overall finances.

and.co is what I use for invoicing and business expense tracking. This is what I reference when doing my taxes even though YNAB is easier to use day-to-day.

The course uses InVision Studio, but it's definitely as much about motion design in general as it is about the software.

Hi Designer News! I'm excited to announce that the user interface animation course I've been working on for the past few months is officially live!

Over the past few years, more of my projects have had some element of motion in them. Meaningful Motion UI is basically what I wish I had when I started integrating motion and animation into my projects.

My first motion design project was completely prototyped in the browser! While that was definitely a valuable experience, there are so many more tools out there today that let us iterate quickly through motion design. The course uses InVision Studio in particular, but it's relevant to whatever tool you're using. It covers the tools and features within Studio, but it also discusses the fundamental principles of motion design.

It covers parallax, loading states, page transitions, and there's even a few bonuses about using motion in design systems.

I hope it's useful to anyone looking to improve their motion design skills or understand of their tools, and I'm open to any feedback on how it can be improved!

My opinion on sites like this probably runs counter to a lot of the common thinking. This is also from the perspective of never having used Fiverr, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I don't think these platforms are that bad. Every industry has aspects of it that are completely commoditized, and it forces people that do want to differentiate their services to think more critically about the value their providing.

Everyone talks about value-based pricing, but the other side of that is a small business that is just getting started and may not need or want a custom logo and full brand system. They're getting proportionally less 'value' out of something like that, so should be expected to pay proportionally less. I think there is a need for $5 logos and high-end design services, and one doesn't necessarily devalue the other.

Also, a good way to learn your tools (not necessarily to learn 'design') is to do a looot of work. Doing work on these platforms probably isn't going to help you improve your critical 'design thinking', but it will definitely help you grow with managing client relationships and understanding the more tactical aspects of design.

I do think there are definitely some issues around intentionally driving down prices in order to scale and other practices like that, but I don't know if that is relevant to Fiverr at all.

Every article I see about Upwork/Fiverr/etc. basically says 'it devalues my work!!!', but I'd love to see a more nuanced argument from that perspective.

RE: 'Auto Link Layers' not appearing in the current build... It's a confirmed bug that they're aware of, but for now you can hide the inspector (Command+Option+2) to view it.

I tried pretty much all the GIF creator tools, and GIF Brewery is what I finally settled on. It is a good balance of quick/easy while still being able to tweak settings, resolution, etc. I still put it through Photoshop to get the best quality/size tradeoffs and create the final asset, but that might be overkill.

This is awesome! Love the photography and color palette.

Any combination of great design and vegetarian food definitely speaks to me! Where's the email field so I can be notified of new recipes?