Gilli.is
Portfolio and blog of Gilli Sigurdsson
Latest posts
You can’t tell AI to fix User Experience (yet)
There has been a dramatic shift in the market, which I as a consultant have definitely personally felt. Hiring contractors is almost a thing of the past, which is understandable, you can get so far with the help of AI now that you might think “why do I need a UX/UI Designer?”. And the oversupply of applicants for every single job seems to be lowering prices and also favoring just hiring someone…
My new product, meet Crops
I've just launched Crops in Early Access. If you're in the marketing or creative space and need a digital asset management tool, definitely check it out!
Great designers don't need to know anything about your industry
I keep seeing job ads looking for some dream designer who has experience and knowledge of their particular niche and think that their perfect designer soulmate is out there somewhere. The designer soulmate is out there, but they probably have no experience in your field. A good design relationship is about people, not products, fields, or niches. (image: bramley-parker-1830-1600.jpg) ## A good…
JPMorganChase
Simplifying complex finances
Ella
(image: 001-desktop-hd-copy-19-2x.png) (image: 002-desktop-hd-copy-20-2x.png) (image: 003-desktop-hd-copy-21-2x.png) (image: 004-desktop-hd-copy-22-2x.png) (image: 005-desktop-hd-copy-23-2x.png) (image: 006-desktop-hd-copy-20-1-2x.png) (image: 007-desktop-hd-copy-24-2x.png) (image: 008-desktop-hd-copy-25-2x.png) (image: 009-desktop-hd-copy-26-2x.png) (image: 010-desktop-hd-copy-27-2x.png) (image:…
Baseline
Brand design made simple
103 Bits of Advice
I stumbled upon this excellent collection of advice on things the writer wished he knew when he was young. The experience and mistakes of the writer really shine through his tips. I only know because I've made a lot of those mistakes myself, which gives me confidence in the rest of the advice.
Baseline Embed Test
I've added a feature to embed brand guides from my personal project, (link: https://baseline.is text: Baseline), and wanted to test it out here on a typical blog, with width constraints and other limitations. Here it is:
Notifications are out of control
It seems that notifications these days have lost their meaning. Companies do not seem to respect people's time and constantly want to shove their "content" down their throats. It amazes me how far they go to draw people's attention to them at all times. This post was born after waging several notification-wars with various apps I use. (image: alas-mercy-1600-1.jpg) ## Twitter Twitter seems to…
Baseline soft launch
I've quietly launched my new product, Baseline. Still testing things out so I haven't made much noise about it yet.
The three year rule: How to stay motivated
A nice article on how to stay motivated and let go of the expectation of instant feedback. Great things take time.
Norde Source
An SVG Icon manager
Why designing for open source can be so difficult
After being involved with design and open source projects for many years, I've noticed a few common reasons why designing for open source projects can be very difficult. Open source projects (especially FOSS) face a lot of issues that more conventional projects don't because they lack a clear business model, the structure, and the incentives that for-profit proprietary projects have. (image:…
Flex
Balance Transfers
Native image lazy loading
This feature has been longed after for a long time, by me at least. Until now you needed to use some library if you want to lazy load your images in all browsers, and you still do if you want to to work in all browsers. However you can start using lazy loading for images , as well as iframes actually, if you don't mind it only [working in a few…
Flex Partner UI
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Direct flights to Iceland
I couldn't find any list of cities that offer direct flights to Iceland, so I decided to make my own and share it. Here is what I found. ## Europe ### Paris Iceland Air ### Amsterdam Iceland Air ### Hamburg German wings
Autorefi
Automotive refinancing
A logo I made got featured
It's always a nice feeling to see your work get shared. I just noticed some traffic to my website coming from a a little logo inspiration website featuring a little logo I made for a client. I don't normally do much logo work but once in a while a client twists my arm and this one was the result of one of those cases.
How to get better at design
I recently answered a post on (link: https://www.indiehackers.com text:Indiehackers.com ) about how non-design founders (Such as developers and business people) can get better at design. That's something I always try to help my clients do so that they can make better decisions. This allows us to work better together and help them become more self-sufficient. After all my job is to help them…
Blobmaker
I stumbled across this cute little blobmaker tool in my RSS feed today. It's a clever little app that helps you create blobs that you download as SVGs. This solves a small problem but it can be surprisingly frustrating to create blobs like that manually so I bet somebody created this to scratch their own itch.
Contraste app
I just stumbled upon this nifty little app that sits on your desktop and let's you quickly and easily test text contrast.
Web design museum
I just stumbled across the web design museum. I remember a lot of them but somehow they always looked better in my memory. Who knows, maybe one day one of my designs will be there! :)
Nostalgic
Personally vetted tours in Iceland
Responsive tables using CSS Grid Layout
Tables can be a big problem on mobile devices. [There are a number of articles](https://css-tricks.com/responsive-data-tables/) covering the subject of how to make them responsive all with their own drawbacks. I realised recently that the new CSS Grid Layout could be used to solve this and make them look like a lot of mobile apps choose to display data like that. At least for tables that are not…
Using HSL for web development
Sara Soueidan goes into detail on how using HSL instead of HEX or RGB simplifies creating matching color sets and how powerful HSL can be.
Designers and their portfolios
I’ve been checking out a lot of designers portfolios lately out of curiosity to see what others are doing and how they present themselves. I decided to write small reviews on some of them and share with you. ## [Laura Kalbag](https://laurakalbag.com/) I like that she includes a bit about her in the footer rather than links. This is something I started doing on specific pages myself. She plays with…
Nice guide for using SVG on the web
Just came across this while searching the web regarding some SVG issue I was having. It's a nice reference guide to using SVG on the web. I had forgotten that you could use the ` ` element for SVGs still be able to manipulate it with CSS and javascript.
Inspiration: Emergence
I'm genuinely inspired and amazed by the design of this website for this investment fund. The portraits, the colors, the layout, everything, simply amazing.
Webmentions
Sounds like webmentions could possibly enable us to take back and own our identity a bit more on the internet.
Landing pages and Hugo
A client of mine came to me with a problem. They have multiple partners that use my clients product for their customers and each of those partners needs a landing page to promote and onboard their users. My client was creating those landing pages by copy-pasting some html code and editing everything manually. Which was obviously getting overwhelming for them since their partners kept growing and…
FOSDEM Open Source Design videos are online
The FOSDEM Open Source Design videos are online. The presentation is a bit rough but if you have any interest in design and open source software I recommend checking them out.
Japan hotel
My wife and I have been thinking about visiting Japan and this interesting hotel just popped up in my RSS feed.
Theraputic motorcycle repair videos
Maybe it's just me but I find it very relaxing and theraputic to watch someone fix something. I also like fixing things myself and have a great interest in motorcycles. This guy I found on Youtube has a great collection of videos where he is fixing up old bikes and cars. I recommend checking out this playlist of his where he is bringing a 1971 Honda CB 350 back to life.
Do's and don'ts for presentation and critique
*Design presentation can be a very delicate process, especially the initial presentations for a new project. If handled incorrectly it can cause a lot of stress for both sides, feelings can get hurt, bad morale can build and lack of progress overall.* *I've compiled several do's and don'ts that I have found helped a lot to improve this process in my career. I will continue to refine this document…
Syncthing
Sync data directly between your devices
Selecting the last two elements with CSS
`nth-child()` is a very handy pseudo-selector, but sometimes you need to approach things from the other end, starting from the last item. That's where `nth-last-child` comes to the rescue. `nth-last-child` works pretty much the same way as `nth-child` does except it runs in relation to the last-child. For instance `nth-last-child(odd)` selects every odd number starting from the very last number…
Creative energy
Creative energy is what you use when you are working on things that require you to use your brain to solve various tasks and problems. If you deplete your creative energy you burn out. Here are some of the things I try to have in mind to keep my creative energy up. ## Rest Creativity cannot be force, contradictory to what a lot of managers like to believe. Working 16 hours instead of 8 does not…
Old freelance work 2010-2013
I wanted to highlight some old work I did when I was freelancing between the years 2010 and 2013. I thought they deserved a home here since I am retiring my old portfolio and will be focusing on writing case-studies rather than image only portfolio. I feel that just putting images of work doesn't say much about my skills or the work and thought that went into making it. So this one last time I…
Sarpurinn
TV playback app for iOS and Android
remoteStorage
Choose to own your storage location
RÚV
A major public broadcaster
My problem with responsive images
Currently responsive images work by checking the window width and giving you the corresponding image based on that width. Which is fine when you have an image that fills out the widest width possible, like those big hero images, but that's not always the case. In my experience I often need a larger image when the window size is smaller. For example if you have four images side by side across the…
Out-of-stock badge for Drupal Commerce
***In this tutorial I will show how to create an out of stock badge for Drupal Commerce (Or Commerce Kickstart to be specific) using a simple rule, the add to cart form and some CSS. If you are currently using the add to cart form in the product list this tutorial might not work for you.*** (image: sold-out-1.jpg alt:Sold out) I remember setting up a clothing store using Ubercart a couple of years…
SimplyCredit
When the guys at SimplyCredit first approached me I thought“ Why would anyone need help paying their credit cards?”. Because over here in Iceland it is very unusual to have more than one credit card. Let alone a credit card issued by something other than a bank. Many even go for a prepaid credit card that they have to transfer money to, before purchasing what they want, because they are afraid of…