Jayhan Loves Design & Japan - Design blog by Jayhan Sim, a designer from KL, Malaysia who loves Japan!

Web design trend: bento box

19 Mar 23

While browsing through good web designs recently on Twitter or via web design galleries, I noticed a trend of using content blocks in variable size and design to form an interesting bento box style design. It’s usually designed in a grid, for example 3×3, 4×4 or other configurations, and then making it visually interesting by being creative with the block sizes while conforming with the underlying grid configuration.

In this post, I will be talking about how the trend got started, then show some creative examples of applying the bento box content UI in web design. Lets get into it.

Q&A with SMU students on Digital Product Design & Solution

11 Mar 23

. Product Design

Recently I have the honour to share my experience working as a product designer with the SMU students online over the Zoom call with my product manager. As far as I can remember, this was my first time sharing with an audience, so I was pretty stoked and nervous at the same time.

It was a short 30 minutes Q&A session with three questions submitted by the students before the sharing session, and my product manager and I took turn to answer those three questions from the product management and design point of view respectively. In this post, I will share my thoughts to the three questions.

Should you name your layers?

19 Feb 23

. Art & Design

Cover image of should you name your layers? article

Recently on the design Twitter-sphere, there was a viral conversation over designers should organise and name the layers in Figma. In the original tweet, the Tweeter thinks that designers who organises the artwork in Figma without proper layer management are inexperienced and has no own style or ways of doing things, and he has no problems calling them out for sloppy design files. In my opinion, the tweet was certainly carried slight unfriendly tone.

When I first saw the tweet, it definitely captured my attention and many others. It became wildly discussed with two obvious camps: one that supports and one that against, though on the designers that I’m following, more of them think that designers shouldn’t spend their precious time on naming the layers.

8 excellent use of gradient in web designs and learn how to create it

06 Feb 23

. Inspiration, Web Design

Recently while browsing through some good web design, I’ve been seeing a noticeable trend of using gradient in the design application. Gradient is essentially a gradation of two colours or more to create the effect of one colour fading into another. It can be used as a way to convey light source, to unflatten the design or to bring out the sense of space; it also can be used to bring more colours to brighten up the design.

During the skeuomorphic dominant design era, designers may use it more on the UI elements like buttons. In the modern web design, we can attribute the use of smooth gradient to Stripe, and Linear for the usage of gradient in dark web design. In this article I’ll show you some more examples of using gradient in web design.

Short thoughts on “How to Win Friends and Influence People” book

24 Jan 23

. Book

Book cover of 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'

When I was browsing for books to read at the end of last year, I often saw many recommended “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. The title arouses my interest and I was really curious and eager to learn if there are any tips that I can learn from. So I went to a big bookstore while travelling back in hometown in Kuala Lumpur and bought the book.

I bought the pocket size version and the book was really easy to read with many examples and i enjoyed reading it thoroughly. The tips on winning friends and influence people are practical and real. There are two main takeaways that I have from the book.

14 inspirational web design galleries for 2023

18 Jan 23

. Inspiration, Web Design

It’s new year and let’s start it right with a refreshing mind and take a look at what are the great designs out there, done by creative designers with modern tools. As a designer myself, I always hunger for good designs that can ignite that spark for my design work. In this article, I will be sharing 12 web design galleries that I found recently and would like to share with you.

In the examples, you’ll find a mixture of galleries that showcase nice landing pages, the technology, the motion and the styles used, but also galleries of for UX focus that demonstrate user flows and jobs to be done. Without further ado, let’s jump right in!

A lot has happened in this 6 years

04 Dec 21

. General

Minna-san, ohisashiburi desu. It’s been a while since I last wrote my article. 6 years ago I was 30 years old, I made many big change and decisions to y life including buying my own car, trying to start a new company and then the biggest change is to move to Singapore at the end of 2015. Moving to Singapore opened a new chapter in my life, I’m constantly learning and gaining new experience. Hence the interest in writing has been slowly fading out.

During this 6 years, I continue working as a designer, but for financial institution. Singapore is one of the top financial and tech hub in Southeast Asia, I felt the tremendous opportunity to learn and to grow myself as a designer. I also started to be more active outdoor by having weekly runs and cyclings. I have ran several marathons including one in Osaka in 2018.

8 Product Hunt-ish web design community that worth visiting

08 Jul 15

. Web Design

Product Hunt for Web Design

Product Hunt is a famous website that allows users to submit new startups and services and then gain exposure plus get upvoted and discussed by anyone if they find it interesting. With the uprising of the Product Hunt’s popularity, many Product Hunt-ish websites are born, cater to different subjects and theme. We call this “Product Hunt for X”.

Well there is no exception to design world. Here I collected 8 Product Hunt style web/mobile design community that covers every topics related from visual design, user experience, product designs, tutorial to development. Continue reading to find out these 8 vibrant and useful websites.

Find the best similar fonts with Font Matcherator

03 Jul 15

. Typography

Font Matcherator

When comes to finding the font name of the font that we came across on designs or images, usually What The Font by MyFonts would be the best tool to use. And now we have another new tool that can do similar thing, and that is the Font Matcherator from FontSpring.

The function is pretty much similar: you upload an image with the font you want to find out, then Font Matcherator will do their best to find the fonts from their font database that have the closest match to the font. Continue reading

Beautiful Monogram Logo Designs

29 Jun 15

. Art & Design

monogram

When launching a brand you need to make sure that you make your mark with the logo that you choose. It says a lot about the message that you are trying to get across and it’s quite common for people to use monogramed logos to make things look more personal.

They aren’t exactly modern they have been about since ancient Greece, but they really started to become popular in the late 19th century. They don’t need to be a person’s initials which is what some people think, they could be any letters (usually 2) that will create an acronym that you will remember.

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