Toptal Design Expert
Create Standout Social Media Graphics That Drive Engagement
Are users scrolling past your brand’s social media images? Try these graphic design techniques to create expert visuals that grab attention on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and beyond.
Micah Bowers
Micah is a digital designer who has worked with clients such as Google, Deloitte, and Autodesk. He is also the Managing Editor of Toptal’s Design and Technical Content. His design expertise has been featured in Fast Company, TNW, and other notable publications.
Better UX Writing: 3 Effective Strategies for a Seamless User Experience
UX writing should strike the right tone and be empathetic and persuasive. Create a frictionless user experience with these three best practices.
Kate Margolis
Kate is a digital product designer and UI/UX consultant who specializes in user-centered design, UX writing, and user research. She has partnered with companies such as Hertz, Jaguar Land Rover, and the dating app Thursday.
Design Dilemma: Balancing Aesthetics and Functionality
Ideally, aesthetics and functionality would merge seamlessly in digital design, but that isn’t always the case. Here, we discuss when to prioritize one or the other for the optimal user experience.
Merehan Elamrosy
Merehan is a product designer who crafts functional and visually appealing user interfaces for education, management, health, transportation, SaaS, and e-commerce companies. She has led design workshops for multiple EU-funded projects and has given design thinking lectures at leading European universities.
Can Designers Make the Metaverse Less Awkward?
UX designer Pam Nicholls has created video games and augmented reality experiences for companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and DreamWorks Animation. Here she explores designing for the metaverse and reveals innovative ways to make the user experience more intuitive and accessible.
Pam Nicholls
Pam is a UX designer who specializes in video games, augmented reality, SaaS, and web applications. She has worked on projects for high-profile clients such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, DreamWorks Animation, Scrabble, the NBA, and the NHL.
4 Keys to Remarkable Brand Storytelling
Storytelling is a compelling way to communicate brand value—but only if you’re telling stories that resonate with your audience. Find out how to craft authentic brand stories that captivate customers and build lasting loyalty.
Dayo Tinkerman
Dayo is a senior designer who creates engaging digital products for organizations like Guinness World Records and American University Washington College of Law. He specializes in uniting consumer insights, user research, and brand storytelling for fintech, healthcare, e-commerce, and real estate clients.
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You Be You: Creating Content for the Gen Z Design Aesthetic
Today’s young adults have enormous buying power, but they’re choosy shoppers with particular tastes. Understanding what drives their purchasing decisions can help you design content that resonates with Gen Z.
Jorge Gonzalez Miksi
Jorge is a senior designer and art director with expertise in graphics and animation. He has worked for several brand design agencies and created social content for numerous companies, including the luxury skin care brand Panachea. He holds an MFA in animation from the University of Edinburgh.
Supporting Diverse Needs: A Rebranding Success Story
Brand designer Bari Keenam shares how he turned a tricky logo redesign into a brand overhaul that helped his client establish an emotional connection with its customers.
Bariledum Keenam
Bari is a brand designer with a user-centric approach to brand ideation. With a background in engineering and marketing, he excels at problem-solving and brings diverse perspectives to brand creation. Bari teaches typography and UX design at the Lagos Engineering Career Expo and the Àṣà Coterie design community.
For Your Health: 5 Tips and Strategies for Wellness Branding
The health and wellness industry is booming, creating opportunity—and a competitive market. Wellness businesses can apply these branding best practices to stand out and connect with customers.
Pilar Rios Niño
Pilar is a UX/UI designer and illustrator with deep expertise building brand design and strategy for yoga, health food, and fitness companies. She holds a postgraduate degree in UX/UI design and bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and advertising and public relations.
Designing GitHub’s Octoverse: A Data Visualization Case Study
Designer Gemma Busquets shares how she created a responsive website and 20+ engaging charts and graphs for the software development platform’s annual report.
Gemma Busquets
Gemma is a designer and creative director with over 15 years of experience in UX, data visualization, and branding. She has taught data visualization for 7+ years at the university level and has directed a master’s degree program on the subject. Gemma’s portfolio includes collaborations with GitHub, Coca-Cola, Nike, Visa, and Seat.
Keep It Tasteful: A Guide to Food App Design
The pandemic has intensified the demand for online food ordering, and businesses are rushing to meet the need. With food apps increasing in popularity, providing an exceptional user experience is critical.
Pili Fernandez Davila
Pili is a UX, UI, and product designer who has led teams at Clearco and Compass Digital Labs. At Compass, she worked on the Thrive app, which facilitates ordering from cafes in office buildings. She is an Associate Professor of Brand Design at Universidad Anáhuac in Huixquilucan, Mexico.
Apple Arcade’s Lumen: A Promotional Art and Logo Case Study
In this logo case study, we explore how embracing skeuomorphic design and polishing 3D images in Photoshop helped one Toptal designer create standout marketing assets for the hit Apple Arcade game Lumen.
Micah Bowers
Micah is a digital designer who has worked with clients such as Google, Deloitte, and Autodesk. He is also the Lead Editor of Toptal’s Design Blog, and his design expertise has been featured in Fast Company, TNW, and other notable publications.
Millennial Branding for a Boomer Product: A Branding Case Study
Millennials are tough customers, especially for products they associate with their parents’ lifestyles. This branding case study shows how an old-school item can appeal to Generation Y in an authentic way.
Beatriz Garcia de Prado
Beatriz is a designer and art director with extensive experience in digital product design and leading global design teams. She specializes in leveraging user personas, customer journeys, and user story mapping to create products that resonate emotionally.
The Widening Impact of the Motion Design Industry
What does the motion design industry encompass, how does motion design impact business, and what problems are motion designers uniquely equipped to solve?
Micah Bowers
Micah Bowers is a designer and writer whose work has been featured in Fast Company, TNW, and other notable publications. He is a Lead Editor at Toptal.
Showcase Your Skills: How to Make a Portfolio
Many designers grapple with how to create the perfect portfolio. By following best practices and the advice of industry professionals, they can craft portfolios that make their skills shine.
Miklos Philips
Miklos is a design leader, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.
The Power of Structure: A Guide to Design System Models
Through trial and error, the makers of design systems have come to view their work as living products, not static documents. What can be learned from the design system models of large organizations?
Alejandro Velasco
Alejandro is a seasoned digital designer who specializes in helping startups build brand identities through user interfaces.
Design a Better Homepage With the StoryBrand Framework
Adhering to the StoryBrand framework to create a homepage with a compelling narrative that focuses on the customer’s needs is one of the best ways to build trust with website visitors.
Anak Garcia
Anak is a UX specialist who has been helping businesses grow for more than a decade by creating intuitive user-centric digital projects.
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