Toptal Design Blog

The Toptal Design Blog is a hub for advanced design studies by professional designers in the Toptal network on all facets of digital design, ranging from detailed design tutorials to in-depth coverage of new design trends, techniques, and technologies.

authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

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authors are vetted experts in their fields and write on topics in which they have demonstrated experience. All of our content is peer reviewed and validated by Toptal experts in the same field.

Mastering Another Dimension: An Isometric Illustration Tutorial

Isometric illustrations improve user experience and engagement—but they’re time-consuming to create. This tutorial teaches designers an easier, faster way.

7 minute readContinue Reading

Majo Puterka

Majo is a digital product designer who has worked with clients such as Fantasy Interactive, Zypsy, and Studio Echt. He specializes in UI design for apps, motion graphics, and illustration.

Advance Your Organization’s UX Maturity With User Personas

User personas help companies increase UX maturity and establish more effective design practices—improvements that may grow revenue and create positive ripple effects across organizations.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Florence Dairo

Florence is a senior product designer with experience in building and scaling design systems, crafting design strategies, and developing user personas. She specializes in working with innovative startups, including Polywork, Carbon, Amplified Payments, and Shop-Ware. She is the Toptal Community Leader for Nigeria and a Toptal Design Mentor.

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5 Signs Your Product Strategy Is Broken—and How Designers Can Help Fix It

A good product strategy aligns team efforts, cuts costs, and encourages long-lasting conflict resolution. Three Toptal product design experts discuss how product strategies get derailed and what designers can do to help get things back on track.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Christian Adolphus

Christian is a product designer, product owner, user researcher, and Webflow developer. He led the design team at Chaka, a financial solutions platform, and worked as the founding product designer at SquadPal. His product experience spans B2B, B2C, and SaaS enterprise software.

Designing VR Games Worth Playing: 6 Key Considerations

Despite decades of hype, virtual reality gaming has failed to be widely adopted. Better design can reduce player frustration, increase comfort, and make games more immersive.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Edward Moore

Edward is a veteran UX designer with a résumé of award-winning projects for Google, Sony, Electronic Arts, and Sega. He’s worked on iconic gaming franchises like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Sonic. In 2014, he launched a company to contribute strategic gamification and UX services to nongaming companies seeking to leverage AR/VR technology.

Shopping for Apparel in an Online World: UI/UX Design for Virtual Clothing Try-on

How is technology changing the way people shop for clothes? Designers explain how to use AR and VR to drive conversions and minimize returns.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Laurence Brothers

Laurence is Toptal’s Senior Writer for Technology and Software. A former analyst at Google and ITA Software and researcher at Bell Communications Research and Verizon Laboratories, he now writes about the intersection of technology, business, and design. Laurence has five patents for AI and internet applications and a master’s degree in computer science from Columbia University.

Play Is the Point: How UX Designers Can Break Into the Gaming Industry

There are many ways for game UX designers to break into this multibillion-dollar industry. Using her 14 years of video game UX expertise, designer Pam Nicholls shares how.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Pam Nicholls

Pam is a UX designer who specializes in video games, augmented reality, SaaS, and web applications. She has a master’s degree in industrial design and has worked on projects for high-profile clients such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, DreamWorks Animation, Scrabble, the NBA, and the NHL.

Improve the Product Development Process With This Simple, But Powerful, User Flow Analysis

Apply the four steps in this user flow analysis method to make your product development process more efficient—and improve UX for activities like app onboarding and checkout.

10 minute readContinue Reading

Khatia Gagnidze

Khatia is a product designer and researcher who has created and enhanced user flows for banking, fintech, and e-commerce products. Her clients include the Bank of Georgia, the payment processing software HitPay, and Mymarket, the largest e-commerce platform in the country of Georgia.

Toptal Design Expert

Paula Barcante

Paula is an award-winning UX/UI designer, advisor, and illustrator with more than six years of hands-on experience in making complex interfaces delightful and user friendly. She has made a significant impact in large corporations, such as Amazon, Zillow, Google, as well as startups. Her mission is to create efficient, beautiful, innovative, and high-quality experiences for the greater good of society.