Design your way

Looking for the best sports apps for iPhone to watch news and various info about your favorite sports team? This article has what you are looking for.

Having a smart phone means that you never have to think how your favorite team is doing, or who’s winning the game.

Sports news apps are putting the latest schedules, news and statistics with only one click, together with podcasts, hi-res photos and sometimes live-streamed video of the play.

Take a look at the best sports apps and have a fun of a lifetime.

Here are the best sports apps for every kind of fan.

Best sports apps for iPhone

ESPN

Formerly known as SportsCenter, the ESPN app (Android, iOS) brings users the latest and greatest sporting news and information worldwide. Whether you’re looking for updated scoring information, breaking news for various teams and leagues, or professional analysis, the ESPN app has got your back.

Users can easily customize a list of favorite teams, allowing the app to provide a personalized sports news experience for all the franchises and athletes you care about. Cable subscribers can also tune in to the WatchESPN app (Android, iOS) for a variety of live-streamed games and shows as well as on-demand videos.

CBS Sports

CBS Sports is one of the best sports app for iPhone that you can find. It offers personalized score updates, stats, news and analysis for your favorite sports teams and leagues.

The app also provides live streaming for a variety of events, such as NCAA Basketball and the PGA Tour, as well as access to on-demand video of game highlights, expert analysis and original video programs.

Users can also listen in on live broadcasts of CBS Sports Radio.

theScore

theScore (Android, iOS) shines in delivering up-to-the-second game updates and statistics, as well as breaking sports news. An event calendar lets you easily look up upcoming games, statistics for past matches, as well as the latest scores and most important plays. Matches include detailed statistical breakdowns to warm the hearts of stat junkies, as well as play-by-play breakdowns.

The app allows users to follow teams and individual players, giving you notifications of related news or big plays. Social features make stories, stats and game summaries easy to share with your friends and followers.

Yahoo Sports

Yahoo rebranded Sportacular into the new Yahoo Sports (Android, iOS) app, designed to sync across the website and mobile apps. The goal is to provide all the best and latest news, scores and statistics for your favorite sports.

Particular standouts in the app are the extremely detailed player, team and game statistics. We also like the highly customizable notifications that alert you to game starts, scoring plays and close game situations.

Team Stream

The Bleacher Report’s Team Stream (Android, iOS) app shies away from the generalist approach of other sports news apps in exchange for a laser-like focus on your favorite team or franchise. Simply designate your favorite teams, and Team Stream delivers relevant, real-time notifications taken from numerous sources across the Web.

You’ll get scores, stories, pictures and videos featuring your chosen clubs. Get the latest breaking sports news from newspapers, blogs, websites and Bleacher Report, too.

Thuuz Sports

Thuuz Sports (Android, iOS) makes sure you never miss your team’s most exciting games, combining the ability to follow your favorite sports, teams, and players, with a clever system that follows news and online buzz in order to create an excitement rating of 0 to 100 for upcoming games.

Users can then easily look up game schedules and find out where they can watch the upcoming big game, whether on cable channels, streaming, or your nearest sports bar. In addition to the game scheduling, Thuuz also provides extras like personalized sports news, on-the-go alerts and fantasy sports tracking.

Yahoo Fantasy Sports

The internet and mobile apps have been a great help to the growth of popularity of fantasy sports, and one of the best all-in-one apps out there is the Yahoo Fantasy Sports app (Android, iOS), which covers fantasy football, baseball, basketball and hockey.

Players can create or join fantasy leagues, set up drafts, quickly set up team lineups and track scores and performance, as well as check out analysis by Yahoo Sports and Rotoworld experts. In addition to custom leagues, users can also participate in weekly and daily fantasy games with a chance to win real money.

StubHub

Looking for tickets to the big game, or suddenly unable to make it? StubHub (Android, iOS) is an online service that allows users to buy and sell tickets to games, concerts and other nearby events, complete with a “FanProtect” guarantee.

Users can look up game schedules, seat layouts, as well as follow their favorite sports teams or artists to get info about upcoming games and concerts.

T!ckets

Another option for mobile ticket purchasing is RateYourSeats.com’s new mobile app, T!ckets (Android, iOS), which brings RateYourSeats’ price comparison and SeatScore tools right to mobile devices.

Users can quickly look up events for their favorite sports teams and artists, compare seat prices, view interactive maps of available seating, complete with photos to give you an impression of the view from the stands, as well as a Deal Rating metric to show you whether you’re getting a good price or not.

Forza Football

If you’re looking for an all-in-one football app for sports news, match schedules and online community, then look no further than Forza Football (Android, iOS). It brings you up-to-the-minute match updates for your favorite teams on your Android or iOS device, as well as providing a forum for fan polls and opinions.

Users can select their favorite teams and upcoming matches to receive notifications for goals and cards, as well as pre-match lineups, formations and other information. In addition to the live scores, users can participate in online polls on the performance of a team’s squad, manager and chairman.

NFL Mobile

If you’re looking for the latest in pro football news, then the official NFL Mobile app (Android, iOS) is the app to get, with up-to-the-minute game updates and customizable team notifications. Read breaking news, watch post-game video highlights and even manage your own fantasy football team from within the app.

Verizon subscribers, as well as users logging in with select cable providers, can enjoy NFL Red Zone and live game streaming.

MLB.com At Bat

The official MLB.com At Bat (Android, iOS) mobile app is your go-to source for the latest Major League Baseball news, game schedules, stats, standings and rosters, as well as selected videos and analysis. Users can follow their favorite teams for personalized notifications and news feeds.

Premium unlocks provide users with live audio and game look-ins, access to the MLB.TV Game of the Day, in-game highlights, and a wealth of other features.

NHL GameCenter

NHL GameCenter (Android, iOS) delivers live scores and player stats for your favorite teams, as well as season schedules, game alerts, in-game and post-game highlight videos, as well as live game audio for every game. Users can also catch up on the latest news, analysis and schedules for their favorite teams, as well as receive customizable notifications.

Subscription to GameCenter LIVE unlocks live streaming video of out-of-market games, full-length match replays, multiple camera angles and cross-device access.

NCAA Sports

If collegiate sports are what you’re after, you can’t go wrong with the official NCAA Sports app (Android, iOS). The app lets you view live video coverage of more than 65 championship events, as well as look up scores and schedules for multiple championships.

In addition, users can pull up regular season scores and standings. Users can follow specific schools for custom scoring notifications, as well as view team hubs for the latest scores, news and social media feeds.

Fancred

Fancred is a sports news apps that combines the latest sports news with social media. It is by far the most interactive of all the sport apps you will find on the iPhone at present, allowing you to upload photos, write comments and add articles about your favorite teams.

You would typically need a laptop or desktop computer to do all this, but here you can do it through the app itself. You can begin by creatig a profile, using your email or Facebook account, then pull those people from your contacts list to see which people are using the app.

You will then have a feed that is full of the latest sports news, not so much from biased news sources but from likeminded fans. Players will also get involved in order to bring teams and fans closer together, which is great.

Want to see more of the best sports apps for iPhone?

Read on.

The Sports Feed

The Sports Feed app is another one of the best sports apps for iPhone. It is very similar to the ESPN app, only without all the clutter. Again, you sign in and pick your favorite teams, then turn on notifications to receive up to the moment info.

There are two main pages to toggle between here, which is a setup that I believe works very well. There is the main page with sports news that is pulled from around the web, and then a live scores page that you can refresh to get instant updates.

The great thing about this app is that when you do pull web articles, it will give you a version of the article that is tet only, and without the all those pesky ads. The schedule feature is also neat, taking your favorite team and then showing the next times they are playing.

BreakingSports

We’ll be honest here: the sport apps market right now is full with average products, though there are one or two apps that stand out as worth noting. Most of these at this point are third party sport apps, one of which is Breaking Sports.

This app does exactly what the name suggests, delivering to you all the latest news, scores, injury reports and a whole lot more. You can follow not only your favorite teams but also your favorite players, so you never again miss out on that important piece of news.

The app has also been updated to work with the Apple Watch, so that you can get all the latest breaking sports news on your wrist, too.

NBA

No matter what grumpy has-been old-timers such as TNT’s Charles Barkley say, the National Basketball Association is better than it ever was.

Despite a healthy dose of top-heaviness (which has always been a strong characteristic of the league, just look at how many teams have won a championship during the NBA’s 70-year history), the league is bursting with amazing young talent, TV ratings records are broken left and right, so all in all, the future looks brighter than ever.

FOX Sports Mobile

As opposed to NBA Mobile, Fox Sports Mobile is at the other end of the sports app spectrum in terms of ratings, features, design, functionality, customizability, user-friendliness, and versatility. FOX Sports Mobile can also cook tasty meals worthy of a fine-dining restaurant, does not wear brown shoes with black socks (and vice versa), writes beautiful poetry, and calls his (her?) mom every single day.

Jokes aside, FOX Sports is, in several ways, different from all other sports apps, putting its own innovative twist on run-of-the-mill features. The most recognizable of these sports app innovations is an enormous scoreboard that provides instant access to an abundance of game-related information, saving you from the hassle of having to leave the scoreboard to check out, for instance, detailed stats.

WWE

The official app of the WWE network is the best way to watch wrestling if you’re a subscriber. The app brings you streams of wrestling events live across your Internet connection, both as they’re happening and from the WWE archive, as well as the ability to use your iPhone or iPad as a second screen when you watch live.

WWE also provides event schedule information and information about wrestlers whenever you want it.

Coach’s Eye

While I’m not a golfer, I thought last year’s Tiger Woods: My Swing was a brilliant idea for an app. It essentially allowed users to record video of their golf swings and match them up to Tiger’s own swing. Coach’s Eyeoffers similar micro-editing techniques, but employs them over a wider net so players in numerous sports can really look at their own technique.

The main difference between is that there’s no professional expert to model yourself after in each sport that Coach’s Eye helps you analyze. Still, things like swing plane and adding virtual lines to look at posture are retained, and it’s a promising step in the right direction for the future of video analysis of athletes.

Rotoworld

The last one of the best sports apps for iPhone present in this article is Rotoworld. Rotoworld is your one stop for all fantasy news. Sort by sport for a big overview or find a specific player’s injury report. The main page is broken up into News, Top Stories and My News. The main newsfeed is broken up into one sentence updates that you can easily scroll through or tap on one to learn more.

Share certain updates on Facebook, email or Twitter. The My News section is made up of all the teams or players you follow. Set up notifications so you know exactly who to bench or trade on your fantasy team.

Summary:

There are lots of different sport apps out there these days, but most are designed with one thing in mind: getting information to you, the sports fan, and getting it there fast.

This is why so many of these sport apps and news apps pride themselves in up to the minute info, not only news stories and breaking info but also things like scores and even statistics.

If you liked this article with the best sports apps for iPhone, you should check out these as well:

• Best Arcade Games for iPhone and iPad
• Best News Apps for iPhone and iPad
• Best iPhone apps of the year
• Apple Watch Design Guidelines – What You Should Have Known Already

The post Best Sports Apps for iPhone appeared first on Design your way.

Source: http://ift.tt/2xL0aDE

15 Tattoo Fonts For Ink Lovers

Calligraphy is a type of visual art. We may define it as the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner. Calligraphy fonts are each designer’s must-have and the tattoo fonts can be considered a sub-category to handwritten fonts.

It’s almost possible to feel the wave of euphoria rolling around the Internet that’s been generated by the arrival of Web fonts. Finally, website designers can unshackle themselves from the limited range of fonts that are available once you aggregate down the common typefaces on Windows, Mac, Linux and so on.

I can’t be the only one who sighs in desperation each time the words ‘font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif;’ are keyed into a stylesheet!

When you read the marketing pages from suppliers of Web fonts and font delivery services, you get the impression that with just a couple of lines of code you can transform a site – with no hassle; all the issues taken away from you. The reality is somewhat different: there are actually quite a few gotchas, some of which are easy to miss if you’re not testing thoroughly.

I am sure many of you want to use fonts on yours or some of your client websites that are not traditional – web fonts that stand out. I think a great way to do this is to use tattoo fonts. Why tattoo fonts? Well, they just look really cool : ) Enjoy a collection of 15 tattoo fonts below.

Tattoo Fonts

Angel Tears font

Download. (Personal use only)

ANGEL TEARS font was created in 2010 by Billy Argel. It is very sketchy and the capital letters look great. This Angel Tears font can come in really handy and can be used in many creative ways to improve your personal projects.

Beech font

Download. (Commercial use is okay)

Beech font is an unusual looking font with interesting characters. The design looks great, although the letters are not very easy to read. All in all, this font can be a great asset in your freebies collection.

Bleeding Cowboys font

Download. (Personal use only)

This example might be your next favourite font. Bleeding Cowboys by Segments Design (aka Last Soundtrack) is a nice font with a grungy look and a western inspired design. It can be used for personal projects only

Dirty And Classic font

Download. (Personal use only)

Dirty and Classic by Billy Argel is a handwritten font with some grungy ink splatter details which can be used in personal projects. Looks great as a tattoo font and it can give a classy touch to your designs.

Ginga font

Download. (Personal use only)

This grungy handwritten font looks great and will definitely improve your personal projects’ design. Tip: Use the symbols > and < to make the end of the word, the “tail” ·

Ink In The Meat font

Download. (Personal use only)

If you liked the previous examples then you will definitely love this one and the ones yet to be seen. This font is partial and free for personal use only. The complete set has a lot of scrolls different letters and final letters. It can come in really handy as it might be exactly what your project was missing.

Santos Dumont font

Download. (Personal use only)

This font is partial and free for personal use only. It can be used in many ways to give your personal design project a creative and elegant touch. Commercial licenses and pro version are also available if you want to use it in more projects.

Shaman font

Download. (Personal use only)

You can download Shaman font by Gaut Fonts which is listed under Gothic. It has a nice, creepy design. Would look great in Halloween themed designs! Have a look at this font and see if you think the same!

Tattoo Sailor font

Download. (Personal use only)

Download the free Tattoo Sailor font by Juan Casco. This is an old school tattoo face. It can come in really handy and improve your personal design projects. Free for personal use only, no commercial use.

Tattoo Ink font

Download. (Commercial use is okay)

Download the free Tattoo Ink font by Ryan Splint. This is a fancy retro font. The font contains letters only – no punctuation or numbers are provided.

Tribal font

Download. (Commercial use is okay)

This tribal font is free to download and use in both personal and commercial projects. It has a very nice design and a great tribal vibe.

Tribal Garamond font

Download. (Commercial use is okay)

Download the free Tribal Garamond font by Shaashimov. This is a decorative font in ttf for windows and mac! This font can be used in both personal and commercial projects and can come in really handy. This font can be used in many ways to improve your designs. Have a look and add it to your design arsenal if you like it.

VTC-Bad Tattoo Hand One font

Download. (Personal use only)

This is yet another great example of a tattoo font that ink lovers will totally adore. VTC-BadTattooHandOne.ttf is Windows and Mac OS X compatible. VTC-Bad Tattoo Hand One was created by Vigilante Typeface Corporation – Larry E. Yerkes and can be used in personal projects.

VTC-TribalThreeFree font

Download. (Personal use only)

This font can come in really handy thanks to its unique letter design. Download the free VTC-TribalThreeFree font by Vigilante TypeFace Corp and use it in your personal projects. This font is available for Windows and Mac.

Zoe Graphic font

Download. (Commercial use is okay)

Last but not least, the ZOE Graphic font can not miss from your freebies collection. Download the free ZOE Graphic font by Tanja Schulz. ZOE Graphic Regular font is free to download for Windows or Mac OS. This font is available in TrueType or OpenType format.

---

Which one of these tattoo fonts is your favourite? Do you have any tattoo fonts you’d want to add to the list?

Keep in mind that most of these tattoo fonts are not web safe, which means they should be better used in print or graphic designs, rather than on websites, so you better check them out individually to see if they are suitable for web as well.

Testing is everything. It’s probably true that with website development you can never test enough, that testing is probably 50% of development and testing in older versions of IE is 80% of that. Testing font issues isn’t something that website designers have typically had to do and quite frankly it’s an unwelcome overhead. But Web fonts are here to stay and are, on the whole, a good thing.

They bring visual variety and creativity to the most important part of a Web page. But right now, today, they need to be implemented with care, an awareness of the issues – and with a decent amount of time set aside for additional testing.

The post 15 Tattoo Fonts For Ink Lovers appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

via http://ift.tt/2xAPOqB

Top Prototyping Tools You Should Use to Save Time

Did you ever use prototyping along with your web design activities?  If not, you may be missing out! Prototyping can help you discover how much faster the design process can be.

Moreover, it can show you how much time and money you’ll save by catching design errors and omissions early. Plus, you may experience noticeable improvements in the quality of your finished products.

Prototypes show you what’s working, and what isn’t. They present you with necessary and/or desirable design modification options. Prototyping helps to ensure that your finished product will be error-free. It also will exhibit the precise look and feel your client expects.

The quality of the prototypes you build is also important. This is one reason why you should select powerful, feature-rich tools like these:

Proto.io

Proto.io gives you an added bonus of being able to create your design on the same platform on which you are building your prototypes. That only makes sense, even though many prototyping tools lack this feature.

This makes having a tool like this an absolute must for web designers, and Proto.io is a useful tool for developers as well. Since it requires no design or coding skills to work with, and is so easy to use, product managers can also find many uses for it.

You can start your design and prototyping activities from scratch using Proto.io’s iOS, Android, Windows, and Watch OS UI components, or import your Sketch or Photoshop design files. You can create prototypes at whatever level of fidelity you want, and make them interactive by incorporating touch or mouse events, automated screen transitions, and other features.

You can use the single-click sharing feature to share a prototype, and you can view it on your web browser, or download the free Proto.io app for iOS and Android to view it on selected devices.

Design Systems by UXPin

With Design Systems by UXPin, you can prototype, create a design system, generate documentation, and hand off to developers in one place. The collaborative platform also allows for real-time design in the same project.

In our experience, UXPin is the only “all-in-one” tool that doesn’t just help with prototyping, but also handles the bigger problems of UX consistency and unifying UX and development.

Its design systems feature is a pretty compelling differentiator. It’s more than just a pattern library – you can attach documentation to elements which follow in your projects. That means the “source of truth” is always available anywhere. And you can build the design system with Sketch or UXPin.

The automated development handoff and automated documentation capabilities are also quite handy. You can generate specifications, CSS, and style for anything in UXPin or imported from Sketch.

UXPin currently integrates with Sketch, Photoshop, Jira, and Slack.

Fluid UI

          Getting the look, feel and usability right at the start of your projects is of huge importance, and our third recommendation – FluidUI.com – is loaded with everything you need to build interactive prototypes, from simple wireframes to high fidelity websites and mobile apps.

Fluid UI combines design features such as extensive built-in component libraries, the ability to upload your existing designs, add gestures and animations, with communications features such as collaborative team design, video calling, chat, annotations and comments.

You can design in your browser or with a downloadable desktop app, and test on web or mobile using their preview apps – incredibly useful for understanding how your design will eventually work.

Fluid UI offers a lifetime “Free Forever” plan, a free trial, high quality live chat support and allows you to save all your projects without being charged a monthly free unlike other tools. A highly recommended option!

Why Prototyping is so Important

When you have a great concept for a website in mind, it’s tempting to dive right in. You want to start designing while the concept is still fresh in your mind.

Unless you check where you’re at from time to time, the final design may not perform as hoped. Moreover, you might even have drifted completely off course.

Prototyping is an excellent method for testing your ideas as you go, and for other reasons as well.

1. Progressive or evolving prototypes help you check your design as is

Maintaining a progression of iterative prototypes may seem like extra work. But it’s an excellent way to keep your project on track. Doing so will generally save you time in the long run.

2. A prototype can show you what works well, what works not so well, and what doesn’t work at all.

Even the best design ideas can contain a fatal flaw, and even the best will have imperfections. Low-fidelity prototypes often uncover the major problems. The higher-fidelity prototypes root out problems of a more minor nature.

3. High-fidelity prototypes are useful for uncovering and resolving problems that could negatively affect a site’s UX.

An example is user testing. It is your last chance to uncover problems before your design goes into development. Fixing problems that late in the game can be quite expensive.

4. Prototypes are natural vehicles for sharing design information.

Premier prototyping tools, like those described here, support collaboration with team members and clients. Design reviews tend to be more effective, and take less time; especially when interactive prototypes are used, and when design changes can be accomplished in real time.

Premier prototyping tools support collaboration with team members and clients. Design reviews tend to be more effective and take less time. This is especially when interactive prototypes are used. Also, when design changes can be accomplished in real time.

Summary

As you have seen, a good prototyping tool is worth its weight in gold. Even more so if it directly supports your design and collaboration activities.

You can save a lot of time by checking the current state of your design against expectations. The time (and money) saved by catching errors before you hand a project over to a developer can sometimes be huge.

The post Top Prototyping Tools You Should Use to Save Time appeared first on Line25.

Source: http://ift.tt/2wmG9QM