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Facebook's VP of product management was able to discuss more specifics about how the breach itself occurred. View the full article

If you've ever felt there was something missing from your Photoshop workflow, and that something was the ability to use the full software on the go, without switching between different apps, you're in luck. At its annual conference, Adobe MAX 2018, Adobe has announced it's expanding Photoshop CC, across all devices, starting with the iPad. This will enable users to open and edit PSD files on an iPad, using the same tools they are used to on desktop. Sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud Will it be the 'real Photoshop'? You'll be able to work with Layers, just like you can on the desktop version Project Rocket – or Photoshop for iPad came about when two Photoshop engineers decided to try to run Photoshop on iPad using Photoshop code. That got the design team thinking about how this product might look, and a few months later, they were ready for launch. Because Photoshop for iPad uses the same code as the desktop version, there won't be any compromises in terms of performance or results. The core tools will all be there, and you'll be able to add filters, work with layers and make selections and adjustments, and much more. This will be a marked improvement in the current offering for iPad users, as they will no longer have to switch between different apps such as Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix to perform different functions. This new Photoshop won't be exactly the same as the desktop version, however, as it will have a "reimagined user experience" that is optimised for touch devices, making the most of the iPad's Pencil, touch gestures and mobility. A seamless experience Photoshop for iPad will see the user interface redesigned for the device Not only will you be able to work on PSD files on the iPad, but your files will also sync across devices, via the new Cloud documents. This will mean you can begin working on your desktop, make some changes on your iPad, and then go back to desktop, without having to faff around with importing or exporting files. Photoshop for iPad will be available on its own, or as a partner to Photoshop on the desktop. Initially, a smaller set of features will be released in version 1.0, with more added over time. At the moment, we don't know when Photoshop for iPad will be shipping, or how much it will cost, but keep checking back here for more news. Read more: How to manage colours in Photoshop 60 top-class Photoshop tutorials to try The 38 best Photoshop plugins View the full article

Picking up a pencil or paintbrush is one of the first ways most people discover the power of creative expression. Drawing and painting are fundamental ways of communicating creatively, and now they've been brought to the iPad with Adobe's next-generation digital art app, Project Gemini. Announced at Adobe's annual conference, Adobe MAX 2018, Project Gemini is a dedicated painting and drawing app that makes full use of Photoshop's powerful painting engine. Revealed by Kyle T. Webster and Eric Snowden, the iPad app pairs pen and touch hardware with professional tools and a streamlined, easy-to-use interface. Sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud Rethinking the mobile art experience Images created in Project Gemini will sync with Photoshop on desktop Project Gemini has been created with Adobe's users and community in mind. Having heard that they've been asking for professional-level features on mobile, Adobe went back to the drawing board and completely rethought how its tools can be used on the go. The result is a set of intuitive features that hope to recapture that simple, natural feeling of working with analogue drawing tools. New painting and illustration capabilities, such as new types of paint and painting interactions, open up previously impossible digital art opportunities. This includes the ability to mix digital watercolour washes just like the real thing, as well as exclusive brushes and a multiscreen mode. To ensure that they're up to scratch, these tools have been rigorously tested by a selection of skilled artists. On top of that, Project Gemini is also able to sync with Photoshop on the desktop. This means that art you make in the field can be developed seamlessly when you're back in the studio, without the headache of transferring files. Photoshop brushes will be available across desktop and tablet devices Project Gemini is currently only available on iOS, although the team behind the app are expected to add new platforms in the future. Read more: How to draw: the best drawing tutorials Sneak peek: Supercharged Photoshop tool The 10 commandments of Photoshop etiquette View the full article

Today marks the start of Adobe Max 2018 – and it's already going off with a bang. As you'd expect, part of the company's annual creative conference includes details of updates it's made to its Creative Cloud service. And, we have to say, Adobe has pulled some seriously exciting – not to mention, impressive – new tools and apps out of the bag. The best laptop for graphic design in 2018 Adobe favourites Photoshop, Illustrator, XD and Lightroom have all had 'under the hood' work, with new features to help streamline creative workflows. But the big news has to be three new apps Adobe will soon be welcoming to the Creative Cloud family; Project Rush, an all-new video editing app, Project Rocket, aka Photoshop on iPad, and Project Gemini, a powerful new digital art app. “Today, we unveiled a portfolio of next-generation creative apps that deliver meaningful value to our community by transforming creative workflows across devices and platforms,” said Scott Belsky, chief product officer and executive vice president, Creative Cloud at Adobe. “By continuing to innovate in our flagship apps, extending into exploding segments like experience design and social video content creation, and pioneering in emerging mediums like touch, voice, 3D and augmented reality, Adobe Creative Cloud has truly become the creativity platform for all.” Excited? So are we. Let's take a closer look at exactly what Adobe has been up to... Project Rush Project Rush was no real secret, as Adobe’s all-new video editing app has been in the pipeline for a while. But now it's well and truly ready to roll. From the demos we've seen so far, this app is highly intuitive, by which we mean you don't need to be a video, colour or audio expert to create a really professional-looking video with it. Rush harnesses the power of its older siblings, Premiere Pro and After Effects, and gives users access to professionally designed motion graphics templates in Adobe Stock to get started quickly. Powered by Sensei, Adobe's new AI technology, Rush has a one-click auto-duck feature to adjust music and normalise sound. It also allows access anywhere, enabling users to create compelling video projects – optimised for social distribution – on one device and publish from another, with a consistent user experience across desktop and mobile. The downside to Rush is that you're out of luck if you're an Android user, with the all-new Premiere Rush CC only available on Windows, macOS and iOS. Adobe states Google Play store availability is coming in 2019, but when exactly that might be is anyone's guess. Project Rocket Is this the one we've all been waiting for? Adobe MAX 2018 sees the unveiling of Project Rocket, also known as Photoshop CC on the iPad. We've yet to see it fully in action, but Adobe claims the tablet version delivers all the power and precision of its desktop counterpart. Photoshop CC on iPad will let users open and edit native PSD files using Photoshop’s industry-standard image-editing tools and will feature the familiar Photoshop layers panel. Exciting stuff, which we can't wait to see. Although, we'll all have to wait a while, with Adobe so far saying nothing more than it will be available in 2019. Project Gemini A new app designed to accelerate drawing and painting workflows across devices, Project Gemini is coming first to iPad in 2019, and combines raster, vector and new dynamic brushes into a single app experience built for drawing. Project Gemini enables artists to use and sync their favourite Photoshop brushes and works seamlessly with Photoshop CC. Adobe Sensei Adobe Sensei is the company's new AI technology built into the Adobe Cloud platform, and it aims to dramatically improve the design and delivery of digital experiences. The 2019 release of Creative Cloud delivers over a dozen new Adobe Sensei-powered features and productivity enhancements – building on the many existing Sensei-powered features already available to Adobe Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud customers. Sensei-powered features in the 2019 release include: An expanded Content-Aware Fill workspace in Photoshop CC that offers greater precision and control to save editors valuable time when working with their images. A new Content-Aware Fit feature in InDesign CC that intelligently detects an image and crops or fits it to an image frame automatically. New Freeform Gradients in Illustrator CC that enable the creation of natural gradients. A new tool in Character Animator CC, Characterizer, which transforms any style of portrait into a vivid, animated character. Project Aero Adobe also previewed Project Aero, a new cross-device AR authoring tool that enables creators to design augmented reality experiences. Project Aero is the first AR app built for designers and artists and was first sneaked on-stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this year. Project Aero enables optimal delivery of AR experiences, empowering creatives to place digital content in the real world. At Adobe MAX, Adobe showcased an AR-powered retail store of the future revealing the exciting possibilities of immersive design experiences. Adobe XD The all-in-one UX/UI solution for designing websites and mobile apps, Adobe XD, now features new capabilities leveraging recently acquired Sayspring technology to empower designers to prototype experiences and apps for voice-powered devices like Amazon Echo. New voice capabilities, including voice triggers and speech playback, enable designers to create powerful experience with screen and voice prototyping now in one application. In addition, developers can now leverage Adobe XD APIs to build plugins and app integrations that add new features, automate workflows and connect XD to the tools and services designers use every day. Adobe favourites Alongside these new additions, Adobe also introduced major updates to its desktop applications, including: a new Content-Aware Fill workspace in Photoshop CC. performance and workflow improvements across Lightroom CC and Lightroon Classic. the ability to design with photorealistic, freeform gradients in Illustrator. a powerful Content-Aware Fit in InDesign CC. the power to instantly create and animate unique stylised puppets using a webcam and reference artwork with Character Animator's new Characterizer. a new rendering engine for improved render preview in performance in Dimension CC. a new Sensei-powered search features and exclusive content in Adobe Stock, including a new library from GoPro. In addition, Adobe announced it is addressing the needs of the video animation industry with new workflows and integrations across its apps. Pricing and availability Updates to Creative Cloud desktop software are now available to all Creative Cloud subscribers, including membership plans for individuals, students, teams, educational institutions, government agencies and enterprises. Adobe’s mobile apps are available for download from the iOS App Store and Google Play. Photoshop CC on iPad, Project Aero and Project Gemini on iPad will be available in 2019. Spark Post on Android, previously available as a public beta, is now available as a 1.0 app in the Google Play store. The all-new Premiere Rush CC, available now on Windows and macOS and via the iOS App Store (Google Play store availability coming in 2019), is offered across a series of plans tailored for customers’ unique needs. View the full article

Adobe XD has become the first and only UX/UI platform to enable designers to create prototypes for voice-activated devices. Users can now move seamlessly between voice and screen prototyping thanks to the addition of new voice trigger and speech playback capabilities. Find all the CC features updates on our Adobe MAX news hub XD (which stands for experience design) is the part of Adobe's Creative Cloud that provides users with an intuitive way to create product prototypes (sign up to Adobe CC here). Voice experiences are becoming more and more popular (the number of smart speaker users in the US is expected to reach 90 million this year), but until now, they have been excluded from the main prototyping tools. XD offers a way for designers to start creating hi-fidelity prototypes for digital experiences that extend beyond the screen, without having to grapple with the complexities of each platform. That might be adding voice commands to a mobile app design, introducing speech playback to an in-car navigation system, or making the most of the capabilities of Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. Adobe XD users will be able to add voice-triggered responses Voice triggers work in a similar way to taps or clicks in XD prototypes; launching a particular interaction when the user says a specific word or phrase. Speech playback gives designers access to a powerful text-to-speech engine, which will enable them to design for platforms such as voice assistants and smart speakers. Along with these new capabilities, Adobe XD has added a UI kit for Amazon Alexa’s new frontend framework: the Alexa Presentation Language (APL). This comprehensive kit contains all of the styles, fonts, colours and components required to design for Amazon Alexa. Other updates to Adobe XD A number of other exciting XD updates have been announced at Adobe MAX. The first is the addition of third-party plugins, which enable developers to extend the platform in new and exciting ways. As well as giving the community a chance to build their own features to customise XD, Adobe has also been working on integrations with other established apps. Users can already move seamlessly from Photoshop CC or Sketch into XD, but integrations with popular productivity and collaboration apps including Slack and JIRA promise to make the app even more usable. Users can access the first wave of plugins from directly within the XD app, with more on the way. Another interesting announcement is the introduction of Auto-Animate, which will provide a simple way for designers to create immersive animated transitions between artboards. It promises to be simple to use, but have a big impact on the user experience. At the moment, playback of animations is supported in the preview window and mobile apps only – but Adobe says support for prototypes viewed in the browser is on its way. Read more: Adobe launches free XD Starter plan How to prototype a mobile app with Adobe XD How to choose the right prototyping tool View the full article

You're reading How to Import HTML Email Template from Postcards to Salesforce, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! In this video, I will show you how to import a custom email created in Postcards directly to Salesforce. First, open the email template in the Postcards app and insert all the required tags by Salesforce. View the full article

If you think about it, we’ve been making infographics since the dawn of time – those early cave paintings were passing on information graphically that could be processed and understood quickly. 13 incredible tools for creating infographics The best infographics wrap information and/or data into a story in a clear, concise and engaging manner. It's an increasing way of communicating data to the masses, and therefore a skill no designer should be without. In this article, you'll find some pro tips for producing infographics in Illustrator that will help you pull things together quickly and efficiently. For more advice, be sure to check out my talk on creating infographics in Illustrator at Adobe MAX 2018. A whole lot of information Before you get started on making infographics in Illustrator CC (sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud here), you’re going to need information, and probably lots of it. Think about the story you'll be presenting and then do some digging (fortunately there are a lot of free data sources available and you’ll find some listed at the end of this article). You’ll be looking for several things to make the data more meaningful to your viewers; look for trends or patterns that can show movement in the numbers. Are there any outliers that can either make or break the story? Look for context and comparisons, which often may come from other data sets, to help the viewer make sense of it all. Examine any history associated with the information to see if that helps make things any clearer. Once you have the information, it’s time to examine it. 01. Master pivot tables... Dealing with cold, hard numbers is going to involve working with spreadsheets, and you can make sense of data sets, especially large ones, by learning how to use pivot tables (Excel and Google Sheets both support these). Trust me when I say once you've got the hang of these, you'll wonder how you ever managed without them. 02. ...Or make friends with someone who already has Getting spreadsheets to handle your data makes life so much easier, it's filtered into the second tip too! If numbers are really not your thing, I'd go so far as to suggest you make friends with someone who is awesome with spreadsheets, and buy them the best dinner you can afford whenever you work with them (yes, I totally do this). 03. Sketch out your ideas Next, you’ll need to start sketching out your ideas, and working out how to present that information. The first thing you’ll need to do is work out what size and format the completed work is going to take; I’m often asked about what size to make an infographic and my answer is always the same, 'the size that best suits the medium and the audience'. If you think that the infographic is most likely to be viewed on a phone for example, then make it as wide as the device being held in landscape orientation, and as tall as needs be to convey everything, which is why there are lots of skyscraper-style infographics to be found online. For structuring the story, try to adhere to the principle of the information sandwich, start with an introduction, fill with all of the yummy information and close with a conclusion or Call to Action (CtA). 04. Choose your tools wisely Adobe Photoshop Sketch is great tool to help you work out your ideas I use Adobe Photoshop Sketch on my tablet to work out my ideas, as I have more tools available than I can carry with me, and I can push my sketches directly to Illustrator as a basis for my finished work. 05. Use a grid Use a grid as a guide for your layout – and remember that it is only a guide, not a ruleset; you don’t have to make things fit exactly within the guide boundaries. Mostly, my preference is to use a grid that has twelve columns, as twelve is easily divisible by two, three and four, but use whatever you need. For skyscraper statics, vertically you should divide the grid up into rows that are roughly representative of the screens that you’re anticipating it being viewed on – try to give a tantalising glimpse of the next screen’s content (“below the fold” in press terminology) to encourage the viewer to keep scrolling. Your grid type will vary for other kinds of presentation but always use one – they’re invaluable. 06. Use video tutorials Simply follow this video tutorial for an easy way to make an awesome grid for your infographic in Illustrator. 07. Work with linked assets Create your chart elements in separate documents and place them as linked assets. You don’t have to produce all of the charts, graphs and other graphics in the same document. There are a number of advantages to working with linked assets during infographic production, but the main ones are: Illustrator doesn’t have to actually redraw the entire graphic – just a representation of it while you’re working – and you can work faster. More than one person can be working on the project at once – simply update your placed version if someone else makes any changes. It makes it easy to resize graphs and charts, which otherwise normally involves using the Scale Tool. 08. Chart or graph? Knowing how to best present a piece of information is key - and Data Visualisation Catalogue can help Knowing how to best present a piece of information is part of the challenge, and if it isn’t immediately obvious, then I can offer you no better tip here than to use Data Visualisation Catalogue (and ideally buy the eBook version of the site) – that way you’ve always got a copy to hand plus you’re rewarding the author Severino Ribecca, for his hard work that’s helping you out. Illustrator has nine chart/graph tools and while that doesn’t sound like a lot, you’d be amazed at what can be achieved with them, although there’s a bit of learning involved there. That said, there are times when you’re going to need to hack the default tools. At the moment, the number one thing I get asked about in this regard is how to make doughnut charts, and segmented doughnut charts – the answer to both of these can be found on my YouTube channel and you’ll be able to keep the data live, too. 09. Keep a live connection Always try and keep the connection between the graph/chart and data live. If you’re watching a tutorial online that mentions ungrouping the chart, then stop watching and look elsewhere as there is almost always a way to keep the data live, and it’ll save you a lot of effort if you can. 10. Group Selection Tool is your friend The Group Selection Tool is essential for working with charts and graphs in Illustrator; you’ll find it nested with the Direct Selection Tool in the toolbox. There’s so much more to learn than I can present in this article, but I hope that you found this advice useful. I’m always keen to see what you’re making in Illustrator, so let me know via Twitter. Further reading Here’s some of my favourite titles on my bookshelves; some of these deal with data representation, some with process (e.g: Raw Data and Visual Storytelling) and some are whimsical, perhaps (e.g: Infographic Guide to Cycling and Super Graphic), but I’d recommend: Visualize This: The Flowingdata Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics by Nathan Yau Knowledge is Beautiful by David McCandless Information is Beautiful by David McCandless Infographics: Designing & Visualizing Data by Wang Shaoqiang Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design by Randy Krum Raw Data: Infographic Designers' Sketchbooks by Steven Heller and Rick Landers Visual Storytelling: Infographic Design in News by Edited by Liu Yikun and Dong Zhao Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling by Jason Lankow and Josh Ritchie Infographic Guide to Cycling by Roadcyclinguk Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong Also note that some of the titles and authors have websites that are well worth visiting. Read more: How to create amazing infographics Infographic: 14 design terms you might be getting wrong 21 ways to design better in Sketch View the full article

Manga art is in rude health, so if you know how to draw manga and paint it you’re in good company. It’s now possible for manga artists to amass hundreds of thousands of social media followers, get crowdfunded via sites like Patreon, sell their art commercially, and even go and live and work in Japan itself. But how do you go about it? Here, four manga artists who have found success share advice on how to follow in their footsteps. 01. Maximise your social media presence The first, and perhaps most obvious, point is that you need to get your art in front of people. “If you create a lot of illustrations but don’t post them anywhere, nothing’s going to happen,” says Ilya Kuvshinov, a Russian artist based in Tokyo with 1.3 million Instagram followers. “It can be scary to expose your work publicly, but there’ll be people who love it – trust me!” One of the illustrations from Ilya’s book, Momentary: The Art of Ilya Kuvshinov Just posting in one place, though, may not be enough, says Larienne Chan. Better known as Lärienne or Princess Lärienne, the Polish illustrator has made a huge impact on the DeviantArt community, which honoured her with its ‘Deviousness’ award in 2016. But she’s also built strong bases on Instagram, Tumblr and the online Japanese art community, Pixiv. “Some people think just being good is enough, but unfortunately that’s no longer true,” Chan says. “In these times of constantly changing algorithms and fierce competition, you never know where clients or fans are coming from, so you need to be in as many places as possible.” “Aiming to give my art a different feel to other manga has helped it stand out,” says Spryszynska It’s also important to post often, says Aleksandra Spryszynska, a Polish art student who’s attracted almost a quarter of a million followers on Instagram as Yenko. “Being consistent is key,” Spryszynska stresses. “You need to keep posting new things, come up with new ideas all the time, so that people don’t forget you and will introduce you to their friends.” Spryszynska's own Instagram feed is a great mixture of photography, sketches and full artwork, which makes it feel much more personal than just a straightforward gallery. “People would rather see a photo of your artwork than a clean scan of it,” she stresses. “They like to see behind the scenes, the workspace. It’s also a great way to show the tools you’ve used.” 02. Let your passions shine Given that other manga artists will be doing all that as well, though, how do you ensure your work stands out? Spryszynska believes it’s essentially about being true to your vision. “Just like in other types of art, we all have our own style, and other things that make our work unique,” she says. “Concentrate on what interests you, and others will follow.” “Setting up my Facebook and Instagram profiles were the main turning point for me,” says Spryszynska That said, some have found that posting fan art can be an effective way of getting extra attention and boosting their audience. “My own ‘big break’ came when I shared fan art of Mathilda from the film Leon on Instagram,” says Kuvshinov. “Suddenly I found myself with a huge number of followers.” It was a similar story for Chan. “My real breakthrough came with applying my personal style to fan art of western cartoons,” she says. “It’s important to post work to all the social media pages people visit, day by day,” says Gonzalo Ordoñez Yet for every fan artwork that goes viral, a thousand more get ignored, and it’s not something you should rely on, believes Gonzalo Ordoñez, aka the popular Genzoman. “When you do nothing but fan art, people might start to see you more in those terms than as a creator,” he says. “So I think a better strategy is to combine your own ideas and concepts with fan art, not just one thing or the other.” Aleksandra adds that if you’re going to experiment with fan art, make sure it’s something you have a true passion for. “It’s so obvious who’s actually into the fandom, and who’s just out looking for likes and shares,” she cautions. 03. Study the industry The same principle, of course, applies to the discipline itself. Manga isn’t just one style, but a deep and rich culture going back decades, and the more you can study and immerse yourself in it, the better your art will become. “Many people think manga is only Shonen [manga aimed at teenage males] or Moe [child-like characters that aim to elicit a strong emotional response], which is what audiences outside Asia tend to see,” says Ordoñez. “But there are many genres, artists and visions within manga, so I’d encourage young people to learn as much as they can about its origins. “With so many talented people around, your artwork needs to be unique to stand out,” says Chan “Explore the work of Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori and Go Nagai,” he says, “as well as other types of Japanese artists, such as Yoshiharu Tsuge or Yoshihiro Tatsumi. This helps you diversify, because if we’re all doing similar styles, we’ll end up competing with one another. A manga artist doesn’t have to be a one-trick pony, but can be as versatile as any other type of creative.” In short, it’s about being original and finding your own, distinct path. “When I was starting out I copied pages from Dragon Ball, and recreated the style of artists like Kazushi Hagiwara,” says Ordoñez. “But there’s a point where you have to try new things, so people don’t see you as ‘the imitator of’, like the art equivalent of a covers band.” “DeviantArt’s viewing public is very different to Tumblr’s, Pixiv’s or Instagram’s, so you need different content for each,” says Gonzalo And after that, it’s down to persistence, hard work and just keeping going until it starts to happen for you. “Believe in yourself,” says Chan. “Get engaged with the art community. Ask questions, experiment and practise a lot.” And Aleksandra adds: “Don’t give up. It’s very hard. People aren’t fair, social media isn’t fair. But you can be fair to yourself. Do what you love and what defines you. Work hard and it will pay off!” Lead image by Larienne Chan This article originally appeared in issue 163 of ImagineFX, the world's leading magazine for digital artists. Subscribe here. Related articles: How to create an authentic manga comic strip How to colour your manga art like a pro Get started with ink drawing View the full article

Graduating from university is a huge achievement that should be celebrated, but for a lot of college leavers, the hard work starts once you're out of the classroom and trying to forge a career. Learning how to network, building a name for yourself and progressing up to bigger jobs are all par for the course, and as we saw in our assessment of design graduates, universities are better than they once were when it comes to prepping students for the real world. There's always more to learn though, so to help fresh-faced graduates on the long road to success, we've rounded up some of the biggest names in the industry to hear what graduates need to know in order to survive. 01. Be patient “Understand the role and studio/clients you want to work for, show interest, do your research and don’t expect things to happen overnight,” says co-founder and director of The HudsonBec Group Will Hudson. “Everyone at the end of the phone or email was once where you are now. Persevere.” 02. Recognise your value “Understand the value that you bring to any situation and don’t waste your time working for free, as it shows that you don’t see that value in yourself,” advises Intern Magazine editor Alec Dudson. 03. Start friendships “Research the projects instead of the agencies. Befriend people, say hi and complement them on their work,” enthuses designer Jenny Theolin. “Collaborate with agencies – maybe there is a project or an idea you can ask their mentorship for? Or maybe they want to do it with you?” 04. Be entrepreneurial “Be a great storyteller. Be curious. But also, have a good understanding of business and brands,” advises Neil Bennett, strategy director at LOVE. 05. Take a genuine interest “You have to naturally pool people around you that you get on with, that you share values, principles and a work ethic with,” advises Craig Oldham. “Otherwise you become that person who goes in hard at a social event, banging business cards under everyone’s nose. And in my experience, no one likes that person.” 06. Solve problems “It’s easy to get caught up in the next ‘it’ technology or buzz area, but it’s important to remember that a designer’s strongest and most important skill is research (both for the client and user), with the creative problem-solving ability to back it up,” reveals Shillington director Sarah McHugh. 07. Learn from mistakes “I’ve made plenty of mistakes, too many to mention. I’ve been broke, worked with terrible clients but all of those experiences have taught me an immeasurable amount,” shares Dudson. “Failure is the best way to grow, there’s no beating it or getting around it.” Lead image by Nate Kitch. This article was originally published in Computer Arts, the world's best-selling design magazine. Buy issue 282 or subscribe. Related articles: Nuggets of advice for fresh design graduates 5 top tips for graduate designers 6 trail-blazing design graduates you should know View the full article

Every so often, there's a clarion call for designers: this bright, shiny new technology –this brave new world – will change everything. It'll revolutionise how we work, how we live, how people engage with our brand campaigns at every level. In the last decade, these game-changing innovations have included huge moves forward in VR/AR, the inexorable rise of AI, increased affordability of 3D printing, and the fast-growing Internet of Things (or IoT) – smart, connected objects that support your every whim at work and home. Now, we don't want to be naysayers, or come across like 1990s luddites moaning that the internet will never catch on. It is undeniable that all these design trends have yielded some incredible opportunities. But have they changed the game as quickly, or as dramatically, as predicted? No. Or at least, not yet. Of course, according to sci-fi visions of 2018 we should all be zipping about on hoverboards, exploring deep space and getting wiped out by super-intelligent robots of our own making by now. That hasn't happened either. Yet. Read on as we explore the three biggest examples of premature hype in recent years, and what this means for the average designer... 01. Virtual Reality The VR hype from 2016 seems to have fizzled out. Can the new Oculus Quest finally bring the tech to the masses? Unless you were living under a stone in 2016, you won't have missed the VR hype. Headset after headset hit the market in quick succession – Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and then Microsoft's offering, the 'mixed-reality' HoloLens. That's without the sea of comparatively inexpensive alternatives that used your phone, ranging from Samsung's Gear VR to Google Cardboard. It seemed like VR was here to stay. But where are we now? VR simply hasn't taken off in a truly mainstream way – even in gaming, according to a recent industry survey at the Game Developers Conference. The biggest global phenomenon by some distance has been in the AR space: Pokémon Go. That's not to say there haven't been amazing uses of VR in brand campaigns, and if the context is appropriate, there are plenty of opportunities to create an immersive VR experience yourself. But is it truly mainstream yet? No. Facebook-owned Oculus has just rolled the dice again by announcing the Oculus Quest, the first fully self-contained headset that will support 'six degrees of freedom' – meaning your head position, tilt and rotation is fully tracked throughout the experience. Will VR finally take over our homes in 2019? Time will tell. 02. Artificial Intelligence If you're one of those designers who fears that AI bots will steal your job, there's no need to panic yet. While there have been some phenomenal applications at the cutting edge of the field, on a day-to-day basis the public faces of AI – like Siri and Alexa – still have a way to go before we can genuinely consider them intelligent. For brands, one of the most exciting applications of AI comes in the form of chat bots, interacting with customers in real time. Banks such as DBS, OCBC and Citibank are actively innovating in this space, and in the next few years such narrowly task-focused bots could expand into broader areas. But it's not mainstream yet. Compared to most of its western counterparts, China has embraced the potential of AI and automation much more readily. One example is Alibaba Cloud's latest innovation: ET Brain. Launched earlier in 2018 with a dynamic brand identity by Wolff Olins, it's an "intelligent, adaptive technology platform" – processing huge amounts of data in real-time, and learning as it goes. As the video above explains, ET Brain applies AI at a macro level, engaging with the infrastructure of a city on everything from traffic flow, to environment management, to healthcare. Whether this glimpse of an AI-driven future excites or terrifies you depends on your perspective, and which movies you've been watching. Will designers be replaced by robots at some point in the future? Probably not. But AI could provide more opportunities to automate common design tasks, freeing up more time to engage the creative, problem-solving human brain. 03. 3D Printing Entry-level models like the M3D Micro make 3D printing accessible, but it still hasn't caught on in a big way Okay, so 3D printing has been around in a rudimentary form since the mid-1980s – the concept is not new. The enormous amount of hype in recent years relates more to its ever-increasing accessibility and affordability. What used to be a huge, industrial-scale investment for a manufacturer can now be picked up for less than the price of a high-end smartphone. Rather like VR, designers were raving about 3D printing not so long ago. The possibilities seemed endless. In 2015, at the height of the hype, we ran a series of articles here on Creative Bloq – including a guide to 3D printing for beginners. Three years on, has 3D printing revolutionised design? Erm, not quite. According to our sister site TechRadar's round-up of the best 3D printers for 2018, the entry-level choice is the M3D Micro – which costs a few hundred pounds, and is compact enough to sit on your desk. Even higher-end models such as the MakerBot Replicator+ or Ultimaker 2+ are still only a few thousand. It couldn't be more accessible. But again, like VR, there's been a great deal on focus on the how, and not enough on the why. Aside from gaming and entertainment, VR provides a wealth of opportunities in the training space – particularly in the military and medical sectors. 3D printing remains an exciting area in manufacturing and architecture, and could prove revolutionary in medical applications such as prosthetics and organ transplants. The need is there, and the technology facilitates a solution. Do you need a 3D printer or a VR headset gathering dust in your design studio? Probably not. Should you shoehorn it into a project because you can? No. But if the right creative problem comes along for which those technologies make total sense, they've never been more affordable. Just don't believe the hype. Related articles: 4 design trends we're all tired of hearing about 4 design tools you never knew you needed 8 must-have products for a smarter studio View the full article

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Unity is one of the world's most popular game engines, responsible for powering hundreds of thousands of games all around the world on over 25 platforms. You may already know how easy it is to get started, prototype, iterate and publish to your chosen platform, and over the past few years we have been improving the Unity toolset to be more than a developer or programmer tool. Artists or designers can now use Unity to bring their assets to life, whether they're custom-built or free 3D models, and express their creativity without the bottleneck of needing an experienced coder. With the release of our Webby award-winning demos Adam and Book of the Dead, Unity has shown that it can produce Triple A quality productions in real time. In this tutorial we'll take our exported FBX model from our DCC tool and import it into Unity, add in our procedural camera system (Cinemachine), apply our animations via the Timeline sequencing tool and then make our scene look beautiful with our post-processing stack. We'll demonstrate how easy it is to put something together with no code, and bring your creations to life in real time. Download the assets and follow along whilst watching the video with the link below. Download the files and accompanying video here. 01. Get started in Unity Start Unity up and open the Unity Artist Tutorial file [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] Make sure you have the assets for this project downloaded, and open Unity. Select Open Project then navigate to the Unity Artist Tutorial file. It might be useful to familiarise yourself with the Editor layout by watching this video on our Learn site. 02. Import your model Importing an FBX brings in all its associated data [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] In our Project window we have imported our FBX models into the project by simply dragging them into this window or pulling them into our Assets folder. When we import an FBX into Unity we import all of the mesh, materials, animations, light data, animation curves and many other values. 03. Add your character Your character comes ready-lit [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] Navigate to the Adam Prefab in our Project window and pull that into the Hierarchy. You will see it pop up in the scene and Game window. You'll notice that he is already very well lit; you can view how we have lit this scene in the Environment GameObject by expanding it. Play with the lighting to get a feel for how it all works [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] For this project we are using one Directional Light for the main source of light, a spotlight so Adam is backlit, some softboxes for the environmental soft lighting as well as some reflection and light probes in order to help distribute the lighting around the scene. Feel free to have a play with the lighting available and experiment with how it looks with different objects turned off and on. 04. Animate the character with timeline Now we create a Timeline asset [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] We are going to animate the character using our sequencing tool called Timeline. Go to the toolbar and select Window > Timeline and dock the Timeline window wherever you want in the Editor. Select Adam in the Hierarchy and in the Timeline window click Create. This will prompt us to create a Timeline asset. Save it as AdamTimeline. 05. Set an animation soundtrack Check your animation by scrubbing through the timeline [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] On the Adam track in the Timeline right-click and select Add from Animation Clip, then choose Adam_Walk. We will now have this block in our track that will play the animation. We can now press play and scrub through this timeline in the window instead of pressing play. 06. Add the camera system Cinemachine will give you a procedural third-person camera [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] We want to create a procedural third-person camera system to follow and move around our character. We already have a ready-made package called Cinemachine, which is available for free on Unity's Asset Store. So, search for, download and import Cinemachine into your project. 07. Add a Freelook camera Create a Freelook camera and pass in a Follow transform and a Look At transform [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] On the top toolbar navigate to Cinemachine > Create FreeLook Camera. In the Hierarchy we now have a camera icon on the Main Camera stating Cinemachine is in control, and we have the GameObject CM FreeLook 1 which has a big component on it in the Inspector. We need to pass in a Follow transform and a Look At transform. Drag the Adam GameObject from the Hierarchy into these two slots. We will now see three rings, called rigs, around our character in the scene. 08. Modify the rig You can change the focus of the camera by setting up individual Look Ats for each rig [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] Now we want to modify our rig so that we have complete control over the look and feel. We want to be able to focus on different parts of our character depending on where our camera angle is. There are three rigs in this component – Top, Middle and Bottom – shown by the three circles around our character in the scene. Because our target's root is on its base, all the cameras will focus on its feet. We can change the focus of the camera by setting up individual Look Ats for each rig. On the Top rig our Look At transform wants to be set to Adam, the Middle rig to Bip01 and the Bottom rig to Bip01 Spine. We can see the transition between these different rigs by either entering Play Mode, or by changing the Y axis value in the Axis Control section of the FreeLook camera. 09. Import post-processing You'll need to add the PostProcessing package to Unity [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] Next we are going to add the post-processing into our project. We can download the PostProcessing package from the Asset Store via your browser or via the 'Asset Store' windows in the Editor and search 'Post Processing Stack'. On the top toolbar, navigate to Assets > Import New Package > Custom Package. Then locate the PostProcessing package and click Open. Add a Post Process Layer to your main camera and set up a Volume Blending Layer [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] On our Main Camera we want to add a new component, and that component is a Post Process Layer (Add Component > Rendering > Post Process Layer). This will handle our post-processing for us, so the only thing we will need to do is create a new layer. On the top toolbar, navigate to Edit > Project Settings > Tags and Layers. Next click the arrow to reveal all layers in our project, and add in a new User Layer called Post Processing. Now we can go back to our Main Camera and set up the Volume Blending Layer on the Post Process Layer Component. While we are on our Main Camera, we want to add some anti-aliasing to our view. Let's change the anti-aliasing mode to FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing). 10. Set up post-process volume Use the Is Global setting to ensure that all effects are applied to the camera [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] On the top toolbar, navigate to GameObject > Create Empty. Select this GameObject and rename it 'PP Volume'. Let's set the layer of this GameObject to the layer we set up earlier, Post Processing. Next let's add the Post Process Volume, by navigating to Add Component > Rendering > Post Process Volume. On this new component we want to tick the 'Is Global' checkbox. This will ensure that the effects are applied to the camera. Next we want to create a new Post Process Profile by clicking New next to the circle selector for Profile. Now it is finally time to start adding all of our post-processing effects. 11. Apply post-effects Finish off by working through all the post effects [click the icon in the top right of the image to enlarge] Let's work our way through the post-processing effects. The first effect we'll add is Auto Exposure. Within this effect if we want to edit a value, first tick the box to the left of the variable, and then it becomes editable. We're going to do this for the following options: Minimum (EV) – set the value to -0.35, Maximum (EV) – set the value to 1, and Key Value – set to 1.25. The next post-processing effect we are going to add is Bloom. As we did with the previous effect, we are going to tick the variables we want to edit, and then we can tweak them as desired. We are going to do this for: Intensity – set to 1.5, and Soft Knee – set to 0.1. The scene is looking a bit dull, so let's add in the Color Grading effect. The variables we will set are the following: Tonemapping Mode to ACES, Post-exposure (EV) to 0.6, Saturation to 10 and Contrast to 15. The final effect we will add to the profile is Vignette, which will add a darker edge to our camera, serving to focus the user towards the centre of the screen. We only need to set one variable on this effect and that is Intensity at 0.3. And there we have it, our final product. We've managed to import a model into Unity, create a camera system using Cinemachine, apply an animation using Timeline and finally add some image effects using post-processing. You can add in more characters, some landscape in the background or even some more animations and use the Timeline to sequence them all together. This article was originally published in issue 236 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 236 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: 7 tips for the perfect 3D gaming portfolio Design a playable avatar for a video game Create an atmospheric game environment View the full article

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