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However hard agencies fight against it, branding has always been subject to stylistic trends. Whether brands embrace or resist the status quo, the fact that some kind of aesthetic benchmark exists remains significant. Arguably, there’s some value in a new launch sharing certain visual characteristics with the rest of its sector. It helps build familiarity and trust, as a sort of visual shorthand for consumers. There’s no denying that standing out is always easier if you position yourself against the grain of a trend, but you must work a lot harder to do so successfully. Either way, just make sure you outline you ideas clearly, like in these meticulous design style guides. For Wolff Olins' chief creative officer Chris Moody, it’s clear which route to take. His view is that trends are to be avoided at all costs. “House styles suck, trends suck, looking like your competitors sucks,” he says. “I rate originality and distinctiveness above craft – sometimes even above practicality,” Moody goes on. “Creative movements are circle jerks that only satisfy those in them. Designers should care less about what other designers think, and more about exciting, surprising and energising the end user.” It’s a rousing call to arms, and few designers worth their salt would disagree with the notion that the end user should be front and centre for key design decisions. However, trends still have their place in some designers’ creative processes. For its rebrand of McKinsey & Company, Wolff Olins worked with Signal Noise to visualise data in an illustrative way “In their early stages, trends can be useful to help align you with a style of work, a movement,” says Rob Coke, an executive creative director based at Output. “The brand benefits from being seen as contemporary, part of the culture. It’s possible to be part of it and yet put a different spin on it.” Coke points out that branding often reflects wider aesthetic movements in architecture, interiors, art and culture. He acknowledges that this is not a recent phenomenon, although the immediacy of trends – and the speed of their proliferation – has changed considerably. “In the distant past you’d find out about Modernism and the Swiss Style by trawling through Graphis annuals at college. In the '90s, people were inspired by Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, or a grungier, cut-up ‘end of print’ aesthetic,” he says. For youth mental health service HeadStart Newham, Output developed a bold, attention-seeking brand that makes use of bright colours and emoji-influenced graphics “These days, things are more homogenised. Designers aren’t forced to hunt around for obscure inspiration: everyone’s looking at the same references, in real time. There’s a recognisable ‘online look’: a vaguely European, friendly aesthetic, balanced by a sense of craft communicated through hipster symbolism and mid-century colour palettes.” Coke is quick to assert that once trends become ubiquitous, they descend into cliché and are best avoided at all costs. “That’s how a counter-trend starts, like the rush towards serif typography as a reaction to the ubiquity of geometric sans,” he says. “Smarter agencies know how to give their work a contemporary feel, but to build it around strong ideas. This is always what sets original work apart from the herd.” Why trends risk homogenisation Completed in-house, this colourful rebrand of yogurt brand Chobani features beautifully stylised imagery with a retro 1970s tinge, and spawned a host of imitators Sometimes, a single stand-out piece of work attracts enough attention in a particular sector that it creates an almost immediate spike in ‘me too’ brands, accelerating the formation of a trend. Koto founder James Greenfield believes exactly that happened last year, following the celebrated in-house rebrand of ‘America’s number-one Greek Yogurt’, Chobani. “Its Matisse-like, cut-out style and reboot of typefaces with a 1970s feel have seen a plethora of similar identities come out in the past six months,” he says. “That being such a stand-out piece of work in 2018 will cause the trend to come and go quicker than it might have otherwise. It also requires a certain amount of talent and flair to carry off, making the distance between the original and the copies even more stark.” Johnson Banks founder Michael Johnson draws attention to “the preponderance of ‘technology-serif’ brands”, lamenting the fact that tech companies often default to similar geometric sans serifs in their branding. “There was once a school of thought that all branding should be timeless,” says Johnson. “Now, many rebrands happen within four or five years, rather than every 10 or 15. Branding has become much more tactical, and we’re seeing more designs that are style based.” Johnson Banks’ work for challenger brand THIS marks a new approach to meat-free foods Spencer Buck, co-founder and creative partner at Taxi Studio, concurs: “There’s a lot more style-over-substance branding, and worse, seemingly unnecessary rebranding at present,” he says. This is exactly the mindset that Taxi fought against with its recent global rebrand of Carlsberg. Its pared-back, distinctively Danish aesthetic has been crafted with timelessness and longevity in mind, making it a great example of an ‘anti-trend’ rebrand that doesn’t need to be rehashed every few years. Buck highlights luxury fashion as another sector losing its individuality. “It’s bizarre,” he shrugs. “By definition fashion is trend-driven, but that doesn’t explain the homogeneity in a sector that exists because people desire visual differentiation and disruption.” Ironically, disruption can be a trend in itself. It must be done for the right reasons to be a differentiator, rather than a source of confusion. “The alcohol industry has shrugged off most of its dusty old category conventions, starting with the wine category two decades ago,” says Buck. Designed to be ‘anti-trend’ and timeless, Taxi Studio’s global rebrand of Carlsberg unifies many variants under one carefully crafted masterbrand system. “Now the baton has been passed from wine to rum, vodka, gin, craft beer and so on. Anything goes branding-wise, which means very little actually sticks. You can plonk any style of illustration, type or photography on a can or bottle of booze and get away with it because it’s ‘trendy’. And that’s the problem.” If everyone’s shouting at the top of their voice then no one gets heard – which is why the quiet, crafted confidence of Taxi’s Carlsberg rebrand is so effective by comparison. “Chaos breeds the new normal. It becomes wallpaper,” says Buck. “Even if the work is impeccably executed, it gets lost in a different sea of sameness category by category. If everyone is disrupting, nothing is disruptive.” Trends in different markets While some markets used to be more reactive to trends than others, Greenfield believes that’s no longer the case. “Finance has as many trends as FMCG, and within that lie many nuances,” he says. Coke agrees that trends are prevalent in any sector these days, and he expands on the finance example: “Once banks were all about authority and trust, and the colours, imagery and tone of voice reflected that. First Direct stood out by balancing a stark, modernist black-and-white aesthetic with a quirky, friendly voice,” he says. “Now, open banking regulation has thrown tradition up in the air, with newcomers like Monzo introducing emojis, animation and downto- earth language. This is already becoming a cliché in itself, with several brightly coloured brands popping up.” Monzo is a much-quoted example of a disruptor kick-starting a trend, and Moody adds Bulb to the list as a comparable challenger in the energy sector. “Every sector has its tropes and clichés,” he points out. “It’s fascinating that whenever someone breaks out of those they are heralded as mavericks.” Monzo was an early disruptor in the world of financial services, a sector that’s now filled with similar challenger brands Studio Texture’s strategy director Louise Kyme has particular expertise with charities and not-for-profit organisations. She believes this sector is still getting to grips with the idea of a brand having its own distinctive personality, rather than following trends. “As the big brands lead the way with chunky budgets and big, ambitious agencies, smaller charities tend to follow diligently in their tracks,” she says. “Rather than taking the opportunity to be risk-taking challengers, we end up with more fighting brands, and more sad advertising.” Part of the issue, Kyme believes, is that branding is still perceived by much of the public as a waste of charity funds. “As a consequence, charities tread with caution throughout the process, which inevitably results in trend following, rather than trend setting,” she continues. “This is a shame, although I suspect a rebel charity brand will shake us up soon.” Where are the biggest trends? One of the most immediately striking trends within any given sector concerns choice of colours – particularly what Coke describes as the ‘Airbnb-ism’ of brand palettes. “It’s not just about the use of pink, but the approach to colour as a whole,” he says. “We now see a lot of range-ambiguous colours, with evocative names, sitting around the colour wheel.” Much of this comes down to how much harder brand palettes have to work nowadays. “It’s not just about having one or two recognisable brand colours for marketing communications, but about introducing range and tone to digital products and platforms,” adds Coke. “Of course, there’s a danger that every brand can be every colour these days, which can be harmful when you’re trying to create distinctiveness.” Having overseen the Airbnb rebrand while he was creative director at DesignStudio, James Greenfield admits some responsibility for the trend that Coke identifies. “Bright, poppy palettes have been popular for a good eight years now, and show no signs of abating,” he says. “Some adventurous brands are trying out some more muted approaches, but this requires talent in deployment,” Greenfield goes on. “The fact of the matter is, there are only 12 to 14 main colours to choose from, and the nuance of how you work with them is the skill. Colour is just one component of a bigger brand world these days, and it’s one of the last things we get locked down on most big branding projects.” Michael Johnson’s playful ‘graphic mocks the trend for geometric sans serifs Kyme agrees that bright, flat hues making up multi-colour identity schemes are the order of the day, particularly among digital-first brands. “In the context of this, there’s still equity in owning a single colour or narrow palette,” she points out. “We’ve also noticed brands making a special effort to steer clear of gender colour-stereotyping or colour-coding, especially in areas where they want to promote and re-establish gender balance, such as in education and skills,” adds Kyme. Within the field of typography, those ubiquitous geometric sans serifs still abound among digital-first brands in particular. It’s a well-trodden trend that Johnson Banks mischievously emphasised on Twitter in September 2018 by fusing the word marks of Spotify, Airbnb, Google and Uber into the Frankenstein-like creation ‘Spairboober’. “This style is largely responsible for what people are calling ‘global blanding’,” says Coke. “The use often comes down to practical reasons around legibility and recognition at small sizes, but it’s leading to a world of sameness and provides opportunities to buck the trend.” As well as quirky serifs and expressive scripts injecting more personality into branding, dynamic variable fonts are another exciting counter-measure. Wolff Olins has worked extensively with Colophon and Face37 on exactly that: “Both get the fact that type should be intelligently powered,” explains Moody. “The work that went into our Lafayette Anticipations typeface was immense. It could recognise when two similar characters sat together, and automatically swap in an alternate.” Bespoke type is an effective way to differentiate a brand: Wolff Olins worked with Colophon and Face37 on this font for Lafayette Anticipations Moody also heralds the use of ‘smart’ illustration – which can adapt to cater to local markets and cultural nuances – as a key part of a modern brand’s toolkit. “The work we did with Signal Noise on data visualisation for our recent McKinsey work was a real eye-opener for me as to how data could be used in a truly illustrative, beautiful way,” he says. “Illustration is the antidote to the stock imagery trend,” says Andy Howell, co-founder and creative director at The Clearing. “More often than not, stock images are an aspirational or unrealistic representation of real life. Unsurprisingly, that fails to build emotional connections with any audience.” Emotional connection is what illustration does best, says Howell – and The Clearing used it to great effect to appeal to families in its recent Wimbledon rebrand. “It’s not trying to be realistic, and that’s exactly why it’s relatable,” he adds. “We can all imagine ourselves within the story. Stylistic trends within illustration come and go, but using illustration for storytelling is here to stay. Let’s embrace that.” Coke agrees that illustration can be invaluable for brands to express character and playfulness, and to find that all-important point of distinction in a trend-driven world. “When almost every website leads with a centred headline over a full-bleed image of vaguely trendy, happy people, illustration provides potential for difference,” he adds. What clients and consumers want Of course, many of the bigger-picture trends that affect the industry at its core aren’t stylistic at all: they concern the constantly shifting landscape of consumer attitudes, expectations and behaviour. Consumers expect more of brands than ever before, and the pressure is on to step it up. “If it’s made up, false or inauthentic, people see straight through it,” confirms Johnson. “Our decision is simple: only work with brands – and people – that you can trust or believe in.” Trust has been a particularly thorny issue in the charity sector in recent years, reveals Kyme, as high-profile failures and public critique of chief executive pay have dragged the worst parts of the sector into the spotlight. “Audiences are warier of charity marketing techniques, partly because charity marketing has become increasingly commercialised,” she says. “This misses the chance to tell a genuine story. That’s not easy to achieve, but we believe it’s where the real opportunities lie.” Koto’s branding scheme for creative recruitment firm Talentful combines an on-trend ‘range-ambiguous’ colour palette with quirky type and illustration According to Howell, it’s all too easy for brands to become blinded by the success of others and lose sight of how they could find a point of difference. “Just look at the domination of Amazon and Google, and the rise of businesses clamouring to be just like them,” he says. “Finding a problem, a gap or a need – that’s where real impact can be had.” For instance, The Clearing worked with Ownable - a service that bridges the gap between offline and online by making off-the-page purchases in a magazine as smooth and simple as clicking a website link. “While Amazon gives us an overwhelming amount of choice, Ownable helps you buy recommended products in just a couple of clicks,” he explains. With budgets and time-frames becoming progressively tighter, the pressure is on from clients to deliver more for less. “The need for speed is overwhelming. It’s all about being ‘right now’ compared with ‘being right, now,’” says Buck. “Quicker. Cheaper. Better. These three things used to be a choice. Now it’s a shopping list,” says Moody. “The brand industry is being disrupted, commoditised and put under pressure.” But he relishes the challenge. “One way of looking at this is to say: ‘Isn’t it a shame we don’t have time to think about projects anymore?’ But I prefer to say: ‘Great, now we can get more stuff out in the world,’” asserts Moody. “Things are tougher? Good, it’ll get rid of the bullshitters and charlatans that have had too much airspace.” This article was originally published in issue 292 of Computer Arts, the world's best-selling design magazine. Buy issue 292 or subscribe to Computer Arts. Related articles: Trend alert: the end of authenticity 6 big portfolio trends of 2019 2019's illustration trends to know about View the full article

If you have a killer creative project that you're trying to get off the ground, the rise of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding services has seriously improved your chances of success. It cuts out middlemen such as publishers, who'd need persuading of the merits of your projects before taking a tidy slice of the proceeds, and gives you full control of your creative enterprises – whether they're posters, graphic design books or something entirely different. As long as you can find enough people to back them, that is. Since it launched in 2009, Kickstarter has seen over 17 million people raise more than $4.4 billion, with 167,372 projects backed – a number that's rising every day. And while those numbers are huge, take a look through our list of 10 of the biggest design-related projects on Kickstarter and you'll see that you don't need to find a massive number of backers for success. If you can convince around 1,000 people to pledge money for your project, you should be good to go. How to launch a successful Kickstarter 01. 1975 NASA Graphics Standards Manual Backers: 8,798 Total pledged: $941,966 The 1975 redesign of the NASA logo is one of the most controversial pieces of branding ever, throwing out the almost militaristic seal that had been to the Moon with the Apollo missions and replacing it with minimal, fluid and futuristic wordmark that's come to be known as the Worm. Loved by those who grew up in the age of the Space Shuttle and hated by almost everybody else, the Worm came as part of a detailed design system that's outlined fully in the NASA Graphics Standards Manual. This reprint pulled in record Kickstarter backing and is still available to buy now. 02. A to Z of The Designers Republic The Designers Republic had a huge impact on design for music and games Backers: 1,324 Total pledged: £135,786 Ian Anderson's The Designers Republic is one of the most iconic design groups of all time. It started out working with the music industry, most notably defining the look of Warp Records, but it's TDR's association with video games that probably had the most impact: its graphics and packaging design for Wipeout on Playstation was instrumental in making video games cool. Written by Anderson himself, An A to Z of The Designers Republic takes you from Age of Chance (a Leeds band that TDR designed record sleeves for) to Zermatt Road (Anderson's Croydon address before he moved north), with plenty of detail, imagery and insight. 03. Munich '72. The Visual Output of Otl Aicher's Dept. XI Discover the story behind the designs for Munich '72 Backers: 1,036 Total pledged: £84,657 Written and designed by Mark Holt of 8vo, Munich '72. The Visual Output of Otl Aicher's Dept. XI is the first book to take an in-depth look at the groundbreaking design work undertaken by the German designer Otl Aicher and his team at Dept. XI for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Dept XI defined the entire look of the 1972 games, from its logo, iconic pictograms and the first Olympic mascot – a dachshund called Waldi – through to apparel, signage and stadium decoration. Due for publication in September, the book also includes the complete standards and guidelines for visual design. 04. The ACME Corporation If only more of life's problems could be solved by dynamite and anvils Backers: 3,042 Total pledged: $105,083 A name familiar to any lover of cartoons, The ACME Corporation is the fictional company that supplied the hapless Wile E. Coyote with the various items he used in his attempts to catch the Road Runner in 43 cartoon produced between 1949 and 1994. Rob Loukotla has watched every episode and drawn all 126 of them, from anvils and dynamite through to iron bird seed and giant catapults, to create this stunning 24x36" poster. Having smashed its Kickstarter target many times over, it's now available to order here. 05. Philographics: Big ideas in simple shapes A fantastic visual tool for grappling with life's big questions Backers: 1,629 Total pledged: £65,217 If you've ever wondered what everything's all about, here's a project that can help you find some answers. Philographics is a project by Genis Carreras that hopes to merge the worlds of philosophy and graphic design by explaining big ideas in simple shapes. It started out as a set of posters and grew into a set of 95 designs, each depicting a different philosophical 'ism' using a combination of geometric shapes, colours and a short definition of the theory, and it's available to buy from Carreras in book form and also as a set of postcards. 06. Manuals 2: Design & Identity Guidelines If you love style guides, here's a whole book full of them Backers: 748 Total pledged: £56,768 Who can resist a good set of corporate identity guidelines? If you love leafing through style guides, Manuals 2: Design & Identity Guidelines from Unit Editions is a monster collection, featuring 20 design manuals created by some of the giants of 20th century design. Originally published in a limited run of 2,000 in 2014, this much-demanded reprint is your chance to get your hands on a set of meticulous and beautifully reproduced design manuals. 07. Clubbed: a visual history of UK club culture Top one, nice one, sorted Backers: 1,403 Total pledged: £56,640 It's not quite all about the music. From Peter Saville's revolutionary design work for the Haçienda onwards, British club culture has always had a foot in the world of design, and Clubbed aims to celebrate the best graphic design in UK clubs from the last 35 years. It has a vast collection of logos, posters, photography, tickets, menus, cover art, signage, lanyards, fonts and flyers featuring work from some of the biggest names in design including Angus Hyland, The Designers Republic, Trevor Jackson and, of course, Peter Saville himself. 08. Hermann Zapf & the World He Designed Learn about the man behind the dingbats Backers: 504 Total pledged: $48,915 One of the giants of 20th century typography, Hermann Zapf designed more than 200 typefaces over the course of his career and is almost certainly responsible for a decent chunk of your font library – five of his typefaces come pre-installed on every Mac. Written by Jerry Kelly, Zapf's friend and colleague for nearly 30 years, Hermann Zapf & the World He Designed explores Zapf's life and work and features a wealth of never-before-seen works and photos, as well as definitive lists of his type designs and calligraphic work. 09. Vignelli: From A to Z Another chance to enjoy the wisdom of a modern design legend Backers: 344 Total pledged: $29,733 Based on a series of lectures delivered by the legendary Massimo Vignelli at Harvard University's School of Design and Architecture, Vignelli: From A to Z was originally published in 2007 but had been out of print for a number of years until this Kickstarter campaign came along to bring it back. Starting with 'A for Ambiguity' and covering everything from book design through to garment design, packaging and typography, it's a wealth of design wisdom from Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and it's available to buy here. 10. The Font Deck: a Playing-Card Guide to Typography Learn about typography while playing poker! What could possibly go wrong? Backers: 720 Total pledged: CA$ 26,626 To wrap up, here's a fun way to learn the basics of typography. The Font Deck is a set of casino-quality playing cards, and each of its 52 faces contains a mini-lesson about fonts along with a beautiful visual example. With topics including typeface anatomy, kerning and historical typographic subjects such as Gutenberg's press and Chinese movable type, it's basically a pocket-sized textbook in card form that enables you to learn about typography while playing poker. Designed by Ben Barrett-Forrest, it's on sale here. Related articles: How to self-publish a book The best free fonts for designers A designer's guide to printing a poster View the full article

A strong studio culture can work wonders. It goes way beyond investing in a fancy coffee machine, finding room for a pool table or scattering some beanbags. Done well, studio culture can motivate and inspire people to create their best work. Don't be the one that screws it up for everyone. Even as you read this, your co-workers might be grinding their teeth as you blithely break yet another unspoken rule of studio life. Or perhaps your boss is about to call you in for a stern chat, because you're the fly in the ointment once again. So whether you're a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new graduate keen to get the best start in studio life, or long-term staffer who needs to shed some bad habits, read on to discover four things you should never do when working in a design studio... and four things you should. You'll find more advice on how to successfully navigate the industry in our pick of the best books for graphic designers. Not yet snagged your dream role? Take a look at our jobs board for the best new openings. DON'T trash others' ideas No, mocking other people's ideas isn't big or clever As the old adage goes, a great idea can come from anywhere (and anyone). If that philosophy is genuinely encouraged within your studio – and credit is given where it's due, even if the killer concept comes from an intern – then congratulations, you're one step closer to a positive studio culture. As another old adage goes, there's no such thing as a bad idea. Of course, in practice there really is – there are some terrible ones out there. Some of them get made. But it's not your place to mock or trample on people who are brave enough to put forward something different. There could be a gem buried deep in there, or it could kick-start a discussion that takes the team in an unexpected direction. Of course, it could just be terrible. But if you're constructive rather than disparaging, the mood will be very different. That person's next idea could be a killer. DON'T hog the limelight Despite what your ego tells you, it's not all about you No one likes a showboater, but if you really have to strut and preen if a project goes well (hint: you don't) then at least make sure your self-loving is proportional to your role in making it happen. In short: if you're part of a team, it's a team effort and the glory should be shared. Whether it's throwaway boastful comments in the studio, or your credit-hogging takes a more permanent form in your personal design portfolio – stop. People will respect you a lot more if you're honest about what you actually did, and big up everyone around you at the same time. And yes, creative directors, this can apply to you too. Sure, the buck may stop with you – and you may be steering the team to success. But if you're the only one collecting gongs at awards dos or basking in applause on the speaker circuit, spare a thought for the people who put the graft in. DON'T try and 'delegate' everything You may find certain tasks boring, but they still matter Behind every life-affirming, firework-display moment that fills you with pride and proves why you chose to be a designer, there's a daunting to-do list of mundane, repetitive tasks. Whether it's resizing images in Photoshop, artworking or just mind-numbing admin – someone has to do it. Once you've made it to a senior level, you may not have to worry about those time-draining tasks that you spent many hours on as a junior, but rest assured there'll be a whole new list of things you'd rather not be doing. Delegation is a valuable skill, but there's a difference between sharing the load and dumping it on someone else's head. Sometimes you just need to roll up your sleeves and get on with the unglamorous but necessary bits of the job, and not bleat that your talents would be better spent elsewhere. DON'T be a dead weight It's not fair to expect your team mates to drag you along A vibrant, positive work hard/play hard studio culture can yield some amazing results, and build a strong team if everyone's pulling in the same direction. But remember: you do actually need to do some work before playtime starts. Generally speaking, the smaller the studio the harder it is to get away with not pulling your weight – there are fewer places to hide, after all. But if you are ever tempted to coast along while your studio teammates shoulder the burden, you'll build up resentment against you and may not have a job for long. That said, finding the right balance is crucial. If 'working hard' includes the occasional late one to hit a crunch deadline or nail a big pitch that's one thing – especially if everyone celebrates together afterwards. But pushing yourself to the limits day in, day out isn't sustainable, and will damage your physical and mental health. If that's happening, say no. DO bring a positive attitude If everyone in the studio approaches problems in an open, constructive way, you'll create an environment where great ideas – and great people – thrive. DO be a humble team-player Team work makes the dream work, so get busy Support the people around you. Be generous with your time, and share your skills as well as the credit. If everyone does the same, you'll all be stronger as a result. DO sweat the small stuff Pay attention to the smaller details, and take pride in doing them well. They may not seem glamorous, but they keep the project moving. DO pitch in wherever you can Whatever your role on a project, make your input count. Be indispensable. Contribute ideas, go the extra mile, help take the work from good to great. Then share in the success. Read more: 5 design student stereotypes to avoid How to become a junior designer The best office chair of 2019 View the full article

Freelancing is a great life, but it's not without its challenges. So whether you're new to freelancing or an old hand, it's always worth seeking out advice and new ideas. Thankfully there's a lot of creatives ready and willing to help via online videos, and these seven channels listed here are the cream of the crop. They're all presented with honesty and openness, free from jargon and waffle, and most importantly, they're not trying to sell you anything. Instead, the hosts all genuinely want to share the benefit of their experience, so it's well worth taking advantage if you're thinking of making that leap in to freelance life. 01. Best for learning how to make money: Roberto Blake The title of designer Roberto Blake's most popular video, "FROM BROKE TO $100K/YEAR... THIS IS HOW I CHANGED MY LIFE", sounds like it might be low-grade clickbait. But don't be fooled. In fact this 27-minute talk by Blake, who's both head of a digital agency and founder of a creative education platform, features some of the best advice on making money as a freelancer we've ever heard. It's not shouty, or salesy: instead he explains calmly and rationally the principles behind his own successful career, and how you can follow them yourself. And this high quality continues throughout all the videos on his YouTube channel, which are strongly focused on the business side of freelancing, covering topics including 'Why you're tired all the time, and feeling burnout', 'Passive income: how I earn $7,000/mo with affiliate marketing' and 'How to find freelance clients step by step.' 02. Best for the nuts and bolts of freelance life: Charli Marie Want some advice and inspiration on the more nuts and bolts issues of freelance life, such as how to create a home office, what computers to use, and how to design an online store? Then you should check out this YouTube channel from Charli Marie, a web and graphic designer from New Zealand, currently living in London and working remotely for an email marketing company. In a friendly and approachable manner, Charli walks you through how she does things and offers tips based on the various challenges she faces from day to day. Topics include 'Working from home: Life as a remote designer', 'Designing my blog' and 'My biggest fear as a designer'. 03. Best for business tips: The Skool Rocks The Skool Rocks is a YouTube channel taking a magazine-like approach towards education for creative entrepreneurs. Presented by Chris Do, an Emmy award winning director, designer, strategist and educator, and Jose Cabeller, UX design consultant and coach, it tackles a range of topics in a number of ways, including interviews, tips pieces, case studies and more. What remains consistent, though, is the slickness of the presentation and the usefulness of the advice and analysis. Topics covered include 'A better way to present to clients', '3 ways to reclaim your creativity and productivity', and 'How to get work in ANY city'. 04. Best for freelance coders: John Morris If you're working independently in web design and development, you'll find a lot of excellent advice on the YouTube channel of John Morris, who's been a freelance web developer for over 14 years. His videos are aimed at teaching new and aspiring developers learn how to get freelance work, how to get clients and how to earn a living. He explains all these things clearly and succinctly, with useful reference to his real-life experience where relevant, and absolutely no time is wasted in explaining his best tips and advice. Topics covered include 'Get a freelance job with no experience', 'What keywords should freelancers try to rank for?' and 'How do I get a steady flow of new freelance jobs?' 05. Best for digital nomads: Chris the Freelancer One of the latest and most exciting developments in the modern freelance lifestyle is becoming a digital nomad: combining working remotely and global travel, as a way of seeing and experiencing the world. Chris the Freelancer has been doing so since 2015, and he's currently in Brisbane, Australia. His channel is dedicated to documenting his own experiences, as well as the digital nomad movement and how it's influencing the future of work. Whether or not you're interested in being a digital nomad, it's full of fascinating insights, many of which may be useful in your own life as a remote worker. Topics covered include 'Coming home after travel: 4 things nomads might forget', 'Passive income: what you need to know' and 'Finding your path as a digital nomad girl'. 06. Best for business tips: Emma Mills Emma Mills is not a designer: she runs a virtual PA and call answering company in the UK called Mi PA. But her YouTube channel is still a must-visit for any freelancer looking for tips and advice on the bread and butter issues of running a day-to-day independent business. Her channel is full of bite-sized advice videos that look at the day-to-day problems and challenges that might not seem that important in the grand scheme of things. But if you can get a handle on them, you really will notice the difference in terms of your creativity and productivity. Such topics include ‘3 quick steps to deal with overwhelm’, ‘How to plan for a more productive day’ and ‘How niching down can help grow your business’. 07. Best for motivating yourself: Gary Vee Sometimes you don't need advice: you just need a blast of raw and energetic motivation to help you get off your backside and start creating amazing work. And there's no one quite like Gary Vaynerchuk (aka Gary Vee) for providing it. A regular on the web design conference circuit in the early 2010s, the serial American entrepreneur is now a best-selling author, media personality and company owner. But his infectious positivity and optimism haven't diminished one bit. Vaynerchuk's basic position is that we should love what we do, stop watching Netflix, and devote all our time to making a success of our careers. If that sounds dull, then just watch one of his evangelical rants for more than a minute, and you'll soon be feeling differently. Topics include 'One life, more regrets', 'Think about legacy, not dollars' and 'The advice successful people WON'T give you'. Read more: 5 podcasts every freelancer should listen to How to cope with a freelance apocalypse How to manage your freelance cashflow View the full article

Designing in 3D can be a daunting task for anyone used to working solely in two dimensions, but the great potential to open new creative horizons makes it a step well worth taking. Luckily for beginners, Photoshop CC presents a helpful middle ground that lets you create and edit 3D scenes without needing any real experience in other software. In this tutorial we will be downloading a 3D model from the Adobe Stock library and using it to create a bespoke advert in Photoshop CC. 01. Select your object model Search the Adobe Stock website for the 3D object you require 3D models allow you to light, manipulate, and freely reposition objects without the need for a real-life photography studio. This is particularly useful for smaller businesses where editable images can be reused multiple times, over a range of marketing material. In this scenario I have imagined an IT company called ‘Techfixa’, looking to create an advert using a 3D laptop model. Open a web browser and go to the Adobe Stock website (stock.adobe.com), where you can browse the collection of royalty-free 3D models, lights and materials. Select 3D in the drop-down box and search for ‘laptop’. Then hover over the desired image and choose License & Save to My library. This will download a folder containing the model as an obj. file, as well as .png files for textures (we will get on to these later). 02. Place model into document Either drag the .obj file into your canvas or select New 3D Layer from File under the 3D taskbar All great designs begin with a single step; open Photoshop and create a new document. The dimensions will depend on the intended destination of your design – for this project I used an aspect ratio of 16:9 for use in digital. You can insert the model into your file by simply dragging the .obj file from the downloaded folder onto your canvas. Alternatively you can open it from within Photoshop, by selecting 3D > New 3D Layer From File and opening the .obj file. This should automatically switch your workspace into 3D mode, but you can also do this manually through Window > Workspace (this will be more important when you want to switch back to Essentials). 03. Create a background Make a simple horizon by duplicating the background layer, adding a multiply blend, masking and drawing a gradient Adding a horizon will make it easier to realise the structure of your design and where to position your model. While it is possible to create backgrounds in 3D or integrate models into flat images, I used basic 2D Photoshop tools to create a simple coloured background. Create a new layer and use the fill tool to colour it turquoise. Duplicate the layer, set it to a ‘multiply’ blend mode, add a mask and use the gradient tool to draw a horizon, from halfway up to the bottom. This is a simple method for making a basic horizon. 04. Add text Use Photoshop's Character panel to select a typeface and use the kerning option to improve the spacing between letters Adding text at this stage will give you an idea of how much space will be left for your laptop. Use the Type tool to draw text boxes onto the canvas and add your copy. I employed a combination of AgencyFB and Exo typefaces to adopt a ‘future-techno’ style. The introduction of a black strip at the bottom of the frame helps make the contact information stand out. 05. Position your model Selecting the right tool can take some getting used to, but eventually it becomes second nature Using 3D in Photoshop can be a fiddly business, requiring you to constantly switch between different panels (3D, Layers and Properties), but with a little practice it can quickly become like second nature. Once the laptop layer is selected, a perspective grid should appear and you will have access the 3D tools in the Options bar. You can use these to rotate, move and scale the object, as well as changing the floor and camera view. Click on the laptop in the canvas window and you will see its frame, as well as the axis that allows you to move, rotate and scale. Experiment with the controls, moving the object around the canvas until you are happy with its position – it can always be changed later on. If you intend on having two laptops in the same scene, you can duplicate the layer and combine the two layers. This will render the two objects together, saving you the effort of consistently altering the settings for each. 06. Customise textures If you are new to 3D, think of the Diffuse material as an unwrapped net, which folds together to form the laptop shape Click the drop-down arrow on the laptop layer to reveal the textures applied to that object model. Double-clicking on the Diffuse layer ‘plastic_laptop_Mat_baseColor’ will open the texture file in a separate Photoshop document. This is viewed as an unwrapped net, each seam marked by a black line. You can edit the texture in this file and the original document will be updated once saved. I drew a blue rectangle on a new layer over the area that represents the laptop screen. I then used the shape tool, combined with Select > Modify > Smooth to create a rounded triangle error warning on top of that. 07. Check the lighting Use the lighting tool to choose direction, while you can control intensity and softness in the Properties panel Click on the light source, in this case ‘Infinite Light 1’, under the 3D panel. You can alter the lighting settings in the Properties panel, controlling the type, colour and shadow softness. Switching to ‘spot’ or ‘point’ lights can instill a more interesting or dramatic atmosphere to the scene, but in this instance a soft ‘infinite’ lamp suits the purpose. Use the control sphere in the canvas window to adjust the angle of the light source. 08. Render and export Setting the ray-tracing at 10 will render the image at highest quality, but will take more time Right click on the 3D layer and render. Don’t be surprised if this takes some time; the longer it takes, the better the final render. You can change the render settings in Preferences > 3D. Finally export the file in whatever format you require, in this case I used RGB jpg for web. 09. Final image Designing adverts in Photoshop becomes easy with downloaded models from Adobe Stock Try it yourself with free 3D assets available on Adobe Stock. View the full article

Researchers have uncovered easy-to-exploit bugs that can impact physical safety, utilities, healthcare, critical infrastructure and more, setting the stage for widespread worm attacks. View the full article

Accessibility is a human right, and in some countries, the law. In fact, 2018 saw a huge increase in web accessibility lawsuits. Now designers are starting to realise that web accessibility is a must. With that in mind, here are eight top tips for ensuring your web design is optimised for accessibility and as inclusive as possible. If you do decide to overhaul the accessible elements of your website and realise that your web design needs a total refresh, here are the hottest web design tools and resources you can use to help. 01. Define accessibility Inclusive design means more than accessibility Accessibility and inclusive design are sometimes referenced interchangeably, but failing to recognise the distinction between them can have drastic consequences. Accessibility design is about removing obstacles, so that all users can use the apps and websites we design. Next, let’s remember that larger font sizes reduce the 'can’t read the text' obstacle, so either we enable certain users to switch over to an alternative 'accessibility mode', or we create an accessible, but separate, version that can be accessed using a link in the navigation. Now, not only does this blur the line between accessible and inaccessible (since visually-impaired users still have to locate this 'accessibility site'), but it’s not at all inclusive, because we’ve alienated these users. They’ve been segregated, made to feel di­fferent, and to top it off­, we’ve needed to design and develop two versions of our interface, spending additional time and e­ffort. Instead, we could have simply designed a singular, more inclusive interface, where the font is larger for everybody. After all, even users that aren’t visually-impaired will benefit from being able to read text more easily, and this is why inclusive design is a win for both disabled and non-disabled users. Inclusive design doesn’t abate the experience of those that aren’t disabled. In fact, the vast majority of accessibility rules as defined by the WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, double-up as usability tips that if implemented, all users will benefit from. 02. Simplify language The written word takes up a vast portion of the web, but if someone can't read it, it's an opportunity missed When it comes to the written word, there are a huge variety of considerations to bear in mind if we want to design experiences that cater to everybody. There’s the simplicity of the words themselves (which can a­ffect those with reading difficulties), there’s the typography (which can a­ffect visually-impaired users), and there’s the consistency (which can a­ffect those that are cognitively disabled). And of course, suboptimal design a­ffects those who aren’t disabled just as much as those who are. Take note of these rules How to improve typography, and therefore readability: Align text to the left or right only Underline links for added visual contrast Enforce line spacing at (at least) 1.5x the font size Paragraph spacing: at least 1.5x the line spacing Paragraph width: no more than 80 characters How to reduce cognitive load: Use simple language Define abbreviations upon first use Ensure that link text is described efficiently Match identical URLs with identical link text Logically structure content using clearly-worded headings 03. Optimise colour contrast Colour contrast is key – make sure you get it right Colour contrast is a measurement of how well the colours of two design elements distinguish from one another. The unit of this measurement is a ratio, and there’s a minimum ratio to aim for. Assuming that various design elements meet the minimum colour contrast ratio as defined by the WCAG, not only are we enabling readability for visually-impaired users, but we’re boosting it for those that aren’t visually-impaired too. This is one of the many ways that we design inclusively with virtually zero e­ffort. So, what is the minimum requirement, and how do we check for it? Firstly, colour contrast analysers like Stark can be used to measure colour contrast ratio. However, the minimum ratio that we need to aim for depends on the element itself, i.e. whether or not it’s an important UI element, such as an icon or form field, or, if the element is textual, whether the font size is small or large, as larger fonts are more readable even before tinkering with contrast. These are the colour contrast ratio requirements for text over background as defined by the WCAG: 14pt bold or 18pt normal: 4.5:1 (7:1 is better) 14pt bold or 18pt normal, and above: 3:1 (4.5:1 is better) These are the requirements for UI elements: Graphical objects (like charts): 3:1 Focus, hover, and active states: 3:1 Clickable icons and form elements: 3:1 The Stark app mentioned above can also simulate what our design looks like for users with varying types of colour-blindness – 4.5% of the world is a lot of potential users, after all. If you’re finding it difficult to achieve optimum contrast with links in a body of text, underline them to make the links easier to spot, because some colour-blind users don’t see colour contrast at all! 04. Help users fix mistakes Let people know when they've got it wrong Mistakes often result in a cloud of confusion, especially when the user doesn’t know what exactly they did, or how to fix it. Mistakes are inevitable, especially for the modern-day user rushing to engage with interfaces, heavily armed with their mental model, and this is why helping users (disabled or otherwise) overcome their mistakes is vital to inclusivity. Naturally, the most common scenario where the user might make a mistake is when filling out a form, and often as a result of a variety of disabilities, i.e. difficulty understanding as a result of a cognitive disability, incorrect data input as a result of a motor disability, and so on. Firstly, if we can fix the user’s error programatically, then crisis averted. An example of this in action could be adding https:// to their URL submission if it’s not already been added, as opposed to forcing the user to fix it themselves. Use form labels to describe input fields, and placeholders to describe acceptable input Consider these other tips for reducing form errors: Always use form labels to describe input fields …and placeholders to show an example of acceptable input Enable autofill and autocomplete to reduce typing requirements And these tips to help users fix errors: Display form errors clearly in realtime Let the user verify their input before submission Important and often forgotten: don’t make users feel stupid! 05. Take note of 'Skip to Main Content' This might be an obscure accessibility feature, so take note Skip-to-main-content is a relatively obscure accessibility feature aimed at those who navigate UIs with screen readers. You’ve most likely never heard of this feature; that’s how inclusive it is. Screen readers, or simply those who mostly navigate UIs using the keyboard, tab through tap targets using the tab key. If you’re not disabled, you would have likely experienced this regardless when tabbing through form fields on a desktop web browser, since it‘s much easier than clicking. Skip-to-main-content is an accessibility enhancement to help this subset of users escape repetitiveness by bypassing the main navigation – this works by having the first tab item a link that skips to the main content. It’s obscure to those that don’t use screen readers because this link only displayed once tabbed. Try Googling something, then hitting the tab key! It’s also important to visually indicate which element is currently focused, since the tab index may shift to an unexpected location (tab indexes and therefore screen readers read from top-to-bottom.) When tabbing through tap targets the :focus state is triggered, and the browser then knows to style the element automatically. In terms of CSS code, this often appears as if it’s a blue box-shadow:, but it’s actually outline:, so make sure that you don’t overwrite this style! 06. Don't create pressure Don't forget the user at the expense of the design Nobody likes to feel pressured, but for those with motor or cognitive disabilities, pressure can be anxiety-inducing. Interfaces have become vastly more dynamic over the years, as more and more tasks can now be completed using a device. Sadly, far too many dynamic experiences are the result of designers trying to make UIs more imaginative at the cost of usability. A useful snippet of advice would be to simplify the layout and remove unnecessary dynamic elements. This includes carousels, popups and alerts and distracting animations. Next, let’s take a look at how we can make these elements, should we need them, accessible to those with disabilities. First of all, we need to add a level of control for autoplaying media that demands attention, as this could add an uncomfortable amount of extra cognitive load for those with cognitive disabilities. The rule is, as defined by the WCAG 2.0, that if media runs for more than three seconds, it should be controllable. Anything else that scrolls, blinks, or otherwise moves automatically without the user having to interact with it (i.e. animations and carousels) should also be controllable if it lasts for more than five seconds. If media runs for more than three seconds, it should be controllable Generally, unexpected movement/media is disliked by users and it’s best to avoid it. Note that a similar rule applies to elements that flash more than three times per second, especially if it’s high-contrast and red, as this can induce seizures! Concerning chat messages, alerts, reminders, newsfeeds, and the like, users should be able limit their frequency to allow themselves more time to read and understand what’s being communicated, and it’s also advisable to let the user easily dismiss any alerts or visible obstructions with the esc key. Pressure to carry out a task is sometimes unavoidable as some interfaces (like banking interfaces) can timeout for security reasons, and naturally these alerts have to be obvious. In this scenario, disabled users that require more time should be o­ffered the chance to do so, letting the interface know that the user hasn’t abandoned it and mistakenly left their data exposed. 07. Relay with developers It's not just designers who need to be web-friendly When it comes to making accessibility enhancements, developers should share half of the responsibility, especially when it comes to making user interfaces screen-reader-friendly. Optimising websites for screen readers mostly happens behind the scenes, and doesn’t impact non-disabled users at all, making these websites very inclusive to users of all abilities. For those wondering, a screen reader aids visually-impaired users by audibly reading out what’s on the screen. But what about images? What about icons without text labels? How exactly do screen readers convey design elements with no text description, and how do these assistive technologies quickly switch focus to key landmarks such as search and navigation? Well, this is exactly where the developer comes into it. Design elements with no text accompanying said element can be described behind the scenes using HTML. Here’s a terrific checklist you’ll want to bookmark. Let’s go through some of the key aspects: Use semantic HTML elements such as <nav> and <header> Use ARIA landmark roles to add further context to HTML elements Declare the (correct) language (WCAG guidance here) Always form elements Use “alt text” (Error! Filename not specified.) for text alternatives to images (guidance here) Provide no-JS fallbacks and never use inline scripting 08. Choose simple gestures We use more than just a mouse to navigate – think fingers Choosing simple gestures over complex ones will win over non-disabled users, while making UIs accessible to disabled users. Gestures tend to differ between apps and websites. Firstly, there’s the matter of user expectation; for example, swiping interactions on touchscreen apps is fairly normal, but users typically wouldn’t think to engage in swiping on a website (not even on a mobile website). That aside, is anything beyond simple tapping and clicking tricky for disabled users? The answer is yes, but they’re also a bit daunting for non-disabled users as well, with swiping possibly being an exception because it can be done using just the thumb. I mean, have you ever tried rotating a Google Map? It’s a really finicky experience, and for those with some motor disabilities it would be a near-impossible task to carry out. Since Google Maps doesn’t offer an alternative way to rotate using clickable buttons, this functionality is neither accessible or inclusive. So we need to ask ourselves on a case-by-case basis, 'do we really need this complex gesture?' For example, would a static, vertical stack work just as well as a swiping carousel? In both scenarios we’d have content overflowing the viewport either way, so what does a swiping carousel really achieve? Could the swiping be a progressive enhancement for non-disabled users? Simpler is better in this case. Meanwhile, ensure that tap targets are at least 44px2 (so that they’re easy to tap and click, and also for visual affordance) and reasonably spaced (to reduce the number of error clicks). Join us on 26 September for Generate CSS, brought to you by Creative Bloq, net and Web Designer. Save £50 with an Early Bird Ticket when you book before 15 August 2019. This article was originally published in issue 287 of creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 287 or subscribe to Web Designer. Read more: The future of web design A web designers guide to CSS methodologies The 7 web design lessons you need to know View the full article

Fears of a WannaCry-level global attack grow as working exploit info starts to go public. View the full article

If you're in the market for Apple's 2019 MacBook Pro, there are currently plenty of amazing deals to be had. This includes all-time low prices on the 2019 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro, which has seen its price slashed to just $1,099.99 for students. This is a dramatic saving of $200. And if you're not a student, there are still some hefty discounts to enjoy. The 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro isn't the only model on offer either. There are discounts on 15-inch models too, with up to $250 to be saved on selected models. However the 13-inch model, with its quad-core Intel processor, colourful Retina display, and contextual Touch Bar controls, is a total bargain at a little over a grand. If these devices aren't quite what you're looking for, head on over to our roundup of the best MacBook and MacBook Pro deals for even more bargains. In the meantime, check out these rock-bottom prices on 2019 Apple MacBook Pro models. 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro 2019 deals 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro 2019 deals After yet more Apple MacBook Pro deals? Check out our latest listings, below. Related articles: The best computer for graphic design in 2019 Apple's new MacBook Pro will come with a big screen and an even bigger price Samsung announces its answer to the MacBook Pro View the full article

Disney's weird sort-of live action CG remake of The Lion King might have unsettled plenty of fans by transferring the action from the African plains to the uncanny valley complete with creepy almost-realistic character design, but that doesn't seem to have done it any harm. Despite decidedly mixed reviews that have criticised it for being a joyless retread of the original – not to mention its typographically-infuriating logo – the remake is absolutely killing it at the box office and looks set to make a lot of money for Disney. Understand Disney's 12 principles of animation Before you grudgingly head out to watch it, though, here's a little something that could save you approximately 116 minutes of your life, and that's not including the time it'll take you to get to the cinema and back. It's the work of Dutch animator Cas van de Pol, and it crams the entire Lion King story – or at least the salient bits – into a breakneck two minutes of glorious cartoon fun. Cas has called it The Ultimate "The Lion King" Recap Cartoon – we prefer to think of it as Tiny Lion King – and it does the job absolutely perfectly. Not only does it cover just about every major plot point that you need to know about, it's also fantastically executed. There's a wonderfully rough and ready look to it that reminds us more of the work of animators such as John Kricfalusi and Butch Hartman than anything Disney has ever put out, and there are some brilliant comic beats along the way. Get all the traumatic bits out of the way in seconds! It's a whole lot of fun, and not only is it a great alternative to trudging out to see the remake, it's also the perfect way for anyone who somehow has never actually seen The Lion King – apparently such monsters really exist and actually walk among us – to get up to speed on the story without much effort. The really impressive thing is that van de Pol animated the whole two minutes of Tiny Lion King single-handedly, with other artists stepping up to provide the music, sound design and stunning voice work. "Remember, the Force will be with you... always." You can find more of Cas van de Pol's work on his YouTube channel, and if you want to support his endeavours then there's a Patreon page here that you can sign up to. Related articles: 10 ways to create better character animations How to draw a lion A Disney artist's guide to mixed media View the full article

Adobe has really been treating creatives this year. The company is no stranger to offering users all over the world huge discounts on its Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions, and now we can announce that for today only European creatives can save 20% on single app purchases. This handy discount means that users living in European territories can pick up a single Adobe Creative Cloud app for just £16.18/ €19.67, instead of the regular price of £19.97/ €24.59. The price reduction applies to a selection of Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including popular photo editing tool Photoshop, and digital artists' beloved Illustrator. If you've always wanted to check out an Adobe app but haven't fancied buying the whole Creative Cloud suite, there's never been a better day than today to buy one individually and give it a try. If you're not based in Europe, don't worry, just head on over to our best Adobe deals page and see if there's a discount in your area. You'll also find a whopping 40% off Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps in certain territories. We're updating this page all the time too, so it's worth bookmarking it and checking back later. > Get 20% off Adobe Creative Cloud single apps The full list of apps that you can buy individually with 20% off include: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe XD, Acrobat Pro DC, Dreamweaver, Animate (Flash Pro) Adobe Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, After Effects, Spark, Dimension, Audition, and InCopy. What's more, each comes with 100GB of cloud storage and premium features like Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, and Adobe Spark. We can't stress enough that this deal is valid for today only (29 July). So don't hang around if you're in a European territory and you've always wanted to grab an Adobe Creative Cloud app for less, buy yours now before time's up. Related articles: The 5 best laptops for Photoshop in 2019 Get started with Adobe Dimension CC The best digital art software in 2019 View the full article

For a long time, CSS didn’t contain a huge number of surprises. Developing at a leisurely pace, the language was content to style your fonts and float your divs, while languages like JavaScript did a lot of the heavy lifting. However, in recent years, the language has enjoyed a midlife renaissance, with its W3C working group carving out much more real estate for it in the modern development landscape. Whether you’re putting together responsive website layouts, meticulously crafted animations or constructing pixel-perfect components, CSS now has an enormous amount of horsepower under its hood. But while this offers you a whole new toolkit when styling your sites, it does mean that its easy to miss new tricks that you can incorporate into your development workflow. At Generate New York in April this year, our audience had the chance to learn some tips straight from some of the best and brightest CSS experts in the industry, such as designer and developer advocate at Mozilla and a member of the CSS Working Group Jen Simmons. But rather than hoarding these hacks, we wanted to share them with you and show you some the neat things Simmons taught us to help you up your CSS game. You can watch the full talk below or read on for the key takeaways. 01. Creating CSS grid layouts is a breeze Okay, it’s probably safe to assume that at a lot of people have gotten this message by now. But, as Simmons’ talk makes abundantly clear, grid is a super smart way of laying out your sites. First of all, setting up your initial grid is a cakewalk. Want to just create a simple 12-column grid to start laying out your core divs and components? All you have to do is tell grid to repeat 12 columns, with each being an equal fraction of the grid: And rather than faffing about with floats, placing elements is a breeze. Say you want a div spanning the centre of your site, leaving two columns of white space either side, again the code could not be simpler: Basic stuff so far. But what Simmons' talk makes abundantly clear is how smart grid is. Before you’ve defined the position you’d like your content to take, CSS grid will automatically lay content out in subsequent rows or columns, making it easier to see the elements you’re going to structure. Alternatively, say you've gotten stuck into laying things out and you haven’t yet defined your grid; rather than leaving you staring at a borked layout, CSS will infer the number of rows and columns your grid should have from the maximum grid-row and grid-column values you’ve used. 02. Grid is nothing like HTML tables When anything new comes along, there will always be people ready to criticise the change. CSS grid is no exception; it was certainly greeted with its fair share of naysayers, who claimed that it’s just a reheating of the stale, old practice of laying sites out with HTML tables. Fortunately, Simmons' talk put this to bed. In the dark old days of web design, table-based grids were flat, inflexible things. The second a developer needed two elements in adjacent cels to overlap, they were forced to break down and save content as static images – which feels less old-fashioned and more palaeolithic. Conversely, grid not only allows you to stack and overlap elements but it allows you to do so flexibly and responsively: rather than fixing layouts in stone, you can use it to dictate exactly how elements respond to and slide over each other. 03. Subgrid adds a whole new layer to layouts If HTML tables are the dim and distant past and grid is the present, subgrid is the future. As you can see in Simmons' talk, grid only goes so far – a grid on a parent affects its children but any grandchildren don’t inherit the grid. And while you can place a new grid within the original grid, it won’t adhere to the parent’s rows and columns, leading to the kind of messy layout work you thought you’d left behind long ago. Fortunately, subgrid solves this problem, meaning, if you like, your layouts can be grids all the way down. And thanks to the fact they adhere to the properties set by their parent grids, you can create some fantastic layouts with a very granular level of control in their grids. 04. Variable fonts are absurdly versatile As you can probably tell from Simmons' delight tinkering with them in her browser’s dev tools, variable fonts are a big deal. Ship just a single variable font with your site and you can reference an almost infinite variation of weights, tracking and styles, effectively allowing you to do the heavy lifting that’s normally the preserve of entire font families. All in all, a cracking tool when building creative new layouts. 05. CSS smashes type layouts Another great CSS secret is just how flexibly it handles type – an excellent example comes from Simmons' video. If you want to utilise languages that are conveyed from right to left, you can simply use the property ‘direction: rtl;’ to get them appearing as they should. Alternatively, say you want the lines of your paragraph to be rotated 90 degrees clockwise, you can just use ‘writing-mode: vertical-rl;’ – or ‘writing-mode: vertical-lr’ should you want your first line to appear on the left with each subsequent line further to the right. While support is still mixed for both ’vertical-rl’ and ’vertical-lr’, these nifty snippets of CSS are worth bearing in mind when adding progressive style enhancements to your sites. Learn more about CSS at Generate CSS CSS is evolving all the time and, as you can see, there are always plenty of new tips and hacks to learn from. That’s why if you’re looking to spruce up your designs and elevate your layouts, you should come along to Generate CSS, our focused web design conference catering to all things CSS, which is taking place at Rich Mix, Shoreditch, London on 26 September. And it's worth snapping up your tickets now. If you grab yours before by 5pm UTC on 15 August, you can save £50, paying just £199 + VAT. Buy your ticket now! Related articles: First speakers announced for Generate CSS 19 cool CSS animation examples to recreate How to code smart text effects with CSS View the full article

Cinematics are crucial to the world of video games. Although they rarely receive the same attention as in-game elements such as video game characters, they serve a variety of purposes, from advancing the story of a game to promoting its release. According to Hungarian studio Digic Pictures, game cinematics are a special genre of full-CG short films, sitting somewhere between VFX and 3D animation. There’s an art to creating cinematics that are compelling enough to go toe-to-toe with gameplay, or convince people to buy a game in the first place. We've gathered a host of leading industry experts to find out how they’re made, and to tell us how you can create cinematics that captivate your audience. If you're inspired by the expert tips and you want to boost your 3D artwork skill set, head over to our post rounding up the best Cinema 4D tutorials. 01. Use in-engine rendered cinematics Creative Assembly has developed its process significantly since Total War: Rome 2004 As one of the UK’s oldest and largest game developers, Creative Assembly has a wealth of experience in crafting memorable cinematics, particularly for their Total War series. “In our early games, cinematics included the game introduction and specific narrative moments,” say the team at Creative Assembly’s Horsham studio. “The in-engine tools that we developed for Rome: Total War in 2004 allowed us to start making trailers using the game engine.” They continue: “Fast forward to today and our games feature a mix of in-engine rendered movies, 2.5D narrative movies and heavily stylised 2D-animated movies. Our team is constantly evolving and growing to meet the demands of higher-quality cinematic experiences.” Creative Assembly’s in-engine cinematics are parts of the game that require cinematic cameras, for example panning around the campaign map at the start of a game or introductions to historical battles. 2.5D refers to in-game cutscenes that are created as animated 2D layers. Pre-rendered cinematics are generally outsourced by Creative Assembly, as they require huge teams. “We only do one every year or so,” they add. “In-engine rendered cinematics make up the majority of our team’s work, we create trailers for marketing and cutscenes for the games using the game engine.” 02. Treat the trailer as its own genre A still from Platige’s Scavengers cinematic, created for brand-new developer Midwinter Entertainment One studio collaborating with Creative Assembly on cinematics is the Poland-based Platige Image. “As far as video game cinematics are concerned, the intro and outro for the first instalment of The Witcher franchise marked our first foray into this field,” explains director and art director Jakub Jablonski. “Video game cinematics and trailers have become a permanent fixture of our output and we’ve since had the pleasure of producing movies for a number of games that we grew up on.” These games include the likes of Ghost Recon, Halo 5 and Hitman. Platige also work on a number of CG game trailers. Jablonski explains: “The video game trailer is a genre unto itself, blending a traditional movie trailer with a product commercial and the innovative storytelling of animated shorts.” 03. Focus on the atmosphere The Total War: Three Kingdoms cinematic showcases cultivated atmosphere Producing game trailers is very different to run-of-the-mill VFX work, and is a much greater challenge artistically, Jablonski explains: “A stand-out trailer needs to have two things: good CGI, from both the technical and artistic perspective, and a captivating storyline.” He adds: “In my experience, the best trailers also feature a well-constructed reveal of a key detail, either related to the setting or a specific game mechanic. Personally, however, I believe that the atmosphere of an individual title is often the key element that the film’s success hinges on. Capturing that can be incredibly difficult, especially in view of the fact that we rarely have the opportunity to play the finished product before we start work on the trailer. This is where the game’s developers come into play, and their assistance is often invaluable.” 04. Tell the story effectively Consider the storyline in the finest detail ( Still from Total War: Three Kingdoms) A range of disciplines come together to create stand-out cinematics, from storytelling to cinematography. “You need a beginning, middle and end,” say the team at Creative Assembly, when asked how they approach narrative. “Even the smallest sequence of shots should be a story in itself: an archer firing a bow should be aim, fire, impact.” The Total War series provides Creative Assembly with a unique proposition when it comes to storytelling: “The series is an interesting beast as it’s based on history, yet the story in the game is what the player decides. The narrative exists in the player’s mind as they play and it can evoke emotions as powerfully as any novel or film. As we tell the story of renowned characters, like Caesar, Attila and Liu Bei or even Karl Franz, we need to make sure the character’s motives and appeal are in line with their story. Our trailers need to give viewers a peek into the emotions Total War will provide them – what’s it like to be commanding thousands of troops and defending an empire? What’s it like to rewrite history?” 05. Take risks for maximum impact Platige took the term cinematic to new extremes with their recent work on the announcement trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, the long-awaited sequel to a cult classic video game. “The production had a very tight deadline, but it seems like our first-person vision of Seattle has really managed to electrify game players worldwide,” says Jablonski. The mocap session for the trailer saw GoPro cameras mounted on the heads of stunt performers. Jablonski adds: “Thanks to our incredible stunt team, under the direction of Maciej Kwiatkowski, we managed to shoot all the underground combat sequences in one take.” The trailer introduces a plethora of memorable characters and even homages The Shining. “The actions of our protagonist, the brutality and desire to climb to the very top of the vampire hierarchy in the city, are mirrored, somewhat abstractly, in the blood which slowly overwhelms the city,” he says of the trailer’s final shot, which shows a visually arresting wave of blood about to wipe out the entire Seattle waterfront. 06. Adapt your approach Digic Pictures, whose latest collaboration is on Darksiders Gensesis (above), approach each project differently Digic Pictures’ approach to storytelling varies depending on the demands of a particular cinematic. “It depends on what story the customer wishes to tell, and what the particular story requires,” says narrative director Csaba Vicze. “We work with a variety of directors and each of them is exceptional in different ways. There are those who have a stylised, classical animation style, and there are others who are better with quick cut actions, or who take inspiration from classical filmmaking.” After choosing a director appropriate for the project, Digic respond to a brief sent by the client with a preliminary narrative package and a script. “This way, it’s possible to easily clarify what kind of film tools we want to use for the cinematic,” adds Vicze. To gain a better understanding of the approach the team gather examples from well-known movies: “We make a rip-o-matic version where we can show what kind of camera tools, lenses and editing styles we want to use.” Alongside this process, the team at Digic will undergo a visual development process, where they will develop the mood, set design, costume design, character design, lighting and the main setting. 07. Speed up your workflow Freelancer Sofia Gariazzo, who created this character 'Jim Darkmagic' agrees that the biggest test lies in handling tight deadlines A unique art form breeds unique challenges, and game cinematics are no exception. Our experts have all experienced their fair share of technical and artistic challenges in the pursuit of cinematic greatness. “As usual during the creative processes, the biggest challenge is finding the opportunity for creative development, and at the same time, adapting ourselves to the production deadlines and expectations,” says Róbert Kovács, head of CG at Digic Pictures. “The desire of every creator is to develop unique, exceptional work. This is no different for Digic. We like to give the opportunity to our artists to work on exciting projects and to make extraordinary movies.” In the world of video game cinematics artists and studios are required to work with very tight deadlines. It’s often a challenge to meet the high bar they set for themselves, something Sofia Gariazzo, a freelancer who specialises in modelling, shading and grooming, attests to: “The biggest challenge with cinematics is the pace. The deadlines are so tight that you have to be constantly learning how to speed up your workflow while still delivering decent results and staying within the pipeline of a particular studio. I don’t have much experience outside cinematics, just a couple of gigs here and there, but I’ve never experienced deadlines so demanding.” Jablonski refers to Platige’s biggest challenge as “a temporal paradox,” in which they are often required to show something that is in the early alpha stages or in various stages of development. “Time is almost always the biggest challenge that we face,” he adds. 08. Use your own in-house studio Creative Assembly work on games like Total War (above) from their own in-house studio The team at Creative Assembly are able to circumvent some of these taxing deadlines by using their own in-house mocap studio. They’re one of only a handful of developers in Europe to have one. “Having our own mocap studio a short walk away is incredibly useful,” say the team. “The turnaround on the data once shot is fast and if we need to make any unexpected last-minute changes we can simply run up, dive into a suit and recapture. It gives us real flexibility and the opportunity for plenty of creative freedom.” Digic are able to make use of a similar mocap facility, equipped with a Vicon motion capture system. Their system is able to capture up to ten actors along with props. Thanks to their in-house developed Vicon Blade Tools the team are able to quickly process the footage in post. 09. Face the challenges A character from Platige: Ubisoft’s For Honor, note the detail in the face But Jablonski and his team also face their fair share of artistic challenges: “Character work is always the hardest, particularly when it comes to facial expressions and emotions. The uncanny valley is always there, just waiting to strike. But we nevertheless try to push the envelope as close to realism as possible, always hoping to break through the barrier. Luckily for us, CGI characters don’t always have to be hyper-realistic to have that spark of life to make them stand out.” 10. Press play on your career There are a number of things you can do to make yourself an appealing candidate If this combination of game development and cinematic sensibilities sounds appealing, then you might be wondering how to tailor your skill set towards it. Should you apply to work at a studio, or build a portfolio from your own home? “What worked best for me was spending a couple of years in a studio,” explains Gariazzo. “Before that I didn’t get much work and the ones I did were usually pretty bad. In a studio you get to make a portfolio and learn a ton of stuff, but most importantly you make contacts.” Whether applying to work at a studio or setting out as a freelancer, a good portfolio is the ultimate weapon in your arsenal. “You need to have a good portfolio to land a job,” Gariazzo asserts. “If you don’t have any professional work, then work on some personal projects and make them look as good as you can until you get offered something, and then do your best on that.” (Here are some brilliant design portfolio examples, if you need them.) 11. Sell your specialist skills The bigger the studio, the more specific skill set they'll be looking for, says Digic Pictures According to Digic, the bigger the studio is, the more specific skill sets they will be looking for. This is where a wide-ranging knowledge of CG will become helpful. In the game cinematics industry, a deeper knowledge of video game development could be a huge advantage, how they are created, the engines, different types of gameplay, and so on. By building a portfolio this way you’ll be able to hone in on your preferred field. For many of the most experienced artists, there is little difference between game cinematics, VFX or 3D animation films. Jablonski boils success down to some more fundamental qualities. “In my opinion, a good artist working in a studio like ours has to have good communication skills, a healthy fascination with CGI and a desire for self improvement. Independence and self-reliance are also very important traits, and many in our industry tend to forget how important these qualities are for their personal, technical and artistic development.” This article was originally published in issue 247 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy it here or subscribe to 3D World. Read more: How to get a job as a video games artist How to create a video game character in ZBrush These 3D portraits are unbelievably realistic View the full article

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The UX design process itself is very flexible and can change significantly depending on the circumstances, with different design teams having different ways of implementing their process. However, without a solid UX design process in place, a design team could be working completely in the dark. A clear and concise UX process, on the other hand, makes it possible to craft amazing and less problematic experiences for the user. But how do you implement such a process if you're working as a solo designer – which is a common position to find yourself in these days? In this tutorial we take a look at a simple UX process to help streamline your solo workflow – including which web design tools to use along the way. Generate CSS is a bespoke conference for web designers: Grab an early bird ticket now 01. Define your problems Define the problem(s) first! You need to understand clearly what you’re trying to solve: ask your clients if you are working in an agency and ask business stakeholders or the product manager if you are in a product team. UX design is a problem-solving discipline and helps the end users to achieve their goals with ease. So discovering if your product idea will fulfil these needs is your first step. 02. Gather data from real users Surveys enable you to get a decent amount of data from real users. By using clever questions, you can discover more about who they are, where they are and what their needs and goals are. You can use many available tools to carry out surveys, such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. 03. Analyse your competitors By looking at who your competitors are, you can get a much better feel of how you can create something more unusual. However, this shouldn’t be a long process, as all you’re doing is seeing how viable your product idea is and whether or not it has a place within the market. 04. Create personas With the data you have from the user surveys and analysis of your competitors, you can now create personas. Personas are not the customers you want but the customers that actually exist, whether they’re the ones you already have or potential customers in the market. Even though these personas are fictional, they should represent real people’s behaviours, motivations, goals and needs. Although the effectiveness of creating personas has been hotly debated of late, it is a very good way to remind yourself that you’re not the user. 05. Define user flows With the information we now have within our personas, we can begin to map out the flow our users would take. This is a user flow – the path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task. The user flow takes them from their entry point, through a set of steps towards a successful outcome and final action, such as purchasing a product. In most cases, a user flow is a visual chart that shows each screen a user will or could find themselves at. Even though this is a great way for designers to visualise and work with the site, it can also help developers see and understand the typical user journey. 06. Brainstorm! Brainstorming is a combination of informal problem solving and lateral thinking. It’s a great way to generate ideas that you would not be able to come up with by sitting down with just a pen and paper. However, this will be the hardest step to follow as a solo designer because, in most cases, this is done within a group. So here are some steps you can follow to make your solo brainstorming a success. Firstly, break out of solitude, get outside and look around as small scenes can lead to big ideas. If you’re working for a company, go and ask questions of the developers, project managers, receptionist – even the boss! Getting fresh perspectives can spark all kinds of ideas. Now using sticky notes or a blank sheet of paper, spend 15-30 minutes writing down as many ideas as you can. Don’t judge them; just keep writing down what you’re thinking. 07. Create paper wireframes Pen and paper are all you need record your ideas, ready to be honed to the final product By now you should have a decent number of ideas, either on sticky notes stuck to a wall or scribbled on paper. Now it’s time to get even more creative and start sketching out those ideas on paper – sometimes referred to as paper wireframes. Sketching things out is a very efficient way of trying out a multitude of ideas and iterating them before settling on the best one. Using a pencil first, we can draw a lot of basic sketches to look at the problem from many angles and consider different solutions. Once you’ve settled on the solution, you can now go over your sketches with a pen and then rub out the pencil. To make things clearer, make sure you add annotations and notes where possible. Once you’ve done a few sketches, go and have a break and come back to your sketches a while later. Take a look at them and see if they still make sense. 08. Develop the wireframes Low-fidelity wireframes include the most basic content and visuals and are usually static (non-interactive). They are often used to help map out the shell of the interface, its screens and basic information architecture. There are many wireframe tools available nowadays, including Figma, Sketch and even Photoshop. Whatever tool you use, your low-fidelity wireframes usually serve as a checkpoint for the beginning of the design process for stakeholders and product teams and you should be able to present clear solutions to them. 09. Build a basic prototype At this point you have all these nice wireframes designed with your favourite design tool, so now what? Well if you’re using a tool such as Figma, Sketch or InVision Studio, then it’ll be nice and easy to create a low-fidelity prototype. The prototype is a simple and easy translation of the product and design concepts. It’s used to turn the design ideas into testable and tangible artefacts, collecting and analysing the user demands at this early stage, refining your product as you go. 10. Refine the visual design We are now the proud owners of a working prototype and all stakeholders and the product team is happy. It's usually the case that this is the stage where you would hand your prototype over to a UI designer. But because we’re flying solo, it’s also our job to create the final visual elements. Even though there are loads of design tools available, only a couple are considered ‘industry standard’ for UI design and that’s Sketch and Figma. Both tools are very similar, so whichever one you pick you’ll be able to switch easily at a later date if you change your mind. 11. Don't forget design systems Design systems are a great way of utilising a collection of repeatable components and a set of standards that outlines the use of those components. Many companies have been able to change the pace of creation and innovation within their teams due to design systems. As a solo designer, managing your company’s (or even your own) design system won’t be easy but is definitely well worth doing in the long run. You can use design tools such as Figma and Sketch to create reusable UI components within a pattern library or you could work with the front-end dev team and build them out using code. This collection of reusable components can then be assembled together quickly in order to build any number of applications. Join us on 26 September for Generate CSS, brought to you by Creative Bloq, net and Web Designer. Save £50 with an Early Bird Ticket when you book before 15 August 2019. This article was originally published in net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Subscribe now. Read more: 5 emerging UX trends in 2019 20 top UX tools and resources How to use colour to shape UX View the full article

If you're looking to build a career as a designer, there's a lot you need to learn. There's the technical intricacies of graphic design software, theories like the golden ratio, and a bunch of industry specific terms that you must know if you want to communicate effectively with colleagues and clients. It's these terms which are clearly explained in this Design Dictionary from Creative Market. In it, you'll find fundamental words and phrases that designers use to communicate and help realise their ideas. The design dictionary is a perfect reference point for beginners, but there's no harm in seasoned pros using it to brush up on their knowledge. Every term is outlined in plain English, with an accompanying graphic to give you an idea of what it looks like in action. There are 36 terms in total, covering everything from fonts, negative space, and image types. Check it out below. Click the image to take a closer look at the design dictionary While some of these terms might seem obvious even to a beginner, it's always a good idea to go over the basics to make sure you know what you're talking about. And we're sure that there are some words in here that will push your understanding of design to the next level. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to design terminology. But with these terms under your belt, you'll have a strong foundation to build on in the future. And if you're after a device to help bring your design ideas to life, look no further. We've rounded up the best laptops for graphic designers, which includes a range of models to suit all needs and budgets. Related articles: The best computer for graphic design in 2019 The best free graphic design software The best graphic design portfolios from around the web View the full article

Good web design is imperative to attracting users to your site, but in order to keep them when they arrive, you have to make sure the user experience is spot on too. When it comes to creating an excellent website, user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) go hand-in-hand. The UI & UX Design Bootcamp is an online training course that will teach you how to build digital products that both look and work beautifully. Across six lessons and over 39 hours of premium content, you'll get to grips with what makes the world's most visited websites tick. The training covers everything from UX and UI basics and essential design principles, to how to design apps from start to finish and top tips for creating habit-forming products. And if you're in need of some resources to help you along, check out our round-up of the best UX tools from around the web. Here's a sneak peek of what to expect from the UI & UX Design Bootcamp course: Mobile User Experience: The Complete Guide to Mobile This course covers the design process involved in building mobile apps that not only look great, but work beautifully too. You'll be introduced to the design principles and considerations behind the world's most popular apps, get to grips with understanding users' specific needs and testing designs that resonate with them and run usability tests to find the design that would get people hooked. To fortify your learning, you also get to ask questions and consult the instructor on course material. How to build habit-forming products This two-hour course revolves around mastering the art of building a successful product with an active user base. Instructed by Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products author Nir Eyal, you'll explore habit formation principles and how they can be applied to the design process, as well as comprehend common design patterns of popular digital products. You'll also learn how to optimise products for user retention and get acquainted with the Hook Model, a framework that highlights the design components that influence user behaviour. Become a Senior UX Design Strategist Want a career as a UX professional? This course will equip you with the knowledge and skills to build a successful UX consulting career. In the three-hour lesson, you'll get an overview of UX strategy fundamentals, learn how to develop and streamline a UX strategy, and acquire tips on how to lead a design team. You'll also get to master essential skills like interviewing users, developing projects from start to finish, and a whole lot more. A value of $995, you can now get the UI & UX Design Bootcamp on sale for $39 – that's a whopping 96% off the retail price! Read more: Top upcoming web conferences in 2019 The best web design jobs The best free blogging sites View the full article

Map illustration has had a real resurgence over the past few years. An exciting alternative to a dry Google map, illustrated maps can be filled with character and fun detail to truly capture the atmosphere of a city. Creating your own map illustrations is a challenging exercise in composition, but can be a great addition to your design portfolio. Every map is a careful balancing act of plotting elements to their geographic location whilst also ensuring the illustration layout works in harmony. In this tutorial I’ll walk you through a step-by-step guide to how to create your own map illustrations, from initial layout to final image. All you need is access to Google maps and your digital art software of choice. 01. Select your location Make sure there are enough landmarks to keep things interesting First you need to decide the location for your illustrated map. This could be your favourite city or perhaps your last holiday destination – just make sure there are lots of interesting iconic landmarks to choose from. In this example I’ll be using a map of Seattle I created for the Visit Seattle tourist board. 02. Use Google Maps to make a plan Plot your chosen landmarks to check how they're spread out Google Maps makes it easy to plot the landmarks out. Sign in to Google Maps and choose ‘Your places’ from the main menu. Click the ‘Maps’ tab and then ‘Create map’. You can now search for any landmark and once the pin has dropped on to the map, choose ‘Add to map’. Create 6-8 pins across your map and take a screenshot. It will help to choose landmarks that are evenly distributed across the map and think about whether the layout needs to be portrait, landscape or square. 03. Add the main arteries of the city Start with rivers, main roads and trainlines Open Illustrator or Photoshop (other software packages are available) and import the screenshot of the Google Map. Set the transparency of the map screenshot to ‘Multiply’ and lock the layer. You can now create new layers underneath and you’ll always have the Google map as a handy reference. Add a background colour and start drawing the main arteries of the city: the roads, rivers, train lines and so on. You’ll begin to see the form of the map start to take shape. 04. Add your labels As well as being useful, labels are important design features Text can be a feature in itself, so add the labels early on to start building up the density of the map. Handwritten labels can really help add to the character of the artwork. 05. Sketch out and balance your icons Start playing around with icon size and placement Research the landmarks and collect images of them from different angles. Think about which viewpoint works best with your map. I like to sketch out the landmarks on paper, then scan the sketches in and import them into my map, but you can do all this digitally if you prefer. Try out different placements and sizes until you feel like the layout is evenly balanced. If some of the landmarks are all clustered together try spacing them out and adding arrows to help connect them with their geographic location. The beauty of illustrated maps if that they don’t need to be 100 per cent accurate. A bit of artistic licence is encouraged. 06. Choose your colour palette Think about the mood you want to evoke when choosing your palette Try and select colours that help capture the atmosphere of the location. A sunny holiday destination might have a yellow background and a rural map could be predominantly green. It can also help to base your colour palette on one of the iconic landmarks and use this to set the tone for the rest of the map. Experiment with different combinations and try and find a complementary colour for the icons that helps them stand out from the background. Start to colour your landmarks. At this point you might need to resize them again, as the impact of the colour can alter the balance of the composition. 07. Build up detail Add some people and animals alongside the buildings Add a few people and animals to breathe some life into your map. In the Seattle map the client wanted to include lots of different sports, such as canoeing and cycling, to show all the different activities you can do in the city. People are also a good way to help fill any empty space you might have. Add a bit of fun and play around with the scale of the characters – they could be as big as a building if you want. 08. Research the local cuisine Local delicacies add more flavour Icons of food and drink specific to the area are another great way to add more interesting detail to your map. Coffee cups and beer glasses are an ever-present in lots of the maps I create, but adding some unusual local delicacies will make your map more memorable. 09. Fill in any gaps A few trees and texture details help fill in any blank space Small details such as buildings, road signs and trees help fill any remaining space and bring the whole map together. Double-check your colours and make sure everything is harmonising. Sometimes just the addition of a few small trees can alter the focus. Zoom out so you can see the whole map on screen and tweak the composition and colours until you have a well-balanced final composition. Below you can see my final design for the Visit Seattle tourist board magazine. Click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image Read more: These tutorials show you how to draw just about anything 20 sketching tips to help you make your first marks The best drawing apps for iPad View the full article

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There's no doubt that the most important thing about your portfolio site is your selection of work. That, after all, is what potential clients and employers are going to want to look at. But just as any painting can be enhanced by the right choice of frame, the look and feel of your design portfolio can be really helpful, not only by complementing your work but also by showing off some of your personality and also demonstrating that you're in touch with the current design trends. Modern web design technologies give you almost infinite options for creating eye-catching portfolio websites that'll show your work off to best effect. You can easily find website templates that'll help you achieve the right look for you, or if you know your code then you might be able to create your dream site by hand. For some helpful inspiration, though, take a look at six current portfolio trends that you might want to use for yourself, as well as some excellent examples of sites that use them to their advantage. How to curate a creative portfolio 01. White space Remember that white space doesn't always have to be white White space has long been the designer's friend; it gives your words and pictures room to breathe and can balance out an otherwise far-too-busy page. The web, though, has always been preoccupied with catering to short attention spans and getting as much information across as quickly as possible. If you're willing to go back to design basics and employ white space in your portfolio, the results can be striking; for a prime example, take a look at Abdelkader El-Issaoui's slick but calm portfolio, which showcases his artwork beautifully. 02. Clever interface effects Little glitches and animations can add life to your portfolio There are so many visual effects that you can pull off in the browser that it's all too easy to go too far and overload your audience while increasing loading times and wrecking performance. But with restrained use of JavaScript, WebGL or even good old CSS you can bring in some micro-interactions or other visual flourishes that can serve to highlight your work and add an element of discovery and delight to your portfolio. Vadim Tyurin's site does just that, with neat mouseover glitch effects, moving buttons that can't quite evade your mouse cursor, and a subtle parallax effect; it's just enough visual excitement to please they eye without overwhelming the work. 03. Click-and-drag Give your portfolio a more tactile feel, even on desktop Many web design conventions are based around tried and trusted paradigms that just work, and while it's often self-defeating to break convention for the sake of it. Having a bit of a play with convention, however, can often work in your favour; for example, see how Luis Henrique Bizarro's portfolio site lets you scroll through his work. For starters it's a side-scroller rather than vertical, and while the mouse scroll wheel will take you through it just fine, you can also click and drag to whizz through his project, much like you'd swipe through on a tablet. It's a small touch, but an engaging one. 04. Vibrant colours Make the most of neon palettes while you can, because we'll soon become tired of them If you've been keeping an eye on this year's big visual trends then you'll know that as far as colour is concerned, the bigger and bolder the better. Ultra-saturated shades and neon hues are the order of the day, with perhaps a bit of contrast being provided by judicious use of calmer, pastel tones. Depending on your preferred palettes you can work this contrast to your advantage, colouring your site to contrast with, and draw attention to your work; otherwise you can take Likely Story's approach and create a site that's a beautiful barrage of high-impact colour schemes. 05. Split-screen layout Split-screen layouts are a popular and effective use of screen space Modern web design techniques such as CSS Grid and Flexbox means that you're a lot more free to play around with layouts these days and create portfolios that have more in common with the printed page than with traditional websites. A popular look right now is a split-screen layout, with images on one side and text on the other; we're particularly taken with Marvin Bernd's new portfolio site, which uses the left-hand side of the page as a vertical slider, with all the facts you need to know on the right. Click through to a project and it uses the split-screen differently, with the left-hand third of the page explaining the project, and the other two thirds containing either a static image or another vertical slider. 06. Oversized typography Big typography can be mixed with other effects for stunning looks Web typography continues to evolve and improve, again making it much easier to create print-like layouts on web pages. One look that you can't get away from right now is the liberal use of oversized fonts to draw the eye; it's a strong look but it's one that works better if there's more to it than a really big point size. Text along a path isn't easy to fake on the web, but it looks amazing One fabulous example is Zef Cherry-Kynaston's site, which not only makes good use of enormous sans-serifs, but also cleverly simulates text along a curved path through careful use of the translate and rotate functions on individual letters. And for other imaginative applications of oversized typography, check out Vincent Saisset's portfolio, which pulls off all manner of clever tricks with massive lettering. Related articles: 10 on-trend portfolio templates The wrong way to build a portfolio 5 little portfolio details that make a big difference View the full article

Legendary designer Stefan Sagmeister stepped down from his famous design agency Sagmesiter & Walsh yesterday, giving his business partner Jessica Walsh the opportunity to oversee commercial operations. As of now, Sagmeister & Walsh is no more, instead the new studio will go by the name &Walsh. And, being such a prominent feature of the old studio's logo design, it comes as no surprise that Walsh's new identity places a major focus on the ampersand. The new logo (above), features a fluid, curvy ampersand shape that stands in contrast to 'Walsh', which is displayed in Milieu Grotesque’s Maison. Pushing the art of typography to new limits, the design is supported by 50 secondary ampersands, all of which will appear as bizarre, distorted versions of the logogram. The idea being to clearly and effectively communicate Walsh's goal to help brands "find their weird". The previous logo (below) was a clever way to communicate the partnership between Sagmeister and Walsh. Foregrounding the ampersand addressed Sagmeister's head-turning decision to offer Walsh a partnership position in 2012 when she was 25. It's a powerful example of a typography-based identity, see more examples of this in our guide to logo design. The old logo looks more formal in comparison On the &Walsh branding page, the studio adds: "Our branding uses an ampersand for both the visual identity and tonal expression. This typographic system includes our clients, projects, collaborators, experiments & endeavors: hence the (Blank) & Walsh." "We’ve drawn 50 final ampersands in our style and will draw a custom ampersand for every new project or team member. The ampersand is one of the most beautiful typographic characters and will challenge ourselves to continuously reinvent its form." Check out how these iterations appear in the gallery below. There's been some confusion as to how the new studio will work, given that Walsh wrote in a blog post that "this isn't the end of Sagmeister & Walsh". It looks like Sagmeister has done a bit of a Jony Ive, in that he's left, but will still collaborate on art projects, just not commercial ones. In terms of operations, &Walsh will still maintain the 25 people who already work for the firm. It's an exciting development for Walsh, who points out that: "Only 0.1% of creative agencies are women-owned. POINT. ONE. PERCENT. How does this make any sense when women drive about 80% of consumer purchasing?" Related articles: Design a killer logo in Illustrator 15 top typography resources 53 top typography tutorials View the full article

Apple's much-anticipated 16-inch MacBook Pro is due to be released in October, according to a recent report from Taiwan's United Daily News. The LCD device will be Apple's largest MacBook Pro since its 2012 17-inchers, and will come with an equally supersized price tag: prices are rumoured to start at around $3,000 (roughly (£2,450). So do the specs justify the cost, or will you be swayed towards one of the best MacBook Pro alternatives? Let's have a look at what we know so far. According to reports, this device will be a halfway house between an iMac and iMac Pro. In terms of specs, users can look forward to an LCD screen instead of an OLED display, with a 3K pixel resolution of 3,072 x 1,920. Design-wise, we're expecting smaller smaller bezels, as well as that generous 16-inch screen. And as for processor technology, UDN's report says the new MacBook Pro will ship with Intel's 9th or 10th-gen Core i series chipsets, although this is yet to be confirmed. However we do know that Apple will come with up to 32GB of memory (the same as the current MacBook Pro offering). Whether the functionality will justify its mega price tag remains to be seen. Of course, big prices for Apple products are nothing new. Earlier this year the new Mac Pro 2019 made headlines for its whopping price tag and equally eye-wateringly expensive stand (sold separately). If this MacBook Pro's suggested three grand sticker price is a bit beyond your budget, check out our guide to the best cheap Apple laptop deals for some friendlier prices. While we're pretty sure the new model will be hitting shops in October, the specific release date has not been confirmed. Given that it's only a couple of months away, we expect to hear more updates soon – and will be updating this article with all the news as soon as we hear it. So while some of the details are still up in the air, it does look like Apple has a portable, professional-grade device up its sleeve. And with Apple's increasing focus on content creators and developers, here's hoping that it will serve those audiences well. Roll on October. Related articles: The best Walmart laptops in 2019 The 5 best laptops for Photoshop in 2019 Samsung announces its answer to the MacBook Pro View the full article

A local development environment allows you to use your own machine to run your website, instead of using one provided by a web hosting company. You can customise the setup without worrying that it'll affect your live site, as well as make and test site development before uploading your site. Taking away risk when building something makes the development process much less stressful. Another benefit of working locally is that you don't have to be connected to the internet. If you have slow wifi, like to work in the garden or are travelling, there is no need to search for a wifi signal all the time. The time spent FTPing to a staging site and waiting for your site to refresh really adds up over a day of development. A local environment will let you focus on code and the fun bits of building websites. This tutorial assumes you are on a Mac, and the tutorial for getting started with Valet focuses on this. For a PC alternative, try Homestead. A basic knowledge of Terminal is good, although you should be able to follow along, as the commands are all fairly simple. They are mainly to get the prerequisite components installed and running. After completing this tutorial, you will have set up PHP, Homebrew and Composer on your machine, installed Valet and learnt how to set up local sites. Download the files for this tutorial. 5 ways to speed up your websites and apps 01. Install Homebrew Start off by installing Homebrew from the terminal First step here is to install Homebrew. Type the following command in your Terminal. 02. Install PHP Make sure that your PHP is version 7 Next we need to install/upgrade to PHP7, so check using php -v. If you need to install you can type: If you restart your Terminal window now and type php -v again, it should show v7 installed. 03. Install Composer You will need to download Composer, and then put it in a directory that is part of your PATH. 04. Move to your PATH Put Composer in your PATH Now move Composer to a directory within your PATH. Once done, you can check your access to it by typing composer-v. 05. Check your PATH If you type echo $PATH, you will see what it contains. If it doesn't, then type the following to add it. 06. Require Valet globally Now we have the pieces installed, we can get on with installing Valet. First. let's check nothing is using port 80. Type the following, and if it returns nothing, we are good to go. 07. Install Valet We use Composer to install the Valet package for us, and then we can run valet install. 08. Park/unpark directories Create a directory for your development sites and tell Valet to serve them. Note that folders inside this can be accessed as sub domains. 09. Forget directories In a similar way to park, if you no longer want a folder to serve through Valet just use the forget command from inside the directory. 10. Link/unlink directories You can also link to directories. This allows you to choose the name you use. 11. Share your site with the world You can share your local dev url to the outside world. In the directory of your project, type valet share and it will create a URL you can use. 12. Using a database You will need to install your database of choice – for WordPress, we can go ahead and install MySQL. 13. Choose a database tool With a database set up, a tool to import and export data is useful, since we don't have phpMyAdmin or similar with Valet as it is so lightweight. 14. Download Sequel Pro Sequel Pro is a straightforward database tool We are using Sequel Pro, as it offers a simple interface. You can download it here. 15. Connect the database Using the default settings from MySQL, add the following details and test your connection. 16. Set up a WordPress site Install the WordPress Core in your Valet directory With everything now in place, set up a WordPress site. Create a new folder inside your Valet directory and install the WordPress Core. 17. Add a database Create a database in Sequel Pro In Sequel Pro, create a new database with the same name as the folder you created. Update the wp-config file to suit. 18. Test it's all working Head to the browser and check it's working Now if you open your browser, and navigate to (your-folder).test you should see the WordPress install screen. Follow this through as normal. 19. Taking it further Valet is not just for running WordPress installs on, it was actually originally created for Laravel development. Whether you are building something bespoke in PHP or using a framework, you can easily create a new site by creating a new directory for it in your root folder. Join us on 26 September for Generate CSS, a bespoke conference for web designers brought to you by Creative Bloq, net and Web Designer. Save £50 with an Early Bird Ticket when you book before 15 August 2019. This article was originally published in issue 287 of creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 287 here or subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: 40 brilliant WordPress tutorials The best WordPress hosting services in 2019 4 different ways to create a website mockup View the full article