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Houdini software is a 3D animation program that's invaluable for 3D artists. We've got a set of tips and tricks to speed up the animation process and help to get great results, fast. First up in this post are some general tips on using the new tools and functions found in Houdini 17.5, followed by a tutorial on creating hair in Houdini (jump straight to page 2 to create hair in Houdini, and follow the links opposite to jump straight to the section you're after). Elsewhere on the site, our comprehensive review has our full verdict on Houdini 17 Banshee , and if you want to check out other 3D software, we also have a rundown of the best 3D modelling software around. 01. Condensation tool Find it on the Particle Fluids shelf On the Particle Fluids shelf we can find the new Condensation tool. This creates the usual triple geo level node setup, one with the selected geometry which prepares it for the simulation, a DOP network with particle simulation, which uses the new POP fluid solver, introduced in the Whitewater tool in H17, and the output geometry which generates the continuous surface around the particles for rendering. So for now we are just a few clicks away to add the usual rolling droplets onto the glass for a beverage ad. 02. Measure 2.0 Check the documentation for detailed notes for every mode This is a revamped version of the original. Now we can use it on points, not just on primitives – there’s also many variations of measurement modes. It’s advised you check the documentation, as there are detailed descriptions and extra notes for every mode. We can use this node to drive shading effects from SOPs, rather than relying on render-time calculations, define selection groups or weights for procedural modelling, or prepare objects for simulations: separate parts, measure the volume of the parts, slope, curvature etc. 03. Viewpoint volume rendering Convert the other geometry to volume, gain its density and combine with the main volume The display of the volumes in the viewport now use ray traced OpenGL shaders, thus the self-shadowing effects are pretty accurate. However they still doesn’t use the parameters of the attached render material, so we need to use Volume Visualization for that. The shadow interactions with other objects are also missing. The work around is to convert the other geometry to volume, gain its density and combine with the main volume. 04. Select output and visualize The right-click menu offers all the outputs for viewport display under the Flags/Output for View submenu Using the middle mouse button on any input or output of a node displays the node info panel with the data related to the specific input or output. Pressing Ctrl while clicking keeps the panel open after release, where we can also choose the desired output. Here a click on any underlined attribute creates a quick scene level visualiser for that in the viewport, however we may tweak its type in the visualiser settings panel. The right-click menu offers all the outputs for viewport display under the Flags/Output for View submenu, but clicking on any of them with the Shift+Ctrl+Alt brings up the items in the Hotkey Manager, so we don’t need to navigate to this submenu if we bind hotkeys for these. 05. SOPS 2.0 It automatically includes all the upstream nodes From H16, we can access the optimized and multi-threading based version of the SOP context by using compiled blocks, which is basically the optionally accessible SOP’s 2.0 environment. There are some restrictions and nodes which aren’t compatible with this yet, that’s why we should manually manage it. However in H17.5 there are additional compatible nodes such as File, Volume, and Cloud Light. The most significant speed gain using compiled blocks is with for-each loops, but it’s still useful for others, because Houdini handles the nodes in a block as a single node, so the memory use especially with OpenCL nodes is more efficient. The Compiled Block in the Tab menu creates two nodes and is the easiest way to wire the last node of the original node chain to the bottom one (Block End Compile). It automatically includes all the upstream nodes, so it may fail if there are nodes which aren’t compatible with it. The Non-compilable SOP Badge in the Network View Display Options flags all of these nodes with a crossed cog icon, so we can wire the top compile node (Block Begin Compile). 06. AliceVision The AliceVision framework is open source We can say that the price of Houdini includes an advanced and versatile photogrammetry module, as the AliceVision framework is open source and recently the developers of Game Tools implemented it as a toolset, for Linux as well. For further info, check the Resources page on my ArtStation site. 07. Physics painter This tool is useful for layout artists This tool can be very useful for layout artists, even for ones working in film and animation. As a versatile interactive scattering tool, we can populate the scene with arbitrary objects, much like how set dressers do their job. The input of this node is for the geometry on which we want to paint. The easiest way to pick the objects for the brush is selecting all of these SOP nodes and drag & drop to the Quick Add field in the Dynamic section of the physics painter parameter panel. It automatically creates slots for each of these geometries and we can also define higher resolution render meshes and dynamic properties here. There are two modes of the brush in the viewport, one is the normal: as you draw the curve it lays down the objects piece by piece. We can activate the second mode with the Paint Bucket Mode toggle to spread the objects more rapidly. With our brush, the red sphere in the viewport represents the volume of the scattering. It can easily slow down the interaction, so it’s also possible to paint in normal mode and use this toggle occasionally to see the result. 08. Building generator This node was much requested Luckily the developers of Game Tools added this very complex and much requested node to the toolset. It is a rule-based module system, we can feed our building part assets into it and use a base mesh as the floor plan of the building. Additionally with the Mapbox and OSM tools we can generate real world data based cities. Check the Resources page on my ArtStation site for further info. 09. Dirt Skirt and Voxelmesh These tools melt together interpenetrating geometries We can use any of these tools to melt together interpenetrating geometries. The Dirt Skirt node generates a connectivity geometry between the two input geometries. The Voxel Mesh node is a single node tool for the common VDB from Polygons > Convert VDB workflow, thus it is more versatile, an alternative to the boolean union tool and a good remesher. Switching on the Sharpen Features allows us to use this tool for hard surface modelling, as it avoids the otherwise voxelated sharp edges. The Adaptivity slider simplifies the geometry on the less detailed and flat areas. 10. Curve branches We can achieve tree-like geometries This node feels like a first attempt for a tool similar to Maya Paint Effects. Not at that complexity, but if we chain together multiple, copies of this node, each representing a level of the structure, we can even achieve tree-like geometries. 11. Thicken Thicken is an easy tool for a simple task An easy tool for a simple task, as it adds thickness to a surface geometry. With this tailored version of PolyExtrude we can simply extrude all the faces of a geometry using a single slider, namely Depth, without getting lost amongst the other parameters. 12. Straighten and axis align This task can be quick with these two Game Tools nodes It’s a boring and time consuming task to manually align and rotate objects to a neutral pose, especially with photogrammetry ones. Luckily this task can be quick with these two Game Tools nodes. Firstly we orient the object with the Straighten node by selecting the desired upward and forward facing parts for the two input fields respectively. Then the Axis Align node brings the geometry to the origin and we can chose the actions for all three dimensions. The default setting is useful, as it lays down the object on the ground using its lowest part. 13. Quick material Create and assign materials to objects or groups without leaving the SOP context The advanced version of the original QuickShade node. We can quickly and effectively create and assign materials to objects or groups without leaving the SOP context, and access the basic parameters and texture inputs of the available material types: Principled Shader, GameDev PBR and Matcap. 14. Quick merge Start by selecting the nodes you want to merge Select the nodes you want to merge, then Alt+drag down the output of any of them. If you press Ctrl rather than Alt, or just simply click with RMB, it will popup the tab menu, and you can choose other nodes with bulk input like Switch. 15. Viewport hotkeys Open the HotKey Manager and check the available actions It’s worth opening the Hotkey Manager and checking the available actions under Houdini / Panes / Geometry Viewers / Operations / View Operation context. This is the secret place where we can add or modify all the Space+something keystrokes for the viewports, like Frame Selected (default shortcut: Space+F). So all the shortcuts here work just by holding Spacebar, or with the active View tool (left toolbar). Actually, we can change the Space to anything else, or add alternatives, which is the Volatile View Operation, directly in the Operations context. There are some really useful shortcuts like the Cycle View Context and Toggle Local/World View Context. They affect the state of the view context switch, the second button from the right on the network controls bar above the viewport, so we can quickly hide/unhide/ ghost all other geometries except the ones in the active SOP context. The Move Camera to Geometry shortcut is also useful, as a kind of teleport function – the viewport camera jumps to the geometry element under the cursor. 16. Fullscreen mode Finally, a dark mode is here Usually a work session in Houdini takes a while, so most of the time we don’t need the interface elements of the operating system. On Linux it’s easy to go fullscreen, the KDE environment offers it in the titlebar’s right click menu. In the System Settings we can also bind shortcuts to any UI actions like this. In comparison customising the other two OS feel extremely restrictive, but at least after decades of user requests macOS finally ships with an optional Dark Mode. It matches with Houdini’s native colour scheme, thus the menubar at the top doesn’t feel like an interrogation lamp. 17. Nextgen Renderman for Houdini It's worth trying the new Renderman for Houdini You may find Mantra slow, laggy and memory consuming so it’s worth trying the new Renderman for Houdini (22.5+). It feels more cosily integrated with its state of the art interactivity. Do we need dedicated lighting/rendering softwares anymore? Next page: How to create hair in Houdini Tips for creating hair in Houdini 17.5 These tips are for grooms, so have been written with fur in mind, but most of them are all-purpose. Artists ranging from beginners to mid-advanced in Houdini will be able to use these tips, but note that this is not the step-by-step guide. You should know the Houdini interface, basics of creating guides and hair, brushing it and editing. Houdini comes out with three shelves for creating and manipulating hair and fur. The tools from Hair Utils shelf are for setting up hair and fur objects, jumping between object nodes, and setting up animation and simulation. The Guide Process shelf contains the procedural tools for styling hair. This article was originally published in 3D Artist magazine. Buy issue 134 now. Read more: These 3D portraits are unbelievably realistic Brilliant free 3D models The best free 3D apps View the full article

It’s that time again. Amazon’s offering deals on products you didn’t even know existed. Adobe’s no doubt planning some discounts on Creative Cloud subscriptions. Every newspaper on earth suddenly seems to care about the cost of kettles. Yep, it’s Black Friday, which sometimes feels as if it starts in August and ends somewhere the following summer. But while some might think it’s all a bit daft and overhyped, it can still be an important time for creatives – and not just because it might mean a slightly cheaper laptop. This year the main event falls on Friday 29 November, but recent years has seen the sale period run throughout the whole of November, with retailers kicking things off as early as October. There’s also Cyber Monday, which falls on the Monday immediately after Black Friday – so this year it’s on the 1st of December. If you are on the lookout for a creative bargain, be sure to bookmark our best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals articles, which we will update with all the best creative offers as they arrive. Black Friday history: how did it come about? There’s some disagreement on when the term Black Friday was coined, but History.com reports that it was first used back in the 1950s by US police in Philadelphia. They used Black Friday to describe the hordes of shoppers in Philadelphia who flooded the streets the day after Thanksgiving for the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. While many retailers kicked off the shopping season with what we’d call Black Friday deals for decades, the term didn’t really take off until the late 1980s – and in recent years the internet turbo-charged it. Black Friday wasn’t always the biggest online sales event of the year, however. That honour went to Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. That’s when everyone went back to work, realised they hadn’t ordered their Christmas presents and secretly shopped at work. Retailers started extending the duration of their sales, and eCoupons.com coined the phrase Cyber Black Friday in 2009. The cyber bit was quickly dropped because it was rubbish. It was several more years before the UK got the Black Friday bug. The first really big Black Fridays in the UK were in the early 2010s, although retailers didn’t really seem to know what they were doing and appeared to be running around the place putting SALE stickers on anything that happened to be lying around. Things got serious in 2015, and longer too: by then Amazon was well into its ever-lengthening Black Friday deals. And by 2016 the week of Black Friday was an established part of the retail calendar on both sides of the Atlantic. Why should creatives care about Black Friday? As a creative, the obvious reason to get involved with Black Friday is to get your tools for less. There will, of course, be all manner of offers on pro-level laptops and devices, which we will round-up in our best Apple Black Friday and Microsoft Black Friday deals articles, to discounts on pencils, software subscriptions and ergonomic office equipment (including the best office chairs). Black Friday is also a great opportunity for creative businesses But Black Friday is also a great opportunity for creative businesses. You can take advantage of the Black Friday ecosystem, where websites try to get all the traffic by listing every conceivable Black Friday deal no matter how small or how obscure, to drive traffic to your own sales efforts. It’s a good opportunity to shift stock to make room for new products, or to attract new or repeat business with time-limited Black Friday deals. If that’s what you’d like to do, don’t wait for Black Friday to do it. The big retailers tried panicky discounting years ago and lost a fortune; now, Black Friday is planned far in advance and discounts are carefully calculated. In many cases, they’re being used to offload end-of-line stock; in others they’re used as bait for profitable cross-selling, upselling and subscription sign-ups. How creatives can make the most of Black Friday? The big sites’ Black Friday speculation and predictions start in October, and it pays to have a dedicated Black Friday deals or offers page up and running as early as you can to ensure it’s indexed and noticed in advance of the event. All the usual promotional advice applies here: make your products or services look utterly alluring and instil a sense of urgency in your copy. Customers need to feel they’re not only getting a brilliant deal, but that the brilliant deal needs to be bought right now. Advance planning and publication is particularly important if you’re going to try and get any Google/news coverage. Planning is also important for any search advertising buys and, of course, it’s crucial for email marketing and social media marketing where you’ll want to craft scintillating copy and plan your timings well in advance. Last but definitely not least, don’t forget about the practical stuff. If your site has a checkout process, speed test everything from the landing page to the final payment processing. Online shoppers are fickle at the best of times, but they’re even more so when every other site in the universe is trying to attract their attention. Black Friday is not the day to realise that bad UX or slow servers are causing people to abandon their baskets from sheer frustration or slow page loads. That’s not the kind of Black Friday any creative business needs. If you are waiting for Black Friday to get a great deal, be sure to bookmark our dedicated product and brand hubs, which we will update with all the best offers as they arrive: The best Wacom Black Friday deals The best Surface Pro Black Friday deals The best iPad Black Friday deals View the full article

When you've got something to promote, you need to think of smart or clever ways to get it noticed, which is what HP has done to promote its HP Z workstations. The tech company has teamed up with creative network Movidiam to help creative freelancers get better access to computing power, and the resulting campaign includes a witty 90-second spot. How does HP try to grab your attention? A trio of talented freelance artists might tempt you to take notice. Still not convinced? Then you need to watch its little film, 'Deal with annoying comments faster…' and also note that the range its advertising includes several machines that made it to our best laptops for graphic design post. (If you're on the lookout for tech bargains then keep an eye on our Black Friday deals post, and if you're after a new screen rather than a laptop, take a look at our best 4K monitors post.) What's the film about? Well, anyone who has dealt with clients will know what joy (we use the term loosely) they can bring to a project. "It's amazing but we think..." is a line that only means one thing. More work. Then comes the inevitable question, "When do you need it by?". It's usually yesterday, but it's not in the video. The especially irritating project manager asks "Is it finished now?". The designer's answer will make you laugh. Then it's back to the client who once again puts a spanner in the works. "We love it but...". As you might expect, that leads to more ridiculous suggestions that go nowhere near the original brief. But by now there's no time to argue, whatever you might think. Is the client always right? We'll leave that one for you to ponder. Other big name brands that've recently had a go at using smarts to get their message across include Coca-Cola. Diet Coke's new campaign – the one with the two old ladies and Derek. It's definitely cringeworthy, but at the same time memorable. Probably a bit like those client comments. To find out more about HP's campaign, where you can sign up to get a 10 per cent discount on its workstations, go to the HP website. You can also see today's best HP bargains via our dedicated price-checker below. Read more: Has Diet Coke lost the plot? How to win over clients 28 amazing design portfolios to inspire you View the full article

Samsung is reportedly rolling out fixes for a glitch that allowed anyone to dupe its Galaxy S10 fingerprint authentication sensor. View the full article

You're reading Bootstrap Carousel Guide: Examples and Tutorials, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook! Bootstrap carousel is a generic unit of the framework that it is a standard component for cycling through elements. However, it can do much more than that and is undoubtedly one of the most sought-after details in interfaces these days. … View the full article

Smart home devices are becoming the norm. A lot of homes have 'smartened up', whether it’s with something as basic as a smart speaker or with a host of smart devices that includes a smart fridge or smart washer and dryer. After all, the best smart home devices do make doing things faster, and therefore make life easier. At best, smart home devices on the market can make creative professionals’ daily routines and workflow much e more seamless. By taking over the simplest and perhaps more tedious quotidian tasks at hand, the best smart home devices for creatives allow photographers, videographers, artists and designers to focus more on their artistic endeavours. If you're looking for more devices to make your life easier, you might also want to check out our guides to the best laptops for graphic design or the best ereaders money can buy. Benefits of smart home devices for creative professionals As creative professionals and self-professed smart home fanatics ourselves, we know this first-hand. There’s nothing better than to have our lights automatically fade in slowly like sunrise to wake us up and help us start our day right, or to have our smart assistant adjust the temperature in the room when it gets too hot or too cold. Well, at least, besides getting notifications from our phone so we can see who’s at the door without having to get up. When we’re in the middle of editing a video or a batch of photos (see our best video editing software), it’s nice to just tell Alexa to turn the music down when it becomes too distracting or have a smart switch start brewing a fresh pot of coffee. At the beginning of our day, it’s great to simply ask Alexa to start running the robot vacuum so we have some time to meditate or do yoga before hunkering down at our desk for 12 straight hours. So, you too can enjoy the benefits of having smart home devices installed in your home or home office, we gathered the best of them, all of which we tried and tested ourselves. Among the other smart speakers out there, including Google Home and Sonos Smart Speaker, the Amazon Echo Plus certainly comes out the winner in our book. It not only offers support and connectivity for most smart devices out there, but also boasts excellent range, and utilises Amazon Alexa, which is a pretty great voice assistant. As a plus, its speakers, though not audiophile level, deliver a surprisingly solid audio quality. Consider it the gateway device to other smart devices, as it lets you control everything from your smart lights and thermostats to your smart plugs and robot vacuums. For creative professionals, that means having access to practically everything without having to take your eyes off the laptop display or drawing monitor. That includes menial tasks like calling someone on their mobile, creating lists and reminders, going through the day’s headlines, and even calculating conversions. Sure, there are other cheaper smart home devices out there, such as. Google Home or Amazon’s own Echo Dot. However, with a better speaker and more capabilities, the Amazon Echo Plus is certainly worth the extra cash. Considering they’re just light bulbs, it’s astounding how many things Philips’ very popular Hue smart bulbs can do. We’re talking more than just turning on and off with voice commands, adjusting light intensity without a dimmer, and setting timers and schedules here. Having a set of the Philips Hue Colour Ambiance Smart Bulbs in your home gives you seemingly endless applications. Want your living room lights on just before you get home? You can set up a routine so that the app tracks your location and automatically turns on the lights in that room a few minutes before you get to your front door. Need brighter lights to make you feel energised and more productive while working in your home office? The Hue app has the perfect scene for you. These lights can even be set up to follow the rhythm of the music you’re currently playing, reflect the weather conditions outside or notify you if the space station is overhead. Boasting 16 million colours, the Philips Hue Colour Ambiance Smart Bulbs are pretty nifty, and it's well worth paying the premium price for all the immersive benefits they offer. If you’re looking to fill your home with the best smart home devices for creative professionals, these bulbs are a great start. Whether you like it or not, how comfortable your workspace is has a huge impact on your productivity and workflow. The temperature in that space, for one, is vital, and simply by installing a smart thermostat makes a difference. There are many reasons why we love the ecobee4 Smart Thermostat for this. That, of course, includes the fact that it includes a room sensor, which manages hot or cold spots for you, as well as reads the temperature and detects occupancy in a room, adjusting accordingly to reduce energy consumption. Unlike other smart thermostats on the market, however, this one gets our vote because it has built-in Alexa features. That means that it can perform some Alexa voice commands like playing music, setting up timers, creating shopping lists and utilising Drop In, Alexa’s intercom feature. Even better, it’s so easy to install that you can forgo the exuberant expert installation fee and do it yourself. It’s one of the priciest smart home devices on this list, but it more than gives you your money’s worth. While there are already a lot of smart home devices out there, including smart refrigerators that can organise your family schedule and even order your groceries for you, there are a large number of appliances out there that are still very much stuck in the 20th century. Though worry not; there’s still a way to ‘smarten up’ such appliances and electronics. Thanks to a plethora of smart plugs, smart power strips and smart switches out there, you can – to a degree – control them remotely through your voice assistant and/or a phone app. The Kasa Smart Plug is one such smart device, compatible with small electronics that run at up to 12 AMPs. This means that you can plug your fans, coffee makers, lamps and radios into it, then control them with voice commands, turn them on/off remotely and even set them on schedules. It even offers a feature called Away Mode, which allows you to set your appliances to on and off at random intervals to make it look like you’re home even when you’re not. Home security camera systems are not just for keeping your home and office safe from intruders anymore. With smart home security cameras taking home security by storm, they’re now also a great way to check package deliveries, talk directly with visitors when you’re not home and even see who’s at the door without having to get up from your desk. And with Arlo Pro 2, you’re getting even more bang for your buck with features like weatherproofing, wireless connectivity, 300 plus feet line of sight, and a rechargeable battery. Of course, all the essential features are there too: sound and motion detection, night vision and local backup storage. There’s two-way audio and instant notifications as well, so you can chase off intruders, if you want to. For even more coverage, you can even expand the system to include up to five cameras for free and up to 20 cameras by upgrading. Like most security cameras, this only has up to 1080p video capabilities – though, it’s not like you need 4K video quality for this purpose. When you’re a busy creative professional clocking in 12 to 16 hours of work a day, you’ll hardly find time doing menial tasks like washing dishes and cleaning your home. This is why we find robot vacuums so practical – they may not offer that deep cleaning regular vacuum cleaners offer, but they’re good enough in keeping your floors debris-, dust- and dander-free on a daily basis. If you can't concentrate on work when your workspace is a mess, that’s already plenty helpful. With the iRobot Roomba 690, you’re basically taking that further with app and voice assistant control. You can now easily customise its cleaning process, start cleaning anytime remotely, set up cleaning schedules and even tell it to go back to its home unit for charging, all without having to physically get up. It’s still plenty noisy, but all that hands-free control should give you more time to focus on other things – like doing morning yoga or making lunch. Should the noise prove a little too loud and distracting, that’s what the best noise-cancelling headphones are for. If you work from home most of the time and like to put on a show or a movie in the background or watch videos online for inspiration and tutorials, then the Fire TV Cube could be for you. Sure, our smart TVs do plenty already and offer a world of convenience when it comes to streaming content or Netflix. But, we also love the idea of not having to get up to scour the living room for the remote or simply controlling the TV without it. Touted by Amazon as its most powerful Fire TV device ever, the Fire TV Cube makes our best smart home devices for creative professionals list because it lets us do just that. Whether it’s to turn on the TV or put on your favourite shows using voice commands through Alexa, the Fire TV simply delivers a level of convenience that no other streaming device could. Great extras include built-in speakers, Bluetooth headphones compatibility and music streaming. Read more: The best mechanical keyboards The best wireless chargers The most powerful laptops available View the full article

If you're lucky enough to own a Surface Pro device, whatever version you have, you'll know they are powerful little machines, capable of high-labour intensive tasks. One of the best tablets with a stylus in our roundup, the Surface Pro is packed with brilliant features to help make a creative's day just that little bit easier. Some you'll be very aware of: that gorgeous screen, full-fat desktop software compatibility, for example. But the Surface Pro has other more under-the-radar features and functionality that might just surprise – and delight – you. If you're looking to invest in a Surface Pro, be sure to bookmark our Surface Pro Black Friday deals page, which we will keep updated with all the best offers as they arrive. Now let's take a closer look at some of the things you can do with a Surface Pro devices that you probably didn't know about, but which could be game-changers. 01. Take screenshots with the Surface Pen The Microsoft Surface team has been working hard to develop the functionality of Surface accessories in recent years, the Surface Pen being one of them. One of the features in Windows 10, Snip & Sketch enables the ability to take a screenshot with the Surface Pen. Simply double-clicking on the pen's eraser button will take a screenshot, which can then be edited, cropped and saved. 02. Collaborate remotely, in real time Whiteboard is an app that you can download for free on any Microsoft PC or Surface device. With an interface designed for the Surface Pen, the Surface Pro 7 lends itself perfectly to this virtual canvas, which allows you to connect and collaborate with other artists anywhere in the world. We caught up with Microsoft's Head of Industrial Design Ralf Groene, who shared his own experiences of working with Whiteboard and the Surface Pro X. "I was working with my daughter on a school project recently when she was in Rhode Island. We used Whiteboard to work through a problem, sketching together remotely," he explains. "That's such a new and profound, very productive experience. Being able to work on a project together in real time, that's a game-changer." 03. Make better human connections The recently announced Surface X (see our hands on Microsoft Surface Pro X review here) brings with it a number of impressive new features that creatives will love; touchscreen display, slim, sleek design, plenty of storage, lots of power, and so on. There's also another feature you will notice, literally, and that's gaze correction, which uses AI to adjust the appearance of your eyes so you appear to be looking straight at the camera when you’re on a conference call. "Not looking into someone else's eyes when you have a video call can cause just this little bit of friction, a little bit of distance, and so us changing this gets you one step closer to better, more natural human interaction," says Groene. "Those are the details that we spend an enormous amount of time on at Microsoft, you can make all the difference in the world this is just this tiny change." Can't wait until Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals drop? Here are the best Surface device and accessory deals in your area: View the full article

Having a well-curated collection of your finest work on show is the surest way to impress people with your portfolio, but never underestimate the power of displaying it in the best possible way. To really turn heads, it pays to spend time – or money, if you're not that technically inclined – on building a portfolio website that takes full advantage of the latest trends and technology. And if you're not sure what approach you should take with your site, you've come to the right place. We've found six of the most best new portfolio sites around, each of which do things in their own individual way and look stunning while they're doing it. Read on for a delicious helping of portfolio inspiration. You can also check out our general post of more inspirational design portfolios. 6 big portfolio trends of 2019 01. Hello Monday We could play with these squishy thumbnails for hours It's hard not to love Hello Monday's mission: to make Mondays better for everyone. This creative studio has an eight-point code of honour that starts off with the simple commitment to being nice, and its portfolio site is equally delightful. We love the squishy thumbnail images on the index page, and the way in which you can drag the edges inward until they finally snap back into place. Every project page is packed with detail and lovely big images, and if you need to know even more, many of them have a little 'In depth' link that makes an even more detailed case study slide into view. 02. Antidote Antidote's animated thumbnails tell you exactly what each director is about Antidote is a Dublin-based agency that specialises in high-end commercials, and its portfolio site's designed for instant visual appeal. Rather than drop a big mission statement in front of you – the kind that every scrolls straight past to get to the good stuff – it puts its directors front and centre; a simple list of names, each one bringing up a set of animated thumbnails as you mouse over them. It's an effective way to get an instant taste of each director's style, and clicking through takes you a page of massive animated previews that you can click to see the full videos. Further written details are available, but overall Antidote's counting on showing, rather than telling, and it's a brilliant strategy. 03. Design Embraced Design Embraced's portfolio is full of lovey eye candy As seen on Hello Monday's portfolio site, getting some movement into your page designs by deforming the edges of images is a great, on-trend look, and it's one that freelancer Anthony Goodwin, under the name Design Embraced, uses to excellent effect. As you scroll through his portfolio the assorted images ripple gently and zoom in slightly as you mouse over them; clicking activates a transition in which the thumbnail expands into the centre of the screen and the page loads behind it. Mesmerising stuff. 04. Headless Horse Come for the horses, stay for the massive portfolio gallery A glorious combination of cutting-edge technology and old-school styling, Headless Horse's portfolio site opens with full-screen video of a pack of horses, over which there's a simple text interface asking: Initiate system? Typing 'yes' takes you to the main portfolio, but there's fun to be had from typing 'no' and seeing what happens next. Once you've finished playing with the text interface, the portfolio itself takes the form of a massive black-and-white photo of pictures pinned to a wall; click on each one to see Headless Horse's various projects in depth. 05. Jamie Hunter Jamie Hunter's minimal portfolio makes a big impact with a light touch Berlin-based Jamie Hunter describes himself as a holistic design and development person, and his beautifully minimal portfolio site does a splendid job of showcasing his work. Its index page does the job with a combination of kinetic typography and animated video loops of each project – along with plenty of white space to let the work breathe. While there are only a few non-agency projects on display (he notes that a most of freelancing is agency work covered by NDAs), each one is displayed thoughtfully, with a detailed case study and enough enticing browser effects to leave you in no doubt as to his abilities. 06. Tangent Tangent takes a clever approach to luring you in to inspect its work Finally, we absolutely adore Tangent's approach to showcasing its work on its portfolio site. An identity and art direction studio based in Glasgow, it lures you in with a gallery of big black and white thumbnails; mousing over the thumbnails turns them full colour, and the briefest details of the project – the client's name and the nature of their business, and the work that Tangent did for them – appear in the four corners of the window in big, bold Helvetica. Clicking through takes you to long case studies that are all about the full-screen imagery laced with short chunks of explanatory text; the perfect way to get a feel for each piece of work. Related articles: The wrong way to build a portfolio 7 free portfolio hosting options for designers How to refine your design portfolio View the full article

Some brands make us feel as if they've been around since the dawn of time. The likes of Nestle and Heinz sport packaging and logo designs that are instantly recognisable, and people pick up their products without even thinking about it. It's a level of consumer trust that brands all over the world aspire to. Artist Ahmed Morshedi recently shone a light on the concept of brand trust with a series of brilliant but brain muddling packaging redesigns. The Experiment is comprised of brand design mashups that aim to make you stop and think. And it certainly made our heads hurt. Toothpaste on your toast, anyone? The above Nutella/Signal mashup is a good example of how Morshedi has managed to confuse us. It's like we've gone through the looking glass to an upside-down world where, though nothing makes sense, everything still works. And let's be honest, who doesn't love the idea of brushing their teeth with Nutella? Well, mouthwash is basically disinfectant anyway Morshedi explains his work: “I redesigned the logos, printed them out and repackaged well-known brands in a way that will mess with your head … in a good way,” he says. But Morshedi hasn't just created this art to turn us all topsy-turvy, he also thinks there's an important message here for designers. "It's simply a different way of looking at the brands, which most of the time their teams are afraid of tackling it in such a way," Morshedi told Bored Panda. This approach makes us consider whether some brands are too ingrained in our consciousness. Do we still see them, or are some in danger of becoming background noise? Morshesdi's work certainly emphasises the impact of a brand refresh, and the importance of thinking outside of the limitations of a brand image. Cigarettes as the essence of life is super-disturbing Branding couldn't be more important for this cigarette/water switcheroo. After the transition cigarette branding has gone through over the last decades – from bright and alluring to plain with unsightly pictures and impactful messaging – it's jarring to see how the brand message of a pack of cigs can be altered. This pack looks like it could be straight out of the mind of an early Don Draper (before all the important legislation came in), bringing cigarettes to the masses with misleading and harmful imagery. Also the idea of water, the essence of life, being covered with cigarette branding is, frankly, disturbing. And not one we ever want to see come to fruition. Orange ketchup could certainly have its uses We especially like this 'Orange Ketchup', not only for the smart redesign but for the opportunity to add ketchup to a different type of meal. It also reminds us of the time purple ketchup was a thing, and we wonder why Heinz didn't continue the shake-up. Though it did have it's own wacky branding, and we kinda like the classic twist Morshedi has put on things. This isn't the first time we've seen brands go though unofficial logo mashups, but every time it happens it makes us consider whether everything we know is true, and it seems it doesn't ever get less confusing. Read more: The surprising story behind the Joker logo Is this the most blatant logo theft ever? 10 iconic logos with hidden meanings View the full article

Sapper is a framework built on top of Svelte. It focuses on speed out of the box with server rendering, link preloading, and the ability to create service workers. Combined with Svelte, the end result is a highly customisable, lightning fast site with a small footprint. In this tutorial, we will be using Sapper to build a lightweight blogging site using Svelte components (see our how to start a blog post for some less technical tips on blogging). Svelte is a framework with a difference. It analyses the code at compile time and creates a set of modules in vanilla JavaScript, which avoids the need for a runtime. If you need further help with layouts then check out our post on how to get the perfect website layout. Download the tutorial files on FileSilo here 01. Install dependencies Firstly, we need to download and install dependencies. It relies on Svelte to work and requires another framework to build the server, but the rest depends on the application being built. In this case, we need a few packages to help extract Markdown files later on. Download the tutorial files (above(, find them on the command line and install the dependencies. 02. Build out server Sapper is built in two parts – the client-side framework and the server-side rendering of that framework. This helps get that extra speed boost for those on slower networks. It is built using Node, which allows the Sapper middleware to do all the heavy lifting for us. Open server.js and create the server with Express. Using their recommendations, we include compression to shrink the files we send and sirv to serve static files. 03. Mount the application On the client side, we need to tell Sapper where to mount the application. This is similar to React DOM’s render or Vue’s $mount methods. Inside client.js, start Sapper and mount it to the root <div> element. That element is included in the template file, which we will come to later on. 04. Start the development server Any errors during the development build process are flagged on the command line. With the basic server and client files set up, we can start the development server. This kicks off a build of the server, client and service worker files, and it will start up on port 3000 by default. Whenever a file changes, it will rebuild the part of the application that changed. Run the server on the command line. Keep this window open while developing the site. 05. Create a server route Anything inside the “routes” directory will turn into a route for the application. Files with the .js extension will become what are called server routes. These routes have no UI, but instead are requested by the application to fetch data. In our case, we will use them to load up blog posts. The routes/blog/index.json.js file will create the /blog.json endpoint on our server. Import the blog posts and create some JSON from them. 06. Return the blog posts Server routes export functions that correspond with HTTP methods. For example, to respond to a GET request, we would export a function called get from the server route file. Create a get function that responds with the data that we collected in the previous step in a JSON format. Open http://localhost:3000/blog.json in the browser and check the posts are coming through. 07. Create index page Pages in Sapper are regular Svelte components. Each component is a single file with a .svelte extension, and contain all the logic and styling for managing itself. Any JavaScript this component needs to run will live inside a <script> tag — just like any HTML page. Inside routes/index.svelte, import a couple of other Svelte components that we can use to build this page. Export a posts variable that we will populate later. 08. Fetch blog post data With the page set up, we can start bringing in blog posts. We need to do this as soon as the page is loaded. In order for the server to be aware of this and then request this data when it renders the page, it needs to go in a separate <script context=”module”> tag. On the server, Sapper will look for a preload function, and wait for it to complete before showing the page. Here, we are populating the posts variable from the previous step. 09. Display post summaries In Svelte, variables are reactive by default. This means that, as they update, our components will also update too. As the posts variable now holds an array of blog posts, we can loop over these and display them. We can do this using an #each block. These will repeat what is inside the brackets for each item in an array. At the bottom of the component, outside of any tags, add the HTML to display the posts. 10. Style the container We can use components to contain any repeated logic and use them wherever they are needed – styles included. The <Container> component currently does not do anything, but we can use it to give a maximum width to the content inside it. Open up components/Container.svelte, and add some styles inside a <style> tag. Any styles that we apply inside a component are scoped to that component, which means that we can use a generic selector. 11. Define a <slot> If a component is designed to be the parent to other components, we need a way to pass those components through. The <slot> element does just that, and can be placed anywhere that makes sense inside a component’s markup. With <Container>, we are wrapping the contents in a styled <div>. Use <slot> inside the <div> to let everything else through. 12. Expose PostSummary props Not every component is going to fetch some data. As we are loading the posts from the main page component, it can be passed through to the components it renders through its attributes. Open components/PostSummary.svelte and define some attributes at the top of the file. These are getting filled in by the spread operator we added in step 09. 13. Display blog post summary When the attributes are populated, they are then accessed like any other variable. By having separate attributes for each part of the post summary, we make the markup easier to read. At the bottom of the component, add some HTML to create the summary. The classes relate to the pre-defined styles. 14. Link to blog post Sapper can fetch the information for a link as the user hovers over it for a perceived performance benefit Unlike similar frameworks such as Next.js, Sapper works with regular anchor links. At build time, it is able to detect internal links, and also to make its own optimisations. Update the markup from the previous step by wrapping it in a link. There is no need for you to create template strings in order to compose the slugged URL. 15. Fetch a post by slug Sapper is able to create pages based on URL parameters. In our case, we link to /blog/slug, which means it renders the component at /routes/blog/[slug].svelte. Inside that component, fetch the blog data like we did for the index page. The params object contains the parameters from the URL, which in this case is the slug. 16. Error if post is not found Unlike the index page, there is a chance there isn’t a blog post at the URL. In that case, we should display an error. Along with fetch, the preload method also includes error that changes the response to an error page instead. At the end of the preload method, show an error if there is no post found. Otherwise, set the post variable for the page. 17. Display the blog post Any internal links can be loaded asynchronously. This includes those written in Markdown. With the data fetched, we can now show the post on the page. Similar to the PostSummary component, we display each part of the post’s content inside curly brackets. At the bottom of the component, add some markup to display on the page. 18. Display HTML instead Looking at the page now, everything displays correctly apart from the actual post content. The markdown conversion generates HTML, but we see that printed as text on the post itself. Sapper has a HTML parser built in for this case. Placing @html in front of it will use this parser. 19. Set page <title> value Our blog functions correctly, but there are a couple of changes needed to finish it. One of those is to update the <title> on the page to relabel the tab it’s displayed in. Svelte supports a <svelte:head> element, which injects anything inside of it into the <head> of the page. Use this to set the title of the post as <title>. 20. Updating the <title> Every page goes through a template in order to stamp out the HTML for the rest of the page. This is where any setup such as font imports and meta tags would be entered. Open up template.html, and add in a hook for the contents of the <svelte:head> element from the previous step. Add this in just before the closing </head> tag. 21. Add permanent header The final thing we need to add is a layout for the blog. Instead of wrapping each page in a component, Sapper will look for a _layout.svelte file to do this job for us. Inside _layout.svelte, import the <Header> component and show that at the top of every page. It provides a convenient link back to the homepage. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 290 now. Web components: The ultimate guide 30 Chrome extensions for web designers and devs 52 web design tools to help you work smarter in 2019 View the full article

"Ernie! Little old lady at 12 o'clock!" – a line die-hard Harry Potter fans will recognise as one from Dre Head, the hilarious Shrunken Head that sits – or hangs – alongside kamikaze driver Ernie Prang in the beloved Knight Bus. A triple-decker, purple AEC Regent III RT bus, Harry first encounters the Knight Bus after inadvertently (not that she didn't deserve it) inflating his uncle's sister Marge Dursley. One of the most iconic vehicles in the Harry Potter series, it was super-exciting to see the Knight Bus transformed into a Lego set. Harry Potter fans have been creating amazing inspired Lego art for years now, so it's not surprising to see Lego itself follow suit. And it doesn't disappoint. The Knight Bus Lego set retails at £34.99, for which you get 403 pieces, divided into three numbered bags. Minifigures included are Harry Potter, complete with trunk and wand, bus driver Ernie Prang and conductor Stan Shunpike, all of whom are dressed almost exactly as they feature in the film. And let's not forget aforementioned Dre Head (the first piece we searched for when opening the set), a floating head that has been design so as to swing with the motion of the bus. As always, Lego pulled out all the stops when fine tuning details with this set, right down to Ernie Prang's bald head with sideburns piece. But in terms of the actual build, what first struck us was the size of the bus. It measures six inches (16cm) high, six inches long and two inches (6cm) wide, which is quite a bit smaller than we were expecting. However we should stress this doesn't take anything away from the overall design, which is packed with lovely little touches to make it an authentic Knight Bus replica. A triple decker bus, the upper deck is somewhat bland (featuring just a newspaper title), in comparison to the bottom and middle levels, which is where you'll come across the majority of the interior design. Here you'll find a bed, for the tired witch or wizard, of course, a chandelier, because public transport can be stylish too, space for Harry's trunk (which holds important mail), Ernie in the front seat and Dre Head sat neatly beside him. The Knight Bus Lego set's design has a hinged opening side panel, which is a stroke of genius. Closed, it's almost impossible to see the interior through the tiny windows, but the panel opens enough to be able to enjoy the inside in all its glory. In terms of difficulty, this set is relatively easy, with numbered bags and the standard easy-to-follow Lego instruction booklet, which makes it a great choice for younger Lego/Harry Potter fans to get stuck in to. Once built, the bus feel very sturdy for future play/use, and there aren't a huge amount of small pieces on the outside that could be at risk of being lost. There's also the added bonus that the overall build and design means if any pieces did fall off, it would be pretty easy to put back together. Lego has released a number of Harry Potter-inspired sets, focussing on various scenes and props in the series. But if, like us, the Knight Bus holds a special place in your heart, this set offers a really authentic replica and fun building experience, with a price tag that makes it accessible to all. View the full article

If you're a web designer then we really shouldn't need to be telling you about Flexbox by now. Even non-web people have got the idea that it's a powerful responsive web design tool for creating pages that arrange page layouts in a predictable way to look good in any viewport. Knowing it's good, however, isn't the same as being able to actually use it, and while there's not actually great deal to the Flexbox specification, figuring out how it all fits together can feel like a bit of an uphill struggle. Our web designer's guide to Flexbox is the perfect way to get to grips with it, but if you're having trouble getting all the various elements to stick in your head, we've found lovely Flexbox cheat sheet that you'll want to keep bookmarked. So if you're having trouble telling your flex-grow from your stretch, head over to FLEX. It's the work of Chris Malven at Malven Co., an interactive design and development studio based in Iowa, and it contains all the most important Flexbox properties you're going to need, presented in a simple visual manner that doesn't bog you down in wordy explanations. FLEX puts all those Flexbox properties you need at your fingertips Instead, it shows what each property does via a wonderfully minimal image; simply find the property you want to use and click on it, and FLEX will copy the code you need straight to your clipboard. Easy! Malven explains that while many Flexbox resources are brilliant for learning the details of how things work, there's too much going on for them to serve as quick references. "I wanted something that was as visually condensed as possible," he says, "and easy to scan visually. I need to see what elements styled using each properly will look like." And so he built FLEX as a visual Flexbox cheat sheet; he says he uses it all the time and that it's helped him to become truly comfortable with the Flexbox syntax. You can find FLEX here; if you find it useful and wish there was a similar resource for CSS Grid Layout, then guess what? You're in luck; Malven has built that very thing in the form of GRID, which lays out all the CSS Grid properties in a similarly digestible format. Related articles: 19 cool CSS animation examples to recreate The best web hosting services in 2019 10 CodePen tricks you never knew you needed View the full article

An unsecured NFC tag opens a door to trivial exploitation of robots inside Japanese hotels. View the full article

Two high-severity vulnerabilities in a Fujitsu wireless keyboard expose passwords and allow keystroke injection attacks. View the full article

In the run up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it's not unusual for some amazing deals to appear. And that's just what's happened with this iPad Pro discount from Currys, which sees nearly to £100 slashed off the regular retail price. So if you want to grab a bargain device, don't miss this opportunity. Meanwhile, if you're after more insider information about what to expect from this year's Black Friday event, be sure to bookmark our Apple Black Friday deals page for more tips and predictions. As for the Currys' discount, this offer applies to the 2017 10.5-inch Space Grey iPad Pro. This model is compatible with the Apple Pencil and the deal comes with a smart keyboard folio for just £759 – that's a tasty £99.97 off compared to buying the iPad and folio separately. It may not be the most up-to-date iPad available, but it should still serve as a decent tool for working on the go. Below you'll find more details about this amazing iPad Pro offers (see our iPad Black Friday roundup for more discounts). After more iPad Pro deals? Check out some of the best offers available right now. View the full article

Multiple critical memory safety bugs in Firefox 69 and Firefox ESR 68.1 in particular affect medium and large government entities and enterprises. View the full article

People are a fickle bunch, always getting bored with things and demanding exciting new stuff all the time. Wouldn't it be lovely if design could maybe just draw a line under everything and decide, yeah, that's it, it's all just going to look like this from now on? Then we wouldn't have to worry about keeping up with trends. But no, designers have to keep trying out new experimental design, ditching old ideas and techniques, and playing around with different palettes and styles, and if you don't stay abreast of what's happening then you'll quickly find that nobody loves your work any more. Harsh, but that's the way of the world. And let's face it, we all love a good trend. If you want to still be relevant this time next year, you'll want to feast your eyes on this new infographic from Coastal Creative. They've identified eight hot design trends that they reckon are going to be massive in 2020, and put them all down in a visual format. Are trends any good for branding? This is Coastal's sixth annual set of trend predictions, and they reckon that, being the first year of a new decade, 2020 is going to bring around some hugely exciting and eye-catching new looks. If you want your designs to hit the 2020 zeitgeist hard, then these you should be looking into incorporating some of these looks into your visual language. Forget about flat; realistic texture's back First up is VR panoramas – adding depth to web design by taking a leaf from the VR playbook and adding panoramic, parallax backdrops to sites. Next there's surreal product photos; rejecting naturalist settings for product shots, and dropping your product in front of surreal dreamscapes. Another innovation for promotional campaigns is zero gravity – using 3D modelling techniques to have your product floating in the air. And while flat design has been having its way for a long time, Coastal is predicting an upsurge in realistic textures, with plenty of tactile grain and contour to them. With so much data to try and make sense of, another prediction is a raise in abstract data visualisation – thinking beyond graphs and charts and finding more engaging ways of turning data into digestible narratives. Coastal believes that 2020's big colour is going to be yellow; it's the colour of youth and confidence, perfect for a fresh new decade, so expect to see yellow backgrounds and accents all over the place. For further visual impact, Coastal expects multimedia portraits to become a big thing; instead of using photographs or sketches of people, designers are mixing up various mediums within a single portrait to create much more exciting representations. And the final trend prediction is Earth & Sky 2.0: fantastical imagery of the earth and sky, inspired by cartography and astronomy to create something thoroughly other-worldly. You can see the full infographic below; to find out more, head for the more in-depth post over at Coastal Creative. Related articles: 5 of the hottest typography trends 3 trends that changed the design industry forever 6 big portfolio trends of 2019 View the full article

CSS is constantly evolving and a host of exciting new features have been added to make the specification an even more powerful weapon in a web designer's toolset. CSS Grid takes layouts to new levels not seen before, custom properties introduce the concept of variables while feature queries check for browser support. Media queries moves up a level with new accessibility properties, variable fonts offer maximum creativity with minimum code bloat while scroll snapping eliminates the need for JavaScript. Check out our cool CSS animation examples to see what you can create. For those looking to get a creative there is CSS Shapes for uniques layouts and a host of blend modes and filters to introduce Photoshop style design effects. Read on to find out how you can use these must-try features in your latest builds. 01. Custom properties If you’ve use a preprocessor like Sass, or indeed a programming language like JavaScript, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the concept of variables — values that are defined for reuse throughout your code. Custom properties enable us to do this in our CSS, without the need for preprocessors. Variables can be set at the :root level (creating global variables) or scoped within a selector. They can then be called using the syntax var(-›-myVariableName). For example, we might set a variable called --primaryColor like this: Now we can use that variable as a property value: Custom properties are inherited, which has some very useful implications. One of those is theming. Take the above example: We can define a global variable ( #f45942 – a bright orangey red) for --primaryColor at the root level, so every instance where we use this variable the value will be red. But we’re also redefining the same variable within a selector, with a different value (#4171f4 – medium blue). So for every instance where we use the --primaryColor variable within that selector, the computed value will be blue. Setting defaults The scoping of variables is a great feature, but one that might catch you out on occasion! If you try to use a variable that is not yet defined, the resulting value will fall back to the browser default, or an inherited value, rather than a variable defined further up the cascade. In some cases, it might be appropriate to set a default value: How do custom properties differ from preprocessor variables? Custom properties differ from preprocessor variables in a few key ways. Preprocessor variables are compiled before your code is sent to the browser. The browser never sees that a value is a variable, it only sees the end result. Custom properties are computed in the browser. You can inspect them in modern developer tools, change the variable and see the resolved value. They are dynamic variables, meaning their values can be changed within CSS, or at runtime with JavaScript. Unlike preprocessor variables, custom properties can’t be used within selector names, property keys or media query declarations — only CSS property values. CSS preprocessors still have plenty of benefits, so we’re likely to see them sticking around for a while longer, but they’ll likely be used more often in combination with custom properties. 02. Feature queries Feature queries are a way to test whether a browser supports a particular CSS property-value combination within your CSS file. They virtually remove the need for feature-detection libraries like Modernizr. The syntax is similar to a media query: You use the at-rule @supports, followed by your property-value pair, wrapping the code to be executed if the browser meets the specified conditions. Feature queries are well-supported in modern browsers, but they are relatively new, and one “gotcha” is that some browsers you might want to test for support might not support feature queries themselves. Often the best way to handle this is to provide fallback styles first (outside of the feature query), then wrap your enhancements for supporting browsers inside the @supports rule. Be aware, feature queries need only be used sparingly. One of the great features of CSS is that browsers will simply ignore any properties or values that they don’t understand. It’s best to only employ feature queries when not doing so would cause a visual bug, otherwise you could be setting yourself up for a lot of extra work. Check the caniuse.com website to check browser support for feature queries How to use feature queries To test for support of a single property value, we can provide the fallback first. In this example, we’re providing a flexbox fallback for browsers that don’t support Grid layout. 03. Media queries You’ll likely be accustomed to using media queries to detect the width and height of the viewport, and the type of media (most commonly screen or print). The level 5 Media Queries specification brings us some newer media features to (optionally) test for, which are already supported in some browsers. These offer some great benefits for accessibility. Users with vestibular disorders, and those who suffer from motion sickness, may not appreciate web pages with a lot of motion, such as animations and parallax scrolling effects. Using the prefers-reduced-motion media query, we can provide users who opt out with a reduced-motion alternative. It’s becoming increasingly popular for websites to provide an alternative dark theme. Prefers-colors-scheme allows us to query whether the user has set a system-wide preference (using the keywords dark, light, or no-preference), and show the appropriate colour scheme accordingly. 04. Variable fonts Check out Axis-Praxis, a website for playing with OpenType Variable fonts In general, if we want to include a number of different fonts faces of the same family on our webpage, we would need to load the same number of font files. The more font files you load, the more weight you add to your page, with an impact on performance — so it’s usually wise to load a maximum of three or four font files (depending on your performance budget). Variable fonts change all that. They enable us to load a single font file for an entire font family. Although this file will usually be larger than a single font would, if you want to take advantage of different weights and styles, then a variable font is the more performant solution. Variation axis Not only that, but with variable fonts, we’re not limited to a small subset of font weights. When working with regular fonts, the available font weights are given in multiples of 100. Typically, 400 might be the regular weight, 300 the light weight, and 700 the bold weight — with different families supplying more weights or fewer. Variable fonts have an axis of variation, which provides us with a range of values for properties like the font weight. A font might have an axis of 1–900, which would provide us with access to 900 different weights! The axis of variation is not just limited to weight. Variable fonts can have different axes for x-height, slant, serif length and contrast (to pick just a few examples) — meaning that a single font file could give us access to hundreds, or even thousands of variations! We could even animate these properties, enabling us to achieve some really cool effects. Mandy Michael (https://codepen.io/mandymichael) has a whole load of creative demos that really test the limits. Browser support for variable fonts is pretty good, and many font foundries are actively developing new variable fonts that you can start using now — although these often come at a premium, especially for the more fully-featured font families. If you just want to get started playing around with variable fonts to see what they can do, there are a number of variable font playground sites: Be aware, if you want to use variable fonts right now you need to make sure you’re using an up-to-date operating system — they won’t work on older OSs. Font-variation-settings While we can alter the font weight easily enough with the font-weight CSS property, font-variation-settings is a new property that gives us full access to a font’s different axes of variation. These include both registered axes and custom axes. Registered axes There are five different registered axes, which correspond to various CSS properties. Each of these has what’s known as an “axis tag”. The registered axes are: wght (font-weight), wdth (font-stretch), slnt (font-style: oblique/angle), ital (font-style: italic), opsz (font-optical-sizing). We can access these axes either by the CSS property, or with font-variation-settings. These axes are not necessarily all included in every variable font (some may only have one or two axes), but they are likely to be the most common. Custom axes Custom axes are bespoke axes included by the font designer, and could be anything at all. They could include (for example) serif length, x-height, even something more creative (and less typographically typical), like rotation. Both types of axes must be expressed as a four-character tag. Registered axes must be lowercase, while custom axes are uppercase. Both can be combined in the font-variation-settings property. Font-variation-settings is animatable, which can allow for some very cool UI effects! Some very interesting experiments have been produced using icon fonts too. 05. Graphical effects CSSgram is a tiny library for recreating Instagram filters If you’re familiar with design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, you might be aware of blend modes and how they can be used to produce different effects on images. The way blend modes work is to blend two or more layers together using mathematical formulae to calculate a resulting value for each pixel. The layers could be anything — images, gradients or flat colours. Some blend modes produce a darken result (e.g. multiply, which multiplies the pixel values of the layers), some a lighter one (e.g. screen and overlay). We don’t need to understand the maths in order to use them, however. Playing around with different blend modes can give us a good feel for which of them produce the desired results when combined with different layers. With the CSS properties mix-blend-mode and background-blend-mode, we can achieve Photoshop-like image effects in the browser. Both properties take the same values, but work slightly differently. Background-blend-mode Background-blend-mode blends together the background layers of the element we’re targeting. Our element could have background images, colours and gradients, and they would all be blended with each other without affecting the foreground content. We can specify multiple values for background-blend-mode, one for each background layer. Mix-blend-mode Mix-blend-mode affects how the element blends with its parent and its siblings, including any foreground and background content, and pseudo-elements. Some interesting creative effects can be achieved by blending overlaid pseudo-elements (::before and ::after). CSS filters CSS filters can also be used to create striking visual effects, using the filter property and filter function values. Unlike blend modes, they apply a graphical effect directly to the element they are targeting, and an element can have multiple filters applied. Convert to grayscale We can manipulate the colours of an element with a greater degree of control than relying on blend modes. Filters can convert an image to grayscale, adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation, blur an element or add a drop shadow. They can also be animated too, and look great with hover effects. SVG filters CSS filters are in fact simplified versions of SVG filters. The CSS filter property also takes a url() function, allowing us to pass in a URL to an SVG filter. SVG filters are extremely powerful and allow for some incredible image effects — but they’re also far more complicated than CSS filter functions! Sara Soueidan has a wonderful article series on Codrops if you’re interested in diving into coding your own custom SVG filters. Check out the article at https://tympanus.net/codrops/2019/01/15/svg-filters-101/ Clipping and masking: beyond rectangles We’re used to dealing in boxes on the web, but not everything has to be rectangular! Clipping and masking are two sides of the same coin, and are different ways to hide and show different parts of an element so that the background shows through. This gives us the power to introduce interesting and creative shapes to our designs. Clip-path The clip-path() property allows us to “cut out” an element by defining a path. It takes a number of basic shape functions, inset(), circle(), ellipse(), or polygon(), which allows us to craft more complex cutout shapes using pairs of xy co-ordinates to define the path. Alternatively, we can also pass in an SVG path using the path() function, or using url() to provide an SVG path ID. Not inside the path Clipping an element clips everything outside of the path you define, but the element itself is still a rectangle. If you have content which extends out of the clip path’s boundary, that too will be clipped — it won’t wrap inside the shape. Mask-image mask-image enables us to show and hide parts of the image by using an image (SVG or transparent PNG) or gradient as a mask. Unlike clip-path, we can add texture to our images with masking, as the mask source doesn’t need to be a path — it allows for degrees of transparency. 06. CSS Shapes The CSS Shapes specification allows us to wrap text around floated geometric shapes, creating some interesting, magazine-like layouts. This is made possible using the shape-outside property. Similar to clip-path, we can give this property a basic shape function circle(), ellipse(), inset(), polygon(), or a URL to an SVG path, and in fact the two work in harmony very well! shape-outside will wrap our text effectively, but it won’t affect the floated element. If we want the text to look like it’s wrapping around the image or floated object, we can use the same value for clip-path. Use shape-margin to add whitespace between the shape path and the content wrapping it. Take a look at the Stuff & Nonsense site to see how CSS Shapes is used to wrap text around a central image. Firefox has a shape-path editor within the dev tools panel, which is especially useful for working with complex shapes. However, use with caution. Wrapping the leading edge of a paragraph of text is great for artistic effect, but is not always great for user experience. Complex jagged shapes can make blocks of text harder to read. For important content, you might want to steer clear. 07. Scroll snapping Michelle Barker's CodePen demonstrates scroll snapping in action Many websites take advantage of JavaScript libraries to provide a slick, native app-like scroll experience, where content “snaps” to points as the user scrolls. Now, with the Scroll Snap specification, we can do this right within our CSS file — there’s little need to import in heavy JS modules to bloat your page! To implement scroll-snapping we need an element to act as our scroll container. The direct children of the container dictate the points that will be snapped to, and can be aligned in various ways within the snap area. Scroll snapping can be even more effective when combined with another new CSS property value — position: sticky. This position value “sticks” an element to a specified position while scrolling within its container — another behaviour that was previously only possible with JavaScript. Check out this Scroll snap with position: sticky and intersectionObserver example. 08. CSS Grid and layouts Front-end developers have hacked layout with whatever tools were available to use at the time — most recently flexbox, which a lot of modern grid systems use. But flexbox was never designed for building strict grids — its purpose is flexibility! CSS Grid is the first specification that’s designed for two-dimensional layout, allowing us complete control over building a layout and placing items on both the row and the column axis. Building a responsive layout with Grid doesn’t require calc() or hacking around with negative margins. The secret weapon is the fr unit — a new unit exclusive to grid. The fr unit sizes grid tracks (rows and columns) as a proportion of the available space. It takes into account any fixed tracks, gutters and content, then distributes the remaining space accordingly. Jen Simmons coined the term “Intrinsic Web Design” to describe the new era of web layout that Grid ushers in. How to use CSS Grid Grid requires an element with the display property value set to grid, to act as the grid container. The direct children of the grid container are the items that can be placed on the grid. We use the properties grid-template-rows and grid-template-columns to define the tracks (rows and columns) of the grid, and column-gap and row-gap to define the gutters (the gaps between the tracks). We’re using the repeat() function to keep the code more concise, as an alternative to the longhand (e.g. grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr 1fr). This example also uses the shorthand gap for row-gap and column-gap. The code above gives us four row tracks, each 100px high, and four column tracks that each fill an equal proportion of the available space, using the fr unit. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the only way to create grid tracks. Implicit tracks can also be created by placing grid items. It’s useful to read up a bit about this if you’re using Grid, as it pays to get a deeper understanding of how Grid behaves under different conditions, and can make coding a layout much easier. We can place items on the grid by referencing grid line numbers, which are numerical lines that sit between each track. Here, we’re using the shorthand grid-column and grid-row for grid-column-start, grid-column-end, grid-row-start and grid-row-end. These tell the browser at which line our item should start and end on each axis. Grid provides us with many different ways to place items: we could instead name our grid lines: Alternatively, the grid-template-area property lets us “draw” a grid layout with text. Using either of these methods, we can simply reference the corresponding grid area when placing a grid item: This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 290 now. 10 best CSS frameworks in 2019 How to add animation to SVG with CSS 52 web design tools to help you work smarter in 2019 View the full article

It was a big day for Star Wars fans yesterday as the final trailer and poster design for The Rise of Skywalker dropped. And while the trailer (above) promises lots of thrills, spills, and epic confrontations, our excitement levels have also been raised by Dan Mumford's incredible illustrated poster for showings of the film in IMAX theatres. We've already taken a look at stunning poster designs to inspire you, and this one definitely sits up there with the best of them. Realised in Mumford's distinctive style, the poster sees Rey confronting Kylo Ren in a storm-lashed wreckage that could be the remains of the Death Star. Roll on 20 December The shot depicted in the poster is taken from one of the trailer's more talked-about sequences. Just where are the two characters fighting? And crucially, who will win? We'll have to wait until The Rise of Skywalker is released on 20 December 2019 to find out. Check out these incredible posters for movies that never happened But what we love about this poster is Mumford's masterful use of colour. The use of red and blue in the lightsabers and the background indicates that this will be a spectacular confrontation. Combined with his swirling line work and dynamic composition, we think Mumford's created a poster worthy of the film. And if you look closely, you'll see that this is poster one of four. Mumford confirms on his Instagram that there are "more to be revealed later this year", and we can't wait to see what he comes up with next. Mumford is no stranger to Star Wars when it comes to illustration. On his official site, you'll see artwork for The Last Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back and A New Hope, so it's satisfying to see him complete a full set of drawings for the franchise. As for the official theatrical poster for The Rise of Skywalker, check it out below. Just who are those new characters? Is this the end of the saga? Related articles: Star Wars artist on how to land that dream job 5 striking Star Wars posters Solo movie posters are a typographic treat View the full article

Email newsletters are a great way to communicate your brand message for very little outlay. And, there are some great tools out there that will help you build and manage email newsletters with ease. If you're keeping it simple, then most of the tools in our list will have you covered. However, if you want to up the ante and include more specific or advanced features then you need to do a little more research to make sure you get what you want. If you want to add top quality templates to your chosen plan, check out our free newsletter templates post. In this roundup of the best email newsletter tools, we've outlined the particular strengths of each service so you can pick the right one for you the first time around. We've included some pricing information that will give a quick guide to the basic plans, but they are more plans available. 01. AWeber Create good-looking templates in seconds with AWeber Price: Starts at $19 a month AWeber is a long-standing tool with a host of powerful features including its free Smart Designer that allows you to create good-looking templates in seconds. What else does it do? It automatically creates emails from blog posts, has a drag and drop editor with over 700 mobile responsive email templates and the option to apply tags to trigger automated email campaigns. There is a suite mobile apps to use, subscriber management and segmenting and email tracking to gauge performance with analytics. 02. MailChimp MailChimp is known for its cheerful copy Price: Get started with a Free account MailChimp is the first thing to pop into many people's head when they think of email newsletters, and for good reason. There's a huge template selection and loads of features that make it easy to run a great-looking campaign that displays well on nearly all email clients. MailChimp integrates with the major ecommerce providers including WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento, so you can use your purchase data to improve your emails. 03. Benchmark Benchmark is available in nine different languages Price: Start with a Free account Benchmark's superpower is its international focus – if you need things in lots of languages this is probably the one for you. It's available in nine different languages. The email newsletter tool also emphasises its high-quality, international customer support as a key selling point, and the company has offices in 15 countries including China and Japan. 04. Campaigner Campaigner gives you fine control over your campaigns Price: Starts at $19.95 a month If you want fine control over your campaign, Campaigner has some really advanced features that enable you to send emails based on very specific triggers. For example, you can send email based on what customers did with a previous email, when they fill in particular forms on your website, or when they make a purchase. 05. GetResponse GetResponse is a full marketing suite Price: Starts at £11 a month Sometimes marketing activities end up growing beyond what was initially intended. GetResponse has a pricing structure that enables you to start with email marketing and move into landing pages, webinars, autoresponders and enterprise features if and when you need to. The email editor has a built-in mobile preview function, 220 email templates, 700 webform templates, 5000 stock images, and segmented lists which enable you to target customers more accurately. 06. Mailjet MailJet delivers your emails promptly Price: Starts at $8.69 a month Timing is often a big factor in the effectiveness of your email newsletter strategies, and that could be ruined by a service that's too slow to deliver. Performance is a strong focus for Mailjet, as are resources for developers – if you want to build something that sends email, this one is a good choice for you. Like Benchmark, it also has good international capabilities with offices in seven countries and support in four languages. Mailjet also emphasises its capacity to work at scale – it is a good option if you're a large company with huge email lists. 07. MailUp MailUp lets you pay according to how quickly your messages need to arrive Price: Depends on features and delivery speed In situations where cost is more important than timing, MailUp is a good pick. It has a clever pricing structure where you pay according to how quickly you need the messages to arrive. As an example, you can send 6,000 mails in 2 hours using the Web plan for just $60 a month. It's a great price if slower mail is OK. 08. Emma The user experience at Emma is top notch Price: Starts at $89 a month Emma distinguishes itself from the rest of the email newsletter tools with its exceptional design and user experience. It's a joy to use (as far as these things can be!), and it has a lot of powerful marketing features that are presented in a way that won't intimidate a new user. The built-in templates are beautiful and easy to customise, and it has all the features you'd expect from a serious email newsletter service. There's also editions tailored to the needs of universities, restaurants, retailers and non-profits, which we haven't seen elsewhere. 09. Constant Contact Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial Price: Starts at £15 a month Constant Contact is often said to be one of the more reliable services for its price bracket, and you can try that out thoroughly for yourself, as you can trial this email newsletter tool free for 30 days. Includes WooCommerce integration, dozens of mobile-friendly templates, landing pages and access to a free gallery of stock images. 10. Sendloop Get great features for a good price Price: Get started with a free account We like Sendloop for its combination of powerful features and pricing that offers good value for money. It's great if you want a really easy builder for non-technical people, and marketing tools to target your campaign just the way you want. There's also a developer platform for building marketing apps that you can sell to other users. 11. Campaign Monitor Campaign Monitor's AppStore lets anyone build an app to customise how things work Price: Starts at $9 a month Campaign Monitor is easy to use, has loads of features and is reasonably priced, but Campaign Monitor's major advantage is its AppStore, which facilitates integrations with a large number of other apps and services. Check out the AppStore to see what it can do. Related articles: The creative's guide to email management 19 tips for great email newsletter design 78 best free fonts for designers View the full article

If you have fond memories of playing Tetris or Pokemon on a chunky '90s Game Boy, an upcoming console from American tech company Analogue is sure to appeal to your nostalgic side. That's because the Analogue Pocket can play classic Game Boy cartridges, and it makes them look better than ever before. Given that the Game Boy inspired generations of creatives to make their own games and pixel art, this release is sure to go down a storm with readers of a certain age. After all, an emulator just isn't quite the same as slamming in a cartridge and giving your thumbs a good workout on a portable handheld system. Described by Analogue as a "tribute to portable gaming", the Analogue Pocket is compatible with the 2,780 plus cartridges that Nintendo put out for the Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. And with the help of an adapter, it can also play retro games from Sega's Game Gear, SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Atari Lynx. Just when you thought you'd outgrown Tetris Scheduled for release in 2020, the Analogue Pocket has a screen resolution of 1,600 by 1,440 pixels. To put that in context, that's 10 times the clarity of the original Game Boy screen. It also has a 3.5-inch LCD screen and "pro level color accuracy," meaning that your favourite games from yesteryear will look crisper than ever. However the layout of the buttons on the Analogue Pocket might play havoc with your muscle memory if you spent your youth with a Game Boy permanently gripped in your hands. Not only are they unlabelled, but the 'start' and 'select' buttons have been moved to the right-hand side of the console. Speaking to Dezeen, Analogue founder and CEO Christopher Taber said" "I think with all Analogue products we're approaching the design with a 'perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away' philosophy." We don't recommend playing games like this Another nice touch is the inclusion a music creation software called Nanoloop. This pre-installed tool works as a sequencer and synthesiser. This is a welcome addition considering that the Game Boy's previous music program cartridge, the Little Sound DJ, is as rare as hen's teeth. If you want to get your hands on an Analogue Pocket, head over to the Analogue site now and sign up with your email address. The console will ship for $199, which is pretty reasonable when you remember that back in the day a Game Boy would set you back $89.99. Related articles: Playdate is the most adorable games handheld ever 5 casual games for designers How to create a video game character in ZBrush View the full article

The Qode Instagram Widget and Qode Twitter Feed both have bugs that could allow redirects to malicious sites. View the full article

A lot of different ingredients go into creating the perfect co-working space. For a start, the space should be beautiful, but also supremely functional. I t helps if there's a sense of history to the building, providing a unique atmosphere. Plus there should be a sense that you're not just about making a fast buck from renting desks, but a wider goal and visual that creatives can truly get behind. Of course, all that will count for nothing without that elusive ingredient 'X': an atmosphere and a sense of community that makes your co-working space more than simply the sum of its parts. And that's supremely challenging to achieve in practice. These 11 co-working spaces have somehow managed to do just that. Read on, as we salute these brilliant businesses, which day in, day out, inspire the independent professionals that gather and work there towards true creative greatness. 01. Gather Round (Bristol, UK) Gather Round was designed by creatives, for creatives Gather Round is a co-working space created by creatives, for creatives. It was founded in 2018 by Ben Steers and Jason Smith after they’d tried and failed to find a suitable workspace for their Bristol design studio, Fiasco Design. Speaking to other creatives, they realised that they weren’t alone in their quest, so they decided to do start their own space instead. After two years of research and planning they designed and built Gather Round, a co-working space that’s been specially crafted to encourage community and collaboration. Recommended to us by Nicolas Alpi, web developer and co-founder of Cookies HQ, and Lisa Hassell, creative consultant and director of Inky Goodness, Gather Round is located on the ground floor of the Cigar Factory, an original 1900s red brick building a stones throw from North Street in Southville. It features both fixed and casual desks, private studios, meeting rooms, a large communal kitchen, and intimate break-out areas for meetings, events and workshops to take place in. 02. The Ministry (London SE1, UK) The Ministry brings the glamour of its sister nightclub to the co-working scene A sister organisation to the famed Ministry of Sound nightclub, The Ministry is a sumptuously designed shared workspace converted from an old Victorian printworks in London, SE1. Four floors of light, spacious offices, and two floors of facilities add up to a place that’s home to a buzzing and vibrant community of creatives and entrepreneurs. Recommended to us by Jules Beazley, agent and co-founder of Create Zine, The Ministry is aimed at “the artistic and the innovative” and their cultural programming celebrates underground, homegrown talent, and thought-provoking talks and events. You'll also find here London’s longest copper bar, a 39-seat cinema, private sound studios, gym, a cafe and private dining rooms, an outdoor heated garden with bar and a welcoming dog policy. There’s even a Tequila and Mezcal bar in, er, the public restrooms. You certainly won’t find that in your local Starbucks. 03. Second Home (Spitalfields, London, UK) This visually stunning space is filled with light and colour Second Home is a chain of visually stunning co-working spaces stretching from Los Angeles to Lisbon to London. They have four offshoots in the UK capital, at Holland Park, Clerkenwell, London Fields and Spitalfields, and if we were forced to choose a favourite we’d probably pick the latter, although it's a close-run thing. Designed by Spanish architects Selgascano, Second Home Spitalfields is a mix of visually stunning workspaces created for individuals and teams, near the famous Brick Lane area of London. Recommended to us by freelance design director David Moloney, it aims be a “workspace as creative as you are”, and include a rooftop roaming space, thousands of plants and trees, cool breakout spaces, a light-filled cafe, a bookshop, and an event space for up to 200 people. 04. Platf9rm (Brighton, UK) Friendly, light and bright, Platf9rm is a co-working gem on the south-east coast PLATF9RM in Brighton and Hove offers contemporary workspaces that enable its members to flourish through collaboration. Members get access to a range of desk space, from collaborative and shared working environments to private office rooms. There's also a programme of educational and social events, encouraging people to connect and reinforce the collaboration the space is designed for. Set up in 2016, its co-working space has grown to over 600 members across both the Brighton and Hove sites. “I've been working out of @platf9rm in Brighton for a few months, and it's very thoughtfully designed,” says Tom Prior, freelance digital product designer and co-organiser of UX Camp Brighton. “It’s friendly, bright and the staff are lovely,” adds freelance copywriter, editor and proofreader Matt Chittock. 05. The Guild (Carlisle, UK) The Guild in Carlisle is full of quirky, arty touches The Guild is a shared office space in Carlisle offering co-working and hot desking to help bring companies and creatives closer together. It also hosts monthly social and business events, from going out bowling to peer-to-peer sessions aimed at turning business problems into opportunities. “I frequently work from Guild Carlisle and it's lovely,” enthuses freelance web developer Dan Matthews. “We even have our own piece of street art on the side, courtesy of Austrian artist TABBY." 06. Tribe (York, UK) Tribe is a dedicated space for social entrepreneurs in York Recommended to us by York-based freelance designer Grace Abell, Tribe has a bit of an early 90s rainbow vibe going on, as you can see from the picture above. But that’s not the only thing that makes it stand out. Tribe is York’s first social incubator, providing space and support for businesses, entrepreneurs and innovators. In other words, unlike most co-working spaces, you can only become a member if you have a social purpose and do something good for the wider community. The interior has an authentic, industrial feel, with lots of different desk options, all housed in a Grade 1 listed building, along with a bike shelter and free fresh coffee, biscuits and fruit. 07. Fueled Collective (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) Based in the old Grain Exchange, Fueled's downtown Minneapolis space is strikingly beautiful Fueled Collective has five locations across Minneapolis, St Paul and Chicago, but it’s the Minneapolis Downtown space that’s made the most impact on Carolyn Porter, graphic and type designer and author of Marcel’s Letters. “It’s been converted from the former Minneapolis Grain Exchange, and it's stunning,” she enthuses. But it’s not just about historical good looks. Offering co-working memberships for freelancers and remote workers, alongside private and semi-private workspaces for businesses with employees, the ethos of Fueled Collective is all about encouraging a collaborative environment for productivity, networking and socialising. The concept is founded on the idea of bringing together work life, nightlife, events, and most importantly, people, in one place. In their own words: “You can work in an entrepreneurial community, connect at our social club, or host events and meetings that make a real impression.” 08. 1909 (West Palm Beach, Florida, USA) 1909 encourages experimentation and big thinking 1909 is a non-profit collective of creators who believes that if they work together, their ideas, projects and innovations will better the community. “We are unapologetically experimenting,” they explains. “We are a place for the process, the mess, the imperfection. We are a place for the unknown to become known.” Recommended by Jenni Schwartz, creative director at Solmark Creative and founder of Creative Mornings Palm Beach, this gorgeous-looking workspace has been deliberately crafted to inspire creative breakthroughs. And to be blunt, if you just want to keep your head down and do your work, they don’t really want you there. “Don’t join 1909 because you need a cool place to work,” they stress. “Join because you're ready to be part of something bigger than yourself.” To help you achieve this, 1909 offers a community space for creation and collaboration; a mentorship platform to connect you with advisors and expanders; a startup accelerator; and a series of community gatherings for art, technology, wellness, and music innovators. 09. Starspace 46 (Oklahoma City, USA) Starspace 49 wants creatives to build startups locally, rather than leave for Silicon Valley "Check out what this neat little group has done in this tiny city of ours," the folks behind media collaboration and project management app Cage told us. Well, we did, and we very much like what we see. Starspace 46 is Oklahoma City's co-working community for all things entrepreneurial and tech. Offering flexible coworking spaces, meeting rooms, and small offices for rent, it's a place where technologists, investors, designers, entrepreneurs and dreamers can all meet, collaborate, share and create new ideas and new businesses. Perhaps most importantly, StarSpace - like many similar hubs around the US - aim to help convince tech-minded Oklahomans to stay in their own area and build something new and exciting there, rather than migrate to existing hubs like Silicon Valley. 10. Crew Collective Cafe (Montreal, Canada) Crew Collective Cafe offers spectacular surroundings with a laid-back vibe Many freelance creatives don’t ever use co-working spaces, and prefer the informality of workings in a cafe. But you can never be quite sure what kind of environment you’ll find there from day to day, and boisterous kids, disruptive teens, or raucous groups of adults can often combine to ruin your mojo. So how about a cafe that’s also a co-working space? That’s exactly what Crew Collective Cafe in Montreal has to offer, allowing you to “work by the month, the hour or the coffee”. Recommended to us by Noemi Stauffer, founder and curator of the Fresh Fonts newsletter, Crew Café is open to anyone and free to enter. But if you’d like to become a member of the Collective, or work in a private meeting room, that’s easy to do too. In short, it's an imaginative response to the current trend of viewing work and workspaces in less formal and more flexible ways. The cafe is owned and operated by people with tech company roots, and that’s obvious through the integrations that you’ll find in the space, from online ordering and delivery to your spot, live-updating menus, online meeting-room bookings, and Slack channels for members. All this, and you’re in quite sumptuous surroundings, too: on the ground floor of 360 St. Jacques, the original Royal Bank of Canada headquarters built in 1928, a lovely architectural echo of old Montreal style. 11. The Work Project (Singapore) The Work Project offers high-class co-working with luxury touches throughout Looking for truly high-scale co-working? Then The Work Project has you covered. Its award-winning co-working spaces in Singapore and Hong Kong consistently make ‘Best of’ lists by the likes of Forbes and Huffington Post, and for good reason. Filled with the kind of touches you’d normally only see in luxury hotels, these workspaces are both beautiful in form, and high-performance in function. Our favourite has to be the Asia Square Tower space in Singapore, which covers a majestic 41,000 square feet and features a first-of-its-kind vertical garden landscape, by renowned botanist Patrick Blanc and art installation by Gallery HUUE. View the full article

Should I go to art school? It's a question you'll be asking yourself if you want to join a big-name studio, work on AAA video games, blockbuster films or a groundbreaking TV series. Is a degree the best option, or would it be better to teach yourself through online tutorials and courses? We've spoken to artists who have lived through that decision, and come out the other side with great advice on which choice might be the best one for you. Whatever choice you make, though, you'll need a killer design portfolio, and you might even find a dream job or internship over on our design jobs board. So how do you decide? Usefully, Lauren Panepinto, creative director and VP of Orbit Books, has created a tongue-in-cheek flowchart that can help guide you towards an informed choice. Click to enlarge But if that hasn't quite helped you make up your mind for you, here are some more words of wisdom from successful artists. The formal path worked for artist Daniel Tal (Firefighter) In 2016, Daniel Tal graduated with a BA in applied arts animation from Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. He’s since been employed as a story artist with Pipeline Studios in Hamilton, so the formal path clearly worked for him. Yet he has a startling admission. “I realised about a year or two into college that the entire curriculum, more or less, “was doable on my own,” he recalls. “Almost everything school teaches you, you can learn yourself through books and the internet.” That said, Tal doesn’t regret his BA. “I’m not the type of person who can self-regulate well,” he says, “and going through a formal programme forces you to avoid procrastination.” It also exposes you to things you might not have considered. “I only found interest in storyboarding in my second year of college,” says Tal. “Had I not gone, I don’t think I would have ever tried it.” School doesn't have it all Melanie Bourgeois sees the benefits in both pathways (art not named but based on The Wicked King, a book by Holly Black) Not all courses are perfect, of course. Mélanie Bourgeois, now a concept artist for Volta, had a less-than satisfactory experience studying 2D and 3D animation at a university in Quebec. “I was part of the first cohort, so a lot of things moved around when I attended,” she says. “None of the teachers were 2D animators, and while they were very nice, none of them had the skills to mentor a student hands-on when it came to 2D.” Consequently, Bourgeois had to fill in the gaps herself, using online learning resources. Yet she’s unsure how well she’d have coped if she’d self-taught entirely. “School helped me focus; I might have found it overwhelming all on my own,” she says. “Online learning also doesn’t provide the same level of contacts and networks, or force you to consume culture outside your personal tastes.” The choice largely depends, Bourgeois feels, on the individual. “I know many successful artists who are self-taught,” she says. “And no one is going to turn down a good artist because they don’t have a piece of paper.” Self-teaching can be overwhelming and frustrating, says Nick Fredin (artwork: Houdini) But if both paths are valid, which is right for you? “It’s a very tough decision, with many factors to consider,” says Nick Fredin of online course provider CG Spectrum. A major one is cost: “In the US, degrees can cost over $100,000, with no guarantee of a job at the end of it.” Going it alone, though, can be daunting. “Without structured pathways guiding you towards your goals, self-teaching can be overwhelming and frustrating,” he cautions. “Opening a tool like Maya for the first time can be pretty scary.” Student debt can be a factor Panepinto might have done thing a little differently (artwork for Petrovich Trilogy) So what's Panepinto's personal take? “I’m glad I went to art school,” she says. “But if I had to do it again, and go into deep debt as a result, I probably wouldn’t. I’d go to a community college, get a cheaper, well rounded degree, and study art on the side. I’d use the money I’d saved to travel to seminars and conventions, and take online mentorships.” You’d might expect Sean Andrew Murray – a concept artist for the entertainment industry who also teaches Illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida – to disapprove of self teaching. But he, too, can see the benefits. “It enables you to craft exactly the kind of education you want, without all of the stuff you don’t,” he says. “You can learn at your own pace, whether that’s slow and steady – perhaps while working another job – or rapidly, to get into the field quicker than the standard four year higher education program.” Building a network CG Spectrum offers courses in animation, VFX and game design One big disadvantage, though, is that it’ll probably be harder to build your network. “The best schools connect students with a network of professors – many of whom may be industry pros themselves – as well as advisers, visiting artists, networking and recruiting events, and also other students, who act as your support system for years to come,” Murray says. In truth, though, for most students it’s not a case of choosing between two directions, but a mixture of both. Those in academia will supplement their courses with online learning, while going the self-teaching route doesn’t necessarily mean taking a scattergun, isolated approach. Some online courses are pretty close to those offered by traditional universities. Take CG Spectrum, which offers courses in animation, VFX and game design. “We offer specialised online education taught by award-winning mentors who are working in the industry, so you’re being taught by the very best.” says Fredin. “Our courses are built with input from major studios, so you graduate with the skills that employers are hiring for. We cut out all the noise and only teach what’s industry-relevant, so students aren’t wasting their hard-earned money.” A virtual classroom The Oatley Academy offers a different approach to art education The Oatley Academy of Visual Storytelling, which helps artists further their careers in animation, illustration, games and comics, takes a similar line. As its founder, Disney artist Chris Oatley, says: “Although we’re an online school, we offer real-time mentorships, where you work with the instructor and your fellow classmates in a virtual classroom setting, just like you would in a physical school. To me, ‘Physical or online?’ is not the question. The question is: ‘How effective is the education?’” In general, Oatley recommends what he calls a “Frankenstein approach” to art education. “Seek out the best teachers – whether online or offline – and learn from them,” he advises. “It really can be that simple… and far more affordable.” This article was originally published in ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists. Subscribe to ImagineFX. Read more: How to break into pixel art How to get a design job: 7 expert tips Design jobs: find your dream role with Creative Bloq View the full article

Welcome to Creative Bloq's guide to canvas painting for beginners. Making the move from working in a sketchbook to painting on canvas can seem daunting to the uninitiated, so this article will fill you in with everything you need to know – from the kit you need to how to prepare your canvas for painting. Canvas is an archetypal artists’ support (artists’ canvas and paper are referred to as supports), and offers a wealth of advantages over paper. If you need more advice on painting, see our posts on art techniques or oil painting techniques. We're going to help you weave your way through the many choices available to an artist and help you enable your work to stand the test of time. Use the drop-down menu opposite to jump to the section you want. Types of canvas For centuries, oil paintings were done on specially prepared wooden panels. These gave a great rigid surface to paint on but environmental factors could cause cracking and warping. They were also heavy to transport. Soon, lightweight stretched canvas soon became the popular choice for painters. Walk into any art shop and the most common canvases available are made from cotton canvas pre-primed with acrylic gesso, with linen canvas primed with oil primer at the more expensive end of the ‘pre-made’ market. If you're going to really splash out, larger art shops will often offer a bespoke canvas-making service. You'll end up with a quality pre-made canvas that will stand the test of time, but expect to pay a proper price for it. Which canvas should I buy? When choosing a canvas, remember you get what you pay for. Linen offers a fair superior surface to paint on due to its greater strength and finer surface, when compared to cotton. Given the choice, we'd always plump for fine Belgium linen primed with an oil primer to give a lovely smooth and non-porous surface. However, if you're just getting started with canvas painting, it might make sense to pick up a cheaper cotton canvas to experiment on first. You can always improve a cheap pre-made cotton canvas by re-priming with an oil primer. ... a note on wooden corners One element of canvas painting that artists often miss is the little bag of wooden wedges supplied with each canvas. These are really important but often thrown in a drawer. These wedges are designed to be hammered into the holes on internal corners of your canvases to create tension on the canvas surface. This is vital to ensure a taut surface so you can control your brushstrokes. You might want to invest in a good rubber mallet for knocking in your wedges without damaging the stretcher bars! Alternatives to canvas Canvas boards are great for studies, they’re thin, lightweight to transport and smaller sizes don’t tend to warp. As the name suggests, they’re made by glueing primed canvas to a board, usually a cardboard. Because they’re made using canvas they tend to have a tooth to the surface which is great for showing off brushstrokes. If you're handy at DIY, a homemade version could save you money overall – take a look at our guide to how to make your own canvas boards. Gessobords by Ampersand are expensive compared to canvas boards but well worth the investment. They’re made from a high-density hardwood so they’re much stronger and still lightweight. They also come in a variety of thicknesses from standard 1/8” to 3/4”, 1 1/2” and 2”. They have a non-porous and lightly sanded surface that allows for great brush control, making Gessobords a top quality alternative to traditional wooden panels and linen canvases. Metal can be a great alternative to wood as its extremely smooth, naturally non-porous, doesn’t rot and is lightweight. Copper is the best choice, but aluminium is also a good option. It’s important to still treat the surface with decent oil primer to make sure your paint bonds to the metal. Take care though, most boards and canvases will take the odd knock but a metal support will need extra TLC. Primers: Porous or non-porous? Whatever material you choose to use for your support, you’ll need to prime it. Primed canvases can be put into two main camps, porous and non-porous. An acrylic gesso primer will make your canvas porous, while an oil primer will make your canvas non-porous. The basic principle is that a porous primed support will enable the paint to dry quicker as the water content of the paint is drawn into the support itself. A non-porous support will allow the paint to dry naturally through evaporation only. The two main advantages to using a non-porous primer are the paint will stay wetter and more workable for longer and the oil paint will keep more of its lustre, or life. On porous primers the paint can look dead and chalky, because it has dried too quickly. A non-porous primer like Michael Harding Oil Primer will also give you more control of your brushstrokes, as the paint will glide over the surface, and stay wetter for longer. A non-porous primer will tend to drag the paint from the brush. How to prime a canvas When priming a support use a wide priming brush like a C Roberson to give an even finish. Start from one side of the support and work horizontally across the entire surface in one direction, and then allow to dry. Once dry turn the support 90-degrees and repeat the process, working across the brushstrokes of your first coat and allow to dry. Repeat as necessary. How to prepare your canvas for painting First: kill the white! Or put less dramatically, apply a ground of colour on your canvas. This not only gets rid of the daunting white, but also acts as a harmoniser. As you paint some of the ground will inevitably show through the brush strokes, creating a visually pleasant, harmonious effect. If using oil paints, I would advise applying the ground colour thinly mixed with a little Liquin drying medium the day you want to start painting properly, before to give it enough time to dry. Apply the ground colour roughly with a brush and then scrub it in with a wad of kitchen towel. Don’t be too precious, it doesn’t need to be perfect. Try experimenting with different coloured grounds. You will need to add more paint over a darker ground compared to a lighter one, but this can also give interesting results. Using a mahlstick You don’t need much equipment to get started with canvas painting, but what little you do need it’s worth investing in. A mahlstick is a great tool for canvas painting. It's basically a stick with a cork ball on the end covered in chamois leather. It’s primarily designed to give something for painters to lean when working on larger canvases, but they come in very handy with smaller canvas too. For more information, take a look at this article on how to use a mahlstick. Canvas painting for beginners: Get started So you've got your kit all ready, and your canvas primed and good to go. Time to start painting! How to approach this depends heavily on what kind of paint you're using. We've gathered our best advice articles together to help you continue on your canvas painting journey. Dive in... Oil painting Working in oils can feel scary – and to master oil painting requires knowledge of certain techniques you might not be used to. Explore these 10 essential oil painting tips for advice on getting started and how to manipulate the paint. For more advice on getting kitted out, take a look at this article detailing five things you need for oil painting. Acrylic painting Acrylic paints dry fast and can either be used straight from a tube or thinned with water and used more like a watercolour. This article runs though the acrylic painting tips you need to know to start working with this versatile, vibrant medium. General painting advice Ready to take your skills to the next level? Explore this painting techniques article for some more advanced tips, including using dry brushing, glazing and sgraffito. There are tips here that can be used for canvas painting with a range of different paint types. Read more: The best art easels in 2019 How to stop perfectionism from ruining your art How to find your art style View the full article