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To create products that look beautiful and are comfortable to use, you'll need to know the design strategies behind effective user interface. With UI & UX Design Bootcamp, you'll learn all the skills a UX strategist needs to know. You'll learn how to develop projects successfully, including how to interview users and lead a UX team to the finish line. You'll gain hands-on experience by creating a stock market app on your own, and you'll learn how to develop a loyal customer base by creating habit-forming products. Learn all this and more with UI & UX Design Bootcamp – it's yours for just $39, 96% down from the list price. Related articles: How to design a bitcoin UX 6 trends that are changing the face of UX The theory of UX View the full article

What's it like moving from an agency to a start-up? Creative developer Steven Roberts joined Asemblr, a start-up in the corporate events space, in February after working at an agency. In his new role, he's focusing more on the user as head of user experience. We catch up with him to discuss the difference between startup and agency culture and preview his Generate London workshop, which will look at building a web-based music player. How’s your new role going and how does working at a start-up differ from an agency? It’s going great. We’re currently designing the next generation of the platform, which will be launching in the summer. While my previous roles were primarily advertising-based, now I’m designing software as a service (SAAS). The platform has a lot of moving parts, which have been a challenge to design. There’s been a huge difference in the transparency of the company in terms of involvement. I know what I’m going to be doing for the next few months, whereas in an agency setting it could be day to day. Working within a SAAS company, there’s one single focus instead of a number of projects flying around, which has been a change of pace for me. I’m also getting to be more of an advocate for the user in my new role, primarily because I’ve had far more time to learn and discover who the user is. Have you discovered any cool tools along the way? I’ve not had a lot of time to use many new tools but the standout for me at the moment is Spirit. It gives designers and developers the ability to create animations in the browser using a timeline, similar to Flash. The animations are running on GSAP in the backend, so the animations are really smooth and cross-browser compatible. Although currently in beta, the developer is hopeful for a full release soon. I’ve created a quick example of what you can do with it in just five minutes over on CodePen. What’s the web-design scene like right now in the North-East of England? It’s exciting. There are a number of companies in the Middlesbrough Boho Zone producing some wonderful work and working with high-profile clients. Hopefully this will attract and keep new and upcoming talent from leaving the area. There are also a number of great companies in Newcastle and a couple of conferences. Frontend NE, which is a local meetup, successfully put on its first conference this year. Design It; Build It (DIBI) runs events in Newcastle too. How important is music in your life and why do you think so many web designers are in bands? Music plays a huge part in my life. I’ve played guitar since I was 14 and have been in a number of bands. I find listening to music while I’m working to be productive, although sometimes I find podcasts to be good for concentration too. I think many of us are in bands because it’s another outlet for creativity. Being in a band also promotes teamwork, discipline, leadership and ownership, all of which are part of our jobs, so it’s easy to adapt to the band environment. Tell us about the workshop you’ll be giving at Generate London. I’m really looking forward to it; it should be a fun day. We’re going to be building a web-based music player interface inspired by the likes of Spotify and Google Music. I’ll be teaching the new CSS layout properties – CSS Grid and Flexbox – as well as utilising SVG as an icon system and, to top it all off, we’ll style the interface using custom properties in order to provide themes. We’ll be using very little JavaScript and concentrating on CSS and HTML to build a responsive interface for modern browsers. This article was originally published in issue 309 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 309 or subscribe to net. Want to hear more from Steven Roberts on harnessing the power of the grid? Steven Roberts is giving his workshop How to Build a Music Player Interface at Generate London from 19-21 September 2018 If you're interested in learning about how you can become a Flexbox aficionado or CSS Grid sensation, make sure you've picked up your ticket for Generate London. A frontend designer and developer currently working as creative developer for Asemblr.com, Steven Roberts will be delivering his workshop – How to Build a Music Player Interface – in which he will show you how to build a Spotify-style music player that will scale to any screen size, as well as giving you a firm grounding in Flexbox, CSS Grid and SVG sprites. Generate London takes place from 19-21 September 2018. Get your ticket now. Related articles: The web designer's guide to Flexbox Fashion flexible layouts with CSS Grid Create a responsive layout with CSS Grid View the full article

If Apple only put its standard stylus – the Apple Pencil – in the box with all its iPads, we probably wouldn't need to write this 'best iPad stylus' buying guide. But the tech giant's own pointer costs a packet to buy separately, and it doesn't even work with all iPads. Luckily there's a thriving market of iPad styluses (or stylii, if you prefer) with options available from both established brands and innovative crowd-funded firms. Whether you need an iPad stylus for drawing or furiously scribbling notes, there's an ideal option for you here. In the following guide, we'll tell you about the best iPad styluses with integrated buttons so you can customise to different functions, and we'll help you decide whether am iPad stylus with a hard nib or soft nib is likely to be better for your requirements. Read on to find out exactly what stylus for your iPad you should buy – and where to buy it for the best price. The Apple Pencil is, of course, the natural choice of stylus for iPad – but only if you own one of the only two iPads that are compatible with it: an iPad Pro or sixth-generation iPad (2018). If you do, there isn't a better stylus to write and draw with on the market. Not only is it exceptional comfortable to use, Apple has eliminated many of the issues that can dog other styluses – such as inadequate palm rejection and clear lag that instantly makes you feel disconnected to what you're producing on the screen. The astonishing pressure levels mean that the Apple Pencil reproduces your movements perfectly, at even the most acute angles, and it enhances all your favourite creative iOS apps. The bottom line is that if you've forked out the cash for an iPad Pro, you'd be daft not to swallow the extra expense and go straight for an Apple Pencil. Also read: Apple Pencil review Wacom boasts an industry-leading reputation thanks to its fabulous range of dedicated drawing tablets. So it's only natural that the company produces an attractive line of styluses as well. As well as being our favourite iPad stylus for artists, the Wacom Bamboo Sketch also takes the plaudits for general use on the iPad Air and iPad Mini series thanks to its all-round compatibility on iOS devices. Rather than trying to exactly mimic a traditional rounded pen, the Bamboo Sketch favours an ergonomic triangular design for better grip. It's an excellent all-rounder, but its fine tip and pressure-sensitive nibs make it just about as close an experience to sketching on paper as you can get. With an epic battery life (recharged via USB) it uses Bluetooth to connect to your iPad, which brings the integrated shortcut buttons into play, too, enabling you to set up handy shortcuts within your chosen iOS apps. If you're an artist or designer who's become completely reliant on your iPad but you do more than just sketching, then the Sensu Artist Brush could be what you're looking for. It looks, acts and feels like a real paint brush, complete with capacitive bristles. There's no battery required here, so the Sensu Artist Brush is super light and svelte. Combine it with your chosen iPad apps, and your digital art workflow should speed up. And if you're worried that this all sounds a bit niche, fear not: the Sensu Artist Brush is a 2-in-1 product. Pop on the rubber cap, and you can use it like a traditional stylus for navigating around your iPad (or any other touchscreen device) with speed and accuracy. If you've not heard of Adonit, it's because the 2010 Kickstarter firm doesn't have any where near the clout of the likes of Apple and Wacom. But Adonit specialises in styluses, and the company is pretty good at what it does. The Adonit Pro range has now hit its third incarnation, and with its textured grip and precision disc tip, it's the ideal tool for note-taking on your iPad. It's designed to feel akin to using a regular ballpoint pen, can be used on all iPad touchscreens and is relatively inexpensive. Unlike the two styluses above, this is a non-connected option. That means no frustration when you realise the battery's empty and also that you can use it on pretty much any touchscreen device – not just Apple iPads. If you're not sold on the idea of spending upwards of $20/£20 on a simple pointing device, and don't need the specialised functioning of the iPad styluses above, then Adonit's budget option – the Adonit Mark – is worth considering. Despite its cheap price tag, this stylus has been designed to feel as comfortable as possible in your hand, with its triangular anti-roll design. It retains the precision you'd expect from the sole-purpose stylus manufacturer, largely thanks to its smudge-free mesh tip. The Adonit Mark won't win any innovation awards, but if you just want a stylus for navigating around your iPad, you won't find a better cheaper iPad stylus than this. Related articles: The best tablets with styluses 10 top new best tools for traditional artists Best cheap Wacom tablets you can buy View the full article

Wacom has dropped the prices of its groundbreaking pen computer, the MobileStudio Pro, so you can get your hands on some state-of-the-art creative kit for a significant discount – up to $300 / £300 off. US: Save $300 on the Wacom Studio Pro UK: Save £300 on the Wacom Studio Pro If you're after a portable, all-in-one design solution for the new school year – or just to help you get some vector art or logo design done while you're out and about – this is a cracking Wacom deal for you. Combining the portability of an iPad Pro with the power of a full-fat Windows PC, the MobileStudio Pro enables you to use all your professional desktop software, without being tethered to a studio – so you can work whenever and wherever you want. The MobileStudio Pro comes in 13- and 16-inch flavours Discounts are available across the MobileStudio range, so if you're on a budget you can get money off the entry-level 13-inch model with a Core i5 processor and 64GB SSD. But if you're feeling a bit more flush you can save on a massive 16-inch model with all the power and SSD space you're likely to need. When we reviewed the MobileStudio Pro last year we were really impressed by its power, portability and build quality, as well as useful features such as customisable ExpressKeys and a pen with 60 degrees of tilt and over 8,000 levels of sensitivity. So if you think you need a MobileStudio Pro in your life, especially at a sweet discount, head over to Wacom US or Wacom UK and take a look. Related articles: Wacom Pro Pen 3D review The best drawing tablet: our pick of the best graphics tablets in 2018 Wacom launches new Wacom Cintiq Pro graphics tablets View the full article

You're reading Design Trends for Fixed Navigation Menus in Web Design, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Designing a navigation takes some careful planning. You need to think about what your users might look for and what type of nav would fit best in your layout. Some designers prefer smaller navigation bars while others like huge mega-menu designs. … View the full article

Your comfort zone might be lovely and comfortable, but it's not the place to do your best design work – the world's best logos and packaging design were certainly not created by playing it safe. if you want to take things to the next level, you're going to have to shake things up a bit. 10 ways to transform your creative thinking The team at Taxi Studio have their own mantra – Fearless Creativity – that they've used this as the basis for an educational short film, produced with D&AD New Blood, in which leading creatives give their take on how they've been fearlessly creative in their careers. "Fearless Creativity is a our mantra but moreover it's our mindset, a commitment to kick mediocrity to the kerb and produce stunning communications that break the mould." says Taxi co-founder Spencer Buck, who also co-directed the short. "Sadly roughly 90 per cent of all creative work produced is shit. Students need to get themselves into the 10 per cent if they want to have a truly fulfilling and distinguished creative career." Jack Renwick appears as a candy-striped asterisk So following on from a series of lunchtime talks at Taxi Studio, where top industry names would come to share their wisdom and supply their thoughts on the idea of fearless creativity, the team had the idea of turning it into an animated film. Pentgram's Marina Miller becomes a fig leaf as she explains how she overcame fears of being exposed Two years later the result is Creative Discomforts, in which a collection of design legends including Laura Jordan-Bambach, Jim Sutherland and Jack Renwick, are recreated as adorable animated characters to illustrate their own tales of fearless creativity. The whole five-minute film is available now; Taxi will also be producing a series of bite-sized clips to distribute in September, just in time for when the latest crop of design students are arriving at university. Buck hopes that students gets something out of the film and that it'll help instil a bit of creative courage in the next generation of designers; but what's been his big moment of fearless creativity? Poor old Jim Sutherland "Well, it takes some balls to invite legends of our industry to take part in an educational film – and then treat them so badly," he says. "But I'm not ashamed to say that we took great delight in breaking James Hilton's bones; stripping Marina Willer bare and chopping Jim Sutherland's leg off." Related articles: 11 of the best creative resumes 8 up-and-coming designers to watch from D&AD New Blood Why designers should face a fear every day View the full article

If you're looking to buy a phone from Walmart, we can help. The retailer is an excellent place to buy a new cell phone, but there's a lot of choice – so we've curated a list of the best cell phones at Walmart right now to help you make the right decision. Whether you're looking for a prepaid Walmart phone with Straight Talk, an unlocked handset, or you're not sure which cell phone you should buy, this article will take you through the very best phones at Walmart, and explain the pros and cons of each. The best drawing tablets at Walmart Prepaid or unlocked cell phones can be used with any mobile network, while Walmart's Straight Talk pre-paid network is an excellent choice if you want a bit of flexibility with your service. You can sign up for Straight Talk for a number of different time periods, such as 30 days, for example. When deciding which is the best cell phone at Walmart for you, there are a few things to consider. The size and design is important – you'll want something that's comfortable to hold. You'll also want to keep an eye on RAM and processors, as these determine how fast the cell phone is. If you're a heavy user who will install lots of games and apps, then go with something that has plenty of RAM and a modern multi-core processor. Most importantly, you need something that suits your budget. There's nothing worse than being locked into a pay-monthly contract that you struggle to afford, while paying for features and extras that you do not need. This is where pre-paid cell phone deals are worth considering. Read on for our pick of the best phones at Walmart right now. The Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus is our top choice for the best phone at Walmart. It boasts a stunning 6.2-inch Super AMOLED screen, which delivers stunning picture quality, and its dual-aperture camera is one of the best we've ever seen in a smartphone. While the large screen size won't be to everyone's tastes, it makes the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus a brilliant cell phone for working on, and even doodling a few digital drawings as well. Plus, it's not that expensive, either. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus from Walmart now If you're looking for a high-end, premium cell phone and have the budget, then the iPhone X is the best phone at Walmart right now. Apple announced the iPhone X (pronounced 'ten') last year, and this radically redesigned iPhone has seriously impressed everyone who got it in their hands. The 5.8-inch OLED screen is the best display ever to grace an iPhone, battery life is very good and the camera is superb. Apple has crammed some very impressive hardware into the iPhone X, making it an excellent performer, and it's added some great new features such as Face ID, which lets you unlock the cell phone by just looking into the camera. Buy the iPhone X at Walmart now If you're looking for a mid-range cell phone at Walmart, one that doesn't cost the Earth thanks to over the top specs and bells and whistles – yet still does the job well, while looking (and feeling) great – then the Huawei Mate 10 Pro is worth considering. Huawei is a name to look out for, as its cell phones (and laptops) are increasingly competing with more established – and more expensive – rivals. Its full HD screen doesn't have the 'wow' factor of the screens found on the iPhone X or Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, but it absolutely blows those two phones out of the water when it comes to battery life. It has a huge 4,000mAh battery, which can lead to almost two days' worth of use before you need to charge. The dual-camera setup of the Mate 10 Pro is also excellent. Buy the Huawei mate 10 Pro at Walmart now The Moto E4 Plus is our choice of the best cheap cell phone at Walmart. This is a handset that proves that the best budget cell phones don't need to sacrifice too much to keep their prices low. So, you get a nicely designed phone with a fingerprint scanner, plus a huge 5,000mAh battery that allows the Moto E4 Plus to run for two entire days between charges. Sure, it's a little underpowered, and the camera isn't the best – but for the price, the Moto E4 Plus is brilliant value for money from Walmart. Buy the Moto E4 Plus from Walmart now The iPhone 8 remains Apple's best-selling iPhone for a reason, and that's why it's our pick for the best Walmart phone with Straight Talk. The 4.7-inch screen size will please anyone who has felt that smartphones are getting too big and unwieldy, and it's far more affordable than the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. However, it still boasts some of the best features that come with those more expensive iPhones – such as wireless charging, a brilliant camera and the powerful A11 Bionic chipset that keeps the handset feeling speedy and responsive. A brilliant phone at Walmart. Buy the iPhone 8 at Walmart now The Motorola Moto E4 is the best prepaid phone at Walmart, delivering exceptional value for money. It comes loaded with a recent version of Android, has a quad-core processor that enables it to perform well, and includes support for microSD cards – so you can expand the storage capacity up to 128GB. While this is far from the most powerful cell phone at Walmart, it does an excellent job of providing some of the latest features we've come to expect from modern cells for an excellent price – especially if you buy it with a prepaid offer from Walmart. Buy the Motorola Moto E4 from Walmart now The Samsung Galaxy S9 isn't quite as brilliant as the larger Galaxy S9 Plus – in the number one slot in our best Walmart phones guide – but it's still a very impressive cell phone, and you can buy it unlocked from Walmart. That means you can use it with any network you want without being tied to a contract. It comes with a lovely QHD 5.8-inch screen with Super AMOLED technology, making images look stunning. The camera is incredible, especially in low light conditions, and it's impressively powerful. While this is a pricey cell, you get some excellent premium features for your money, such as Swift biometric security, dual speakers Or – if you'd like most of these features at a much lower price, try the Samsung Galaxy S8. The camera isn't quite as good (but it's still amazing) and you'll need some finger gymnastics to get to the fingerprint scanner on the back. But if that doesn't bother you (and it doesn't bother us), the Galaxy S8 is a very impressive cell – and incredible value for money now. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S9 from Walmart now Buy the Samsung Galaxy S8 from Walmart now Related articles: The best drawing tablets at Walmart The 6 best smartphones for designers The 28 best iPhone apps for designers View the full article

Making a good logo great is about taking the brief that one step further. Nicely crafted, fit-for-purpose designs that meet, rather than confound, expectations risk blending into the background. It takes that extra spark for a logo to really stick in the mind – and a killer idea is everything. The very best logos use intelligence, wit and unconventional thinking to find that hidden gem that makes them special. Sometimes the solution seems so perfect, it should be obvious – the trick, of course, is making sure you thought of it first. Read on for six examples of logos that eschewed the obvious, took a sideways glance at a design brief and definitely stick in the mind as a result... 01. London Symphony Orchestra The sweeping curve that spells out the LSO acronym doubles as a conductor in mid flow Designed by The Partners (now part of Superunion) in 2001 – and brought to life with multi-award-winning campaign imagery in 2017, to celebrate Simon Rattle joining the orchestra – this inspired logo takes advantage of typographical serendipity, but it's the kind of charming association that many agencies would miss. Defined by a single flowing line, the initials L, S and O trace the shape of an orchestra's conductor in full passionate flow, baton in mid-air – an elegant, simple solution that conveys the joy of live classic music. 02. The Guild of Food Writers Simple but effective use of negative space, like this nib and spoon combo, never fails to raise a smile Smart use of negative space can certainly take a logo from good to great – FedEx's arrow being a case in point – but it's hard to get right. As a rule, it works most effectively when it's simple and elegant, and doesn't labour the point too much. Widely regarded as a standout example of negative space done right, this logo for The Guild of Food Writers by 300 Million achieves just the right balance of graphic restraint and creative wit, with its inspired combination of pen nib and spoon. 03. Agatha Christie Ltd An inspired combination of Agatha Christie's initials with a question mark forms the basis of this identity No list of smart, witty logos would be complete without an inclusion from Studio Sutherl&: Jim Sutherland is a true master of finding a deceptively simple solution right underneath all our noses, and executing it so effectively that you can't believe no one else thought of it. Studio Sutherl&'s recent rebrand of Agatha Christie Ltd starts with the realisation that a monogram of the much-loved author's initials can also incorporate a question mark – the universal symbol of mystery – and expands into a versatile branding system that defines Christie's most iconic characters using only punctuation marks. 04. Spartan Golf Club Golfer taking a powerful swing, or Spartan soldier in plumed helmet – why can't we just have both? When negative space gets more complicated and multi-layered, it takes some careful refinement and true design craft to carry the logo through, and avoid it becoming messy and confusing. Spartan Golf Club nails it. It's fair to say that not many design briefs require a seamless blend between an Ancient Greek soldier and a golfer in mid-swing. Designer Richard Fonteneau must have been through his fair share of iterations before finding the perfect solution, with the golfer's body forming the profile of a Spartan soldier, and the arc of his swing defining the plume of his helmet. 05. VAIO Subtly hinting at both the analogue and digital worlds, the VAIO logo is one of the smartest in its sector With a few notable exceptions – Apple, anyone? – technology firms aren't famed for thinking outside of the box when it comes to their logo design. But when faced with a brief to design a logo for its 'Video Audio Integrated Operation' (later changed to 'Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer', but much better known simply as 'VAIO'), Sony chose a different tack. The logo nods to both analogue and digital technology in a stylish, subtle way – the smooth curve that defines the 'V' and 'A' represents an analogue wave; the 'I' and 'O' become the binary '1' and '0' that are the foundation of all things digital. It could have been a simple typesetting job: instead, it's a logo that keeps on giving. 06. Horror Films Sometimes graphic restraint pays off, for example with this simple but smart depiction of a film reel as a screaming face You'd think a genre as evocative as horror would be a gift for logo designers. That's the danger: going all out for dripping gore and distressed, fragmented type – maybe some slashes, bites and claw marks for good measure – would feel tired, predictable and overworked. It's partly the admirable restraint that makes Siah Design's Horror Films logo stand out in the sector. A simple idea – that a simplified silhouette of a film reel looks remarkably like a screaming face – carries it. Sometimes, that's all it takes. Related articles: The best logos of all time 5 logos that pass the silhouette test Most hated logos and what they teach us View the full article

A criminal posing as a legitimate website publisher on the AdsTerra online advertising network is using maliciously gathered traffic to deliver victims to exploit kits. View the full article

When it comes to Firefox, most people think of the colour critter-cum-web browser that brightens up their desktop. For Firefox though, this isn't quite enough. According to Tim Murray, the creative director at the company's nonprofit owner, Mozilla, there's more to the web browser than is reflected in the current logo design (see below). The previous Firefox logo has been in use since 2017 To help correct this injustice, Firefox revealed in a blog post earlier this week that it wants the public to get involved with helping to evolve its brand. It follows in the footsteps of Mozilla, which open-sourced the process of selecting its new design and brand identity in 2017. The decision to move the Firefox brand forwards through a redesign comes as users find new ways to use internet, with methods that are not truly reflected in the flaming fox design. "As an icon, that fast fox with a flaming tail doesn’t offer enough design tools to represent this entire product family," says Murray. "Recoloring that logo or dissecting the fox could only take us so far. We needed to start from a new place." To create a brand system that truly communicates what Firefox is all about, a team of product and brand designers at Mozilla have reworked its design system. The two systems can be explored below in the gallery by clicking left to right with the arrows. What do you think? If we're being honest, and slightly contrarian, we like the fox icons in system 2, but prefer the geometric icon designs in system 1. Go figure. Crucially though, this isn't a decision by public vote. Firefox is looking for constructive feedback to be left in the comments section of the blog post. And it's important to keep in mind that these icon designs aren't final. You could help shape their look! So if you've got something useful to say, head over to the blog, leave a comment, and help shape a piece of sure to be ubiquitous design. Related articles: 11 places to find logo design inspiration Quiz: guess the logo, can you identify these brands? How to price logo design services View the full article

As the web landscape changes so does user experience and to stay competitive you need to embrace the new. One thing that doesn't change is the user. If they have a poor user experience they will simply look elsewhere. So what are the emerging experiences that you need to consider today? The theory of UX These are the seven key themes that you should be designing for: inclusivity and accessibility, immersion, trust and transparency, coherence, conversation, collaboration and efficiency. Alongside these key themes we reveal the tools that you will need to ensure design success. Design for inclusivity Sometimes referred to as 'Universal Design', inclusive design considers as many people's needs and abilities as possible, instead of a 'one size fits all' approach to the experience. As designers it can be easy to unwittingly design for those that are just like us, or prioritise these considerations due to tight budgets or deadlines. As designers we should be aiming to include people with varying ranges of cognitive or physical disability, rather than exclude them. Designers should do this by removing the barriers that create extra effort and separation, enabling the end user of your product or service to have the confidence to participate equally, and without support. Tech For Good also has a podcast Over the next year, expect to see inclusive and ethical design become an expected part of the UX Design process. Fortunately, there are plenty of other people getting involved in the digital community, with social movements such as The A11Y Project, AXSChat and Tech For Good gathering rapid momentum over the past 12 months. These groups provide a supportive space for designers to learn more about the inclusive design process and the problems that different people face when using technology. Inclusive design shouldn't be confused with accessible design. Inclusive design shouldn't be confused with accessible design. Products and services are usually made accessible as an afterthought; for example, a watch might be retrospectively made accessible for blind people by including braille numbering on top of the watch face. This modification to a device designed for those with sight may solve one technical problem, but introduce many more issues for those that are blind. Inclusive design seeks to fundamentally redesign a product from scratch, removing barriers from the start. Inclusive design is proactive, not reactive. When starting any new project, one of the most important questions UX designers should ask themselves at all stages of the design process is, 'Who will this design exclude?' Top tools Funkify Disability Simulator Funkify is an extension for Chrome that helps you experience the web and interfaces through the eyes of users with different abilities and disabilities. Funkify is created by a team of usability and accessibility experts in Sweden. Stark The colour-blind simulator and contrast checker for Sketch. Simulate the various forms of colour-blindness by quickly previewing your Sketch designs and make adjustments as needed. Contrast A macOS app that provides access to WCAG colour contrast ratios. The entire app UI updates instantly when picking colours, making it easy to get the colour contrast information you need to make informed decisions about the colour of your text. Design for immersion Traditionally, UX designers had a clear separation of realities to design for: real life, and the experience delivered on screen by the person's device. Now the lines have been well and truly blurred with Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) entering into mainstream use. It's not enough to design for screens, pages and offline touchpoints anymore, now the concept of multiple dimensions opens up a plethora of ways to enhance the experience. A whole host of interactions can be incorporated into designs, such as picking up, pinching, pushing and pulling, facial expressions, and even air tapping for Microsoft's HoloLens. To get them to do this, you must also think about the cues you will give users that are used to interacting with flat screens, how will you encourage them to look around in the space? Microsoft HoloLens brings holograms into the real world With new immersive technologies you can now use audio to grab attention, or display elements just off screen to prompt them to move left and right. This new technology also gives you the opportunity to play around with objects in a 3D space, so it's important that designers become comfortable in how shadow and light can be used to create the illusion of depth and mass for objects in the interface. Designers also need to be conscious of the right context to use these interactions. As a user interacting with an Augmented Reality app whilst driving would be entirely inappropriate, and it might be that a voice interaction is more suitable in this type of scenario. Thorough research and testing is required of the UX practitioner to find and understand these contexts and user goals. Overall, expect the prevalence of AR and VR to increase rapidly over the next few years as businesses and organisations find ways for this technology to fit their business models. Top tools A-Frame A-Frame is a web framework for building VR experiences. Originally developed by Mozilla, it is an independent open source project. A-Frame is HTML, making it simple to get started. Microsoft HoloLens Microsoft's 'mixed-reality' product, HoloLens, is the first self-contained, holographic computer, enabling you to engage with your digital content and interact with holograms in the world around you. Design for collaboration As UX Designer and its many permutations become more ubiquitous as a role, teams are growing and they have a bigger seat at the table. As a result, more business stakeholders are interested in knowing – or even being involved – in what you're doing. The UX role has now matured, and there are plenty of online communities, tools, conferences, and books aimed specifically for the UX designer. To complete the perfect storm, the digital marketplace is also saturated with multiple offerings for a single type of product, and organisations are more willing to invest the time in creating unique user experiences to make them stand out in a fiercely competitive crowd. Suddenly, UX practitioners find they not only have a voice, but are influential in navigating a product or service to market. Use RealtimeBoard to design journey maps, personas and other planning canvases Superior soft skills are the secret weapon behind superior UX teams. This includes communication, listening, empathy, workshop facilitation, teamwork and storytelling. These provide the foundation that all other deliverables are based on. How do you know if the prototype you are testing will meet a user need if you have not listened properly in the research phase of the project? These skills are not an innate talent and need to be practised just like any other skill. Not only that, but developing your soft skills as a team enables you all to communicate properly with one another, forming a common strategy so you can all aim for the same goal. There are many good UX practitioners, but great ones have exceptional soft skills to help them do their job. Collaborating with the customer or client is also essential to a smooth-running project. There are many tools such as Marvel, InVision and Axure that will enable you to quickly prototype up your work to show them the 'Promised Land', instead of sending emails back and forth you can now make your solutions come alive. The benefit of this approach is increased buy-in from clients and customers, and frictionless collaboration. Some of the biggest obstacles to collaboration come from people not understanding what UX activities entail. Some of the biggest obstacles to collaboration on a project can come from other business stakeholders and departments not understanding what UX activities entail. The solution here is to be as transparent and as open as possible. As a team you can pique people's interest by creating exciting areas of wall space in high traffic areas where deliverables such as personas, journey maps and wireframes can be displayed to spark conversations between different people within the business. Even the rise of remote working and distributed teams is a waning threat to any UX team. There's a tool for every stage of the process, and you don't even need to be in the same room as each other. Project planning and management can be organised through tools such as Slack or Flock or Asana. Visual deliverables can be taken care of using collaborative whiteboards such as RealtimeBoard. Teams can work simultaneously to create fully fledged prototypes using one of the new generation of tools like Figma or InVision. Top tools Figma Figma is a browser-based design tool that makes it easier for teams to create software. Present and prototype in the same tool as you design. Version control your team designs. Float Float enables you to visualise your team's project assignments, overtime and time off in one place. Collaborate on project plans and resolve conflicts with real-time drag-and-drop scheduling. Loop11 Loop11 is integrated with JustInMind.com and is used to create prototypes that can then be used to run online usability tests, with the results shown in detailed reports and in-test videos. Design for trust Trust is a human emotion that can be designed for, and can make or break the user's experience, but why is it so hard? Well, there's a lot out there to put off even the most savvy digital user, with dark UX patterns, fake news and clickbait rife. Emerging technologies such as blockchain and self-driving vehicles will put the majority of UX designers' skills to the test. In recent years trust has shifted from being controlled from the top-down by the business or organisation, to being collectively controlled by users via social media about how trustworthy (or untrustworthy) their experiences with a brand have been. It's fair to say that companies are not in control of this aspect of how they are viewed anymore, and so it's imperative that a brand's actions speak louder than its words. To gain the trust of the user, the experience must become as transparent as possible, with businesses being open about their motives, beliefs and activities. Designers can enable that relationship by not hiding away this information from the user, removing any anxieties they may have. UserTesting.com is a great online tool for unmoderated testing When a customer takes a leap of faith and invests their time, and possibly their money in your product or service, you suddenly have a social responsibility to make good on that relationship. So despite all that, how can trust be designed for? Thankfully there are a few techniques UX designers can use to instil confidence in the end user throughout their journey. We all judge a book by its cover, and it's also well known that a user is more likely to trust a site that is more aesthetically pleasing. This is called the aesthetic-usability effect, and is described as us perceiving beautiful things as easier to use over ugly ones (even if that is not the case). Included in the look and feel of the site aesthetic should be the tone of voice and type of imagery that are used to convey a professional, reliable impression of the business or organisation. Of course, the ultimate indicator of trust should always be in the user testing results, along with observations of the user's reactions to sites. Subjective measures like trust can also be captured at the end of tests. Moderated user testing will always provide much greater insights, but there are tools online to run unmoderated tests such as UserTesting.com. Top tools Dark Patterns Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you buy or sign up for things that you didn't mean to. The purpose of the Dark Pattern Library site is to spread awareness and to document the companies that use such techniques. Government Research Consent Guidelines The UK government website contains an entire manual on service design and the consent forms you need signed to ensure you can be trusted with a person's data gathered during user research. Design for coherence With more and more touchpoints emerging, organisations are in danger of their user's journey becoming so heavily fragmented that it could become an incoherent mess. To add to the omnichannel experience there are now chatbots and other voice interfaces to consider in the user's journey, so the experiences and conversations people have with them need carefully designing. Planning is key, taking a 'helicopter view' of the entire user's journey with the business. This should include doing as much user research as possible to make sure the touchpoints you design align with their goals, and what they're doing in real life. Turning this research into user journey maps and personas will help guide designers on which touchpoints should be used for different audiences. Many tools exist for supporting these activities; Smaply caters for all of the above, and Xtensio can be used to create simple personas and diagrams, but there are also more traditional offline tools such as Axure that you can use to get the job done. With MockFlow you can plan and create better user interfaces It's also important to consider which touchpoints shouldn't be designed for, especially if it is discovered during the research that it would be inappropriate to use certain methods to contact certain audiences. For example, on a digital experience dealing with a homeless person registering for support services, would it be appropriate to ask for an address? Designing a coherent experience means not just designing for screens and apps anymore, but every means of contact the customer has with that organisation, so that a unified message can be delivered, regardless of the type of touchpoint. It's imperative that this key message is decided on from the start. The entire UX team should know from research what message to deliver. It's a common belief that the more material you present to the user, the greater chance that some of it will be remembered. It's the old adage of throwing a load of mud in the hope some will stick, but this isn't true. Your audience will end up confused about the message you are trying to deliver. Top tools Axure Create simple click-through diagrams or highly functional, rich prototypes with conditional logic, dynamic content, animations, math functions, and data-driven interactions. Use Axure Share to upload content to share with your team. Asana Asana is an online project management tool, designed to help teams track their work. Asana gives you everything you need to stay in sync, hit deadlines, and reach your goals. MockFlow MockFlow provides a full solution for design teams, which includes wireframing, sitemaps, UI spec systems, design workflow and more. Enables you to plan and create better user interfaces together within a single suite. Storyboard That Storyboards are a fun and engaging way to relay research findings and user journeys to stakeholders. Use the extensive image library and flexible templates to create storyboards of this information. Smaply This website has an online editor which enables you to integrate basic service design tools into your daily work, such as user journey maps, stakeholder maps and personas. Your designs can be downloaded as PDFs and image files. Design for efficiency With Kaktus you can implement version control without having to learn a new set of tools As UX teams grow, there are smarter ways of managing the multitude of design assets created by a team. No more naming your work 'homepage_wireframe_finalFinal14.pdf', or taking it in turns to work on the same document in your team. Thankfully now there are tools aimed specifically at design teams to version control design work. The majority are based on Git, the same technology used by developers to manage their application code. There are so many advantages to using this sort of software to manage your designs. Not only can multiple designers work on the same project at the same time, but you can roll back to a previous version if needed. Although you will only see the current version of a file, a full version history is kept and reviewing the changes made between versions of a file are even possible. These features of version control mean problems like losing work when a file is accidentally overwritten, or two people decide to make changes to the same thing are now a thing of the past. Once changes are made, many tools let you communicate those changes to the team. This is a step forward in terms of productivity and efficiency, enabling projects to be completed as quickly as possible. Lots of the larger web-based design tools like Figma and UXPin provide this as part of the subscription, but there are standalone tools like Kaktus, Abstract and Folio for Mac. Design for conversation The rise of chatbots and other conversational devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home has been all pervasive over the past few years, and many companies are still trying to work out where this new technology can be inserted into their strategy with customers. But where does traditional experience design fit in, especially when there will be no physical interface to design? This is a new frontier for service design, with endless possibilities for designing intuitive and human-centred experiences that people love. Conversations between human beings are intricate, complex and heavily nuanced. Not to mention the cultural and semantic differences that are commonly observed in humans across the world. How do you anticipate and plan for the vast array of possible questions and reactions a human being might have? Designers will need to spend time designing all the possible flows and outcomes these conversations might take. And the more human the experience can be the better, but how can you make a machine appear human? How do you build a relationship with a machine? These are questions the UX designer must consider to create an effective outcome for the end user. Conversational interfaces bring a whole new set of challenges with them Understanding the context that your designs will be used in is also important, so rigorous and in-depth research is essential. Would your target audience use a voice interface walking down the street? Would it be usable if it was a noisy street? All this can be answered by spending time understanding your users and capturing what their goals are. Another essential part of the UX practitioner's role will be in planning for and testing these conversational interfaces. This will be very different to traditional testing of apps and sites, and will require much more rigorous planning of scripts and testing sessions. There are a few tools for designing the proposed chatbot conversations and also the UI, such as BotPreview and Botsociety, which then enable you to go and test these conversations out on real people before you release your chatbot or conversational UI. As a result of this frenzied focus given to this emerging technology, expect to see new roles created as offshoots of the standard UX Designer and – relatively new – UX Writer titles, such as 'Conversational Designer' (catering for research, testing, behaviours and personality of the interface) and 'Conversational Strategist' (a niche role dedicated to designing the flows and logic of the conversations). Top tools BotPreview Sketch and design your own chatbot interactions using the BotPreview online editor and share them or export as static HTML or MP4/GIF video, without writing a single line of code. Botsociety Design voice and chat interfaces using the online web editor by quickly building a high-fidelity preview of your next chatbot or voice assistant. Botsociety takes care of the appearance, the platform limitations, the preview, the export and the user testing for you. Botmock Botmock uses a drag-and-drop editor with templates to build prototypes of conversational design. Map out the customer's journey, and create a live preview that can be exported to GIF and video. Bots UI Kit for Sketch A simple and fully customisable Sketch UI kit to help you design and showcase your Facebook Messenger Bots. All elements are turned into new branded Sketch symbols, so prototyping has never been easier. Walkie This tool is especially for Slack users to help design slack bot dialogues. It provides an easy way to write and test bot dialogues, which include buttons and also attachments. This article was originally published in issue 274 of creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 274 here or subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: New skills in UX design What are the main barriers to good UX today? Why graphic designers need to master UX View the full article

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She may live in a castle and have her face on stamps and money, but Queen Elizabeth II does have to do a lot of boring admin. And it's not just signing legislation and sending 100th birthday cards, she even has to approve each and every stamp design produced by the Royal Mail. It's not just Christmas designs either. These days Britain’s postal service is releasing more and more limited edition stamps in order to make some extra cash from a generation that don’t actually send many letters. In this post, we bring together 10 of our favourites stamp designs, all created in tribute to TV shows and movies and featuring some of our favourite character designs. 01. Doctor Who Released in 2013, this stamp design features William Hartnell as the first actor to play The Doctor First screened in 1963, the day after John F Kennedy’s assassination, sci-fi show Doctor Who quickly became a Saturday tea-time institution for children and adults alike. Unfortunately by the 1980s its low budget effects looked increasingly anachronistic, and it was canned in 1989. But fan love for the show failed to abate, and a successful reboot in 2005 under the helm of Russell T Davies rewarded their patience several times over. Assured a prime place in British television history, not to mention its future, Doctor Who got the Royal Mail seal of approval in 2013, the year of its 50-year anniversary. The 11 first-class stamps combined each of the different actors to have played the Time Lord on TV to date, set against a backdrop evoking the ‘time tunnel’ effect shown in the opening credits. Our favourite is featured above. Framing the First Doctor as played by William Hartnell, it’s a simple but arresting composition that feels both of its time and strikingly modern; very much a case of ‘less is more’. You can view the full collection here. 02. Game of Thrones Launched this January, these stamps pay tribute to this popular fantasy show The biggest fantasy TV hit of the 2010s, Game of Thrones, may be American-led, but the UK has provided the majority of actors and hosted most of the filming, mostly in Northern Ireland. So it’s fully appropriate for the Royal Mail to pay tribute to the show that even Penny, the non-nerd character in Big Bang Theory, likes – because, in her words, “It's got dragons and people doing it.” Released in January 2018, the 10 stamps feature the following characters: Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Eddard Stark, Olenna Tyrell, Tywin Lannister, Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark, Jaime Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. Our favourite (above) portrays Kit Harington as Jon Snow, one of the show’s most popular characters and one whose parentage continues to be a source of frenzied speculation. Set against a snow-laden background, it’s a dramatic composition that beautifully sums up the epic bombast and big themes at the heart of the saga’s appeal. You can see the full collection here. 03. Star Wars Luke faces off against Vader in this gloriously epic stamp design In 2018, with disappointing box-office returns for the Solo spin-off, the Star Wars franchise is starting to look on shaky ground, but this time last year the space opera series seemed unbeatable. And as British involvement in Star Wars has been pivotal (the first, in 1977, was filmed at Elstree and Shepperton, and the most recent two in Pinewood), it made perfect sense for the Royal Mail to commission a series of stamps celebrating The Last Jedi. The stamps, which were designed by Malcolm Tween of Digital Progression, feature characters from across the saga, including Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Obi Wan Kenobi, R2-D2, C3PO, Boba Fett and Yoda, plus new characters from The Force Awakens Rey, Finn, BB8 and Kylo Ren. Our favourite has to be the one above featuring Luke and Vader, the epic father-son struggle that lay at the heart of the first trilogy. Summoning the spirit of legendary Star Wars poster illustrator Drew Struzan, but translating a poster design into one that works in a tiny space, this is a great example of elegant minimalism. You can see the full range of stamps here. 04. Monty Python This tribute to Monty Python brilliantly harnesses their subversive spirit It’s difficult to imagine how different comedy was before Monty Python’s Flying Circus hit our screens in 1969. Taking its cues from Surrealism and Dada art movements, the anarchic troupe completely reinvented what comedy could look like, in both their late-night TV show and ensuing films, including the widely banned Biblical parody, Life of Brian. Today the show's influence is obvious in everything from South Park and Family Guy to the phrases that have entered everyday speech (such as the use of ‘spam’ to describe unwanted emails). This design was released by the Royal Mail, appropriately enough, on April Fool's day in 2015 as part of a special range of ‘Comedy Greats’ stamps. Featuring the classic Monty Python team of six (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin), it’s a perfectly chosen shot that effortlessly captures the untrammelled energy of the young team. And it’s been beautifully integrated with an image of John Cleese from the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, providing an instant blast of nostalgia for any Brit of a certain age. You can see the full range of British comedy stamps here. 05. Dracula This stamp design, based on 1958 movie Dracula, brilliantly conveys the melodramatic essence of Hammer Horror When the British film industry looks back on its glorious past, it tends to focus on the highbrow and critically acclaimed stuff, from Alfred Hitchcock to Ken Loach. But it’s important to remember that some of the most successful and popular British movies have been more towards the cheesier end of the scale. And so in 2008, the Royal Mail decided to pay tribute to two so-bad-its-good traditions in UK film-making: the Carry On series of bawdy comedies, and the melodramatic series of horror movies made by Hammer Films between the 1950s and 1970s. Starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, Dracula was a critical and commercial hit on release in 1958, and it’s now considered a classic of the genre; ranked the 65th best British film ever in a 2017 poll for Time Out magazine. And this marvellously crafted stamp harnesses the best of horror poster and book jacket design in reminding us of just what an impact it made on audiences. The colours, typography and use of hyperbolic quotes are all note-perfect, and the way that the Queen’s silhouette has been effortlessly co-opted into the design is quite unnerving. You can see the full range of stamps here. 06. Harry Potter Dumbledore is taking no prisoners in this Harry Potter stamp tribute No list of popular culture-inspired stamps could fail to include Harry Potter, one of the most critically and commercially successful film franchises of all time. That's partly thanks to author JK Rowling's insistence that the movie be made in Britain, with British actors. This move both ensured the distinctive nature of the novels translated perfectly to the big screen, and kick-started London's nascent VFX industry into the bargain. Released in 2011, the Royal Mail's Magical Realms series included two gems paying tribute to the series, featuring arch-villain Voldemort and his adversary, Albus Dumbledore (shown above). It's a striking composition, featuring the magical professor in full combat mode against a background of swirling, menacing auras; a reminder that for all the schoolyard hi-jinks, there's also a dark and gritty backbone that lies at the heart of the series' appeal. 07. A Matter of Life and Death One of the greatest British movies of all time is honoured with this simple stamp design If you’ve never seen the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death (released in the US as Stairway to Heaven), then do something about it. The fantasy-romance revolves around a mixup in heaven, leading to an airman surviving a crash when he was actually meant to die. In a similar way to It’s a Wonderful Life, it had an emotional and powerful effect at the time on audiences, who were all coping with losing loved ones in the war. More recently, it was picked by Total Film as the second greatest British film ever made (in case you're wondering, Get Carter was number one). This stamp was created as part of the Royal Mail’s Great British Film series, released in May 2014, and features Kim Hunter and David Niven, enclosed in a simple black rectangle. It's an elegantly minimal design that perfectly encapsulates the classic, iconic nature of its subject. You can check out the full series here. 08. Paddington Bear This stamp shows the story of Paddington in a nutshell It may have taken a while to come to the big screen, in the form of 2014 film Paddington and the 2017 sequel Paddington 2. But the bear from Darkest Peru with a taste for marmalade has been a hit with kids for decades via the Michael Bond books, first published in 1958, and the spin-off TV series created by London-based animation company FilmFair in 1975. The latter entranced youngsters with its unusual visual approach, combining a 3D stop-motion puppet of Paddington with minimal 2D drawings of backgrounds and other characters. (In one memorable scene, the bear’s adopted parent Mr Brown hands him a jar of marmalade that becomes 3D when Paddington touches it.) In January 2014, the Royal Mail paid tribute to Paddington with this stamp design, part of its range of Classic Children’s TV stamps, and all the essential elements are there. The 2D background of Paddington station, the ‘Please look after this bear’ label, and the bear himself, striking a characteristically jaunty pose, tell you everything you need to know. We particularly like the playful ‘cut out and keep’ element where Paddington’s head and elbow break out of the traditional rectangle of the postage stamp; very children’s TV. You can see the full range of children’s TV stamps here. 09. Thomas the Tank Engine Thomas seems to have his eye on the Queen in this tongue-in-cheek stamp Another of Britain’s biggest children’s TV exports, Thomas the Tank Engine is a fictional steam locomotive who first appeared in The Railway Series books, which were created by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry. Thomas is based on a toy train he made for his son, Christopher. On TV since 1979, the show has become an award-winning hit around the world, and narrators have included everyone from Beatles drummer Ringo Starr to controversial American stand-up George Carlin. In June 2011, the Royal Mail marked the 100th anniversary of the Reverend Albry with a special series of stamps. Six featured images from the TV series, Thomas and Friends, and four others featured illustrations from The Railway Series books. Our favourite, shown above, uses a 'widescreen' format to bring forth a cinematic feel; perfectly evoking the jaw-dropping wonder of a railway as it appears in the mind of a child. We also like the cheeky way Thomas seems to be giving the eye to the Queen. You can see the full collection here. 10. Thunderbirds A blast of nostalgia comes in the form of this Thunderbirds-themed stamp Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson between 1964 and 1966, Thunderbirds was a children’s sci-fi series that combined marionette puppetry with scale model special effects. Broadcast in more than 60 countries around the world, it had such an influence on successive generations of youngsters that it has since returned in a number of formats, including a 2004 live-action movie and a 2015 computer animation. The Andersons created a lot of other hit shows too, including Stingray, Captain Scarlett and Joe 90. But nothing will be more nostalgia-inducing for a certain age-demographic than the classic countdown: “5-4-3-2-1 Thunderbirds are go!”. And so it’s to the credit of the Royal Mail that their stamp tribute focuses not on a particular character but that iconic sequence. You can see the full range of Anderson stamps here. Read more: Savage Brexit stamps are the best of British Create cool collage illustrations 66 brilliant print adverts View the full article

Soon, a new era of experimental design and design thinking will be upon us. We’ll have entirely augmented experiences everywhere we walk, and voice design is the next big horizon for creatives. They’re just two predictions into the future of design shared by Scott Belsky, co-founder of Behance, and Adobe's chief product officer and executive vice president of Creative Cloud. Belsky took to the stage in London at an exclusive Adobe event earlier this summer to talk through the challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologies – and to forecast the future for designers. Scott Belsky at Adobe's Future of Design event in London As the future becomes increasingly commoditised, he said, creativity – and the role of user experience designers, particularly – will become increasingly important. "Companies are putting designers at the head of the table," he explained. "The user’s experience of technology these days is even more important than the tech itself. The UI is what distinguishes a product; a company. That’s one reason why designers are being employed across industries.” Get 15% off Adobe Creative Cloud with our exclusive offer In fact, when Adobe spoke to hiring managers at a range of top companies, 87 per cent of them said that UX designers are some of their most critical hires right now. So aside from a bright future for UX designers, what else is next for design? Here are five predictions Belsky made at the event – followed by an exclusive conversation with Creative Bloq, in which he explores the biggest new challenges and opportunities designers should prepare for. Jump straight to the Scott Belsky interview 01. Augmented reality We’ll soon have entirely augmented experiences everywhere we walk. AR will be as critical as the web,” Belsky predicted, adding that this is why Adobe has developed Project Aero, a powerful new augmented reality tool that makes it easier for designers and developers to create immersive content, and bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. More on that below. 02. Voice design “It’s the simplest interface of all, so we need to be able to design for it,” he said. Voice design tools are being brought into Adobe XD because we’re moving into a voice-driven world (think: Amazon Echo and Google Home) – and it’s raising many questions for designers, not least ethical ones. 03. Artificial intelligence Labour will become increasingly automated, with AI and machine learning helping creatives work smarter and faster by taking on repetitive tasks. “AI is a vertical of creativity,” said Belsky. “Think of it as a creative assistant.” 04. Connected creativity New tools like Adobe Capture – which turns photos on your phone or tablet into creative assets – will continue to deliver on the creative freedom promised by Creative Cloud in increasingly unique ways. “There’s an idea that in some ways we’re still chained to desktop – we expect to do our professional work there,” he said. “But that’s not where creativity happens.” 05. Ethics in design What are our responsibilities for the end customer experience? What is the responsibility of the designer in preserving a consumer choice? When using visual search, such as Google, you're presented with a lot of options. Using a voice interface, this might not be the case – so who chooses which option you get, and how can you ensure the consumer’s best interests are served? Ethical questions have always been important, but in this new age of design they're even more so. New challenges and opportunities for designers : immersive media is poised to become the next disruptive platform. Welcome to the first wave of mainstream AR So will AR really be bigger than the web? What sorts of questions is voice design raising? And what skills will designers need to meet the future of design head-on? We caught up with Belsky after the event to find out more… What are the biggest opportunities of AR for designers? Scott Belsky: I believe AR will do almost everything the web does for us, but in the context of our physical world, rather than on a screen. It will change the way we do everything from finding our way around cities, to reviewing the menu in restaurants, to dating, to fixing appliances in our homes. AR will do almost everything the web does for us, but in the context of our physical world, rather than on a screen. It will change the way we do everything. Scott Belsky Augmented Reality will enrich these experiences in ways we can barely imagine. However, none of this is possible without designers creating compelling three-dimensional interactive content and being able to collaborate with developers across platforms. AR and voice have the greatest potential to disrupt the way we experience the world. Every business group across Adobe is thinking about and building for AR because we strongly believe that it’s a transformative medium. AR is at the intersection of our physical and digital worlds, and requires a fundamentally different paradigm for interaction and design beyond the traditional screen experience. Designers will have the opportunity to literally design a new reality, and that’s going to be fun and challenging. How soon will AR be everywhere? SB: We’re at the beginning of a journey with augmented reality. We believe that Project Aero is breaking new ground, with the goal of simplifying the development of AR content, delivering an even more powerful medium for storytelling for artists and designers around the world. Through our collaboration with Apple, Pixar and other partners, Project Aero will give creative professionals the ability to create more authentic experiences. What’s compelling is the quality and depth of the imagery, which makes the experience real and even more vivid. The industry is evolving at a rapid pace and there will be commercial and consumer demand for these types of experiences. We see the potential of AR experiences to enable new forms of creative expression, spawn new customer experiences, and ignite new business models that we can’t even imagine today. We envision immersive media ultimately becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. We’ll have a new interface through which we interact with a range of retail, news, search and other common applications. What are the biggest challenges of AR for designers? How will Project Aero help? SB: Most designers I speak with are excited about AR, but have no idea where to get started designing immersive experiences and how to work with developers to make them a reality. Our challenge is to help designers work with the tools they know and love, like Photoshop or Adobe XD for screen design, and then import their work to new tools like Adobe Dimension to make their creations 3D. And then, with Project Aero, designers will be able to make their creations interactive and easily 'published' to locations in augmented reality. For the first time, designers will be able to lay out and manipulate designs in physical spaces with a ‘what you see is what you get’ tool, making AR creation more fluid and intuitive. What’s more, delivering these immersive experiences to audiences on mobile devices will become faster, easier and safer. How can designers get ahead in voice design? SB: Design is becoming more immersive and voice has become more important. Increasing numbers of people use a voice interface to order dinner, choose music, set reminders, and so many other tasks, thanks in large part to consumer products like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant. Smart speakers will be installed in more than 70 million U.S. households by 2022, according to a Juniper Research report, and consumers have high expectations of voice technology because they’re used to naturally interacting and talking to people. For designers, creating voice user interface (VUI) experiences requires new skills that transcend the keyboard, mouse and screen. For designers to be successful in the future, they’ll need to know how to create a voice interface that is efficient and intuitive. Scott Belsky For designers to be successful in the future, they’ll need to know how to create a voice interface that is efficient and intuitive. Our goal is to help designers succeed in this medium and in the broader world of immersive and interaction design. That’s one of the reasons we’ve invested so heavily in Adobe XD as an experience design platform that can adapt to new modalities over time. Adobe XD brings prototyping and design together, which has unlocked new capabilities including allowing designers to easily switch from wireframes to prototypes and use tools such as After Effects to add deeper animations to their UX/UI designs. Unfortunately, I can’t share more now, but you’ll see a massive amount of innovation from us as it relates to XD in the coming months. What are the biggest hurdles posed by voice design? SB: As I mentioned, there has been a tremendous growth in voice-enabled devices. For designers, creating VUI experiences requires new skills since you cannot simply apply the same design guidelines to VUI, as you would a graphical app or web experience. Designers must have a deep understanding of human communication and natural conversation flow to design for VUIs. Additionally, it requires a mindset shift to design for this medium. VUIs need to contain the right amount of information to meet users’ expectations and provide users with information on what they can do with the technology. For example, proactive prompting along the lines of, 'What can I help you with today?' might help a user get started. Without visual guidance, it’s easy for the user to get lost. There are, of course, ethical considerations when it comes to VUI design too. For example, designers will need to carefully consider how often the technology is listening or recording, and clearly spell that out for the user. Companies and their designers will need to ensure privacy is baked into the product from the start. Another important issue in voice is the default settings. When you ask your voice assistant to order flowers, what service does it default to using? Making tasks easy is great for consumers, but the design will have to make it transparent how those tasks are happening and give users the option of changing the defaults so they can personalise the experience. Related articles: How to future-proof yourself as a designer 10 huge graphic design trends to know for 2018 The ultimate guide to design trends View the full article

Is your design portfolio the best it can be? Does it show off your full potential, communicate what makes you unique and ultimately win you as much work as it could? Now's your chance to find out. Creative Bloq has teamed up with the good folk at moo.com to give you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You could get your online portfolio critiqued by some of the best in the business, and showcased to potential clients, collaborators and creative peers all around the world in the process. Our expert panel is ready and waiting to give your work – and your presentation of it – a creative review session. This will take the form of a filmed round-table discussion, so you'll need the guts to put your work in the spotlight. Who's on the panel? What are we looking for? The panel has expertise in a broad spectrum of creative sectors, so we want to see an equally broad range of portfolios. Whether you work in graphic design, illustration, digital, motion graphics or a combination of all of the above and more, we want to see how you present your work. This opportunity is open to anyone working in the creative industries, and looking for some focused, constructive advice to help take them to the next level. Students or recent graduates are welcome to apply, but bear in mind we need a significant volume of work for the panel to critique. Submit your portfolio now! So how do you get involved? Simple: use the form below to submit a link to your online portfolio for us to review, before the deadline of midnight (BST) on Sunday 19 August 2018. A selection of the most interesting will be chosen by panel chair Nick Carson and the Creative Bloq team to be put in front of the review panel on 4th September 2018. Remember, we're looking for portfolios that demonstrate a broad range of quality work, and are creative in terms of their presentation of that work. As well as your design prowess, we will also be looking at the structure and hierarchy of your website, how projects are showcased, and how you present yourself and your creative process. In other words, the whole package! Good luck... View the full article

If you work in a creative field such as graphic design or content marketing, you'll probably need to use stock images at some point. With StockPop Lite Bundle: Lifetime Subscription, you'll never run out of high-quality stock and clip art images. This database contains 12,000 stock assets, and your flexible licence will let you use them in pretty much any project that comes your way, royalty free. Whether you need images of animals, electronics, or sports, StockPop has them all, and you'll never have to worry about royalties or copyright. Get your subscription now for only $19.99. Related articles: 5 uses for stock images you might not have thought of Free tool lets you search for stock images in Sketch and Photoshop The 5 biggest myths about stock imagery in design View the full article

So you've decided you want to get started in web comics or another form of storytelling. What makes a good story great? The characters. But how do you create believable characters? Where do you start? The art of character design is complex. In this article, we'll take a look at how to get started, and offer some advice on where to go from there. 01. Figure out a backstory This is probably the single most important part of creating believable characters. It doesn't matter if you're developing a good guy, bad guy or even an imaginary monster. If you want your characters to jump off the page – or the screen – you need to know their backstory (even if the audience doesn't). Strong character development requires more than just deciding hair colour, age, height and weight. It's deeper than that. Ask yourself: Where were they born? How was their childhood? What happened to their parents? Do they have any fears? If so, what are they? The more you ask; the more you'll discover; the more depth your character will have. 02. Get inspiration from real-life experiences They say writers should write what they know. That's true... but not entirely. When developing your characters, drawing on your own personal experience is a great place to start. But don't stop there. Don't make a carbon transfer onto one of your characters based on your Aunt Ethel. Change it up a bit. Give her some new quirks, a new skill, an ex-husband, anything really. Just don't create another Aunt Ethel for your fictional character – not unless she's absolutely perfect in real life. Bottom line... you're a creative person: create! 03. Do your research If your character is not like you, then do your research. I cannot stress this point enough. For example, let's say you're working on a story that features a character that is a former police officer. Unless you, too, used to be a police officer, you're going to need to do a little research in order to develop a character that's believable and realistic. 04. Do a little world building All characters are influenced by the world around them Another way to create believable characters, is to create a believable world. In fact, sometimes the 'world' is its own character, but that's an entirely different topic altogether. The reason creating a world helps is because our fictional characters, like us, are very much influenced by the world around them. Use that to your advantage. Is your character living in a city? The country? How does this impact how they live? Sometimes, I'll work out location before I even attempt to place characters inside it. 05. Allow your character to evolve Let's face it, static characters are not only boring, but they're unrealistic too. Sure, there may be a few people in your 'real life' that don't seem to change, but for the most part, people are constantly growing and evolving. When characters change in a story, it allows the story to move forward. Generally speaking, your protagonist needs to face some kind of challenge. In order to overcome this challenge, they will need grow and evolve. Let them. 06. Give your character a voice Give your character a voice. Talk with them. Let them tell you what they want. I know this sounds a bit strange, and I certainly don't recommend you do this in public, but it can help to have a conversation with your characters – out loud. If having an actual conversation with your fictional character is a bit too much for you, then have one on paper. Write it out. Sometimes I'll even interview my characters. 07. Be the voice no one else can hear Nothing drives a character more than that little voice inside their head. Not only do you need to be the voices around your characters, but you also need to be the voice no one can hear. During the conversations you have with your character, pause every now and again and think about not only how your character will respond, but why they will respond that way. What are they hearing inside their own head? Did their parents always encourage their dreams, or tear them up? Do they hear their ex-partner tell them they're too stupid, too weak, too ugly? Be that voice. 08. Put a face to a name I'm not sure if other writers do this, but sometimes I'll do a Google image search to 'find my character' so to speak. A lot of times, I'll start with an image and build my character around that image. 09. Don't try to be perfect This seems like a no-brainer, but so many people (I won't lie, myself included) get stuck on this 'being perfect' thing. Perfect does not exist. Your characters don't need to be perfect, nor does your story. Especially if it's your first draft. Just get the words out of your head and onto the paper (or into the computer). And most importantly, have fun. You'd be amazed at how much better your writing is when you're having fun. Like this? Read these! 8 timeless children's book characters The art of reimagining iconic characters 11 best video game character designs View the full article

Substance Designer is an excellent tool for creating all sorts of materials for your 3D art. Here, I'm going to explain how to create a tiles material in Substance Designer, this material can be used in scenes such as the one above. If you're looking for more objects to add to your scene, check out our list of free 3D models. 01. Set-up For this type of material, I select the Physically Based (Metallic/Roughness) Graph Template and delete the metallic output since it isn’t necessary for this substance. At this point we can start to add these nodes from the Substance Designer library: the Brick Generator pattern (the main elements of the substance), the BnW Spots 2, BnW Spots 1 and two Cells 3 noises, the Height to Normal World Units filter, five Levels filters, two Blur filters, three Blend filters, a Warp, an Invert Grayscale filter and last but not the least the Gradient Map filter. 02. Link the elements Now it’s time to link these elements, starting with the Brick Generator that will be placed at the beginning of the graph. This one will be linked with the Warp filter, in which we will connect the BnW Spots 1 followed by the first Blur. Now we can connect the Warp to the first Levels filter and this one to the Background/Opacity of the Blend filter. In the Foreground we have to connect the BnW Spots 2 noise followed by the second Blur. Then we have to connect this Blend with the Background/Opacity of the new Blend, with the only difference being that in this case we will link the Cells 3 noise to the Foreground of the Blend. After that we can connect the Blend to the Gradient Map and this one directly to the Base Color output. 03. Make more connections Now we can continue with the nodes for the creation of the Normal Map. Connect the Blend filter to another Levels filter, which will be linked to the Background of the third Blend filter. Unlike with the previous links we have to make a middle connection between the Levels filter and the Opacity of the Blend filter. In this case we have to place an Invert Grayscale filter. In the Foreground of the Blend we have to connect the second Cells 3 noise generator followed by the fourth Levels. Now we can connect the last Blend filter to the Height to Normal World Units filter, and consequently we can link it to the Normal output. The last two connections we need to do are between the two Levels filters that will be linked respectively to the Roughness and Height outputs. 04. Set the parameters For this material we only have to fix the Intensity parameter with a value of 3.5 for the first Blur filter and 2.5 for the second. For the Warp the Intensity should be 0.15. For the first Cells 3 noise the Distance should be 14, while for the second one it should be 128. At the end we have to change some parameters of the Brick generator. For the Offset we have to set a value of 0, for the Smoothness and Round Corners a value of 1 and 0.35 for the Bevel X and Y. All the other parameters for the Levels and the Gradient Map filters are arbitrary but I advise you not to exaggerate. This article originally appeared in issue 235 of 3D World, the world's leading magazine for 3D artists. Buy issue 235 or subscribe here. Related articles: Upgrade your textures in Substance Designer Create ornate tiles in Substance Designer Master procedural modelling View the full article

In a resale scenario, a previous owner could continue to have access to the online account – with all the new owner’s information stored within. View the full article

After inmates hacked tablets with security vulnerabilities, a CenturyLink spokesperson told Threatpost the "vulnerability issue has been resolved." View the full article

Many brands choose to use illustration to do at least some of the talking for them, and if it’s true that an image speaks a thousand words, it’s easy to see why. Whether through content, style, implicit narrative or (likely) all three, an image can communicate what copy and typography often can’t, at once setting out a mood, tone of voice, target audience and attitude in a succinct visual. The illustrator hotlist 2018 The idea of using illustration not just in a campaign, but as a core part of a brand’s visual identity is perhaps less common than it once was, and seems more aligned to certain sectors than others. Luxury food packaging design, for instance, especially on seasonal ranges: think high-end Christmas chocolate boxes. Or craft beer, a sector that’s seemingly indefatigable when it comes to both new variants and breweries. An illustration route is straight to the point: it’s an instant emotional connection that can surpass language barriers Chloe Templeman, Design Bridge So what can illustration do that type, photography and copy alone can’t? For one, it shows a uniqueness, and in the right hands, it delivers on-shelf standout like few other approaches can. There’s far less chance, for instance, of a brand commissioning the same illustrator, style and image as there is of it using a similar typeface or colourway. Broadly speaking, a brand commissioning illustration also subtly communicates a level of thought and attention. In a similar way to brands working with bespoke, hand-drawn typography, even digitally created illustration hints at a person behind a brand. This helps build its story and tells us that there’s more to the product than just ‘buy me’. As Chloe Templeman, creative director at Design Bridge puts it, the notion of image as story is as, “old as cave paintings and hieroglyphics, and has come full circle to emojis. An illustration route is straight to the point: it’s an instant emotional connection that can surpass language barriers.” Boozy illustration Thirst Craft is a Glasgow-based branding and design agency specialising in the drinks sector, whose portfolio boasts no shortage of richly illustrated designs – including the design for Loch Lomond Brewery used as the headline image for this article. According to creative director Matt Burns, it’s little surprise that the craft beer sector in particular has latched onto illustration as the perfect conduit for communicating a brand’s attitude and uniqueness. Hired Guns Creative created this packaging for Driftwood Brewery “Illustration is created by the hand, and that hand-rendered touch lends itself nicely to craft beer, and the whole ‘brewed by hand’ story,” he says. “There’s something personable about illustration, so it’s a great way to communicate and tell a story of that brewery, but there’s also something kind of quite edgy and visually exciting about illustration, which is why it works well on pack.” Burns adds that illustration is engaging and has a lot of energy, meaning that people can really relate to it. “It captures that level of excitement and emotion... rather than being a sales tool, it’s a piece of art. People want to keep the cans, and you don’t get that with other packaging.” Hired Guns Creative is an agency based in British Columbia, Canada which, like Thirst Craft, has chosen to specialise in solely creating designs for alcohol, with most of its work across the craft beer sector and the majority of that work relying on illustration in one form or another. So why is craft beer such a rich font of illustrated packaging? Rather than being a sales tool, it’s a piece of art Matt Burns, Thirst Craft “A lot of it comes down to trying to compete on shelf,” says managing partner Leif Miltenberger. “The craft beer market in North America and in the UK is exploding, so every product on that shelf is trying to scream as loud as it can for attention. Really bold, eye-catching illustration is a good way to stand out, and is difficult for other companies to emulate. A lot of craft beer companies have packaging design that’s very minimalist, and although you can stand out through typography, bright colours, or certain printing techniques, it’s easier for another company to come along and replicate that.” For craft beer in particular, brands are selling an attitude as much as a liquid: “A lot of people in that space really try to align themselves with counterculture through their brand, and illustration is a great way to do that. You can design things for the craft beer guys that major beer or spirit brands would be too scared to do,” says Miltenberger. Somewhat unusually, Hired Guns chooses to create all its illustration in-house, mostly by creative director Richard Hatter. Investing in craft When a brand commissions illustration work, it’s not only a way of augmenting or creating a more cohesive brand world or message, it sends out a signal that it cares about its product, and the people that are buying it. A distinctive, characterful illustration is a symbol of uniqueness and distinction, immediately elevating it above nondescript system fonts or less ownable colour palettes. Silas Amos gave Red Red a surreal vibe with illustration “It shows they value the appearance of the product as well as what’s inside,” says Miltenberger. “Some people think that if the product is good enough, it’ll be successful, but that’s not the case. It’s a super-competitive market. Sometimes you get the feeling from the illustration that they’re trying to target a certain demographic – maybe something hand-drawn to feel authentic and appeal to millennials or hipsters or whatever name they have on their demographic. But bigger corporations more and more are co-opting that approach: a hand-drawn gin label doesn’t mean its created in small batches by someone who cares.” Being seen as a creative brand is priceless... The more avant-garde you are, the more you’re making a difference Silas Amos As Burns points out, such intricate packaging is also a crucial hook – especially within the craft beer sector: “The packaging is what makes people buy the first one, and the product makes them buy the second, third and fourth.” Careful and considered commissioning also gives the sense of a brand being not just about product, but artistry. “Being seen as a creative brand is priceless,” says creative strategist and designer Silas Amos. “For brands, it’s about creating an aura around themselves. The more avant-garde you are or the more you visually snag, the more you’re making a difference.” There’s also the question of how much a brand is seen to be investing in craft, continues Amos. “Craft is telling a story, and that tends to be whimsical – pictures are a good way to tell whimsical stories.” One of the reasons we’ve recently seen a wave of illustration that hints at care, craft and heritage is the fact that so many brands are celebrating landmarks. Their 100th or 150th anniversary is a perfect chance to put their flag back in the ground, and show a world full of shiny start-ups that they’ve been in it for the long haul; they’re reliable, an institution. Design Bridge played on the heritage of Hellmann's with this design At the forefront of Design Bridge’s recent work for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, for instance, was stripping the aesthetic away from synthetic-leaning imagery to usher in a new, softer, watercolour-like, hand-drawn style of illustration. “It feels like more love has been put into it,” says Templeman. Brand storytelling It’s that ability for illustration to convey narrative that brings London-based studio Together Design to draw on it (excuse the pun) for so many projects. As creative director and founder Heidi Lightfoot puts it, illustration is perfect for branding projects as it can communicate, “really big themes and messages that you just couldn’t sum up in a photograph.” In a photograph, Lightfoot explains, you really have to feel some resonance to the people being featured. “But in illustration it’s often less personal, so we tend to find illustration really useful in communicating big themes that are part of a client’s message.” Together Design put together this packaging and illustration for Fortnum & Mason That sense of illustration as a succinct and easily manipulated conduit for a brand’s message extends into what it says about the brand itself – again, what’s “inherent in a drawing is artistry and craft in a way that’s harder to communicate in other ways,” says Lightfoot. “Type can feel quite cold, and photography can occasionally feel quite glossy, but with an illustration you usually see the hand of the artist. That artistry in craft communicates care, warmth and a bespoke quality, which is lovely for brands who want to communicate those attributes. Then if you’re using one style across different materials, it becomes part of the brand’s handwriting.” Choosing the right collaborators A few years back, the typical way for an agency to find the right illustrator for a project would have been through submitted physical portfolios or using agencies and organisations such as the AOI. Nowadays, it’s more a mix of good old-fashioned ‘who you know’ and trawling through online portfolios and social media, most notably Instagram, and for Together Design, sometimes Pinterest too. For Burns, finding the best illustrator for the project is “more gut instinct than anything else,” and he warns against the temptation to simply hire the person who’s available at the right time, at the right price – especially when up against tighter deadlines and smaller product budgets. For Amos, the process of hiring an illustrator to work on a brand is similarly instinctual. “There’s no hard and fast rule or set process [for commissioning], but as a designer, I think in pictures, so I’ve already got something in my head and I’m looking to translate that into a picture. Sometimes you see a person’s work and think ‘their style would be great’, and that informs the answer; but sometimes you have the answer and you’re looking for the style.” The artist will always bring their own take on something and that brings a whole new angle Heidi Lightfoot, Together Design Of course, as Burns hints, you can’t always get what you want when it comes to your dream commission. You have to take into account budget, availability, and the opinions of any other stakeholders who might have a say in the final look and feel. But what makes a person great to work with, should they fit all of those more pragmatic criteria? For Amos, the best sort of relationship is “a little bit of a ping-pong match,” and Lightfoot agrees that it’s vital to find someone willing to collaborate, and work through potentially numerous iterations with the designers. “No matter how perfect the brief is, when you see the first rough there will always be ways to improve, or perhaps the emphasis on different elements has changed,” she says. “It’s nice to be able to have a conversation about that rather than one stage and one stage only, though that’s very rare as illustrators are usually very open to ideas from both sides. The artist will always bring their own take on something and that brings a whole new angle. It’s all about collaboration, not just telling people what to do.” The key to that sort of working relationship is both clarity and flexibility: setting out a clear brief, but being willing and open to listen to new ideas and seeing an illustrator not as a gun for hire, but a crucial cog in the bigger creative machine. When to illustrate Of course, as with any other design communication tool – be it copy, typography, photography, pattern or colour – designers working with global brands have to do some careful research into any unexpected signifiers that might say something they don’t want to say in other countries. When Design Bridge worked with Timorous Beasties on a set of highly illustrative packaging for Fortnum & Mason, for instance, the team soon discovered that moths are seen as unlucky for certain cultures; and had to take care with the shape and colouration of the butterflies that appeared in the work. Design Bridge worked with Timorous Beasties on this packaging As we’ve seen, illustration and craft beer are superbly comfortable bedfellows, and many food brands, too, use illustrative imagery to convey their message and create on-pack details. So are there any sectors where illustration wouldn’t work? According to Lightfoot, not really. “There might be sectors or client types you wouldn’t think could use it, but illustration can disrupt in an exciting manner,” she says. “Even with a product where photography might be king – maybe with something like a tech brand – there’s always a way that illustration can play a part in the marketing, and I’m excited about brands that use it as part of their core messaging.” Templeman agrees: “An illustration route goes straight to the point in conveying a brand’s message. It has so much stretch and there’s such a huge spectrum of different styles – from more linear, stripped-back work to infographics to beautiful artworks – that I can’t think of a brand that illustration would never be right for.” This article was originally published in Computer Arts, the world's best-selling design magazine. Buy issue 279 or subscribe here. Read more: 19 best painting and drawing apps for iPad 8 up-and-coming designers to watch from D&AD New Blood 7 biggest illustration trends of 2018 View the full article

It's time to dig out your slingshot and striped jersey as The Beano celebrates 80 years of causing chaos and inspiring readers both young and old. To mark the occasion, David Walliams has joined the team to guest edit the comic which has been running since July 30 1938. 14 imaginative web comics to inspire you Having set itself apart from other comics upon its launch by doing away with dreary blocks of text that slowed down the story, The Beano went on to cement itself as the go-to publication for kids looking for a fix of mischief. UK readers will no doubt be familiar with the famous Beano characters that emerged over the years, including The Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx, and of course the Dundee-based comic's most famous creation, Dennis the Menace. It was a comic that you should read under the duvet with a torchlight David Walliams So what's the secret behind The Beano's enduring success? How come it's still going strong after the likes of The Dandy have fallen by the wayside and young readers have moved online? The answer can be found in the comic's continuing drive to innovate, along with a uniquely anarchic humour you just can't find elsewhere. Just as The Beano shook up how comics looked in the thirties, these days it's embracing online platforms to bring innocent menacing to the digital world. As part of the 80th birthday celebrations, a souped-up Dennis and Gnasher Fan Club has been launched, with offerings including printable club badges and membership certificates. Members can also access password-protected areas of the site with a secret code to unlock a treasure trove of pranks. This digital upgrade builds on the legacy of a comic which in its heyday in the '50s sold in the region of two million copies every week. A wealth of creative talents have contributed to The Beano's success, including the legendary Leo Baxendale, and more recently Jon Burgerman. To celebrate with the big day, Dundee's McManus museum is putting on an anniversary exhibition, as well as being renamed McMenace in the process. In his editor's letter, Walliams said: "What I always loved about the Beano was that it felt naughty. It was a comic that you should read under the duvet with a torchlight. I don't think I'd have got into writing my books without Beano." Related articles: How to create a comic page How to colour comics Artists document their lives for Hourly Comic Day View the full article

For generations, album art has been an essential part of listening to music. The media may have changed, from vinyl to cassettes to CDs, and then recently back to vinyl again, but the imagery created to represent our favourite bands' music has continued to be an vital and vibrant element of pop culture. That, and of course, the all important music video. In this post, we salute the most iconic album art in rock history, some of which has gone on to become more famous and recognisable than the music it symbolises, and most of which has also adorned poster designs across the globe. 01. Elvis Presley (1956) Elvis Presley's first album cover shows The King in full flow Until the arrival of Elvis, entertainers had typically been restrained and on best behaviour while on stage. But the Mississippi singer who became known as The King threw away that rulebook, thrusting his hips in an overtly sexual style and running wild with a raw, primal energy. Ths dramatic shot, taken at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Florida by William V. 'Red' Robertson, captures him in a full, convention-defying flow. With its brash and colourful lettering, the design of this iconic cover was later echoed by British punks The Clash for the cover of their 1979 album, London Calling. 02. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles (1967) The cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band marked the end of The Beatles' moptop era and the start of something new While Liverpudlian pop sensations The Beatles started out as loveable mop-tops, they soon became influenced by the Sixties counterculture of pot smoking and protest, and their music started going in radical new directions. This culminated in Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is widely credited as being rock’s first concept album. The cover features two versions of the Beatles. One is the real group, dressed as the fictional Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; the others are wax sculptures. But the real stars here are the life-sized cardboard cut-outs of famous people, from Karl Marx to Marilyn Monroe. Designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth and based on an ink drawing by Paul McCartney, this turned out to be one of the most expensive album covers in history, partly because they had to pay so many people to use their likenesses. It was also the first to feature printed lyrics. 03. The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) Having Andy Warhol as your manager has its advantages The first and best album by Velvet Underground, the psychedelic New York band fronted by Lou Reed, is known by fans as ‘the banana album’ due to the eye-catching illustration on its cover. This fruity drawing was the work of Pop Art icon Andy Warhol, who happened to be the group’s manager, while the cover was designed by Acy R. Lehman. Early versions allowed you to peel back the banana skin to recover a flesh-coloured banana underneath (use your imagination). Most later reissues failed to include this expensive-to-produce feature, and so the original pressings are worth a small fortune on the collectors’ market. 04. Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd (1973) The Dark Side of the Moon cover is one of the most recognisable in rock history Even people who’ve never heard of British rock band Pink Floyd will probably recognise the iconic cover to their 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon, which shows white light passing through a prism to create a spectrum of colours. It was created by Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, the designers behind some of history’s best-known album covers, including Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Black Sabbath’s Never Say Die and The Scorpion’s Lovedrive. They came up with the concept, which was inspired by an image of a prism found in a photography book, after an all-night brainstorming session. The design raised eyebrows at the time for including neither the band’s name nor the album’s title. 05. Never Mind The Bollocks by the Sex Pistols (1977) The cover that established in court, once and for all, that you could put a rude word on an album While the psychedelic era saw album covers commonly feature intricate, surreal and lavish illustrations, punk stripped everything to its bare essentials. And the debut album of Britain’s loudest and angriest punk rockers Sex Pistols, designed by Jamie Reid, was a true statement of intent. The use of obscenity, cast in the kind of cut-out lettering commonly associated with criminal ransom notes, was shocking to audiences of the time. The effect was heightened by the sleeve's lurid colour palette, which was based on a series of stickers distributed by the Situationalist political movement (the originals read: ‘This Store Welcomes Shoplifters’). The use of 'bollocks' (a term in British English that means both 'nonsense' and 'testicles') led to a police raid on a Virgin record store that stocked the record. In the resulting court case, Virgin was successfully defended from obscenity charges by John Mortimer, now best known as the author of Rumpole of the Bailey. As he left the courtroom, the group's singer, Johnny Rotten, joyfully exclaimed to a reporter: "Great! Bollocks is legal. Bollocks! Bollocks! Bollocks!" 06. Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division (1979) This iconic album cover image is based on astronomical data When Salford post-punk band Joy Division released its debut album, it didn’t exactly set the world on fire. But today it’s considered a classic, and its entrancing cover art, designed by Peter Saville, adorns millions of T-shirts and posters worldwide. It was the group’s singer, Bernard Sumner, who originally chose the image. It's a visualisation of the radio waves emitted by a pulsar; a neutron star that is created after a dying sun collapses in on itself. Originally named CP 1919, the pulsar in question had been discovered in November 1967 by student Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her supervisor Antony Hewish at Cambridge University. Sumnar found the image in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Science; Saville then reversed it from black-on-white to white-on-black and printed it on textured card. 07. Rio by Duran Duran (1982) The cover art for Duran Duran's Rio combined Art Deco with contemporary fashion design After all the bleak, moody aggression of seventies punk, many in the eighties were ready for the return of fun and glamour... but that didn’t mean they wanted old-fashioned and cheesy. Duran Duran, a band from Birmingham, England, were among the leading lights of the New Romantic movement, which cleverly combined an art-school sensibility with the kind of pop-funk stylings a mainstream audience could actually dance to. The cover design for their second studio album, Rio, pulls off the same trick. It was designed by Malcolm Garrett and illustrated by Patrick Nagel, who was known for celebrating the female form in a style that combined the Art Deco tradition with contemporary fashion designs. Nagel’s depiction of the lead song’s title character is beautifully minimalist, with an inventive colour palette that was instantly eye-catching and trend-defining. 08. War by U2 (1983) The cover of U2's War took an unusual but inspired approach to illustrating the concept of conflict U2’s singer Bono may nowadays be known for having dinner with Popes and Presidents. But while he’s now Mr Mainstream, early U2 was raw, edgy and raucous. And with its controversial songs about war and conflict, like Sunday, Bloody Sunday, their third studio album could be considered the apex of their rebellious youth. Rather than going the obvious route of picturing a battle scene, though, Irish graphic designer Steve Averill took the inspired decision to instead use a child, powerfully conveying the loss of innocence created by war. The boy staring intensely and unsettlingly at the camera is Peter Rowen, the brother of the artist Guggi, who is a friend of Bono's. Rowen appeared on three U2 albums in total, and is now himself a professional photographer. He's even brought things full circle, by shooting U2 in concert. 09. Licensed to Ill by Beastie Boys (1986) The Beastie Boy's first album cover is perfectly in line with their stupid-but-clever humour At a time when music was largely divided along genre and racial lines, three Jewish boys brought together rap and heavy rock in one album, without compromising on the raw, angry energy of either. Designed by Steve Byram and illustrated by World B. Omes, the cover concept for Licensed to Ill was basically a parody of Led Zeppelin's private jet; a symbol of bloated seventies rock excess that couldn’t have been further removed from the boy-next-door antics of the Beastie Boys. And just in case you needed the irony spelling out, the plane's tail number, 3MTA3, spells "Eat Me" backwards. 10. Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy (1990) The cover of this seminal rap album showed an apocalyptic vision of racial conflict Musically and lyrically, Public Enemy's third studio album remains one of the most inventive and ambitious rap albums of all time. From the biting social commentary of 911 is a Joke, about the variance in police response times between black and white neighbourhoods, to the revolutionary rage of Fight the Power, this record changed the game and has arguably yet to be bettered. The cover design, too, is a classic. Group leader Chuck D, who had himself studied graphic design at New York's Adelphi University, came up with the concept of two worlds (a 'black' planet and Earth) eclipsing. The group enlisted B.E. Johnson, a NASA illustrator, to create the design, and the apocalyptic result is a fantastical commentary on the racial paranoia of white nationalism. 11. Nevermind by Nirvana (1991) Nevermind by Nirvana has one of the most unusual and memorable covers of all time At the beginning of the 1990s, it seemed like rock music was starting to go stale and repeat itself. Then came grunge, which brought everything back to its basics and acted like a big 'reset' button, just as punk had done two decades earlier. Nirvana's second album brought grunge into the mainstream, following the success of their number one hit Smells Like Teen Spirit. And its unusual cover was attention-grabbing to say the least. Singer Kurt Cobain had come up with the idea while watching a TV documentary on water births with drummer Dave Grohl. Geffen's art director Robert Fisher dug out some stock images of underwater births, but they were too graphic to put on an album and would have cost $7,500 to licence. So instead they commissioned photographer Kirk Weddle to shoot some bespoke images in a Pasadena swimming pool for just $1,000. (The dollar and fish hook were added later.) The child he shot was four-month-old Spencer Elden, the son of one of Weddle's friends. He's now 27 and working as an artist in LA, while Weddle has continued to be an advertising photographer specialising in underwater work. 12. Screamadelica by Primal Scream (1991) Uniting dance with indie, Screamadelica came with upbeat, dayglo album art Throughout the 1980s, the divide between indie music and dance music couldn't have been more marked. Then came acid house, ecstasy, rave... and all of a sudden fans of moody rock music became much more open to the idea of repetitive beats. A major landmark in the resulting crossover was Primal Scream's third album, which brought together rock, psychedelia, dub, house and gospel in one glorious concoction. Its cover was the work of Paul Cannell, a London artist known for combining a punk aesthetic with exuberant colours, using unusual media such as house­hold undercoat paint and car body filler. The band's singer Bobby Gillespie took a detail from one of Cannell’s paintings, altered the background colour to a hot red, and the classic 'sun' image was the result. Tragically Cannell took his own life in 2005. But this classic cover, along with his work for bands like Manic Street Preachers, The Telescopes, Flowered Up and Shonen Knife, will surely live for an eternity. It was even recreated as an official postage stamp in 2010, as part of the Royal Mail's Classic Album covers collection. 13. Parklife by Blur (1994) Parklife's album cover appropriated working-class culture perfectly As the 1990s progressed, British youngsters started to tire of ecstasy-fuelled raves, and a vacuum opened up in youth culture. This was quickly filled by a return to the old-fashioned pursuits of boozing and listening to rock bands... but with subtle dashes of post-modern irony to keep things interesting. Best at managing this contradiction were Blur; middle-class student types who nonetheless appealed to the masses with their mockney accents, Kinks-influenced tunes and clever appropriation of working class culture. Parklife, their third studio album, saw them at the height of their powers, from Girls and Boys, which poked fun at Club 18-30 holidays, to the title track, which guest-starred Quadrophenia actor Phil Daniels to brilliant comic effect. All this post-modern authenticity was topped off by a brilliant cover based on the unlikely topic of greyhound racing. (Other images Blur considered were a fruit and veg market stall, a betting shop window... you get the idea.) The image used, shot by photographer Bob Thomas, was taken from a stock image library and was not, contrary to popular belief, shot in Walthamstow. The confusion comes because a separate shoot for the inside cover was carried out at the famous East London track, which has since been converted into flats. 14. Original Pirate Material by The Streets (2002) Original Pirate Material's cover used an image shot for an art photography project When Mike Skinner, aka The Streets, made a rough and ready UK garage album in his bedroom, he was aiming it at typical fans of UK garage. Instead, his funny and poetic lyrics led him to be instantly adopted by middle-class intellectuals, a fact that baffles him to this day. Skinner's embrace by the intelligensia may also have been subconsciously been inspired by the highbrow nature of his cover art. His debut album features an image titled Towering Inferno, shot in 1995 by German artist and photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg. Part of a series called London: A Modern Project that focuses on the capital at night, the shot fits nicely into the "sex, drugs and on the dole" narrative spun by Skinner throughout his debut. 15. Fallen by Evanescence (2003) Fallen's cover, like its music, speaks to feelings of isolation and alienation One of the best-selling albums of the 2000s and the winner of two Grammys, Fallen was the debut of Evanescence, a genre-defying Christian band that combined elements of nu metal, alternative metal and goth. But its influence went way beyond 'just' music. Countless youngsters since its release have testified to the way its lyrics, which deal with subjects of alienation, depression, suicide and death, have helped them deal with the angst of 'feeling different' from their peers. Seen in that light, the album's cover art, featuring frontwoman Amy Lee in defiant alt-girl pose, was perfectly chosen. The singer is staring right at the viewer, provoking a feeling of empathy and shared experience, but at the same time the blurry nature of the image and the cold, harsh colour palette speak to feelings of helplessness and isolation. It's not necessarily the happiest of scenes, but for many fans, it's been an essential and life-enhancing one. 16. American Idiot by Green Day (2004) American Idiot's cover design draws on a range of influences A punk rock opera might sound like a contradiction in terms, but Green Day went ahead and did it anyway. This concept album follows the story of Jesus of Suburbia, a teenage anti-hero, and it spawned five hit singles, including the incendiary title track; a stinging critique of right-wing American media that has arguably never been bettered. A game-changing album demands attention-grabbing artwork, and this cover design, featuring a heart-shaped hand grenade held in a blood-soaked fist, delivers it in spades. It was created by Chris Bilheimer, an art director who studied at the University of Georgia with R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe. The design takes in a number of influences, and is said to be inspired by Chinese communist propaganda art, a lyric from the song She's a Rebel ('he's holding on my heart like a hand grenade"), and Saul Bass's poster for the 1955 film The Man with the Golden Arm. 17. Demon Days by Gorillaz (2005) The Demon Days cover sticks to the Gorillaz conceit of a 'virtual band' As the world strode confidently from the 20th to the 21st century, suddenly everything was going from analogue to digital. And Blur singer Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, the comic artist behind Tank Girl, decided to get ahead of the curve by forming Gorillaz, the world's first virtual band. Combining hip-hop and electronica, the musical output of the band was groundbreaking enough, but they further excited audiences and the media by presenting themselves in the form of cartoon characters, from magazine covers to music videos to websites. At a time when most people were just learning what an avatar was, it was a clever idea, and one that effortlessly translated to the cover of this, their second and seminal album. 18. Born to Die by Lana del Rey (2012) Born to Die's cover design is big, bold and mournful One of only three albums released by a female artist to have spent more than 300 weeks on the Billboard 200, Born to Die combines elements of indie pop and trip-hop with New York singer Lana del Rey's haunting vocals in a way that's far greater than the sum of its parts. And the cover, art-directed by David Bowden, was suitably and beautifully epic. The impactful design combines an arrestingly mournful image of the singer, photographed by Nicole Nodland, with big and bold typography based on a bespoke font, adding a truly cinematic feel to the design. 19. 1989 by Taylor Swift (2014) The cover of 1989 makes it instantly clear what the singer is all about One of the biggest stars of the decade, country-turned-pop singer Taylor Swift has won fans by being open and personal about herself, and the cover of her first 'pure' pop album, 1989, fits perfectly into that narrative. Light years away from the pouting, airbrushed glamour shots of her rivals, it features just a simple Polaroid of the singer, cut off at the eyes, with T.S. 1989 (the year of her birth) scrawled underneath. Nothing complicated, nothing overblown... and all the better to make fans feel connected to 'pop's everywoman'. 20. Lemonade by Beyonce (2016) Lemonade's cover has been the subject of frenzied speculation Let's be frank; in the modern era, with streaming taking over from downloads and social sharing replacing record-store browsing, album artwork has declined in importance. But if an artist is big enough, it still makes an impact, and few artists have been bigger in the 2010s than Beyonce. In a sign of changing times, the singer's sixth album, Lemonade, was first made available through Beyoncé's co-owned streaming service Tidal, a day before being released for digital and physical purchase. The cover shows the singer standing next to a car, wearing a fur coat and cornrow braids, hiding her face behind her arm. It's a still from the shooting of the Don't Hurt Yourself video, directed by Beyonce and Kahlil Joseph. But there's no official explanation about why this particular shot was chosen, leaving fans to speculate on the meaning of the cornrows (symbolising black culture?), fur coat (symbolising fame and riches?) and hidden face (symbolising inner turmoil?). In a social media age in which being talked about seems to be the main aim of all celebrities, from pop stars to Presidents, this may be the perfect album cover for our times. Related articles: The 20 best album covers from the '70s 7 must-read books for design students 27 inspiring examples of vintage poster design View the full article

When you're just starting out in you design career, everything can seem like a struggle. You can ease the pain by having the right drawing tools and learning from inspiring design portfolios, but even so there's bound to come a time when you find yourself asking whether it's all worth it. Everyone's been there, though; even the mightiest creative director has found themselves considering jacking it all in and running away to become an accountant at some point. And so we asked nine leading designers to come up with their top tips for anyone starting out in design. They might just make you see your career in a whole new way. 01. Know your niche Creative director Mads Jakob Poulsen says: "Think about what you can contribute to the world of design. What's your niche? What's your special secret weapon? Don't be like everyone else – do what you think is fun." 02. Have a singular vision "If you make things the way you think they ought to be, they're more likely to be what you'll be asked to make going forward," says Spin's Tony Brook. "It took me a long time to fully understand this." 03. Be versatile Anagrama's Sebastian Padilla comments: "A designer needs to be versatile, like a Swiss Army knife. You need to be comfortable with working in broad fields such as typography, composition and copywriting." 04. Refine your skills "Hone your skill set," says Matt Howarth of ilovedust. "Whether digitally or by hand, work hard on your craft every day and in time you will find a style that you are comfortable with and, most importantly, enjoy doing." 05. Follow your heart Dawn Hancock of Firebelly says: "None of us really know what the hell we're doing, but if you think with your heart and go with your gut, it will all work out in the end." 06. Lose the attitude "My tip for a new, young designer starting their career is to lose any sense of entitlement you may have," says Steve Simmonds of weareseventeen. "Just because you've studied for three or five years doesn't mean you can come into the industry and expect it to be easy. This sounds harsh, but I get young designers all the time telling me what they are and aren't willing to do from day to day. "You must remember that it's not just graduates fighting for their place in this industry; seasoned pros and entire companies are fighting too and good attitudes make all the difference. Be keen and enthusiastic: it goes a long way. Bread and butter work is a staple in any studio, so expect to be heavily involved in a lot of this at first. Don't expect to be working on all the bigger studio projects. This will happen in time; just approach the bread and butter stuff with bags of enthusiasm and make those projects shine unexpectedly. Do this and your rise through the ranks will be swift." 07. Stay the course Becky Bolton of Good Wives and Warriors says: "Our general tip for people is to just try and stick with it! A creative career is going to be peppered with rejection and potentially confusing times. Without sounding too trite, it's important to try and believe in the value of your work and keep pushing through the times when you feel like quitting!" 08. Take risks Ady Bibby of True North says: "Stand for something. Take risks. Don't be happy to merge into the mediocrity of creativity out there." 09. Only work with people you like Designer and teacher Fred Deakin comments: "Biggest lesson: only work with people you like on projects you care about. If you take your time to make great work then eventually the money will come." The full version of this article first appeared in Computer Arts, the world's leading design magazine. Subscribe here. Related articles: Top tips for design students 5 design student stereotypes to avoid How to transform a design internship into a job View the full article