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WordPress makes the web go round. The platform is extremely customisable and ready to be crafted into the perfect website. Learn to make the most of WordPress with the WordPress Essentials Lifetime Bundle. You can get it on sale now for 97 per cent off the retail price. By the time you're finished with the WordPress Essentials Lifetime Bundle, you'll be building amazing websites that will provide you with a web presence that people won't be able to ignore. These courses cover everything from the basics of building a fundamentally sound site to how to market your site and products with professional-level copywriting. It hits on all essentials for any upstart web designer who is hosting their site on WordPress. The WordPress Essentials Lifetime Bundle is packed with $880 worth of WordPress content, but you can get it now for 97 per cent off the retail price. That's a great deal of savings for these must-have courses, so grab this deal today. Related articles: 40 brilliant WordPress tutorials Power a blog using the WordPress API 32 best free WordPress themes View the full article

Technology is a crucial part of our day-to-day lives. We already know that coding knowledge is going to become increasingly important over the coming years. But how do we equip children with the necessary skills to becoming coding literate? The secret lies in engaging their creativity and imagination – which is exactly what these amazing toys and tools do. 01. Botley Botley can be programmed to move around and avoid objects Aimed at children aged five to nine, Botley is a screen-free coding robot. Using logic and step coding, children can easily programme him to perform a range of basic movements, detect and avoid objects, and make sounds. Children can lay out the coding cards to plan and visualise Botley's path before coding his movements. He also comes with detachable robot arms he can use to move objects. 02. Coding Jam Here's something a bit different: with Osmo's Coding Jam, kids use code to create their own unique musical jams. Each coding block is a programming command – combine them in different patterns to create music. Sounds range from prehistoric cave beats, to interplanetary pings and science-lab techno grooves. 03. Cubetto Friendly wooden robot Cubetto offers a screenless introduction to coding. Children arrange the tactile wooden blocks in different sequences on the control board to tell Cubetto where to go. Each colour or shape indicates a different action. The toy can be expanded using additional maps, challenges and storybooks. 04. Hello Ruby Ruby is a little girl who solves problems with with her friends Aiming to turn technology and coding into a whimsical, playful experience, Hello Ruby is packed with amusing downloads to engage children's imaginations. The project started with a book (Adventures in Coding – now available in over 22 languages) funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign. Now, Hello Ruby offers a wide range of fun activities to get kids engaged with coding, such as building your own computer out of cardboard, or designing your own board game. The aim of the project is to make STE(A)M education more approachable, colourful and diverse. Get Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding from Amazon: $9.60 / £10.95 Get Hello Ruby: Journey Inside the Computer from Amazon: $10.98 £11.98 05. Code-a-Pillar Rearrange the segments to control the Code-a-Pillar's movements The cute Code-a-Pillar from Fisher Price can be programmed to turn, light up and make sounds. Preschoolers are encouraged to rearrange the colourful segments to change the Code-a-Pillar's path. The set contains a motorised head and eight easy to connect segments, and there are expansion packs to encourage further exploration. As well as improving motor skills, this coding toy is designed to help develop children improve their understanding of sequencing, critical thinking, reasoning and problem solving. 06. Ozobot Evo Young coders can teach the Evo tricks Evo is Ozobot's award-winning coding robot. Aspiring coders can interact with it, teach it tricks, or programme it to do new things – either on-screen, or screen-free using markers and stickers provided in the experience pack. There's also an accompanying iOS/Android add where users can play, explore, and get creative ideas from the community. The Ozobot Evo is aimed at fledgling coders aged eight and over, and has some enthusiastic reviews. 07. Puzzlets Help Rus and his friends save Pear Island in this coding game Combining a physical Play Tray with tablet devices, Puzzlet lets children programme their way through an adventure game and develop their STEAM skills in the process. Children aged six and over can help Rus and his friends save Pear Island from the evil King Kaldera and his minions. With millions of possible solutions, Puzzlets has been tested and approved by gamers as a way of getting young people to think like programmers. Not only that, it gets a thumbs up from teachers, and has snagged a couple of awards, too. 08. Hackaball Hackaball takes ball games to a whole new level. This smart ball teaches the basics of coding in an active way. Children can programme it to light up, change colour and make noises, then have fun playing unique games. Originally funded via a Kickstarter campaign, the Hackaball has attracted a host of awards and positive reviews. Buy Hackaball: $124.99/£89.99 Liked this? Read these: Nintendo Labo makes coding child's play 14 brilliantly creative gifts for kids 8 brilliant portfolios from young designers View the full article

Master the techniques of famous surrealist painters with the latest issue of ImagineFX magazine - on sale today. Inside the pages of issue 161 you'll discover how to turn abstract ideas into strong character art, plus you'll learn how surrealist artists whipped up a strong sense of atmosphere. There's more to it than painting melting clocks! Buy issue 161 of ImagineFX here! Elsewhere in issue 161 we pay a visit to Jake Parker's studio, celebrate 25 years of Magic: The Gathering, and reveal how to build up a ghostly scene with paints in our traditional artist workshop. On top of this there's the usual news, reviews, and reader art that you've come to expect from the world's leading digital art magazine. Take a look at this issue's lead features below. Click here to subscribe to ImagineFX Staying smart on social Time to log out? Getting distracted by social media is a problem for everyone, but artists in particular struggle to manage their time online. We talk to artists from all walks of life to discover how they strike a work and social media balance, and hear how the online platforms can be used in a proactive way. Inside the mind of Allen Williams Pay a visit to the illustrator's subconscious in our interview American illustrator Allen Williams' fascination for drawing started at a young age as his family moved around the country. We talk to the artist about how he teases imagery from his subconscious using prose and poetry. Sketchbook insights Get a behind the scenes look at the work of top artists Few things are more tantalising than taking a look inside the pages of an artist's sketchbook. Here you get to see them at work as they figure out various drawing challenges. In this issue we take a peek into the sketchbooks of Tobias Kwan and Daria Theodora and discover what makes them tick. Revisit a surreal master This workshop pays tribute to one of the most inspiring surreal artists The work of Zdzislaw Beksinski has been revered as some of the best surrealist art of the 20th century thanks to its haunting atmospheres and sinister, baroque characters. In this workshop we revisit this master and learn how we can emulate his style in our own digital and traditional paintings. Storytelling art Learn how a single image can take you on a complete journey They say a picture's worth a thousand words, which means that artists can spin entire stories from one single well-crafted image. In this in-depth workshop we explore how a carefully curated mix of character design and world building details can say more than pages and pages of text ever could. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin... Related articles: How to improve your character art Doodle art: 52 great examples 15 influential art and design movements you should know View the full article

Editorial work is a staple for many illustrators. While it's rarely as well-paid as branding or advertising commissions, it's a chance to stretch the creative muscles and tackle a broad range of subject matters. Illustration can visualise the most abstract, surreal and complex themes and concepts that photography would struggle with. It can fill any available space, interact with the copy, grab readers' attention and draw people into the story. As our illustrator hotlist 2018 attests, the global illustration scene is booming – and editorial is no exception. Read on for our pick of eight particularly inspiring editorial illustrations from around the world. 01. Calum Heath: Cyber Bullying To represent cyber bullying, Calum Heath turned Facebook Likes into shark fins circling an isolated girl Editorial illustration can represent powerful, emotional and also quite abstract concepts, as this piece by London-based illustrator Calum Heath demonstrates. Heath specialises in editorial work, with clients including The New Yorker, the Guardian and MixMag. This piece for VICE, one of his favourites to date, accompanied an article about cyber bullying. In a clever symbolic twist, it transforms familiar Facebook 'Like' icons into foreboding shark fins, circling a girl. "The drawing was originally from life – an observational sketch of my younger sister on her phone," he explains. "I re-contextualised the drawing to make her seem isolated and in danger." 02. A. Richard Allen: Trump Wave Donald Trump's election victory sparked a flurry of political illustrations, including A. Richard Allen's Trump Wave Political satire has always been a fertile breeding ground for illustration, and Donald Trump's shock victory in the 2016 Presidential Election gave plenty of ammunition to creatives around the world. One particularly memorable example is A. Richard Allen's Trump Wave, for The Sunday Telegraph's Money section. Inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic painting Great Wave Off Kanagawa, the award-winning editorial illustration expresses the world's financial markets bracing themselves for potential impact. “Hokusai’s Great Wave is such a beautiful and iconic image – it even has its own emoji – and it seemed apt to reference it when seeking a metaphor for a frozen moment of dramatic anticipation," explains Allen. “The Trump coiffeur as the breaking wave was a neat piece of serendipity. I had to make an oblique reference to the man himself, and chose his inimitable hairstyle.” 03. Helen Musselwhite: 10 Myths of Creativity Helen Musselwhite's intricate papercraft illustration added extra depth and colour to this Dance Gazette article Papercraft illustration has enjoyed a huge resurgence over the last decade or so, with leading proponents such as Owen Gildersleeve, Yulia Brodskaya, Helen Friel and Helen Musselwhite flying the flag with style. Used in an editorial capacity, papercraft can add an incredible amount of depth to an article, although commissioners need to be clear and confident with their feedback at an early stage, and sign off roughs before the build begins, as even the smallest tweaks at the end can be a real challenge. Musselwhite created two skulls to represent the joy of a great idea, and the disappointment when one doesn't come One of Musselwhite's standout pieces, 10 Myths of Creativity, illustrated an article in the Royal Academy of Dance’s magazine Dance Gazette that explored popular myths surrounding the creative process. She created a series of intricate paper skulls, using various weights of paper, to represent two extremes: “That lightbulb moment when you know you’ve nailed it, versus the crushing feeling of despair and insecurity when the creative juices aren’t flowing and you feel you’re on the edge.” 04. Simon Pemberton: The Blackest Isles Simon Pemberton captured the bleak, moody, stormy seas around the Shetland Isles for the Financial Times Sometimes editorial illustration is as much about capturing the mood or emotion of a particular scene or place described in the copy, as it is about depicting it faithfully – which a photograph could do. A winner at the V&A Illustration Awards 2015, Simon Pemberton's stormy, evocative illustration for the FT Weekend magazine accompanied a feature about the Shetland Isles, and perfectly captures the icy cold and thunderous skies during a stormy boat journey. This extract from the article sums up what Pemberton was trying to achieve: “Last night… the ship bucked and tossed as if we were on a fairground ride... the gale has dropped outside and it has started to freeze. Weather is everything in Shetland… we always know which way the wind is blowing.” 05. Eva Bee: The Day My Brother Was Taken A book review in The Observer for The Day My Brother Was Taken was brought to life in style by Eva Bee's illustration As well as communicating abstract concepts, editorial illustration is also fantastic for telling stories – there's a reason why the best children's books feature a collaboration between author and illustrator. Eva Bee specialises in editorial work, with clients including The Boston Globe, Financial Times, the Guardian and Reader's Digest. This particular piece accompanied a book review in The Observer's Sunday magazine: the story of a young boy who leaves home on his bike, and is abducted and killed in the woods. Filled with dark, foreboding menace, Bee's illustration draws you in, in classic horror style, communicating the eerie horror of the story without gratuitous violence. 06. Izhar Cohen: Burnout Izhar Cohen visualised the risk of burnout using a sea of metaphorical matches for this article in The Economist Certain publications rely on illustration to add colour and personality to topics that can be quite wordy, theoretical and not always immediately visual in scope. Izhar Cohen created three illustrations to accompany an article about 'burnout' in The Economist's 1843 magazine, in which the author argues that the root of the problem lies much deeper than people simply working too hard. Using a field of matches with subtle human faces as a visual metaphor, Cohen created a powerful image of what happens to the human mind if it's pushed too far. His full-page opener features a man chopping a lone matchstick with an axe in the outline of an human mind, and risking setting the whole place ablaze when it falls. 07. Tom Dilly Littleson: Undead The terrifying nature of the rabies disease became a blood-red wolf in Tom Dilly Littleson's illustration for US WIRED WIRED is famed for its stylish use of commissioned illustration, and work for the magazine is a portfolio highlight for many top creatives around the world. To illustrate a 2012 story in the US edition about a girl with rabies who benefited from a pioneering course of medical treatment, the creative director at the time, Brandon Kavulla, turned to Australian-Spanish artist Tom 'Dilly' Littleson. Littleson's two illustrations were strikingly overlaid for the feature opener, representing the conflict inside the girl Known for his realistic pencil drawings, and often visceral, gruesome and unsettling subject matter, Littleson represented the disease as a snarling wolf on a blood-red background, juxtaposed with a calm, sleeping image of the girl on pale cream. Dramatically entitled 'UNDEAD', the article opens with a split version of the two images as alternating stripes, to symbolise the crossroads that the girl faced between recovery and descent into rabid madness. 08. Weapons of Reason Weapons of Reason is published biannually Picking up the prize for best use of illustration at the Stack Awards 2017, Weapons of Reason is the brainchild of London-based creative agency Human After All. Published "roughly biannually", the title aims to tackle the biggest questions of our time. While many of the examples above are stand-out examples of particular articles that editorial illustration has brought to life, here we're featuring Weapons of Reason in its entirety, as illustration is such as fundamental part of how the magazine tells stories, from the cover inwards. Halfway through its ambitious run, Weapons of Reason has mastered the use of illustration to explain complex topics The first four issues explore climate change, the ageing population, the growth of megacities and the balance of power in the world – with four more to come over the next couple of years. Such huge topics require a deft touch to make them accessible and interesting, and the magazine's skilful approach to illustration helps translate even the most complex subject matter into bold, simple visuals. Related articles: 5 unusual uses of colour in logo design 7 innovative ways to photograph your portfolio 6 ways to save money as a freelancer View the full article

The number of vulnerabilities continues to grow. In the past year, it increased by 14 percent, reaching an all-time high of nearly 20,000, according to the Flexera Vulnerability Review 2018. This figure alone is clear evidence that the challenge of reducing the risk of exploitation of unattended vulnerabilities is not getting easier. On the contrary, things keep getting more complicated with costly consequences for businesses around the globe… Let me exemplify: Story one: a vulnerability on an operating system (OS) is disclosed – let’s say Windows Server. Patching servers’ OS can be tricky. No one wants to disrupt the business by taking down a system outside regular maintenance windows or by breaking something. The vulnerability is critical, but it has no exploit. The conclusion is not to patch now. The issue is forgotten and that patch is never applied. Then one day you get to work and you’re a victim of a ransomware attack like WannaCry. Story two: a vulnerability on an open source software (OSS) is disclosed. You build internal systems using that OSS but you do not document the use properly. That system parses customer data. Because you do not know you use that OSS, you don’t know you’re vulnerable. One day your business is making the cybersecurity headlines, like in the case of Equifax. WannaCry and Equifax were cases that made it to the news, but the fact is that those are not isolated cases. The exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities remains one of the main vectors for incidents and breaches. According to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute nearly 60% of organizations that suffered data breaches in the past two years cite unpatched vulnerabilities as the culprit in the attack. In a different study by analyst firm Forrester, IT security professionals place exploitation software vulnerabilities as the most common mean for external attacks leading to incidents. But how can you improve your practices to manage software vulnerabilities? Here are three points to take into consideration: You don’t know what you don’t know I continue to be surprised by how many organizations simply don’t know a large portion of the software they use. You can’t expect to protect your systems if you just don’t know what’s in there. Knowing what you have and where is the critical first step in the quest to stay on top of vulnerable applications. Policies and processes Doesn’t matter if it is about applying patches or mitigating the risk of exploitation of a vulnerability which can’t be patched. Policies and processes that enforce those policies are the only way to get control over software vulnerabilities and report on risk reduction. It’s a relatively simple principle: Most incidents occur long after the vulnerability is publicly known. So, processes that support a regular cadence of assessment and mitigation should do the trick and effectively reduce risk. Intelligence and prioritization It’s clear that not all vulnerabilities can be fixed as they become public. The only way is to prioritize. But do you even know when a vulnerability is disclosed for a piece of software you use? Do you have trusted information on vulnerabilities affecting your systems? Can you connect that information with your policies to determine what to do first? Without timely, accurate information on vulnerabilities – intelligence – prioritizing is simply not possible. All of this is easier said than done. But there is hope. Organizations are becoming more aware of the problem and understanding that detection systems and security teams are overwhelmed with the incidents and consequently failing to stop breaches that could have been prevented with optimized processes to regularly patch applications and systems. Flexera’s customers report that our vulnerability intelligence and our technology help them achieve visibility, prioritize efforts and remediate vulnerabilities faster and without operational overhead. They remediate the right things and reduce the risk of exploitation for their businesses effectively. Download Vulnerability Review 2018 – Global Trends today and learn more about the vulnerability landscape and our vision for mitigating risk. Learn more about our solutions for managing software vulnerabilities. Source View the full article

Getting the typography right in your web designs is a vital skill, but one that's difficult to master. These top typography tools for web designers will help you on your way. Here we've included tools to help you find the perfect font pairing and great places to download fonts, but also some handy tools to help you make your font choices work well in situ. 01. Gridlover This tools is great for gauging font sizes Gridlover is awesome at gauging font sizes and spacing on a web page when you’re considering how big your H1 and H2 titles need to be. This free tool enables you to dynamically set scaling rules that apply to your headers and tinker with the CSS. It’s also a great tool for when you need to hand over designs to a developer. The output CSS and rules are really useful for ensuring consistency between design and code. 02. Canva Font Combinations Pick a starter font and see where it takes you Canva's Font Combinations is a useful tool if you want to simply see font pairings and get some inspiration. Select your starter font and this tools will provide you with a list of useful ideas of great font pairings. A great advantage is that you can also see the pairing in situ with live examples. Although the font listing is not huge, you can count on every font being web safe and is a great starting point for inspiration. 03. Adobe Typekit Typekit offers an abundance of web-safe fonts Adobe Typekit is a healthy alternative to Google Fonts, providing you an abundance of choice on web-safe fonts. Create kits for individual projects and navigate through a variety of available fonts. What’s useful about this tool is the ability to rewrite the sample text and filter through typography styles. With a font chosen it’s really easy to install on a web page using a couple of lines of code in the head of your HTML and CSS. 04. Fonts.com This library includes more unique and unusual fonts A great resource if you want your project to be more individual and unique. Font libraries like Google Fonts and Adobe Typekit are always great, but you can count on your chosen fonts being used by others too. The wonderful thing about Fonts.com is that you can browse through a larger portfolio of fonts and see how they are being used by the font authors. It’s a great inspiration resource, especially for personal and unique fonts. Web design event Generate New York returns on 25-27 April 2018, offering a packed schedule of industry-leading speakers, a full day of workshops and valuable networking opportunities – don’t miss it. Get your Generate ticket now. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 271 or subscribe. Read more: The best free fonts for designers 20 fonts every graphic designer should own 5 traits that define a typeface’s personality View the full article

Whether you're just learning how to draw, working through a set of Illustrator tutorials, or you're an illustration pro, reference images are important. But if you're not careful they can cause problems of their own. Your first order of business should be to decide what you need and then photograph accordingly. The best cameras for creatives Before I take the time to get friends together for reference, I usually make a couple of small sketches that roughly define the pose and, if possible, the lighting scheme. It can be tempting to just go outside and shoot photos until you've got something you like (and believe me, I've done it). But there are few things more annoying than thinking you've got the perfect image, sitting down to paint, and realising you have to do the photo shoot all over again because the composition doesn't work with the new pose, lighting and so on. With a little knowledge of lighting, you can even cut and paste your images together for a pose that's more dynamic than what you captured initially. "Try to focus on the painting, not matching reference," says Foti Once the image is ready, you can use the lighting information in several ways. Obviously, it'll help you to paint the main figure. Whenever I have to make something up (the crow's nest of a pirate ship, in this case) I look for anything with a similar angle and texture. When developing the pose from reference, don't get too concerned with matching things exactly. Instead of copying the image, check in with it to get the information correct while you draw the idea in your head. Using a stand-in You can't create the perfect scenerio, so improvise just to allow for perspective and size If there's a scene element you can't get a hold of (in this case the periscope), have your model hold something similar. You can find reference later on, and, to be thorough, take photos in the same setting of something with similar textures. Watch the video for more tips This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 127. Related articles: How to draw the human figure The best photo editors Free graphic design software available to you right now View the full article

Most sites you visit on the web are probably generated dynamically. That is, rather than having all their content encoded into the HTML stored on the server, they retrieve content from a database and construct pages to serve to you on the fly. Many also provide user interactivity through logins, forms and so on. Think of Facebook for an example of both of these things. To build this type of functionality yourself, you might look to a CMS such as WordPress. Web design inspiration For some use cases, however, this is overkill. Simple pages, such as a personal profile, information about a business or even a blog, really don’t need this sort of overhead or complexity. You could of course just build static HTML yourself in a text editor. And indeed, many years ago this was how all sites were built, but this rapidly becomes cumbersome to maintain when you want to scale up or make changes. Static site generators offer a solution to this, by enabling you to build static HTML pages using templates. Essentially, static site generators are command-line tools that shift the creation of the final HTML page forward from the point the user requests it to the point you write the content. When you make an update, you build the new page, which can then be served as-is to every user who requests it. This offers several advantages. Performance will be greatly improved compared to a dynamic site, since serving static HTML and CSS has a very low footprint. Your server-side setup will be much simpler, which also means fewer security worries. Conversely, however, you’ll lose the opportunity to deliver real-time content or receive user input. Static site generators have exploded in popularity in recent years, so navigating the wide range of choice can be difficult. Here, we’ve taken a look at some of the best options you should be considering. 01. Jekyll Jekyll remains one of the most widely used static site generators First released in 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, the co-founder of GitHub, Jekyll arguably popularised the concept of static sites and remains probably the most widely used static site generator. With Jekyll, you’ll typically work with content in Markdown, a lightweight markup language designed for text formatting. The Liquid templating engine is used to place this Markdown content into a HTML template, and to combine templates representing various parts of a page (say, header, footer and content) in a modular and re-usable manner. Support for Sass is built in for those with a preference for CSS preprocessing, and it’ll play fine with libraries like Bootstrap. Also included with Jekyll is an HTTP server which can be used to easily deploy and test your static pages locally. One of Jekyll’s key selling points is its wide range of ‘importers’, which enable an existing site to be migrated to Jekyll with relative ease. If you have a WordPress site, for example, you can switch to using Jekyll using one of the importers. It’s also trivial to convert existing static HTML sites to Jekyll, which can be great if you’ve been coding static HTML yourself or see a template you like the look of. Notably, Jekyll is used to power GitHub pages, a static site hosting service which is provided with GitHub. If you have a GitHub repository, you’re able to create a GitHub pages site for free using Jekyll. This can be a convenient way to give a polished landing page to your GitHub project. The big downside of Jekyll – and this applies to most generators – is that it can seem complex at first and is a new technology to master. You might not be up and running as quickly as with a CMS. However, it’s very well documented and the learning curve is quickly overcome. 02. Hexo Be sure to write your content in Markdown for Hexo Hexo is powered by Node.js and aimed at blogging. While the JavaScript implementation shouldn’t in theory make too much difference to how you work with it, since you’ll be using with markup and templating languages, it can make installation and configuration more familiar for JavaScript developers. If you’re already using npm and git then it’s extremely simple to get up and running. Like many other general purpose generators, you’ll probably want to write your content in Markdown. The default templating engine is Swig, which is once again well suited for JavaScript developers. However, Hexo is extensible to allow other templating engines to be used if you want. The Hexo website includes a range of pre-built themes for you to try out, and one especially popular feature of the tool is its support for single-command deployment. 03. Gatsby Gatsby can be picked up quickly by developers Like Hexo, Gatsby is powered by Node.js and so will be more familiar territory for experienced JavaScript developers. However, several things set it apart from other similar tools. Gatsby uses React, which means that everything is built with components, and allows it to benefit from React’s approach to DOM rendering. This means it can be picked up quickly by developers who have worked with React, but for those unfamiliar with it, learning React will be necessary. It also utilises GraphQL at build time to retrieve data and content from data sources, which provides a modern, consistent interface to ensure that each page receives the exact data needed when it is built. Finally, Gatsby will build pages as progressive single page apps, meaning that the entire site is downloaded and subsequent navigation is immediate. 04. Hugo Whip up your site in milliseconds with Hugo Widely regarded as the ‘other’ leading static site generator, it’s only natural to compare Hugo with Jekyll. Hugo is the newer of the two, and one of its key focus areas is speed, which for some has been a complaint with Jekyll. Nobody likes waiting for a site to build, and Hugo can put together a simple site from your markup and templates in milliseconds, or even blaze through thousands of pages in seconds. With Hugo it’s also typical to write content with Markdown, and the templating engine is based on Go templates since Hugo itself is implemented in the Go programming language. Like Jekyll, it ships with a lightweight HTTP server to quickly serve your pages locally. The two tools’ build workflows are overall fairly similar. For many, the key benefit of Hugo is its quicker, simpler path to getting started, with very little need for configuration and no dependencies other than the core binary. Its documentation and tutorials are very good, and it has an ethos of maintaining simplicity which makes for a very approachable learning curve. One disadvantage Hugo has relative to Jekyll is that it lacks the extensive plugin ecosystem available for the latter. Given its wide range of built-in functionality, however, this is unlikely to be a problem for most users. It also may be marginally lighter on support on sites such as StackOverflow since it hasn’t been around as long; however, it continues to grow in popularity and many believe it may become the leading static site generator in the near future. 05. NUXT Nuxt brings a component-based approach to development Vue.js has gained immense popularity as a front-end framework in recent years, due to its combination of a gentle learning curve, high performance and powerful feature set. Nuxt.js is actually a framework for creating server-rendered Vue applications – that is, dynamic pages which are rendered by the server before being passed in their completed form to the client to display. However, it can also be use to build static sites, with a command line parameter that will build static HTML pages for all routes through a Vue project. Since Nuxt is a Vue framework, familiarity with Vue will be necessary to use it, but developers who have worked with Vue before will feel right at home. And, like Vue, it also brings a component-based approach to development of your sites. 06. MkDocs MkDocs specialises in project documentation sites MkDocs is more specialised than the tools we’ve looked at up until now. It sets out with one very simple objective in mind: to provide a fast and easy-to-use way to generate HTML sites for project documentation. And it absolutely succeeds at doing this. It’s built in Python, so you’ll need Python and pip (Python package manager) installed to get it. After that, getting started is easy. Documentation is written in Markdown, and the tool is configured using a single YAML file. The command-line build process is as simple as it could be. The MkDocs GitHub page includes a number of themes which are specially designed for documentation, or you can build HTML for your own theme. MkDocs is one of the easiest static site generators to get started with, and if documentation is your use case, there really isn’t much cause to look at other tools. 07. Pelican Pelican allows you to import your site from a variety of blogging platforms Pelican supports content written in multiple languages, including the ubiquitous Markdown. It uses the Jinja templating engine, which is both easy to use and extremely powerful, meaning that while Pelican is primarily optimised for building blogs, it is also well suited to building a wide range of different types of other sites. It’s also fast, and can comfortably handle sites with thousands of pages without making you wait for them to build. Like many of the leading static site generators, Pelican allows you to import your site from a variety of blogging platforms. This makes it trivial to convert an existing site built with WordPress or many other popular content management systems. If you’re familiar with Python, and especially if you’ve used Jinja templates before, Pelican is a very safe choice. Conversely, however, it may be a little harder to get to grips with for developers who are more familiar with JavaScript or Ruby. 08. Metalsmith Metalsmith is more customisable than other tools on this list Metalsmith takes a different approach to many other static site generation tools, in that it doesn’t try to do very much at all. Essentially, static site generators take a set of source files, manipulate them, and then generate a set of output files which is the static site itself. Metalsmith provides a framework for doing this, but leaves all of the actual manipulations to plugins. These manipulations are things which typically come out of the box with other static site generators, such as utilising templates, substituting variables, or interpreting languages like Markdown. When run through Metalsmith, all source files are converted to JavaScript objects, which means that manipulations by plugins are essentially modifications to properties of these JavaScript objects. There is, for example, a markdown() plugin which transpires Markdown to HTML. The result of this approach is that Metalsmith is immensely customisable, but requires a little more consideration during setup than some of the more monolithic tools. Don’t like Jekyll’s use of the Liquid templating engine? Here you can pick your own. On the Metalsmith page, you’ll find a lengthy list of plugins to provide a wide range of functionalities, ranging from compiling Sass to CSS through to computing a word count. If you have a preference for unopinionated frameworks, Metalsmith is about as unopinionated as you can get. 09. Middleman Middleman is flexible enough to build a variety of sites Middleman was released around the same time as Jekyll, and will be most familiar to developers who have worked with Ruby on Rails. Its default template engine is ERB (Embedded RuBy) and it also includes built-in support for Haml, Sass, SCSS and Coff eeScript, and can be extended further to support more. Some leading static site generators are heavily geared towards blogs, but Middleman sets its ambitions wider and aims to provide the flexibility to develop any type of site. It’s highly unopinionated and extensible. This means, if all you are doing is a blog, the setup is a little more complex since you’ll have to configure it. 10. Spike Spike is designed to create very simple frameworks Spike is built by the same team as Roots, which saw great popularity while it was actively maintained. It provides a familiar ecosystem for JavaScript developers, utilising webpack, Postcss, Reshape and Babel. Much like Metalsmith, Spike is designed to provide a very simple framework and allow plugins to handle your transformations. Web design event Generate New York returns on 25-27 April 2018, offering a packed schedule of industry-leading speakers, a full day of workshops and valuable networking opportunities – don’t miss it. Get your Generate ticket now. This article was originally published in issue 271 of creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 271 here or subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: The web designer starter toolkit The future of web design How to make it in the web design industry View the full article

If you work in 3D you'll know full well that it pays to stay up-to-date with the latest and best hardware – or at least, the latest and best hardware you can afford. Having the best kit won't make you a better artist, but it will help you create stunning 3D art or render beautiful 3D movies a lot faster. The best computers for video editing 2018 Bearing that in mind, we've assembled five of the best bits of 3D gear you can buy for your studio right now. Have no doubt: some of this kit is eye-wateringly expensive, but if you're serious about producing the best 3D content then you'll find that this hardware quickly pays for itself. This isn't your average tablet 3D has traditionally been a hardware-intensive discipline, making it difficult to work away from your desktop. However, Wacom's stunning mobile pen computer gives professional 3D artists and illustrators the convenience of a mobile tablet – with the full power of desktop creative apps. Making the iPad Pro look more like the iPad Plucky Amateur, the MobileStudio Pro is a high-end Windows 10 PC crammed into a 13 or 16-inch tablet form factor. Powered by an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and Nvidia Quadro GPU, it's packed with features making it ideal for 3D content creation. Its Pro Pen 2 boasts increased capabilities – including 60 degrees of tilt, over 8000 levels of sensitivity and pixel-level pointing accuracy, and higher-spec models come with a 3D scanning camera. Make no mistake: this is a heavyweight machine, literally. You'll know if you're carrying it around all day, particularly the 16-inch model. But if you need to be able to create on the move, the MobileStudio Pro is the only serious choice. Also read: Wacom MobileStudio Pro review The HTC Vive is already the best of the VR headsets, but HTC is upping its game with the Vive Pro, due out in May and available to pre-order now. At $799 for just the headset – you'll need to buy base station sensors and controllers separately – it's not cheap, but if you're working in VR then you'll appreciate its new features. These include a better-fitting headset that's designed to be comfortable for extended periods of time, built-in on-ear headphones delivering 3D spatial audio, and a second front-facing camera for improved tracking. The Vive Pro also boasts a dual AMOLED display with a native resolution of 2880 x 1600, a 110 degree field of view and a rock-solid 90Hz refresh rate. And with the Vive Wireless Adapter due soon you'll be able to use the Vive Pro without all the cables. Also read: HTC Vive Pro review Buy US: HTC Vive Pro at Amazon for $799 Buy UK: HTC Vive at GAME for £799 If you're embracing a VR workflow, you'll want an effective way of building or sculpting in a VR environment. And while both the Vive and Oculus controllers do their jobs perfectly well, it's hard to beat investing in a Leap Motion VR Developer Kit. It takes the standard Leap Motion sensor and mounts it on the front of your VR headset, freeing you from controllers and tracking your hand movements to give you that extra level of precision and finesse that you might not need for gaming in VR – but could prove essential when you're in the middle of a tricky 3D build. Buy US: Leap Motion VR Developer bundle at Amazon for $89.99 Buy UK: Leap Motion Controller for £60.16 and Leap Motion Motion Sensor System for £83.63 Get a new GPU before the Bitcoin miners ruin everything The GPU market is in a very weird state at the moment. If you haven't needed to buy a new GPU in the last couple of years, you're in for a shock next time you go shopping for a 3D upgrade. Decent GPUs are in short supply and their prices have gone through the roof, and it has nothing to do with any demand for realistic 3D graphics. Rather, they're being snapped up by Bitcoin miners as fast as the manufacturers can produce them. The good news, though, is that the miners tend to concentrate on consumer-level hardware such as the Nvidia 10-series GPUs. Pro-level hardware is a little easier to acquire (although these days you'll find that the number of cards you can buy in one purchase is limited), so you shouldn't have much difficulty getting your hands on one of Nvidia's workstation cards. Nvidia's new Quadro GV100, with 640 deep learning-focused Tensor cores on top of 5,120 CUDA cores, is almost certainly overkill for a 3D workflow, especially at $8,999. But the Quadro P6000, with 3,840 cores, 24GB memory and 12 TFLOPS FP32 performance should be all you'll need for the next few years, and it's a (relative) snip at just $4,694/£4,100. Make every other screen you own look blurry and weedy by comparison We've looked at some great portable tech and VR trinkets, but let's face it: you still need a decent monitor most of the time. And they don't come much more decent than Dell's UP3218K. It's the world's first 32-inch 8K monitor, giving you unprecedented levels of crispness, and delivering exceptionally accurate colours and smooth gradation. The best 4K monitors for designers It uses Dell's PremierColor system to provide colour coverage that meets most industry standards, it boasts a flicker-free display that filters out blue light emissions so that it's comfortable to stare at all day, and its adjustable stand means that you can quickly and easily switch it from landscape to portrait view. It'll definitely give a Quadro P6000 a run for its money, and it costs slightly less; the UP3218K is available now from Dell for $3,699.99 / £3,435 Read: Dell UltraSharp UP3218K review Related articles: The best iPad deals for April 2018 Why designers shouldn’t hack their Mac Pro The best computer for graphic design 2018 View the full article

A brilliant new pocket guide to manga art inspired us to seek out the best tools around for those looking to master the form, in this month's round up. We picked out the best quality paper around, and a pack of professional-level pens that won't break the bank. Elsewhere, we get stuck into modern, illustrative mapmaking – skills that teach you how to draw your favourite places. We look at a new book exploring masterpieces that were lost, stolen and destroyed. We get introspective with an essential text on the self-portrait. Finally, another new release encourages you take on ‘sketch dares’. Let’s get started! 01. Tattoos for geeks All the nerdiest tatts around Geek Ink is a tattoo coffee table book with a bit of a difference. Inkstinct is a project that connects 380,000 tattoo studios worldwide. Its new title shows off the best tattoo art that references fantasy and sci-fi themes, maths, science, literature and philosophy, and their creators discuss how they drew them. It's the "definitive tattoo inspiration sourcebook" for geeks. 02. Stolen, looted, destroyed This book celebrates the greatest artwork that didn't make it to the modern day Noah Charney wrote bestseller The Art of Forgery. For his new book, The Museum of Lost Art, he returns to the art underworld and looks at work that was stolen, looted or destroyed in war. Some pieces featured here were accidentally lost, others damaged in natural disasters, and others still destroyed because of the images they carried. Most remarkable of all are the masterpieces recycled for their materials. 03. Art for bookworms Learn how books are used symbolically within art "As every book tells a story, every book in art is part of an intriguing, engaging, and relatable image." In Reading Art: Art for Book Lovers, David Trigg looks into how books in art are used as symbols and subjects in their own right. He considers pieces from museums all over the world in an "homage to both the written word and to its pivotal role in the visual world”. One for both art geeks and bookworms. 04. Modern mapmaking A step-by-step guide to modern cartography In The Art of Map Illustration, four artists guide you through a step-by-step exploration of contemporary cartography and mapmaking. They share their own approaches and techniques, using pen and ink, watercolour, mixed media, and digital processes. They recommended the best tools and materials for drawing intricate maps that tell stories about your favourite cities. 05. Outdoor sketch kit Everything you need to go en plein air This outdoor sketching kit is put together by ever-reliable brand Derwent, so it's good quality gear, but it won't break the bank. The wallet contains graphite, water-soluble, onyx, and charcoal pencils, plus an eraser, a blender, a sharpener, and an A5 sketchpad: everything you need to get outdoors and get started on your mapmaking. For top tips, take a look at our guide to en plein air painting. 06. Level-up your manga A neat but comprehensive guide to Japanese comic art The Little Book of Manga Drawing contains everything you need to know about how to draw manga. It starts with the fundamentals of the form, basic techniques like heads and bodies and proportions, before moving onto to props, colour, costumes, and storytelling. It contains practice pages, creative exercises, and art prompts, so there's something for artists of every level. A small but comprehensive guide to Japanese comic art. 07. Pro-level manga pens These pens are colourfast and won't bleed or smudge These Faber-Castell pens are perfect for manga art. They're colourfast and don't bleed or smudge, so they're perfect for character line work. The pack contains a range of blacks and greys, and various tips ranging from rigid to brush-like. A good stepping stone for anyone looking to move towards professional-level pens, but at an affordable price. 08. Quality manga paper Canson is a leading brand for manga art paper If you're going to get stuck into manga art, you need some nice heavyweight paper to work on. Canson is one of the leading brands for comic and manga art paper. This Comic/Manga sketchpad isn't cheap – you only get 50 sheets – but you're paying for quality and, in particular, its all-important resistance to erasing and scraping. 09. The art of the self-portrait The best self-portraits ever created, in one place Art book publisher Phaidon has given this classic 80-year-old text a reworking. 500 Self-Portraits has been revised for the first time in two decades. It's been given a smart new cover and layers, but still contains the best self-portraits every produced, across various periods and disciplines, plus essays on what they say about the artists who made them. 10. Sketch dares Push your sketching skills with this book of artistic dares Laura Lee Gulledge dares you – she dares you; she double-double dares you – to do things like draw out a feeling, sketch a piece of music, and represent yourself by drawing five objects. There are 24 dares in Sketchbook Dares. Some encourage you to get out and interact with the world around you, while others are more abstract. Read more: How to choose which paint brush to use How to hold a pencil correctly Master wet-in-wet watercolour painting View the full article

If you love the art of design, why not try your hand at it? The eduCBA Design and Multimedia Lifetime Subscription Bundle has the courses you need to pick up new skills and put them to use. You can get a lifetime subscription on sale now for just $19 (approx. £13)! The eduCBA Design and Multimedia Lifetime Subscription Bundle provides you with hundreds of courses with actionable lessons waiting for you – and new ones are being added all the time. You’ll have unlimited access to more than 200 courses and more than 700 hours of content that will take you through tons of media and design essentials. Learn how to work with Photoshop, InDesign, Maya, Flash and much more. The eduCBA Design and Multimedia Lifetime Subscription Bundle usually retails for $797, but you’ll pay just $19 (approx. £13). That’s a saving of 97 per cent – a great deal for unlimited access to skills that could change your career! Related articles: 5 best laptops for Photoshop Turn photos into 3D animations with Photoshop The 10 best free graphic design courses online View the full article

Pantone has launched a range of full-sized single-colour sheets to help product, fashion and home furnishing designers find the right shade for their creations. The new range of TPG Sheets aims to address the need for larger physical references in design workflows and presentations. How to master colour theory The new, bigger sheets will promote better colour communication by providing a more versatile, clearer format for individual colours. TPG Sheets are currently available for the shades in Pantone's Fashion, Home + Interiors (FHI) system. Individual 8.5"x11" colour sheets are available for Pantone's Fashion, Home + Interiors (FHI) system While the company's mini colour chips are fine if you're, say, an individual designer trying to find the right special ink for your poster, the bigger sheets look likely to prove incredibly useful in presentation situations and group meetings, where individual stakeholders might need to consider the colour from afar. You can hang them up for others to evaluate or compare, or try them out in different lighting conditions. Pantone even suggests that product designers could wrap the sheet around an item to get a better idea of how it might look in real life. Each sheet comes printed with a grid on the back, for easy sharing TPG sheets are 8.5 inches x 11 inches of lacquer-coated paper, with a 1 inch x 1 inch grid printed on the back for easy cutting and sharing. Each printed square includes the colour name and number to prevent identification mix-ups. Each sheet costs $15/£12, and they're available to ship globally. You can find out more about TPG Sheets here. Read more: 21 outstanding uses of colour in branding Biggest trends in product packaging design for 2018 10 colour management terms designers need to know View the full article

There are a lot of hurdles to avoid when it comes to tackling a new illustration commission. From handling nightmare clients and distractions from working from home, to knowing the latest illustration trends and the best pencils to use, it isn't always plain sailing. Find out how four leading London-based artists – Michael Driver, Fernando Volken Togni, Jamie Jones and Josh McKenna – tackle the creative process and the practical side of freelancing in the short film below. The four illustrators, represented by agency MP Arts, also offer their hard-won advice for how to tackle an illustration brief. Read on for their tips on how to improve your creative process and make it as a professional illustrator. 01. Stay flexible throughout Fernando Volken Togni's geometric style - as seen in this work for IBM - makes complex topics more accessible "I gather up the information I need and read the brief three or four times," says Fernando Volken Togni. "I'll sketch a basic scheme of what to do, but sometimes the work changes completely in the middle. I experiment, I flip shapes, I change colours and there's not much of a line I follow. As long as you pass the right message." 02. Seek out visual clues Jamie Jones’ work for Jameson Whiskey For editorial work, Jamie Jones always tries to pull out areas of visual interest in the text for inspiration. "From there, I try to give myself as much time as I can so it can be swimming around in my head and my brain absorbs the concept within that," he explains. "I draw as much as I can and hope something comes out. That stage can either go really well or be quite frustrating. Sometimes the best time for getting ideas is on a walk, or on a train." 03. Never stop sketching Josh McKenna’s work for Converse "I have a sketchbook with me at all times," reveals Josh McKenna. "I'll get the brief and sketch up tiny, rough ideas, then develop two or three into larger thumbnails. At that point I'll usually show the client for feedback for the idea," he continues. "If it gets the go-ahead, I'll scan it in and trace the sketch using Illustrator, so I keep all the natural form that I drew by hand." 04. Save your nice pens for later One of a series of editorial illustrations by Michael Driver for Mosaic science magazine about how basketball can break down stigma around disability Michael Driver always opts for the worst drawing tool he can find when sketching initial ideas. "A rubbish pen is great. You never think: 'That mark is great!' because it's just a Biro drawing. You can just focus on the idea," he explains. "Once I've got the roughs, I usually colour them blue and sometimes add colour underneath them before sending them to the art director. It's a good point to talk about how colour can be used in compositions." 05. Prioritise at the sketching stage An illustration by Josh McKenna for Wired World 2015 magazine For Josh McKenna, prioritising is key – and the easiest point to control how much time to spend on a project is at the sketching stage. "If I have three jobs on, I'll have a day where I just do initial sketches to show the client," he says. "I develop them further in order of importance." 06. Stay on top of your deadlines In this short film, the illustrators focus on the essential art of time management and share their advice for hitting deadlines."You need to have discipline. The key is to be organised, because it's all about your routine," advises Fernando Volken Togni. 07. Pin everything on the wall Posters by Fernando Volken Togni for RBS Brazil Rather than complex project management software, Fernando Volken Togni favours a simple corkboard: "I pin everything on it," he smiles. "I need to visually know what's happening. I separate them by colour for different clients, and try to be very organised with that. It feels great to throw the Post-Its away when I finish." 08. Plan out your whole week Illustrations for CIM magazine The Marketer by Jamie Jones With multiple projects going on at once, it can all get overwhelming. Jamie Jones advocates planning out an overview of each week. "Work out what you're doing each day – maybe even split it into half-days," he says. "It sounds obvious, but the number of people that actually do that is probably quite small." 09. Don't bite off more than you can chew When you first start out, it can be tempting to say 'yes' to every job. Michael Driver learnt the hard way how tough that can be, with plenty of late nights. "That's something you're never taught at university. You can't really be taught how to be hard on yourself. Now I take short lunch breaks and get up slightly earlier." This article first appeared inside Computer Arts issue 249, a special issue looking at how to power up your skills as a freelancer and more. Subscribe to the magazine here. Liked this? Read these... 48 illustrators to follow on Behance 100 amazing Adobe Illustrator tutorials How to draw and paint people, animals and landscapes View the full article

Researchers have identified a hacking group behind several widescale maritime shipping industry business email compromise (BEC) attacks since June. View the full article

If you've have the chance to use one of Wacom’s large-format pen displays, you'll know why these drawing tablets are used in studios around the world. Wacom’s previous flagship model, the Cintiq 27QHD, provided artists with an impressive 27 inches of screen space at a resolution of 2,560 x 1,400 pixels. As the push for Ultra High Definition content increases, however, artists are beginning to need more resolution and screen space than ever before. Step up the Wacom Cintiq Pro 32. It isn't yet on sale – but we got our hands on the latest model in Wacom’s Cintiq family to give it a spin... The best cheap Wacom tablet deals 2018 Wacom Cintiq Pro 32: specs The Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 features a 4K UHD display spanning an impressive 32 inches, with a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. With four times the pixels of a standard 1080p display, the Cintiq Pro 32 provides plenty of work space, allowing users to display important toolbars without eating into that precious screen space. Wacom Cintiq Pro 32: display Unlike the Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 (another new release) and previous generation Cintiqs, which came in touch and non-touch variants, the Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 comes with touch functionality as standard. Despite the larger screen, the Cintiq Pro 32 is only 8.5cm wider and 4cm taller but uses a smaller bezel, meaning more screen space without taking over too much desk. Both Cintiq Pro models come with Wacom’s Pro Pen 2, featuring 8,192 levels of sensitivity, plus tilt-response for a more natural and virtually lag-free drawing experience. The displays also come with the ExpressKey Remote, a controller that houses the buttons and touch ring commonly found along one edge of the earlier Cintiq models. The separation of this remote from the main body of the display allows for seamless switching between left and right-handed modes, and the non-slip backing means the remote can be placed anywhere on the face of the device, with magnetic strips down either side to hold the remote in place when the display is positioned vertically. 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and unparalleled tilt recognition means that every stroke is naturally precise In order to rotate the display more freely, the optional Ergo Stand is required. This allows the display to be set vertically like a standard monitor, and horizontally at standing height or desk level. Out of the box, the back of the display features two fl ip-out legs to support the device at a 20-degree angle to the desk. Reducing glare When used in a bright studio environment, glare may present an issue. Compared to the 27QHD, which has a more reflective screen coating, the Pro 32 has taken steps towards solving this issue with an etched glass screen that diffuses those harsh reflections. This is also helped by turning off room lighting and using a desk light, or by using the Ergo Stand to angle the device away from the light source. Connectivity Towards the rear of the display, there is a panel which can be removed to reveal the various ports and sockets used to connect your display to your work machine. These include: 1x HDMI 1x DisplayPort 1x USB Type-C 1x USB 3.0 1x Power socket With four times the pixels of a standard 1080p display, users to display important toolbars without eating into precious screen space. Glen Southern Located around the side edges of the display are four USB 3.0 ports, with two on either side for device connectivity such as charging the ExpressKey Remote. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left side and a SD card VERDICT slot at the right, both located under the USB ports. At the top edge of the display is the power switch and LED power indicator. On the top left above the screen, there is a series of touch buttons that enable you to call various functions from your machine such as the on-screen keyboards, access Wacom settings or enable and disable the touch function. Extra space There is also a button that enables toggling between the display input mode for the device which was absent from the 27QHD, meaning cables no longer have to be swapped between machines. In the studio, we have a USB-C enabled laptop plugged in via the included USB-C cable, with a workstation plugged into the display through a USB 3.0 and DisplayPort cable. This means machines can be swapped with the press of a button and with no rummaging around under the desk. The use of the USB-C for this generation greatly reduces cable clutter, as both the display signal and USB connectivity can be run through one cable. Unlike the Cintiq MobileStudio Pro, the Pro 32 does not feature any external USB-C ports, which will be welcomed by those who are unprepared to upgrade all of their devices to USB-C.The Cintiq Pro 32 offers a large screen size, with the resolution perfect for displaying UHD content. The extra space is also ideal for users who require specific toolbars and custom user interface layouts without limiting canvas or viewport size. Additionally, there is also the option to transform your Cintiq Pro into a powerful standalone creative pen computer with the Wacom Cintiq Pro Engine PC module. The Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 is due to ship in Spring 2018. This article was originally published in issue 233 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 233 here or subscribe here. Also read: The best cheap Wacom tablet deals View the full article

User experience is now considered a vital, standalone discipline within web design. And with 'UX designer' fully established as a job title, and specialists still in high demand, our user experiences should be better than ever. However, as demands change and expectations rise, there are still issues facing the discipline. We asked web professionals what barriers they felt were holding us back from creating great user experiences today. 01. Too many smart devices Multi-channel experiences pose a big challenge James Davis, the head of UX at Verv, argues that the biggest challenge and stumbling block in modern UX comes from the rise in connected devices. "The growing number of smart devices is pushing the UX industry to create more dynamic and continuous digital experiences. Think booking a taxi through Uber using Alexa and checking your phone to see when it arrives," he explains. "This year will see us moving towards omni-channel UX. Creating a seamless user experience, where users can transition their brand interactions smoothly between devices, will be a tough but exciting." 02. Lack of diversity in the industry We need our teams to be as diverse as our customers The lack of diversity within the web industry is damaging our UX design, says experience design strategist Rochelle Dancel. "It’s not a ‘nice to have’, it’s a business imperative, especially if we want products and services that reach – and work for – audiences at scale," she assets. "Ensuring that we have designers, researchers and strategists who are reflective of diverse users is also especially important in a design culture that seeks to get that MVP out as quickly as possible." Dancel points out that with the rise of AI, the issue of diversity is becoming even more important. "Ensuring a diverse set of perspectives is proactively engaged in the design process is crucial (and more of a challenge) as we increasingly develop products and services with AI and automation to reflect and shape the world around us." 03. Disregard for mobile-first (still) Mobile users now surpass those using larger screens While the benefits of designing mobile-first are well documented, many web pros are still ignoring this approach. "Mobile users have already surpassed the number of people using the web from larger screens, but the digital world has yet to catch up," says UX designer Stacey K Flatt. "A site that is not responsive will lose visitors." When to ignore 'Mobile-First' 04. Lack of inquisitiveness There's more than one route to great UX Barry Woodhall, a director at Moken, believes that the main barrier holding us back is a lack of inquisitiveness for the brief. "In the field of user experience, there’s more than one route to success, and in 2018 we expect no different, with user data still informing on solid design decisions," he explains. "One exciting barrier (or opportunity, perhaps) will be the continuing rise of artificial intelligence and the consideration of AI-powered platforms during the early UX research and planning stages of projects." 05. A need to scale up Large companies such as IBM have embraced a design-led culture As more and more large companies embrace design thinking, challenges are arising as to scale up the design culture and processes. "They need to support multiple teams and platform experiences, rather than single app experiences, while also looking to maintain the same level of quality and design consistency," comments Mendix Technology's Christopher J Hodges. "The challenge is only made bigger given the shortage of UX resources for many large organisations: they tend to hire more developers than designers, with on average just one designer for every 17 developers." 06. More demanding users Users now expect more from their devices "The biggest challenge is also the most exciting opportunity for learning: users are busy and we need to display the information they need, right away," explains UX designer Juliette Pretot. "New devices such as smart speakers, watches and cars each introduce their own constraints. You can’t glance over information presented through a speaker. You can only lift up your wrist for so long before your arm gets tired. Our UIs needs to scale across all platforms. To do this, they will have to be context aware and personal." While figuring out how to meet these demands is a challenge, Pretot is confident it will pay off. "Adjusting to those new constraints won’t be easy, but will lead to better UX everywhere, not only for your smart speaker, but for your phone and computer, too." 07. Bad designers Slavishly following trends is a route to disaster We can blame circumstances and new technologies as much as we like, but for Prodlytic co-founder Will Grant, there's only one reason for bad UX: bad UX designers. "Somewhere along the way, many UX people forgot that design – UI design in particular – isn’t art, it’s design to perform a function: to serve users," he says. "Too many designers are slavishly following the latest design trend, applying ‘flat design’ to every app, or trying to be different for the sake of it, with custom-designed interfaces and arbitrary visual metaphors." His solution is simple, too: try and be objective, fight for the user, and test with real users as you go. Web design event Generate New York returns on 25-27 April 2018, offering a packed schedule of industry-leading speakers, a full day of workshops and valuable networking opportunities – don’t miss it. Get your Generate ticket now. This article was originally published in net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 303 or subscribe. Read more: The 5 biggest UX design trends for 2018 7 UX tools to try The theory of UX View the full article

Researcher Billy Rios, founder of WhiteScope, discusses medical device hacking at RSA Conference 2018 with Threatpost’s Tom Spring. View the full article

The software options for digital artists are many and varied. There are plenty of tools on the market aimed at helping you to create unique pieces of digital art or mimic traditional effects. In this post, we've rounded up and reviewed the best digital art and illustration programs around, to help you pick the right ones for you. For art on the go, take a look at our pick of the best drawing apps for iPad. There's software for Windows and macOS, and we've even included a few Linux tools too. There are also free and paid options, depending on your budget. So grab your stylus and let's get this show on the road. Photoshop is the de facto standard when it comes to digital art and graphic design. Because it's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, you can easily share your data and access all of your assets – including brushes, images, colours and styles – across all of your devices. There's also an impressive library of Photoshop plugins available to add extra functionality to the programme. Find out more in our Photoshop CC 2018 review. Affinity Designer has everything you need to create custom designs and illustrations. With Affinity Designer, you have precise control over curves, brush stabilisation options, advanced blend modes, and best of all: one million+ per cent zoom. No, really... it's true! In fact, this might just be my favourite feature. Clip Studio Paint is quickly becoming the go-to tool for manga art and comic creation. If you're looking for a natural and traditional feel that's wrapped up in a digital drawing and painting app, this is it. Clip Studio Paint uses advanced pen pressure detection for natural, realistic-looking pen strokes. This tool comes in Pro and Ex versions – the latter offers more advanced features. Graphiter is an intuitive sketching app, with a beautiful design, that has one goal: to reproduce a real-life sketching experience. With simple tools like a blend tool, an eraser, and graphite pencils, I couldn't help but feel like I was using traditional tools to create my digital sketches. Artweaver 6 is a full-featured digital art tool available in two flavours: Artweaver Free and Artweaver Plus. Take a look at the comparison chart to help you decide which is right for you. Loaded with a large selection of preconfigured brushes, Artweaver will have you creating your masterpiece in no time. You can either use the brushes as-is, or customise and save them to your liking. Its easy-to-use interface is also highly customisable, although out-of-the-box, it's set up quite nicely. ArtRage has always been a favourite among digital painters and illustrators. It offers a level of realism for traditional paint texture and colour that not only looks incredible but is also a lot of fun to play with. Although ArtRage is primarily focused on natural media and painting, it's flexible enough that digital artists who are used to Photoshop will find it useful too. With the latest edition, you can do everything you'd expect from a digital art tool: custom brushes, layers, fills, filters, and more. Krita seems to be one of the most underrated free and open source painting apps on the market, despite it being in development for over 10 years. Krita has an intuitive and customisable interface, where the dockers and panels can be set up to maximise your workflow. The tool offers nine unique brush engines, including a Color Smudge engine, Shape engine and Particle engine. You can also import brushes and texture packs or create and share your own. As an added bonus, you can use a brush stabiliser to help get those perfectly smooth lines every time. Speaking of brushes, TwistedBrush comes packed with more than 9000 brushes! Yes, you read that correctly – 9000 brushes. But don't worry, you can still create your own brushes too. Like other digital art tools, TwistedBrush has everything you'd expect: layers, transparency, masks, extensive options for import and export, image filters, and more. It also has drawing tablet support with high precision sampling and pressure sensitivity. If you're looking for a great, free alternative to Clip Studio Paint, have a look at Medibang Paint Pro. Medibang Paint Pro is a lightweight digital drawing tool with a strong focus on creating manga art and comic books. It comes loaded with 800 free pre-made tones and backgrounds that you can use. It also has more than 50 brushes, and a huge selection of free fonts you can use within your projects. Corel's Painter has been around for a long time, but it's just had a nice upgrade. The 2018 version includes a host of improvements and new tools including thick paint, cloning capabilities, texture synthesis, 2.5D texture brushes and natural-media brushes (review all of the new and enhanced features here). Like ArtRage, Painter 2018 gives your work that natural look and feel. The way the paint interacts with the digital canvas is amazing, so go ahead and pile on the paint, push it around, scrape it off, and blend it to create a stunning, realistic digital work of art. It's all about realistic brushes, right? Not always! Black Ink has a different approach when it comes to brushes. Instead of trying to mimic traditional tools, Black Ink uses a Controller system that opens a whole new world of possibilities in brush creation and customisation. Using a simple node-based language, you'll be able to create any type of brush imaginable, which you can then save and share with the community. A slightly different app than the rest, PhotoDonut lets you transform existing photos into stunning artistic creations, using everything from pencil, ink and watercolour effects to magna and light leaks. With PhotoDonut Style Categories, you can tweak the settings until you reach the desired effect. You can even use the Freehand painting tool to give your photos that painterly feel. Another free and open digital art tool is SpeedyPainter. This one, however, strips away the non-essentials and gives you the bare minimum you need to create. But don't confuse bare minimum with a lack of features. SpeedyPainter supports Wacom digitisers to vary size and opacity of brush strokes according to pen pressure, and it includes tools like mirroring and perspective grids. It also has a neat record and export feature that you can use to capture and share your creation process. Paintstorm Studio is another easy-to-use digital art tool that has a permanent spot on my dock. One of the major features with Paintstorm Studio is its brush selection and customisation options (these include spacing jitter, texture, angle, and more). It also supports stroke post correction, which is a handy feature when you're doing line work. As far as the interface goes, it's easy to navigate and laid out exactly how you'd expect (and the default colour scheme is fantastic). However, if you're not a fan, it's completely customisable. Read more: Create portrait art in Corel Painter The 9 best alternatives to Photoshop 20 illustrators to follow on Instagram View the full article

Web developers keep the internet running. They work behind the scenes to make sure the gears never stop in any of your favourite applications and sites. It's a career that rewards structure and creativity, and you can join the ranks by working your way through the Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle. It's on sale now for just $39 (approx. £27)! The Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle is the ideal starting place for any aspiring developer to start their new career. This collection of eight expert-taught courses can help anyone learn how to code using the most important languages in web development, from JavaScript to HTML5 and CSS3. Work your way through this bundle of courses and you'll pick up the skills you need to launch a new and lucrative career. You can get the Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle on sale for just $39 (approx. £27), 96 per cent off the retail price. That’s a massive saving on a bundle that could help you find work in a growing industry, so grab this deal today! Related articles: The future of web design How to make it in the web design industry 5 articles to improve your web design career View the full article

In 2012, I learned a dangerous rule: a mobile-first approach to UX ensures users will have a consistent experience on all devices. After four years of chanting this mantra alongside UX designers everywhere, there was a recent Sunday afternoon when I realised it like a memory. In the dogmatic spread of responsive, adaptive, cross-browser compatibility – and the design process it requires – something has been lost. Choose a website builder: 16 top tools Ironically, I was meandering through my college alumni magazine, which is still quaintly printed on paper and sent in the mail. The layouts were different from web like a four-chord punk song is different from math rock. Layout itself dictated the content strategy. Layout itself dictated the content strategy in this college alumni magazine Originally, mobile-first was about user experience. Now, it’s often an excuse for using a safe, traditional layout, and lately, UX has been suffering as it’s assumed that consistency is what users actually want. Mobile-first layouts insist on simplicity and minimalism. I’m not the first to rant about the main repercussion: every website is starting to look the same. Click image to enlarge I myself have worked with designers who basically scale up their pixel-perfect mobile comps, leaving the user with a giant desktop experience. A consistent cross-device mobile experience has been the mantra, but it’s clear that banning the use of UI patterns, layouts and interactions that “don’t work” on mobile is becoming an outdated and irrelevant approach to some projects. I feel equipped to pick on mobile-first because I have evangelized it for so long. In fact, for me, this article is borderline hypocrisy. I have a reputation as a ruthless champion for usability at the expense of creativity, so I know all the excuses. Excuse #1: “Cross-device experiences help users jump between mobile and desktop” Why it’s true: If you’re designing complex user flows that require multiple sessions, mobile-first still rules. Understanding the user’s context can dictate how likely they are to be interrupted or need to pause a task. True responsive makes it easier to pick back up where you left off. Why it’s false: Your mobile experience should be usable enough that most tasks can be completed in one sitting, and each component should fit the most likely device for its context. For example, if research shows that a hospital website’s desktop traffic is more focused on researching services, then said content should be up front. Users visiting that website on mobile, however, might be more likely to need location information or ER times. Don’t promote “featured service lines” to a mobile user trying to find the nearest urgent care clinic. If the user’s needs are different on each device, the experience should be different. When it shouldn’t matter: Some designers have changed the meaning of “cross-device” by creating experiences that let different screens play together. Arcade Fire has launched “interactive films” to promote their albums. Reflektor acts as a music video for the titular track. From a computer’s web browser, the site prompts you to “Connect your smartphone or tablet.” Your computer’s webcam recognises the device’s position as you wave it, “reflecting” on the video as it plays. Arcade Fire has launched “interactive films” to promote their albums – Reflektor acts as a music video for the titular track In the same way, Paper Planes, built for Google I/O 2016, brought attendees together by letting them use their mobile devices to digitally throw paper planes at a 50-ft screen on stage. Paper Planes brought attendees together by letting them use their mobile devices to digitally throw paper planes at a 50-ft screen on stage Excuse #2: “People are increasingly mobile” Why it’s true: Think about the speed, screen resolution, and browser capabilities of your current smartphone compared to five years ago. These days, it feels laborious to explicitly type the words: “mobile usage has surpassed desktop.” The stats are everywhere. On 4 November, Google declared the switch to a “mobile-first index,” citing that “today, most people are searching on Google using a mobile device.” There’s no stronger endorsement than when Google declares you just might rank lower if your site isn’t responsive. So, if your digital strategy still relies on SEO, don’t scrap the mobile-first approach. Why it doesn’t matter: Remember that Google Search is meant to help people find information. Is your audience even looking for you? Maybe not. Users in 2017 expect information to come to them – to be sucked in through social referrals, clickhole vortexes, related content, and the unsung magic of contextual navigation. If you have a diverse visibility strategy that brings users in, the payoff for creative layouts and custom experiences might be worth the risk. Shoe company Camper built a highly visual landing page for a recent campaign, heavy on motion and video, but sparse on content. Yet, the provocative site still drove to their regular ecommerce storefront. Shoe company Camper built a highly visual landing page for a recent campaign The mobile experience is neglected. Perhaps the ROI on optimising a similar approach for mobile wouldn’t have been worth it given the short campaign window. Camper's mobile experience is neglected Maybe your project isn’t about findability or conversions. A PREDICTIVE_WORLD uses Facebook data “based on actual research capable of building a digital profile and predicting your future.” There isn’t exactly “content” to rank. There is no CTA. Further, not only is the layout intended for desktop, the experience is majorly enhanced by hover states, animations, and sound effects. A Predictive World's layout is intended for desktop, the experience is majorly enhanced by hover states, animations, and sound effects The team attempted a mobile version, but it’s so limited that they might as well have spent the time and budget elsewhere. The mobile version of A PREDICTIVE_WORLD is very limited Excuse #3: “Some people only ever experience the internet from their smartphones” Why it’s true: For billions of people, access to the internet is a luxury when it should be considered a basic human right. Low-income Americans are choosing smartphones over computers when they can only afford one or the other. Accessibility standards and best practices like mobile-first are meant to ensure equality. If your project is meant to provide people of all contexts, locations, and demographics with information and functionality they need, you’d better be practicing mobile-first. When you shouldn’t care: That doesn’t mean modern web technology as a medium should be forbidden as art. Some people only experience music from Spotify; we still have live concerts. Pharrell’s 2014 web-based “24-hour music video” wouldn’t have made us “Happy” if the cross-device experience zealots had won the argument. Williams' Happy 'doesn't work on mobile' Web technologies are also the perfect place to pay tribute to technology itself. Canadian developer Ben Feist digitised the Apollo 17 mission within a control room-like layout. The screen is cluttered with data, visuals, text, and controls, updating “live” as the rocket is launching. It’s a little overwhelming – which is probably exactly how it felt in 1972. And who wants to experience a moon landing on a 4.7-inch screen? Who wants to experience a moon landing on a 4.7-inch screen? Occasionally, it is better to make something you love for a few than to make something ordinary for everyone. It depends on the goal. These sites do serve a purpose. They are emotional, not transactional. By leaving an impression rather than driving a conversion, the effect is arguably stronger than your templated content marketing site. We’re quickly leaving the era of information-seeking. Users now expect content to appear for them contextually. Expecting them to search for, land on, and spend several minutes navigating your traditional website is no longer the right approach for every brand. Occasionally abandoning the mobile-first law can free us to embrace new ways of communicating, creative stories, and more impactful experiences. Whatever your inspiration – maybe you have free time, maybe you have abstract KPIs, maybe there’s no one stopping you – embrace it. The internet is awesome, web technologies are insane, and you have an idea. Let the medium shine. Related articles: Inside Etsy's handmade workspace Free ebook on Practical Typography Techniques The pro's guide to UI design View the full article

Getting the right education can be the difference between bagging your dream design job and, well, not. Now successful graphic designer Christopher J Porter is a proud Shillington graduate from 2009, who has been out in the design world for almost a decade now. Porter has been killing it on the design front since graduation from Shillington’s full time course in London. Here he talks about setting up his own studio I See Sea in Falmouth and working as a freelancer at branding and packaging studio Kingdom & Sparrow. In the full interview over on the Shillington blog, Porter also discusses his latest exciting project The Collection, in which he tackles topical mental health issues with a slick collection of pins and patches – currently live on Crowdfunder. What originally made you enrol at Shillington? After school I had been working as a professional musician, during which time I had been doing a lot of ‘amateur’ design work for the band. When the music came to an end, I decided that it would be good to train in design. However, at 23 I was reluctant to sign up for three years of study. Shillington seemed like the perfect place to totally immerse myself in design and learn the ropes – and it totally was. The studio environment and fantastic support from the teachers was the perfect foundation for my future in design. Tell us a bit about one your favourite projects of your design career so far. Porter's identities can be seen in various independent coffee houses in the UK That’s like asking me to choose a favourite child..! I’m going to group a few into a category. I have worked on design and branding for a number of great cafes down here and, as a big coffee lover, I always enjoy this work. As someone who works with mainly small businesses, opportunities to see your work on printed materials can be few and far between, but when working with cafes you get to see your identity spread across cups, loyalty cards, signage - it’s a really satisfying feeling. To read the full interview with Porter, head over to the Shillington blog. View the full article

You're reading Designmodo Launches Massive Redesign and New Logo, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! This is perhaps one of the most important days in the history of Designmodo. Today, we are releasing a new version of the site, a new logo and a new vision for the future of our company. As many of you … View the full article

Research shows that colour is registered by the brain before images or type, which means brushing up on colour theory for branding is well worth your time. Successful 'ownership' of a colour in any given sector is the holy grail, and there are many outstanding examples of colour in branding that prove how effective that can be. Certain sectors have familiar colour palettes associated with them. The calm, stable, trustworthy reassurance of blue crops up frequently in the financial services and communications sectors, for instance; while attention-grabbing, energising reds and yellows are key colours in many major fast-food chains. Sometimes a brand strikes off in a totally different direction. McDonald's, long the figurehead of that zingy red-and-yellow palette, went green in many of its European branches. And Apple's white products cut through the black, grey and beige of the technology sector like a hot knife through butter. Guinness' total ownership of black is hugely distinctive within a wine, beer and spirits sector filled with greens, reds and blues. And EasyJet brings a flash of orange to the overwhelmingly red-and-blue dominated airline sector. When it comes to logo design, sometimes it pays to embrace the familiar as a visual shorthand for what you do – but stand-out will always be more challenging as a result. Read on for five examples of brands that think differently about colour... 01. Monzo Brand new banking service Monzo brings a totally fresh colour palette to the financial sector Blue can be found all over the financial services sector. Bank of America, Barclays, American Express, VISA... the list goes on. Throw in HSBC, NatWest, Santander and MasterCard, and there's also a fair bit of red. Founded in 2015, Monzo totally bucks that trend – combining teal, coral, sage green and golden beige in its in-house-designed 'M' logo. It's fitting that a "smart bank" founded with "the new generation" in mind should have a different perspective on colour, too. Digital flexibility was the key, and physical branches and cheque books went out the door – along with those ubiquitous blues and reds. According to Monzo, designer Sam Michael was looking to combine the strength and confidence that customers want in a bank, with a more friendly, colourful and human vibe. The softer, more subtle colour palette makes it more informal, and less officious compared to its establishment rivals. 02. Lufthansa Lufthansa's recent rebrand gave it a darker, more refined shade of blue, but kept the rich yellow that distinguishes it from the airline sector We've mentioned how easyJet cuts through the sea of blue and red airline liveries with a bright orange that defines the entire 'easy' franchise. Hungarian airline Wizz Air also adds a dab of purple and pink to the budget end of the spectrum. But when it comes to the big national carriers – American Airlines, British Airways, KLM, Qantas, Emirates – there are relatively few outliers for whom red and blue don't dominate in the logo and livery. Step up Lufthansa. Sure, navy blue is a significant feature of its branding, but what has always set it apart is the rich ochre yellow that complements it. The German carrier's distinctive crane emblem was originally designed a century ago by graphic artist Otto Firle, and adapted into a comprehensive identity program in the 1960s by Otl Aicher – who introduced the blue and yellow combination. Lufthansa's recent in-house refresh brings it into the digital age, refining the marque and making the main blue darker and more elegant. Crucially, that distinctive yellow remains a distinguishing factor across its various brand touchpoints. 03. Eir Moving Brands gave Irish telco eir (formely Eircom) a bold injection of fluorescent colour as part of its 2015 rebrand Another sector awash with blue is technology and telecoms. Think: IBM, HP, AT&T, O2, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Facebook, Twitter... We've already mentioned how Apple defies its sector in more ways than one, but another, lesser-known brand to have done so is Irish telecoms provider eir, which was given a wholesale overhaul by Moving Brands in 2015. The bold, organic and flowing marque – which, like Monzo, feels much more human and approachable than the rest of its sector – was given a unique, vibrant, fluorescent colour palette that fizzes and pops across digital and print alike. This was the brand's biggest shake-up in 20 years, and Moving Brands explored unexpected colour combinations to match the dynamic, unconventional logo itself. 04. Taco Bell Lippincott's 2016 rebrand pared back Taco Bell's logo and brought a two-tone purple palette to the fore Red (often paired with yellow) is, quite simply, the colour of fast-food. McDonalds, Burger King, Denny's, Pizza Hut, KFC and many more use it as their main brand colour. It grabs attention, feels bold and urgent, and according to some researchers, may even increase your appetite – so it's no real surprise. For McDonald's, reinventing itself in a more sophisticated shade of green in its European branches was about changing brand perceptions in the face of a childhood obesity crisis – and appealing to a lucrative market of young professionals who prefer coffee to Happy Meals. But one fast-food giant changed its stripes significantly earlier. From the mid-80s until the mid-90s, Taco Bell was red and yellow too. Then the bell went pink and purple: a combination that totally bucks the fast-food trend. Taco Bell's main purple logo is also available in these six alternative colour variations Its minimalist 2016 rebrand by Lippincott stripped out the pink and left a pared-back two-tone purple logo marque, although this is also available in six more colour combinations: teal, gold, coral, light green, blue and orange. As well as a broader colour palette, Lippincott also opened up the iconic bell shape as a container device for a potentially endless array of patterns, textures and image, making it much more flexible across all manner of applications. 06. Veuve Clicquot Veuve Clicquot champagne has sported its highly distinctive yellow label and packaging since 1877 Tattinger, Moët & Chandon, Bollinger and Krug are all world-renowned champagne brands, but they share something else in common: the combination of a green bottle and gold foil, often with a touch of red, in their branded packaging. This is where Veuve Clicquot has colour recognition absolutely sewn up: its highly distinctive yellow label has been synonymous with the brand for almost 150 years. Back in 1850, Veuve Clicquot could be distinguished by its minimalist pure white label, but as the global popularity of dry champagnes grew, it sought ownership of a brighter colour. In 1877, the first yellow label was born. Over the following decades, the yellow became richer, deeper and more orange in hue, making it easy to spot in a dark, crowded wine cellar. That brand association remains strong to this day, and definitely bucks the trend of its sector. Related articles: 5 brands so strong they don't need a logo Pick the right font for your social campaigns 4 design trends we're all tired of hearing about View the full article

Choosing the best pencils or paint brushes for your next project isn't always an easy decision. After all, different effects require different tools so it can be difficult to know which to use. To simplify the process of choosing my paint brushes, I make two major distinctions: the type of hair the paint brush is made of and the shape. If you're struggling with which paint brush to use, the best thing to do is to try the various shapes. For example, you could start with only bristle rounds. Then, try and paint with only flats, and then finally filberts. Remember, it takes time to become familiar with the various shapes. Practice makes perfect. So how do you pick the perfect tool? Here are 20 tips to help you decide which paint brush to use, for any painting. 01. Two types of hair Choose from bristle or sable The first way I categorise paint brushes is by the type of hair they use. The two main types of hair are bristle (A) and sable (B). Both come in many different shapes and sizes, and can be made either from natural animal hair or synthetic fiber. I generally use bristles for rougher marks and sables for smoother strokes. 02. Bristle brushes A bristle paint brush will hold a lot of paint Bristle brushes are made of thicker, stronger and sometimes rougher hair. They originally came from animals such as wild hogs, but now synthetic bristle brushes are very common. Bristles are great because they can hold a lot of paint. I use bristles to do the bulk of my painting, especially when covering large areas. 03. Bristle marks Create painterly strokes with a bristle paint brush To help you choose which paint brush to use, here is an example of some marks made with bristle brushes. Bristle marks tend to be rougher and the paint strokes can be easily seen. These are often called "painterly" strokes. I like the rough look for adding texture and variety to my paintings. I also like bristles for making drawing type marks because of their stiffness and durability. 04. Sable brushes Sable paint brushes are subtler Sable brushes are generally made of finer and softer hair. Sables can be made from soft animal hair such as a mongoose or mink, or from soft synthetic fibers. I like sables mostly for blending edges and creating softer and more subtle marks. I also enjoy using smaller sables for adding fine details and finishing touches.. 05. Sable marks These are the marks you'll make with a sable paint brush Here is an example of some marks made by sable brushes. Sables make very clean marks and the paint strokes tend to be hidden. Because of this sables are great for achieving a more "realistic" look in a painting. I like to use sables for making soft, airbrush like marks and for blending. 06. Three paint brush shapes Paint brushes come in three common shapes The next way I categorise paint brushes is by shape. The three most common shapes are: flat (A), filbert (B) and round (C ). All three shapes can come in both bristle and sable hair. They also come in many different sizes. It took me years of practice and experience to decide which shape worked best for me. 07. Round brushes Round paint brushes are great for mark-making The first common brush shape is round. Round brushes are shaped like sharp tear drops or large needles. I like to use rounds for drawing and making drawing like marks. I'll often begin my paintings with a small round brush to draw with, and then use larger rounds to fill larger areas. 08. Flat brushes Use flat paint brushes to define form The next common brush shape is flat. Flat brushes have a rectangular shape. Flat brushes make square shaped marks. They can also make chisel like lines, especially when using a sable flat. I use flats mostly to model form. There square shaped marks are great for defining planes and form in a figure or portrait painting. 09. Filbert brushes Filbert paint brushes are good for many tasks The final most common brush shape is filbert. Filberts are combination of both round and flat. The have the rectangular shape of a flat brush, but also come to a point like a round brush. Because of their unique shape, filberts can create a wide variety of marks. I use filberts for many painting tasks including blending edges. 10. Round bristle brush marks Bristle paint brushes make these sorts of marks Here are some examples of marks made by round bristle brush. Rounds can create a variety of marks. Like a pencil or marker, they can also go thick to thin. Because the shape resembles a pencil, I like making drawing and hatching marks with round bristles. I almost always start every painting with a round bristle. 11. Round sable brush marks Sable rounds are great for detail Here are some examples of marks made by round sable brush. Sables have finer and softer hair and they also retain their shape well. I use round sables for a variety of tasks including blending edges and for fine details. Small sable rounds are my favourite brushes for adding small details. 12. Flat bristle brush marks Here are some examples of marks made by flat bristle brush I love the square shaped marks for painting planes on forms. When I paint figures or portraits I do most of the work with a flat bristle brush. I also like the way the paint strokes are very visible with bristle brushes. 13. Flat sable brush marks Here are some examples of marks made by flat sable brush A sable flat can make square shaped marks, but with a much cleaner edge. The rough, painterly edge is gone, but instead is replaced by smooth and polished look. I use sable flats for blending edges and making softer strokes on a portrait or figure. 14. Filbert bristle brush marks Here are some examples of marks made by filbert bristle brush Filberts can create a wide variety of marks, from thick to thin and back again. Because of their versatility, they are great for drawing and for painting the head or figure. I use filbert bristles to add variety and texture to my paintings. 15. Filbert sable brush marks Here are some examples of marks made by filbert sable brush Like the bristle version, sable filberts can also make a wide variety of marks. Sometimes it feels like drawing with ink or charcoal. I like to use filbert sables for both making crisp, drawing marks and edges and also for blending edges. 16. Large brushes Bristle holds more paint Larger brushes are almost always flat shaped and made from bristle since bristle holds more paint. Large brushes like these (A) come in 1/2 inch to 1 inch in size. The large long handle flat (B) is a size 12. I use large brushes for painting large areas, but also for applying gesso and varnish. 17. Small detail brushes Small brushes can go from size 1 to 00, or even to a single hair! Small detail brushes are almost always made from sable hair, because they retain their stiffness and shape well. I use small sable brushes like these for adding fine details, but also for blending edges in small forms. 18. Build up your brush set Get the essential paint brushes Once you know which paint brush to use and when, start building up your collection. This is my personal brush set for painting indoor subjects like figures and portraits. For brushes that do most of the work, I have two of each size. I also work mostly in bristle, using small sables for detail and blending. 19. Know your tools You need different paint brushes or different tasks For painting outdoors and landscapes, I've settled on this set of brushes. I do most of the work with bristle flats so I carry two of each size. I have a small round for drawing and a large round for large areas. The small round sables are for adding details and finishing touches. 20. Three of the best My favourite paint brushes Still struggling with which paint brush to use? If I was on a tight budget and could only use two or three brushes, these are the brushes I would use. A size 4-6 flat (A) will accomplish many painting tasks and a size 2-3 round (B) will complement the flat well. I would also add a slightly larger 6-8 flat (C) for covering larger areas quickly. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX bookazine How to Paint & Draw. Related articles: How to hold a pencil correctly Free Photoshop brushes every creative must have The designer's guide to working from home View the full article

Sometimes an item pops up that you just didn't know you needed, but once it arrives it makes perfect sense. The excellent Logitech Craft wireless keyboard is one such item – which is why it sits in first place in our Best keyboards for creatives buying guide. When unpacked and plugged in (for charging or permanently if preferred) the Craft software is needed. It's a small app that enables you to define certain characteristics and keep the drivers up-to-date. The keyboard itself is a solid-feeling but very low-profile one, with a lightweight keystroke that still has good positive feedback. Another handy feature is the sensors – if you are in a dimly lit area and approach the keyboard, the backlight will turn on. It's a good, clear light but remains subtle enough to not feel intrusive if you are in a colour/light-sensitive environment. Enhanced workflow for creatives So far so good, but what really makes this keyboard special? Apart from its obvious quality, the Logitech Craft has two extra uses that make it a particularly handy input device. First, there is the Creative Input dial. This is the big knob at the top left of the keyboard, which can be assigned all manner of tasks, from simple scrolling and zooming to switching tabs in a browser, various Photoshop shortcuts and tasks, or viewport manipulation. The Logitech Craft has the ability to switch profiles depending on which app you're using. If, like me, you use a keyboard together with a tablet, it makes even more sense, as you can assign the touch ring on your tablet for one task and the Creative Input dial for another, serving to increase efficiency. It also feels good to use and navigation with it is a joy. Extra synching options Next is a feature that won't apply to all, but if it does it's a huge bonus. The keyboard is Mac and PC compatible – but more than that, it can be synced with three machines at once, so with a single button press you can swap between machines you are using. I use it on monitor with both PC and Mac, so this option means I've reduced desk clutter, improved my workflow and increased consistency of 'feel' while working. It may sound like a small thing, but this feature alone makes it worth the cost, and the fact that the keys are marked up for users of different platforms is a useful addition. For artists looking for the ultimate in simplified workflows, quality and ergonomics, this is an excellent option. It isn't cheap, but if the keyboard suits your needs it's well worth the spend. This review was originally published in issue 232 of 3D World. Also read: The best computer for graphic design 2018 View the full article