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Drupal is giving developers ample time to prepare for an update that patches a “highly critical” flaw because exploits might be developed within hours or days of disclosure. View the full article

When done right, brilliant uses of typography on a book cover can encourage readers to reach for the shelves and get nose deep in a novel. And with so many different type designs to choose from – retro fonts, script fonts and tattoo fonts, for example – designers all over the globe are producing some cracking covers. They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but these brilliant designs make it very hard not to... 01. Cormac McCarthy – No Country for Old Men No Country for Old Men cover by David Pearson Designer David Pearson has designed the covers for nearly all of Cormac McCarthy's novels, including the infamous titles No Country for Old Men and The Road. Using an old style slab serif typeface, imitating the raw look of letterpress printing, Pearson has created a bold, handcrafted feel. 02. Mario Puzo – The Godfather The Godfather cover by S Neil Fujita Originally published in 1969, American graphic designer S Neil Fujita created a heavy, Gothic-looking typeface for The Godfather. The design was also used in the opening credits of Coppola's movie trilogy and remains iconic to this day. 03. Chuck Palahniuk – Snuff Snuff cover by Rodrigo Corral Chuck Palahniuk, famous author of Fight Club, turned to established designer Rodrigo Corral, who's also created covers for authors John Green and Daniel Kahneman, to create the cover for his book Snuff. First published in 2008, Corral has hand-drawn a font to create a provocative cover that fits well with Palahniuk's image. 04. Jonathon Safron Foer – Everything is Illuminated Everything is Illuminated cover by Gray318 John Gray, otherwise known as Gray318, is another of the biggest book cover designers out there and has designed for the likes of Joe Dunthorne, AM Holmes, and Zadie Smith. His hand-drawn fonts for the covers of Safran Foer's first two books, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, create an energetic and fluid design. 05. Ian Fleming – The Spy who Loved Me The Spy Who Loved Me cover by Michael Gillette To celebrate Ian Fleming's birthday in 2008, Penguin commissioned designer Michael Gillette to create 14 new covers for the Bond series. Each book uses a different font but the retro-style remains the same, painted alongside forms of the iconic Bond girls. 06. Jesse Ball – The Way Through Doors The Way Through Doors cover by Jason Booher and Helen Yentus Designed by two of the best cover creators Jason Booher and Helen Yentus, Ball's highly acclaimed novel uses a striking illusion of layered paper and a slab serif typeface to create clean lines and almost clinical feel to reflect the story of a hospital patient's attempt to remember the truth after a car accident. 07. Phillip Pullman – Tales from the Brothers Grimm Ohio-based designer Cheong-ah Hwang also used an illusion of layered paper to create Pullman's reworking of The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, and was released alongside a beautifully illustrated trailer. 08. Robert Lowell – For the Union Dead For the Union Dead cover by Berthold Wolpe Faber's art director and designer of the Albertus typeface Berthold Wolpe designed a number of covers for the famous publisher, including Lowell's For the Union Dead. His bold cover designs were said to have been created in response to the typical illustrated covers of the time. 09. JK Rowling – The Casual Vacancy The Casual Vacancy cover by Joel Holland Her first since the Harry Potter series, Rowling's book featured illustration and hand lettering by Joel Holland on the cover. Unsuprisingly given Rowling's fame, the cover design caused some controversy but as Jon Gray told The Telegraph: "As a designer I'm left non-plussed and envious and as a reader I'm left intrigued. That means another copy sold, so: job done." 10. Chad Harbach – The Art of Fielding The Art of Fielding cover by Dana Tanamachi Brooklyn-based artist Dana Tanamachi used her custom chalk lettering style to design the UK version of Harbach's novel, using the chair to create a 3D element to the cover whereas the US version, designed by artist Keith Hayes, has more of a baseball feel for the American audience. Related articles: 68 best free fonts for designers Typography rules and terms every designer must know 5 typography trends for 2018 View the full article

Magical lands, swashbuckling adventures, tall tales conjured with wonderful breaches of logic… The lure of children’s book illustration is clear. Who wouldn’t want to spend their days crafting stories of courage, loyalty and bravery? 23 stunning book illustrations Children’s book publishing is booming. In the UK, the market grew more than 7 per cent in the first quarter of 2016, according to Nielsen Books, following a 5.1 per cent growth in 2015. Unsurprisingly, it’s competitive, and for many artists a tough field to crack. Even Dr. Seuss creator Theodor Seuss Geisel was rejected by over 30 publishers before releasing his first book. So what does it take to make it in the wild world of children’s book illustration? 01. Mine your imagination “I illustrate with lots of colour and detail because that’s what I loved when I was six,” says Jonny Duddle For author and illustrator Jonny Duddle, the first key attribute is an active imagination. “Whether you’re writing and illustrating your own books or illustrating another author’s text, you need to create original, inspired artwork to capture a child’s imagination,” he explains. “You need to be passionate about your vision, and make sure you have the style and technique to pull it off.” 02. Build up your stamina Duddle estimates that he spends almost 1,000 hours creating the artwork for each of his picture books Fresh from creating the covers of two new JK Rowling books, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages, Duddle – who in 2014 also illustrated the jackets of Bloomberg’s refreshed Harry Potter series – has a unique insight into the highs and lows of the field. “Stamina is just as important,” he adds. “Finishing the artwork for a picture book always takes longer than you think. Sustaining your vision, passion and imagination over several months is probably the greatest challenge an artist can face.” 03. Don't expect it to be simple A promotional image by Kiri Østergaard Leonard for Montague Mouse Danish illustrator Kiri Østergaard Leonard agrees. “Many people go into children’s illustration thinking it’s really easy to do, but it isn’t. Not only is it a difficult and competitive market to break into, it’s also a difficult language to learn – especially because it isn’t always about drawing well. It’s more about relying on story, emotion and strong colours than making something pretty.” From both a technical and practical perspective, learning how to draw children’s book illustrations can be deceptively challenging. There’s a dizzying variety of genres on offer – from folklore to fairy tales; for babies to young adults – and often the simpler a style, the harder it is to create. Don’t be fooled into thinking fewer words means an easier job, either. “Some picture books have characters and items evolving from page to page that are never mentioned in the text,” points out English illustrator Nick Harris. “You might show the moment just before or just after the scene described in the text, which can have an implication or pathos that adds weight to the words.” 04. Embrace your inner child “With picture books, the words and pictures must work together," says Duddle, "Neither should tell the full story” There can be more restrictions involved when creating imagery for children, too. “There’s a level of censorship that isn’t present in artwork for adults,” says Leonard. “What’s great, though, is how vivid children’s imaginations are. They won’t ask why the dog is green – because of course the dog is green.” “If you still love to draw the kinds of things that excited you as a child or teenager, then you’re halfway there,” adds Harris. “I still laugh at fart jokes and pratfalls. Just never condescend. Children are inexperienced, not stupid.” 05. Marry up subject and style Duddle visualised the Harry Potter universe as he read through the books Like many children’s book illustrators, Harris works collaboratively with authors and publishers to bring existing stories to life, rather than illustrating his own. For him, creating imagery that perfectly captures and adds to the narrative is one of the most exciting parts of the job. “How you interpret the mood – using eye-line, lighting and body language for characters – affords a ton of ways you can present a scene in your own particular style,” he explains. Other artists, however, prefer to illustrate their own books. As Leonard admits, trying to bring someone else’s vision to life can be a struggle. “Although then you have to worry about writing, which is a whole different challenge.” For Duddle, the key is to develop story and visuals at the same time. “I don’t write the story first, or plot out all of the pictures,” he says. “Sometimes a book begins with a casual doodle in my sketchbook, or a rhyming couplet that I think is funny. But each book develops over months or years as a back-and-forth between words and pictures.” 06. Make an emotional connection “I enjoy illustrating for middle grade and young adults, more than early readers,” says Leonard So what do you need to make it from a professional standpoint? According to Helen Wicks – creative director at Kings Road Publishing, part of Bonnier Publishing – no prior experience is necessary. She frequently hires graduates fresh from college, looking for technical accomplishment, a distinct style and unique perspective. “Just as important is the ability to tell and sustain a story visually, and to communicate emotionally with the reader,” she explains. “Our illustrators create pictures with a purpose: to tell a story, convey emotions or illuminate facts.” She’s happy to work with illustrators who write, or to match writers with partners. “If the talent is there, we’ll find a way to make it work,” she says, adding that if you’re interested in getting into children’s publishing, don’t be afraid to market yourself. “Some pitch fully formed concepts; others send in simple portfolios of illustration that manage to catch our eye. Talk to as many other illustrators and publishers as possible,” she advises. 08. Be on time Nick Harris’ cover art went through a number of iterations before arriving at the bright, final version Whatever you do, don’t be unreliable. The cardinal sin of children’s book illustration is over-promising and not delivering on time. “We can cope with almost everything else,” Helen warns, “but the ramifications of lateness are profound and very stressful for all.” Like any career, says Harris, children’s book illustration can be tough. But when the perfect image brings life to the text, it’s incredibly rewarding. “Aim for the magic,” he says. “It’s there. When the right words find the right illustrator, it really ignites.” This article was originally published in ImagineFX magazine issue 143. Buy it here. Related articles: How to illustrate children's books: 7 top tips Vintage Ladybird book illustrations would be banned today Linocut illustration: 10 stunning examples View the full article

Struggling to give your work a strong sense of perspective? There are perspective tools built into both Photoshop and Illustrator that will help (for example, click Edit>Perspective Warp in Photoshop). Get Adobe Creative Cloud now When you’re first experimenting with perspective I’d strongly suggest using these tools as a guide to help you with your compositions. Once you feel more confident and understand which is the right perspective for your composition, then you can start to create your own perspective grid for more flexibility. Having a strong perspective in your work helps the image feel more realistic, and it also enables you to convey the power you want the image to have. For example, picking a lowangle perspective, like in my racing car piece here, gives a real sense of speed and power, whereas picking a higher perspective angle (imagine looking down from a tall building) can give a sense of height and fear. Once you’ve decided on a perspective and angle for your composition, you can start to bend the rules slightly and exaggerate your perspective for a more dramatic effect. However, don’t go too far because it will begin to feel unrealistic! 01. Create a horizon line It all starts with a horizon line It all starts with your horizon line. Once you have this you can then pick your primary vanishing point and begin to create your guides from the point. Keep your angles simple to make your life easier – you can always rotate your artwork later. 02. Place your object Take a couple of passes to settle on a good shape Once you’re happy with your perspective, sketch some loose shapes to see where and how you want your objects to sit. I often have multiple sketches with different angles and perspectives before I decide on the one I feel works best. 03. Add details Add a secondary vanishing point if needs be When your angles and perspective are working well together, start to add detail and flesh your drawing out. You can also add a secondary vanishing point if necessary. For my piece here I added a secondary vanishing point for the buildings. This article was originally published in issue 156 of ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists. Buy issue 156 or subscribe to ImagineFX here. Related articles: Create perspective by warping your textures in Photoshop How to draw your art in perspective using Adobe Illustrator How to draw people, animals and landscapes View the full article

Nobody's perfect. Design fails happen all the time – even the most thorough creative director is allowed to trip once in a while. The most important part is how you get back up again. Recognise your mistakes, don't be afraid to embrace your human side, engage in the conversation, and – if you can – try to turn it around into a positive. Remember that consumers aren't necessarily looking for perfection; rather, for honesty and decency. When brands don't break trust by trying to be deceitful or hurtful, most of us are willing to laugh, forgive and forget. Here are some of the most embarrassing examples from recent times of where branding went wrong. 01. Pepsi You almost have to admire Pepsi for getting this campaign so spectacularly wrong. It seems to have looked into what The Young People are into and decided that mass protest is the latest thing, and created this saccharine abomination featuring the most anodyne demonstration ever, a ruthlessly diverse assembly of cheerful, well-scrubbed youngsters waving blandly meaningless placards. Kendall Jenner making everything all right by handing a can of Pepsi to a riot cop, as a female Muslim photographer catches the perfect shot, is the sugary icing on an already syrupy cake; Pepsi apologised and pulled the ad within days. 02. BrewDog "Pink IPA for girls! It's a joke, yeah? Like Ricky Gervais!" Glasgow brewery BrewDog has form when it comes to provocative marketing with a tendency to wind people up, and its recent effort for International Women's Day is no exception. While you can't really fault its intention to help end gender pay equality and donate to charities that fight inequality and support women, rebadging its Punk IPA as Pink IPA and calling it 'Beer for girls' is a bit of a misfire, whichever way you look at it. BrewDog was unapologetic, insisting that it was satirically exposing sexist marketing practices and that people didn't get the joke, but later admitted that next time it would try to be funnier. 03. Guinness This four-leaf shamrock was unlucky for Guinness For some, Guinness and St Patrick's Day are virtually synonymous, but in 2016 Guinness make a bit of a blunder when its Canadian St Paddy's Day promotional billboard advertising contained a shamrock with one too many leaves. Social media was not slow to inform Guinness of its error, which then spread to traditional media around the world, causing major embarrassment for the renowned Irish stout-maker which will take some time for it to get cl-over. 04. Sainsbury's Sainsbury's internal staff message ended up facing the public In 2014, Sainsbury's was left red-cheeked after a poster, which was intended for internal audiences only, accidentally appeared in the window of one of the supermarket's east London stores. The poster said: "Let's encourage every customer to spend an additional 50p during each shopping trip between now and the year end" and was meant as a staff incentive to boost the retailer's profits. Lidl was quick to pounce on Sainsbury's blunder Sainsbury's admitted this was a mistake and quickly took down the poster but the actual star of this blunder turned out to be Lidl, who spotted the opportunity for mischief and came up with its own fifty pence challenge. 05. The American Red Cross There have been a few instances of personal tweets coming from corporate accounts Mixing up the corporate Twitter account with your personal one – this must be one of the biggest fears of people working with social media. It also is the cause of many – often quite entertaining – brand blunders. One example is the rogue #gettingslizzered tweet by the American Red Cross, which stayed up for about an hour, enough to be picked up by various blogs and sites. The American Red Cross cleverly turned the error around However, much more interesting than the tweet itself was the way the Red Cross responded to the incident – with a good-humoured tweet that acknowledged this as a very human mistake. This misstep was then turned around to using #gettingslizzerd and the newly gained attention to inspire a wave of support for the Red Cross and increase donations. 06. Schweppes Schweppes fell foul of the classic foreign language translation gaffe Failing the linguistic check – another popular cause of funny (and sometimes quite creepy) brand blunders. When Swiss company, Schweppes, launched a promotional campaign in Italy for its Indian tonic they decided to go for the name "il water". Sounds pretty Italian, right? But what they did not take into account was that "il water" means "the toilet" in Italian. Naturally, the company did not want to sell toilet water and so it changed the name to Schweppes Tonica. Luckily for Schweppes, the Italian market gave them a second chance but a simple check on Google Translate could have spared them the embarrassment. 07. Labour's Pink Bus "What do women like?" "Pink things." "Perfect. Paint the van pink and let's go to lunch." When Labour launched the Women to Women campaign their aim was to treat women as equals, listen to their concerns and encourage progress in women's lives. But in complete contrast the campaign used a pretty pink, which felt very patronising the women they were there to help. Dressing in pink to attract 'women' as a collective suggested that women would only be interested in politics if the information were packaged with a pink bow. 08. Tropicana Destroy a much-loved brand and prepare to see your profits collapse Pictures speak louder than words. Tropicana is made from 100% Orange Juice – pure and natural. It says so on the pack. More to the point the packs got a real orange on it with a straw sticking out of it – genius! It's an iconic piece of design as relevant today as the day it was created. An ill-considered and short lived redesign in 2008 binned the orange and the straw and the familiar characterful logo in favour of a bland stripped back geometric sans serif makeover. Overnight it had lost its identity and PepsiCo lost in excess of $100m dollars as sales fell by 20%. The original branding was immediately reinstated. 09. Electrolux Electrolux didn't understand that "sucks" has two meanings. Or did it? "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". This tagline by the Swedish appliance manufacturer has become something like an urban myth of brand blunders, the joke being that the Swedish failed to recognise the dual meaning of "sucks". But was that really the case? This is so bad, it's almost cool. And the attention this controversy generated was enormous. So although this has gone down as a fail moment, it might actually have been intentional. This in turn raises a very interesting question: how thin is the line between failing and winning? (See also John McCarthy's post on Penguin Books and the #YourMum hashtag). Related articles: 25 logo design tips from the experts 5 logo design trends for 2018 10 of the best logos ever View the full article

3D software Houdini from Toronto-based firm SideFX utilises a node-based, procedural approach to provide digital artists with a remarkable level of power, flexibility and control. It’s some of the best 3D modelling software around. While many Houdini users utilise the software to carry out very specific tasks for their 3D art, it has a highly extensive toolset and capabilities – and in recent times has become more artist friendly. So now’s the time to jump right in. Whether you’re completely new to Houdini or just want to hone your skills on its many features, going back to basics is a great way to master tools you might not already be hugely familiar with, and speed up your workflow. Here, you'll find some expert Houdini tips, which include specifics on enhancing your workflow, character creation and rigging, terrain generation and creating a robot with personality. 01. Cut wires mode hotkey This hotkey is an excellent time saver when disconnecting nodes "This hotkey is an excellent time saver when disconnecting nodes," says Blue Sky Studios' FX technical director Chris Rydalch. "By default, Y is set up as the key, so hold down Y and drag across network wires to disconnect the nodes. You can edit this to another letter of your choice, though. "I've found that when I add X as a hotkey for Cut Wires Mode, I use it much more often. To do this, go to Edit > Hotkeys, then search for Cut Wires Mode. When you click to add X, it will warn you that X is assigned to Visualize Output, so click Remove Other. Only do this if you are happy with this change; since I disconnect nodes much more frequently than I put down visualizers, this works much better for me." 02. Use automatic and manual update modes Manual cook mode will let you make changes to parameters and nodes without having to wait "By default, Houdini is set to update (cook) automatically," Rydalch explains. "For small to medium scenes, this is fine. But often production work involves lots of very heavy graphs and simulations. In these cases, it is valuable to switch to Manual cook mode. This will let you make changes to parameters and nodes without having to wait for the nodes to cook and the viewport to refresh. Click the Refresh button to see any changes you've made. "Also, you can add hotkey shortcuts to pick which mode. To do this, go to Edit > Hotkeys and search for Update Mode 'Always' and Update Mode 'Never', which are the commands for Automatic and Manual modes, respectively." 03. UVs along curves The UV Texture SOP (Surface Operator) is great for adding UVs along a curve "The UV Texture SOP (Surface Operator) is great for adding UVs along a curve," says Rydalch. "To do this, set the Texture Type to Rows & Columns and the Attribute Class to Point. Now you can access this in a wrangle using v@uv.x to get the UV value of a point along a curve. This works with multiple curves, and not just one at a time." 04. Compound bullet shapes Houdini Bullet Solver is very fast "Houdini Bullet Solver is very fast, and in most cases, the default collision shapes are good enough," Rydalch explains. "When you find you have a lot of concave pieces, and the concave collision shape isn't working, you can generate a special compound collision shape. Compound collision shapes are several distinct pieces, but they are permanently glued together and treated as a single shape. "The way this works is you toggle on Create Convex Hull per Set of Connected Primitives under Collisions > Bullet Data on an RBD (rigid body dynamics) Object or RBD Fractured Object DOP node. This will tell Houdini to look for the s@name primitive attribute, and all primitive shapes that share the same name attribute will be treated as a single shape." 05. Emit particles from fast-moving geometry The POP Source DOP has some built-in features for particles that need to be emitted from fast-moving geometry "Often, particles need to be emitted from fast-moving geometry, and it’s not uncommon to find stepping in these cases," says Rydalch. "Thankfully, the POP Source DOP has some built-in features for these cases under the Birth tab. "By default, Jitter Birth Time is set to Positive. I find I get better results by setting it to Negative and setting Interpolate Source to Back. This will interpolate the source geometry backwards in time, and birth the particles along that trajectory. This requires unchanging topology; your source geometry can be translating and deforming, but you can’t have varying point counts." 06. Bone capture biharmonic tool "Bone Capture Biharmonic is a fantastic tool for a quick character setup," says Red Ring Entertainment's Kalin Stoyanov. "When rigging the amarok werewolf for the Houdini 16 presentation, we decided to use it and were amazed by how well it handled all the usual suspect spots – elbows and knees. The deformations were extremely smooth and behaved properly. It did not need much more weight painting (the most boring type of work in rigging). We just did some final touches and voila! 07. GATOR GATOR is a great tool for transferring weights and shapes from one object to another "GATOR is a great tool for transferring weights and shapes from one object to another, and makes it really easy to add clothes, shoes and additional objects to an already rigged character," Stoyanov continues. "In Houdini, such a concept exists in the very core of the software and transferring the attributes was easy as it updates on the fly." 08. CHOPS Channel operators are a really powerful tool to help with animation "The biggest reason for me to choose Houdini as a rigging software is CHOPS (channel operators)," Stoyanov says. "For those who do not know about CHOPS – imagine the Animation Mixer (XSI) and Animation Tracks (Maya), but better and much more powerful! 09. Work with the erosion node When working with the erosion node, always try to start with a low terrain resolution for the first step "When working with the erosion node, I always start with a low terrain resolution for the first erosion step," 3D artist Aron Kamolz explains. "I do this to get strong, succinct details. Then I increase the terrain erosion, mixing in other details and do another erosion. This way you can get some exponent strong flow/erosion details for basic shaping of your terrain, and then you can add the smaller details on top. "This workflow applies not only to the erosion node, but is also valid for the whole terrain generation process. Start low res for the bigger, dominant details and gradually increase the resolution while adding smaller details on top." 10. Use terraces Houdini has a wide selection of geometry nodes for generating and shaping terrain "Since the erosion washes details away, it's always good to add some terraces before the erosion process, even if you’re aiming for a terrain without a terracing effect," Kamolz adds. "If you use it right you won't see the terracing anymore after the erosion. Instead, your terrain profits from a bit more variety in details, since the terraces slow down the erosion process and give more space for sediments to settle down." 11. Mix-terrain fractals To get a more interesting-looking terrain, try mixing different HeightField Noise functions To get a more interesting-looking terrain, you should try and mix different HeightField Noise function," Kamolz suggests. "Simply using only a HeightField node and then carrying out an erosion on top looks boring and uninteresting most of the time." 12. Make use of masks Masks are really helpful when working with height field terrains "Masks are your friend when working with height field terrains," says Kamolz. "You have several functions to choose from, such as mask to slope or mask to height. Use them to combine multiple height fields to get interesting-looking terrains. Some nodes also output masks, like the flow mask you get from the erosion node. Use them to texture your terrain." 13. Experiment with Houdini's features It can make a big difference which part of a model gets split into its own Houdini object so make sure to experiment "After my beloved Softimage had been EOL-ed I was looking for a new ‘home’, and I found it in Houdini," says 3D freelancer Philipp Von Preuschen. "In order to get used to the new concepts that Houdini is based on, I started by modelling a few robot busts. I prefer to create robots with some personality. "I started off with some sketches; as I knew from the get-go that the robots won’t need to move, I didn’t particularly care about mechanical correctness. The main rule for me in most cases is: it has to look functional, but it does not have to be. "One thing I discovered in Houdini is that it can make a big difference which part of a model gets split into its own Houdini object. Each Houdini object has its own SRT in the scene context. One could, for example, model a piston and then rotate it within its Houdini object, but the piston could also be rotated by the Houdini object that it is located in. Each method has its own pros and cons, and by experimenting and figuring out what to use I found it key when it came to successful mechanical modelling in Houdini." 14. Utilise plugins Direct Modeling HDA plugin is great for efficient hard-surface modelling "I have recently discovered a great modelling plugin for Houdini: Direct Modeling HDA by Alexey Vanzhula," Von Preuschen says. "I used it a lot for my projects as it provides a functionality that is similar to Modo’s MeshFusion. It’s great for efficient hard-surface modelling." 15. Texturing Houdini's curvature shader is a killer texturing aid "I didn’t assign any UVs to my creation, and I used Redshift to render the robots," Von Preuschen adds. "Its triplanar projection is a superb way to texture almost anything super fast. The other killer texturing aid is the curvature shader, as it makes it easy to give metal some edgewear." This article was originally published in issue 231 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 231 or subscribe to 3D World. Related articles: The biggest 3D movies of 2018 5 ways to hone your motion graphics skills How to get your first CG job View the full article

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You've probably heard that you should use relative units for font size. This is a good rule for accessible web design; if the user changes their browser's default font size, this enables your page's text to resize accordingly. You may have taken this advice and made the switch. Perhaps you got out your calculator and converted your site's font sizes from absolute px units to ems or, more likely, rems. But if that's where you stopped, you are missing out on a lot of the flexibility and power that ems bring to the browser. The em unit is not simply a replacement for the familiar px; you can use it for more properties than just font-size. If you do, some of its other benefits begin to emerge. By consistently using ems, you can design components on the page that respond automatically should the font size change. Then, with a clever trick for a responsive font size, you can produce an entire page that adjusts dynamically based on the viewport width of the browser. Let me show you how to leverage the 'relative' behaviour of ems to create designs that are scalable and responsive. Font size units Using ems for font size can be tricky. The exact value is determined by the element's inherited font size (i.e. the font size of the parent element). This gets complicated when you start nesting elements more deeply. If an element has a font size in ems, its parent has a font size in ems, and its parent has yet another. You will have to multiply all these values to determine the actual computed value of the child element. This means that placing the same module in different containers might change the meaning of em. The module will be unpredictable. To avoid this, we typically use a different relative unit for font size: rems. A rem (or 'root em') is based not on the inherited font size, but on the font size of the page's root element, <html>. This means its value is the same throughout the page. It is more predictable than, and often preferable to, regular ems. Building a module with ems Let's use relative units to build a module. However, we're not going to follow the common approach. Instead of using rem for everything, we will use it only once: on the top-most element of the module. This will establish a known font size for the module, rather than it being based on an unpredictable chain of em values above it in the DOM. It means we can easily scale the size of the module by overriding a single value. Use rems on the outermost element to establish a known font size, then use ems to build based on that value After we establish this known font size, we are safe to use regular ems throughout the module. Use it not only for any font sizes on the sub-elements, but also for most other properties, including padding, margin and border-radius. We'll build a panel with a heading and a body. The markup looks like this: Let's style the outer container. We'll set the font size at 1rem to establish our local em value. We'll then define the border-radius using ems. I typically like to use px for border, though, to get a nice fine line. Next, style the inner elements. We'll use ems for padding. Then we'll increase the font size of the heading to 1.25 times our local em value, producing a 20px computed size. You can multiply the padding values by their font size to determine their computed values (9.6px vertical and 19.2px horizontal). Truthfully, though, it doesn't matter. Try to not get bogged down with pixel-perfect measurements. This may feel awkward, but press on. The more you use ems, the more you will become familiar with them as a unit in their own respect. Dynamically scaling the design When we create reusable modules like this, we often find we need a few variations. Say we wanted to create a larger version. If we were using px for everything, this would mean increasing the font size, the padding, the border-radius and so on. However, because we have defined everything in relation to one rem-based font size, we need only to change that value, and the entire module will respond: We simply add this class to a panel to make it larger: <div class="panel panel--large">. This will change the local definition of an em, and thus the border radius and padding change as well, along with the font size of its child elements. With a single declaration, we've resized every part of the module. A panel module, with paddings and border radius defined using ems Likewise, we could create a small version: By grounding the module using a top-level font size in rems, we've made it stable and predictable. By defining everything else within using ems, we've made all of its component parts scalable. It is possible to base the size of everything inside the module on one value, then change that value to scale it all This is a powerful pattern. You can use this approach for anything on your page, from drop-down menus to social media buttons. Ground the module with a rem value, then use em for virtually everything else from paddings to positioning to icon sizes. Making it responsive Let's push the principle one level further. We've sized the module (and theoretically all other modules on the page) using rems and ems. This ultimately means their size is based on the root element's font size. Then, we can adjust this single value to make the entire page respond in turn. Let's bring in another relative unit: vh. This unit's computed value is derived from the user's screen size; it is equal to 1 per cent of the width of the viewport. If we use the vh unit to define the root font size, it will automatically scale responsively, sans media queries. Set the font size on the root to 2vw: Unfortunately, the effect is a bit too strong. On an iPhone 6, for instance, this will compute to 5.5px, which is too small. Likewise, it's unreasonably large on bigger screens. To soften the effect, we can make use of CSS's calc() function: Now the font size is derived partly from a stable value, and partly from a responsive one. This produces a much better effect. The 0.6em behaves as a sort of minimum font size. Now the root em will scale fluidly from about 13px on smartphone to 21px on an average desktop screen. With your page made up of scalable modules, each grounded to the rem value, and they too will scale with the viewport. The page is structured with a three-tier hierarchy; you can change the size of the entire page, an individual module, or a single element by making a simple edit to the font size. Trust the ems and rems, and the browser will take care of the work for you. You may still need to add the occasional media query to control line wrapping and some other responsive concerns. But this small bit of code combined with a habit of using ems and rems will get you a lot of the way there. This article was originally featured in net magazine issue 288; buy it here Related articles: 10 typography tricks every designer should know A designer's guide to typography and fonts Master accessible web typography View the full article

Netflix opens up bug bounty program to all white hat hackers and ups the ante for bugs to as much as $15,000. View the full article

Birmingham is a UK city with plenty going for it – more canals than Venice, some amazing architecture and a young, multicultural population. But unless you lived there, it's not somewhere you might automatically associate with design. How to organize a conference However that's about to change with the launch of the Birmingham Design Festival. Taking place from 7-10 June at venues across the city, it's planned as a celebration of the local, national and international design industry. And it's lined up an incredible collection of speakers to inspire you, no matter which part of the wide world of design you're from, or whether you're a junior designer or an art director. The first Birmingham Design Festival kicks off in June Around 80 speakers are expected to be sharing their wisdom and insights, and the festival has already announced some big names. Heading up the bill are graphic artist and printmaker Anthony Burrill, Pentagram partner Marina Willer, Hat-trick and Studio Sutherl& founder Jim Sutherland, award-winning creative director Jack Renwick and Draplin Design Co. founder Aaron Draplin. And a quick look through the rest of the speakers lined up should tell you that you're never going to be stuck for a session. It's not all design celebrities, though. The festival's organisers have taken care to involve local studios and individuals in a carefully curated programme based around the theme 'Forward'. And if you have a great idea for a talk or workshop, they'd like to hear from you; download the festival submissions pack and send in your proposal by 27 April. The Birmingham Design Festival is taking a clever approach to organising its many workshops, talks, exhibitions, demonstrations and screenings so that you're a lot less likely to miss out on something relevant to your interests. It's gathering everything into three distinct Design Districts – Graphic, Digital and Product – so no matter what your place in the design industry may be, you'll have no trouble seeking out inspiration over the festival's four days. Other great names lined up for the festival include Trevor Beattie, Made by many, Craig Oldham and Dan Mumford It's all adds up to a compelling design destination for the summer. "Our beloved city is currently undergoing an exciting period of evolution and development," says organiser Daniel Alcorn, "and over the last few years these changes have also been evident in the creative industries. Brum is starting to act and feel like the creative powerhouse it has always had the potential to become." You can find out more about the Birmingham Design Festival here, and keep up to date by following its Twitter account. Related articles: How to encourage diversity in the design industry 5 essential rules of self promotion 8 design industry trends for 2018 View the full article

Want to understand UX design? Then go to the toilet. A place that provides insights into how to design goal-oriented, task-based, time-critical user interactions and interfaces. The ultimate guide to user experience Many public toilets are a catalogue of catastrophic design failings. No wonder the internet has usability issues when we still struggle to create elegant solutions for the everyday activities we have been doing for millennia. But we can learn from the good and bad of toilet design. Here’s some tips to take into your next digital project. 01. Don't create problems Good design is meant to solve problems, yet sometimes the design inadvertently creates the problem. In the gents’ toilet at Brighton’s Dome Theatre a notice reads ‘This is a sink’. Unfortunately, in the hurry before a show you often see men mistaking the long, metal trough-shaped fitting for a urinal. I’m sure when it was displayed in the designer’s studio it looked fantastic, but in situ, the height, colour, material, position and shape disguise its purpose. Avoid that sinking feeling. Always design for the people who will use your products and consider the context in which they will encounter them. 02. Put humans first Mobile-first and content-first have their place, but I’d suggest the best designs are created human-first. Observing human behaviour helps you create surprising and innovative solutions. An example of this is an experiment set up by the cleaning staff at Schiphol airport over 25 years ago. By simply adding an image of a fly into the porcelain to aim at, they managed overnight to reduce ‘spillage rates’ in the men’s toilets by 80 per cent, which translates into major savings in cleaning costs. This fly printed on the urinals at Schiphol airport helped seriously reduce cleaning costs The experiment has been replicated across the world. It turns out men are rather predictable; make the task a competition and you’ll get their concentration. 03. Make simple interactions Train toilets are a big source of design crime. In many cases, to simply lock the door requires you to read reams of instructions and select the correct combination of flashing buttons. I’ve been on trains where a sign is needed to point to the flush, as it becomes hidden when the seat is lifted up. This poor design is made worse when the only visible button is a non-labelled and easy to reach emergency stop. Clues on how to use a product should be baked into the interface. The need for instructions is a strong indication your design is not instinctive to use. 04. Communicate, don't confuse We’ve all been there: bursting for the loo (often after a few drinks) with rising anxiety as we try to decipher the sign on the door. Is it a merman or mermaid? Are berets gender-specific? Remind me, is the XY chromosome an indication of male or female sex-determination? I don’t want to solve a puzzle, I just want to go through the correct door. What can seem like a playful extension of your brand personality can quickly end up in user frustration. However pretty your wayfinding symbols or icons are, if they don’t communicate what you intend at a glance, they are an example of bad design. 05. Tame the technology Just because you can build it doesn’t mean you should. Japanese toilets provide a sanitary lesson in the perils of over-engineering and feature creep. On top-end toilets, flushing, raising and lowering the lid, and even keeping a personal ‘performance’ record is all done via a smartphone app. This means that at night, before you can go to the toilet, you need to find your phone (and hope the battery is charged). This Japanese toilet is a lesson in the perils of over-engineering Sometimes the minimum viable product should be the extent of the product. In design less is more; and even less is even more. 06. Find space to think The toilet provides the perfect perch for contemplation and encouraging curiosity. So if you want to understand human behaviour, get inspiration for interaction patterns, or just need the room to think, you know where to go. Become a better designer today by going to the toilet. This article was originally published in net magazine issue 289. Buy it here. Related articles: 5 top UX design trends for 2017 10 reasons why UX designers have the best job in the world 10 essential tools for freelance UX designers in 2017 View the full article

The idea of following brand guidelines is something that doesn’t get a lot of attention on most design courses. “I’ve never come across an intern or graduate who understands the fundamentals of brand guidelines,” says Ellie Pearson, senior designer and studio manager at Cambridge-based agency Mobas. “But it’s not their fault: they weren’t told about it, and neither was I.” The concept itself, though, is quite simple. Brand guidelines are a set of rules that dictate how all elements of a brand should be applied. Designers are given a detailed outline of a brand's preferred colours, fonts, logos and so on, and how each are to be used. But what students are often taken aback by is the sheer range of things covered by brand guidelines. 21 outstanding uses of colour in branding “I was surprised at first by the complexity and depth of brand guidelines,” recalls Jess Dutton, junior designer at Mobas. “For some larger clients, they’re incredibly extensive. You think of brands having one or two primary colours, but I didn’t know they could have secondary colours too.” Dutton was also surprised by the distinctions between internal and external colours for collateral that will be used for staff and for customers. “It’s a lot more complex than meets the eye,” she says. If you're new to working with brand guidelines, here are some pro tips for making sure you get the most out of them – without stifling your creativity... 01. Read the brand guidelines before you start Brandon design consultancy experimented with branding guidelines for Vlerick Business School It sounds obvious, but the complexity of some brand guidelines means it's good practice to spend time digesting them – before you start a project. “I always make sure I’ve gone through the brand guidelines from start to finish, and that I have a clear understanding of the look and feel of the existing brand, before I start a project,” says Joe Bembridge, junior designer at Macclesfield design consultancy Brandon. Tom Tennant, a motion graphics designer at Gramercy Park Studios in London, tells a similar tale. “I spend as much time as possible studying the guidelines, as it’s really helpful to be on the same page as your client,” he says. “Even reading the parts that aren’t relevant to what you’re doing can give you more insight into the brand. After all, it’s there to help.” 02. Know when to push back – and when not to Laura Wynn-Owen, junior designer at Nelson Bostock Group in London, notes that guidelines are usually handed over without being talked through, so they can be open to your own interpretation. “But in our case, there are usually brand teams on hand to answer any questions,” she says. “There may also be brand sites that give access to assets, guidelines and best practice examples.” As the word ‘guidelines’ suggests, these are not immutable rules. But pushing back on them should be a last resort, not a default, believes Andrius Petravicius, digital designer at Hampshire design agency Superrb. “I usually wouldn’t push back on brand guidelines, as in most cases, you can still be creative and work around them,” he reasons. “I’ve done so on occasions, though, when I felt like the guidelines weren’t working well visually and I knew they could be improved upon.” 03. Make suggestions Karl Doran of Manchester design agency Flow Creative concurs. “We did some work recently for Arts Council England,” he says. “They had a fairly detailed brand guidelines document, but we did try to push it a bit, and bring in some extra tints and colours, plus we created a kind of illustrative classic style that they’d not really used before.“ “It fitted in with their branding but it moved it on a little bit, and they were happy with it. If you can do that, that’s ideal, although it does obviously depend on the client and the brief.” 04. Don’t limit your creativity Illustrator MegaMunden’s site needed to incorporate his signature style, so Superb studio asked him to illustrate a lot of the incidental elements “Don’t let brand guidelines hold you back on your creativity,” agrees Joe Bembridge at Brandon. “These guides are put in place not to limit creativity, but to help a brand stay recognisable and consistent,” he points out. “If you do go against the guidelines, make sure you have a valid reason for doing so.” 05. Work within a reliable system Normally, your job is simply to understand and internalise the brand guidelines, as well as work within a reliable system to ensure they’re adhered to. Such systems will vary from studio to studio, but will normally be largely based on common sense. “At Moras, we have a huge printed folder with details of all brand guidelines that we work on in the studio, which is also accessible on our server,” explains Dutton. “I go through and manually double-check colours, as well as doing an InDesign check that shows all the typefaces used, so you can easily weed out any that shouldn’t be there. Plus, we have an internal artworker in the team who checks everything against guidelines and specs before it’s sent back to the client.” 06. Use the right tools Adherence to brand guidelines may also be integrated into the software itself. “At Superrb we use Sketch, which allows us to set up reusable colour palettes and typography styles,” says Petravicius. “I’ve also been using InVision’s Craft plugin for Sketch quite a lot lately; this lets you create branding libraries with all brand assets, styles and symbols. I’m also really excited about a new tool from InVision called Design System Manager, which seems like a powerful system for creating, managing and scaling design libraries.” 07. Harness the software “To make sure I follow the guidelines carefully, I’ll take a screengrab of the most important parts: the colour references, font, and point sizes,” says Gramercy Park Studios' Tom Tennant. “I also find it helps to copy the brand colours into whichever software you’re using so you have a palette that’s easily accessible.” 08. Ask if you don’t understand The most important thing, adds Ellie Pearson, is that if there’s something you don’t understand – and there probably will be – ask. “Brand guidelines can be incredibly technical,” she says. “One of our animal health clients has a lock up at the bottom of all designs that requires a mathematical formula to work out the right height and width for the exact document you’re working on. A junior or intern has little hope of understanding that, so they should always seek help if they’re unsure.” “Raise any questions you have as soon as possible, rather than when you’re midway through the work,” advises Laura Wynn-Owen, junior designer at Nelson Bostock Group. “If there’s anything you’re unsure about, ask. Even senior designers need guidance. There are no stupid questions when it comes to brand guidelines.” Related articles: How to create a design style guide: 25 pro tips 13 magically meticulous design style guides How to create effective brand guidelines View the full article

2018 looks set to be a massive year for film – and 3D movies in particular. With long-awaited sequels and thrilling adaptations in the pipeline, now might just be the time to renew your cinema subscription. Because if you're going to see a film laced with CGI – to fully appreciate the show-stopping 3D art – it's got to be on the big screen, right? Here's the best of what's yet to come this year... 01. Rampage Yes, it’s based on a not terribly interesting video game, and yes it stars The Rock, but who doesn’t want to see three genetically engineered animals tearing into the skyscrapers of Chicago? True to the 1986 coin-op, Rampage stars George, an albino gorilla, Ralph the wolf and Lizzie the crocodile in a fight to see who can become the top apex predator. By the same team that brought you San Andreas, we’re pretty sure this 3D movie will be short on plot, but long on scenes of city-wide destruction. The movie calls on the skills of Weta Digital for the oversized creatures and Scanline VFX for scenes of devastation – so it should at least be a treat for the eyes. 02. Avengers Infinity War The 19th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series see the Avengers joining forces with the Guardians of the Galaxy to defeat Thanos, the murky villain in search of the Infinity Stones. It’s the first of a two-part series, with a direct sequel appearing in 2019, and both films being shot back-to-back. Infinity War will undoubtedly be a tour-de-force of computer graphics, with big-hitters Framestore and ILM on VFX duties. Indeed, with the entire team in full flight, at least six of the lead characters are all-CG entities, so there’s very little real footage these days. 03. Solo: A Star Wars Story The Star Wars film no-one really asked for has suffered a troubled production, with a change of directors, reshoots mere weeks before launch, and a lead actor who neither looks nor sounds like Harrison Ford and needed a dialogue coach on set. Recent rumours even suggest that Disney have written the film off and expect it to bomb at the box office. Ouch. Still, the trailer is pretty engaging and the Star Wars brand seems to be a bulletproof cash-cow. And if the thought of a pristine Millennium Falcon being chased by TIE fighters and a proper Star Destroyer doesn’t lure you in, then this probably wasn’t the film for you anyway. 04. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom When the sequel to one of the most beloved franchises earns $1.67 billion worldwide, you can bet your ass there’ll be another one – and here it is. The action returns to Isla Nublar, home of the original doomed theme park, where an impending volcano threatens to wipe out the remaining dinosaurs. Chris Pratt is back as the velociraptor wrangler, and Jeff Goldblum makes a welcome return as chaotician Dr. Ian Malcolm. The 3D movie promises more dinosaurs than ever, with lots of full-size animatronics, but don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of giant CG reptiles rampaging across the island, and some tasty volcanic effects too, courtesy of ILM. 05. Incredibles 2 The long-awaited sequel to one of Pixar’s best movies is finally here. Even though there’s a 14-year gap between productions, the film takes place immediately after the events of the original. The superheroic Parr family is struggling to lead a normal life while fighting The Underminer and dealing with their latest member, Jack-Jack, who has a host of dangerously uncontrolled powers. And when a new super villain enters the fray, things just get worse… In terms of visuals, we pretty much know what to expect, with Pixar’s usual honed skills teamed with the stylised retro-look of the first Incredibles film. After a long schedule of kid-friendly fare it’ll be good to get something with little more edge. But how we long for Pixar to break free of Disney’s controlling influence and do something truly ground-breaking. 06. Ant-Man and the Wasp And the Marvel Studios movies just keep comin’. This time it’s a sequel to the 2015 flick Ant-Man. Paul Rudd reprises his role and gains some back-up in the shape of Hope van Dyne, played by Evangeline Lilly. This 3D movie riffs on the whole shrinking/enlarging conceit, with a series of gags that include a wheelable office block and giant Pez dispenser. And, having revealed Ant-Man’s ability to become oversized in Captain America: Civil War, there’s bit of that too. With numerous CG shots, including another trip into the quantum realm, the effects workload has been split across Double Negative, Scanline VFX, Luma Pictures and Rodeo FX. 07. Pacific Rim Uprising Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 outing was bombastic nonsense, but clearly left enough of an impression to warrant a follow-up. The film stars John Boyega, doing his best Idris Elba impersonation, and Scott Eastwood, doing a passable version of his dad, as pilots of humanity’s giant mechanoid fighting machines, the Jaegers. Earth is once again under threat when some mysterious organisation opens the Breach, releasing Kaiju monsters back into the world. Shots of citywide destruction channel the Toho monster movies of old, and, thanks to a rogue Jaeger, there’s enough metal-on-metal action to keep Michael Bay happy. For fans of VFX, it’s a veritable green screen CG-fest. 08. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Despite the original Fantastic Beasts being a rather tame affair, worldwide box office takings north of $800 million pretty much guaranteed a sequel. Having escaped custody from the Magical Congress of the United States of America, the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) continues his plan to build an army of pure-blood wizards to rule over the world’s non-magical inhabitants. And it’s Potter fans’ chance to see a young Albus Dumbledore, played by Jude Law. With an array of magical effects, wizardly apparitions, period set extensions and, of course, fantastic beasts, you can expect host of CG in this 3D movie. The bulk of the work is being handled by London-based FX houses, most notably Double Negative and Framestore, which have enjoyed long associations with the Harry Potter franchise. 09. Alita: Battle Angel Based on Yukito Kishiro’s 1990 manga series Battle Angel Alita, this 3D movie adaptation is directed by Robert Rodriquez, under the production auspices of James Cameron and Jon Landau (Cameron had stated his intent to direct, but the little matter of two Avatar sequels prevented that). The bulk of the VFX work – which looks substantial – is being handled by Weta Digital. The story centres on Alita, an amnesiac cyborg discovered by Christoph Waltz, who – in the comics at least – becomes a Hunter-Warrior in pursuit of killer cyborgs. The trailer does little to expand upon that, but you spend most of the time looking at Alita’s curiously oversized eyes. With a whopping $200 million budget, this feels like a sizeable gamble for Cameron and 20th Century Fox. 10. Mortal Engines Based on the novels by Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines is set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world in which London and other major cities have been mechanised and roam the planet preying on smaller ‘traction towns’. These are dragged on board and stripped of their resources – as revealed in the impressive trailer (which is also rather bewildering if you’re unaware of the books). With four novels in the series – plus the words ‘Peter Jackson’ and ‘an epic new saga’ – we're pretty sure this is intended as the first in a line of 3D movies, assuming the first is successful. Unsurprisingly, Jackson’s chums at Weta Digital are in charge of the CG work, which should be substantial given the theme of the movie. Related articles: The best 3D modelling software 2018 16 most imaginative movie wallpapers 18 best iPad art apps for painting and sketching View the full article

If you're looking for the best illustration books, you're in the right place. Whether you're a beginner or more established artist, we've rounded up 10 must-read books for illustrators in this essential list. These books don't just explore how to draw. You'll also find titles that give an overview of the history of illustration; instructional books to help you master the fundamentals of the craft; and books that'll help when you're struggling for inspiration. Whether you're a hobbyist, art student, freelancer or a studio professional, every book here is essential reading. Read on for our 10 must-read illustration books. Let's start at the beginning. In Fifty Years of Illustration, Lawrence Zeegen and Caroline Roberts plot the evolution of illustration – "the rampant idealism of the 1960s, the bleak realism of the 1970s, the over-blown consumerism of the 1980s, the digital explosion of the 1990s" – and how the craft has changed over of the years. Zeegen looks at the socioeconomic factors that effect illustration and vice versa. He also uses essays and artist profiles to investigate contemporary illustration's impact on popular culture. This is an illustration book to keep on your bookshelf, and go back to again and again. What is visual language and how do you develop it? Mark Wigan's Thinking Visually for Illustrators asks you to "take a step back from your own work and explore the approaches of contemporary illustrators". He looks at work from students, recent graduates, and the people who teach them. The book is a little more academic than others on this list, but it's also one of the most thorough. The visual library will get your ideas going, but it's in the analysis of the processes behind each image that the book comes into its own. First published in 1991, Molly Bang's short, beautiful, slightly strange book is one of the best ever written on composition for illustrators. Picture This: How Pictures Work explores the mechanics; the nuts and bolt of picture design. But she also asks abstract questions too: Why are diagonals dramatic? Why are curves calming? Why does red feel hot and blue feel cold? And at just 96 pages, you could easily read this in a oner. We had to include the legendary artist James Gurney in our list of essential books for illustrators. We could easily have picked his first book, Imaginative Realism, in which he tells you how to paint what doesn't exist. But his second book, Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter, is arguably the best, most exhaustive book ever written on colour and light. In it, Gurney looks at artists who were experts at using of colour and light, how light reveals form, the properties of colour and pigments, and a variety of atmospheric effects. But he does it without using jargon or overly scientific terms. This book shows Gurney is not only a master artist, but a master teacher too. Andrew Loomis is one of those artists who transcends art. If you don't know the name, you will know the work – he is the master of figure drawing. In Figure Drawing for all it's Worth, Loomis encourages you not to imitate his very distinct style, but instead to understand the principles that prop it up. If you're starting out, this is as good a place as any to master on of the fundamental building blocks of illustration, but there's more than enough here for old pros to learn a thing a two. The realities of being a working artist mean that as well as being able to draw, you need to know how the industry works. A good one for beginners, How to be an Illustrator covers the basics of the business of being a professional illustrator, including putting together a portfolio, approaching clients, preparing for contract meetings, managing your time and money. It also includes valuable interviews with nine industry professionals. Rees has worked with big clients in the UK and the US, so he knows what he's talking about. His book looks smart too. Many artists shy away from terms like marketing and strategy. But understanding how these things work is the difference between a hobbyist and a successful professional. Marshall Arisman and Steven Heller's Inside the Business of Illustration 'tells budding illustrators everything that their teacher didn't know or their art director didn't tell them'. And it succeeds in doing so without sucking the fun out of drawing. This book includes interviews with illustrators, art directors, and art buyers (the current edition has an afterword with Milton Glaser) but is thoughtfully structured to avoid ever feeling too academic. Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist is a modern classic for anyone who wants to do anything creative. But once you've started making things, what next? You have to show what you've made. And this is often the most terrifying, frustrating part. In Show Your Work: 10 Ways to Share your Creativity and get Discovered, Kleon – 'a writer who draws', in his own words – explains the difference between networking and using the network, how you become 'findable'. Chapter titles include You Don't Have to Be a Genius, Share Something Small Every Day, and Stick Around – which pretty much describes the whole arc of the book. 'It's not self-promotion,' Kleon says. 'It's self-discovery.' 'I failed my GSCE art,' writes Ben Tallon early his brilliantly titled book Champagne and Wax Crayons: Riding the Madness of the Creative Industry. The memoir proves he's a bit like Hunter S. Thomson and Ralph Steadman rolled into one. He tells you how he made it as freelance illustrator, from that failed exam, through art college, the early days of freelancing, all the way up to the top clients he works for today. He writes in clear, funny prose, and it's all illustrated with his trademark scratchy drawings. A useful book for anyone setting out on a freelance career of any kind. After all those books about business and self-promotion, here's a title that helps you remember why you love to draw in the first place. Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World has tips on illustration. But it also features 50 drawings about words in various languages that have no direct translation into English. Author Ella Frances Sanders explains that the Japanese language have a word for the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees, and in Finnish there's word for the distance a reindeer can travel before needing to rest. Those written definitions are cumbersome. Her illustrated definitions aren't. Read more: 30 books every graphic designer should read 18 best iPad art apps for painting and sketching Art techniques: top tutorials for painting and drawing View the full article

Arch Hosting Web Hosting is the web host of choice for web developers when they need to get their sites online with the assurance that all their designs will work as expected. This reliable web hosting service can get your site up and running in a snap. You can get a lifetime subscription to this powerful service for just $24.99 (approx. £18). Arch Hosting Web Hosting has everything you could possibly need to get your website up and running at its peak performance. This performance-oriented web host understands the importance of having no downtime and quick load times and will optimize your site with its lightning-fast network. You'll get 2GB of storage space and 500GB of bandwidth for your domain, which you'll get free for a full year. It's the perfect web hosting bundle for any web developer. You can get get a lifetime subscription to Arch Hosting Web Hosting plus one year of domain registry for just $24.99 (approx. £18). That's a saving of 95 per cent off the retail price for a deal that will get your site up and running, so grab this deal today! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: 12 best web hosting services How to host a successful design sprint The future of web design View the full article

The mahlstick (or maulstick, as it's sometimes known) is a stabilising support tool used by painters when working at an easel on a canvas or a large board. If you've never used a mahlstick before, you could find that it revolutionises your painting technique. They are one of those iconic artistic props, akin to a floppy beret and painter's smock (both I blushingly admit to owning myself). But don't underestimate this ubiquitous little branch of cliché. It's a very handy tool to have at your disposal, for a multitude of applications. Here are some tips for getting started. 01. Component parts of a mahlstick Mahlsticks are made of three elements Mahlsticks are typically made up of three main elements. One: a long, thin shaft, resembling a walking cane, that you lean your hand or wrist on while painting. Two: a cork ball, about the size of a ping-pong ball, fixed at the top end of the shaft, that leans on the canvas or board or hooks over the top of the easel. And three: a piece of protective chamois leather wrapped around the ball to stop the mahlstick from scratching, dragging or otherwise damaging your beautifully painted surface. 02. How to make your own mahlstick Making your own mahlstick is easy and fun Make your own DIY mahlstick by using a length of dowelling for the shaft, fitted with a cork ball at the end. Then fit the chamois leather around the cork ball and tie on a length of cord to hold it in place. When building your own, make sure you use a straight piece of dowelling for the shaft. This is crucial to ensuring you can use the mahlstick to its full potential. If you prefer, you can buy a quality mahlstick on Amazon or at other major retailers like eBay. 03. Hook up your mahlstick Hooking the mahlstick on the easel means you can position it at different angles You can rest the mahlstick directly on the canvas, or hook the ball over the top of a small support or the easel. Hooking the mahlstick on the easel enables you to position it at different angles, and to perform tricky tasks. Remember not to lean on the mahlstick too much as you could disturb your painting. 04. Mahlstick painting techniques A mahlstick doubles up as a straightedge tool Use your mahlstick as a handy straightedge tool as well as a rest. Hook the ball over the top of the canvas or board so you can use your non-painting hand to manoeuvre the stick to get a straight vertical line. Then simply run your brush or charcoal down the length of the shaft to create your straight line. You can do this from any angle to also create horizontal or diagonal lines. This article originally appeared in Paint & Draw issue 03; buy it here! Related articles: Review: Chameleon Colour Tone pens How to illustrate children's books: 7 top tips Create a low poly wallpaper in C4D View the full article

'Don't touch the logo'. It's a common phrase in many design agency briefs. Sometimes it even makes its way into rebranding projects, when all the other brand touchpoints are up for grabs except that one. The role of logo design may have diminished in the age of multi-channel, experiential branding, but that doesn't stop companies being rather attached to their carefully crafted marks. After all, brand recognition is built on coherence and consistency. All of this means that when a well-known brand does, temporarily, shake up its logo – people take notice. In recent years, several household names have done exactly that, to raise awareness of a particular cause. Read on to discover how five big brands successfully changed their logos for all the right reasons... 01. Lacoste Lacoste partnered with IUCN to raise awareness, by changing its iconic crocodile logo into 10 different endangered species In February this year, French fashion brand Lacoste caused a media stir by changing its iconic logo for the first time in its 85-year history, to raise awareness for endangered species. The project was the brainchild of BETC, and saw the world-famous crocodile emblem stepping aside for a limited time to make way for 10 more threatened animals, on a set of (fittingly) limited-edition polo shirts. Lacoste partnered with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to produce one polo shirt for each of the corresponding animals left in the wild. That equates to 1,775 in total, including 350 Sumatran Tigers, 231 California Condors, and 67 Javan Rhinos, 50 Northern Sportive Lemurs and 40 Burmese Roofed Turtles. Launched at Paris Fashion Week, the shirts retail for $183 apiece, with profits donated to IUCN. It's a bold move that raises awareness as well as cash, but the fact that the French sportswear brand messed with its long-established logo to do so added even more spice to the story. 02. PRODUCT(RED) Just seven of the global brands that agreed to have their logos "multiplied to the power of (RED)" Founded in 2006 by U2 frontman Bono and Bobby Shriver of the ONE Campaign, PRODUCT(RED) seeks to engage well-known private-sector brands to help fight HIV/AIDS in eight different African countries. Over the past 12 years, it has proved fantastically successful in doing so – convincing global brands such as Nike, American Express, Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Gap to shrink down their world-famous logos into brackets as part of the (RED) branding construct created by Wolff Olins. Apple has been one of PRODUCT(RED)'s major partners for over a decade Like the Lacoste example, the impact of these partnerships goes far beyond raising awareness, as the project leverages the enormous commercial power of its partner network to generate charitable funding on a global scale. Each partner company was tasked with creating a product, or range of products, featuring the PRODUCT(RED) logo and colour scheme, with up to 50 per cent of profits donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. 03. Google Doodles Google worked with several illustrators to produce this recent Doodle to mark International Women's Day 2018 Google has been playing with its logo since the early days. Back in 1998, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin added a stick figure drawing to the second 'o' in 'Google' to indicate that they were out of the office at Burning Man Festival. It was the first Google Doodle. Ever since, the idea of decorating, redrawing and manipulating the company logo to celebrate notable events, and raise awareness of particular causes, has been a familiar sight on the tech giant's homepage. Google has its own in-house team of 'doodlers' to meet demand. Sophie Diao's doodles for Earth Day 2016 highlighted the planet's major biomes Google Doodles often mark public holidays and anniversaries, as well as the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists. And the team invite suggestions from the public. They're a colourful, quirky way to make the branding more playful, as well as reflecting popular culture – and can also convey a more serious, awareness-raising message. For Earth Day 2016, for instance, Google doodler Sophie Diao was tasked with representing each of Earth's five major biomes: the tundra, forest, grasslands, desert and coral reefs. Each singles out a particular animal worthy of celebration and conservation, including a polar bear, red fox, elephant, tortoise and finally a coral reef with an octopus. 04. CokexAdobexYou Illustrator Birgit Palma was one of a group of 'influencers' invited to remix Coca-Cola's brand assets Lacoste was fronted by BETC, PRODUCT(RED) by Wolff Olins, and Google handles its doodles in-house. But it takes a particular kind of confidence to throw your brand open to the public, as Coca-Cola did in 2017. To celebrate the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Coca-Cola worked with Adobe to run a global contest, CokexAdobexYou – inviting people to use Creative Cloud to remix Coke's iconic brand assets into artworks that celebrate sport, movement and strength. These assets included the Red Disc, Spencerian Script, Contour Bottle Icon, Dynamic Ribbon and the Coca-Cola Red (Hex E41E2B or R:228 G:30 B:43). Part of the brief was to base the composition on a circle, and use Coke's distinctive red-and-white colour scheme. A selection of the user-submitted remixes of the Coke brand assets on the CokexAdobexYou Behance page Of course, Coca-Cola never actually modified its official branding as part of the initiative. But it remains a bold move to throw such carefully protected brand assets open to the public to play around with. While cynical onlookers may argue that Coke was primarily raising awareness of itself in the process, the project included a $35,000 donation to support the Special Olympics, a non-profit organisation that gets children and adults with intellectual disabilities involved in sport. 05. McDonalds McDonalds flipped its iconic 'M' to mark International Women's Day 2018, but not everyone was impressed In an attempt to mark International Women's Day 2018 and "honour of the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere", McDonalds flipped its iconic Golden Arches logo on its head to make a 'W' for 'women'. As well as updating its brand on social channels, including Twitter and Instagram, the fast-food chain also supplied 100 of its US restaurants with rebranded clothing, and even physically flipped a giant sign above a branch in Lynwood, California. While it successfully garnered plenty of global publicity, the stunt backfired in some circles in terms of actually raising awareness of the real issues. Many drew attention to issues with living wages and zero-hours contracts, and the effort was disdainfully branded "McFeminism" by British left-wing group Momentum – which goes to show, once again, that a brand's values and message extend far beyond its logo. Read more: Big-brand logos that pass the silhouette test 15 influential art and design movements you should know Fantastic design fails – and what we can learn from them View the full article

You're reading Deal of the Week! Two Products for the Price of One!, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Start the spring with a good deal! This month only you can purchase two of Designmodo’s most popular website builders for the price of one! Purchase Slides Framework and Startup Framework for only $249 and create unlimited websites for your clients. Click here to add both products to your cart and activate the discount code. […] View the full article

User engagement expert Donna Lichaw helps startups, non-profits and global brands optimise their digital products and services. She’ll be sharing pro insight into how to build your brand at Generate New York 2018. Get your ticket now. As the old philosophical conundrum states: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? You might be creating the best product or service you could imagine, but if you have no audience the chances are that falling tree, when you launch, makes very little sound. When launching something new, it’s important to have an interested audience in place. One way to do that is to share your story as you confront the challenges of building your brand head-on. Don’t wait until everything’s finished to start sharing your story. The end is only the beginning: the journey to that end point is an interesting and overlooked part of the story. Share that story, and you can start to build an interested audience while you work on putting the finishing touches in place. One way to do this is to build a mailing list. Email newsletters are incredibly effective and, according to Campaign Monitor, email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom, with a 3,800 per cent ROI generating $38 for every dollar spent. Even better, dedicated tools like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and others are incredibly easy to use with very shallow learning curves. When I launched Start! Stop Procrastinating and Pursue Your Passion, it was my email newsletter that drove the most traffic, by quite a substantial margin. Twitter was useful, but it paled in comparison when connecting with others through their inboxes. Tell, don’t sell In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with content, it can be incredibly hard to keep up. Rivers of content, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, all too quickly become overwhelming. Stepping outside of the flow, through a carefully considered journal or email newsletter, offers a way to connect with other like-minded individuals who‚ contrary to what you might have been led to believe‚ are hungry for useful information. Don’t just sell; tell. People buy stories by people, so spend some time developing your brand’s story. What are you focused on? What might you share that others might find useful? Great newsletters focus on sharing ideas that are thought-provoking and helpful. There’s a world of information on the web; what’s sorely missing are ways to filter all of that information. Distil down your discoveries and your audience will thank you. Newsletters like Hiut Denim’s Chicken Shed Chronicles attract an audience because it’s the product of hard work and intense focus. It’s also light on the hard sell, instead focusing on helping others. It’s critical to value your readers’ time; put the effort in and create value and your audience will thank you. Build a list and, when your product’s ready to launch, you’ll have a group of like-minded individuals that are bought into your vision and values. Many will happily repay your efforts by supporting you in return for all the hard work you put in along the way. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 293. Buy it here. Want to learn more about how to engage users? Donna Lichaw is giving her talk Story First: Crafting Products That Engage at Generate New York from 25 - 27 April 2018 Donna Lichaw helps startups, non-profits, and global brands optimise their digital products and services by providing them with a simplified way to drive user engagement. In her talk at Generate New York from 25-27 April 2018, Lichaw will discuss how we often overlook one of the oldest, leanest, most effective tools out there: the structurally sound story. Whether you realise it or not in the moment, you experience everything as if it was a story. The better the story, the more likely you are to want to use a product, continue to use it, pay to use it, and recommend it to others. Find out how to drive user engagement through story at Generate. Get your Generate New York ticket now. Related articles Your website needs to tell a story - here's why 5 killer ways to tell a story with your design 10 visual storytelling tips from top agencies View the full article

AMD on Tuesday acknowledged several vulnerabilities that had been reported in its Ryzen and EPYC chips, and said that it would roll out PSP firmware patches in the coming week. View the full article

Selecting a beautiful typeface is useless if it looks ugly on your screen. To avoid hideous – or worse – illegible text, you should always test if the font works well on the devices your visitors are using. You might be surprised; most of your visitors are probably not using the same device you use to design and develop. In fact, the vast majority of people surfing the internet are using Android and Windows machines. Worldwide operating system usage, according to StatCounter Global Stats (April 2017). Apple’s devices represent a small fraction of global usage, while Android and Windows dominate. The best way to test how a font behaves is to set a sample text in the font and try it out on all devices that you target. Bad rendering is especially noticeable on thin weights. For example, a font that renders well on macOS may appear fragile on Windows (see image below). It’s important to use real devices, because online browser-testing tools and virtual machines are often inaccurate (more on that later). Jubilat Thin on Windows 7 (left) and macOS (right). Note that on macOS the text looks ‘heavier’ than on Windows 7. If you don’t have your site’s content yet (tsk!), give Tim Brown’s Web Font Specimen a spin. It sets content at several text sizes and with different background colours. It’s no replacement for real content, but it’ll do in a pinch. Sometimes you get lucky, and the font you have chosen is designed explicitly for screens: Hoefler & Co’s ScreenSmart, Monotype’s eText, and Font Bureau’s Reading Edge are examples of collections specifically designed with screens in mind and should look beautiful everywhere. Of course, it pays to double-check the text rendering, regardless of the origins of the font. But exactly why does text look different from one browser to the next? To answer that question, we’re going to have to take a quick detour into the nitty gritty details of text rendering. Rasterizing and antialiasing The process of transforming font outlines into pixels is called rasterization. The operating system’s text-rendering engine places the outline (ie the shape) of each character at the desired font size on a pixel grid. Next, it colours all the pixels whose centre is inside the outline (see image below). From Bézier curve to pixels. On the left is the outline of the character ‘a’. In the middle that outline is superimposed on a pixel grid; any pixel whose centre is inside the outline is turned on. On the right is the resulting rasterization. In this example, a pixel is either on or off, no matter how much of the outline is present in the pixel. This approximation of mathematically perfect outlines is called aliasing; antialiasing attempts to mitigate the coarse staircase-like appearances caused by the limited resolution of screens. The idea behind antialiasing is to figure out how much of the outline is present in each pixel and represent that with a greyscale value. In other words, if the outline covers 50 per cent of a pixel, it uses 50 per cent of black to colour that pixel. If the pixel is entirely within the outline, 100 per cent black is used, and so on. This leads to an antialiased rendering that reduces the aliasing (see image below). You’ll often see the term ‘greyscale antialiasing’ used to describe this effect. Antialiasing using greyscale values to represent the outline coverage of each pixel produces better results. While antialiasing improves the quality of text rendering, it’s possible to improve the result further using subpixel antialiasing. Subpixel antialiasing makes use of the characteristics of screens to increase the resolution of rasterized text. Each pixel in a display is made up of three oblong subpixels: red, green, and blue (other configurations exist, but the same principles apply). The operating system can control these subpixels individually; subpixel antialiasing exploits that by applying the coverage calculation to each subpixel (see image below). By targeting individual subpixels, subpixel antialiasing effectively increases the resolution of rendered text. The colours the naked eye perceives (left) are the result of setting individual coverage values for each subpixel (right); the subpixels for red, green, and blue combine to form a single perceptible colour. The difference between these text-rendering options becomes evident when you start working at smaller text sizes. Without antialiasing, characters quickly lose their distinctive outlines. Greyscale antialiasing makes characters blurry but maintains their shape. Subpixel antialiasing renders sharp characters but also introduces some colour fringing around the character’s edges. Antialiasing tips You can change antialiasing settings through the non-standard -webkit-font-smoothing and -moz-osx-font-smoothing CSS properties. Unfortunately, many CSS frameworks and libraries use the antialiased and grayscale values to make the text appear lighter on macOS. However, most developers and designers don’t realise this disables subpixel antialiasing and makes text appear blurrier, thereby hurting legibility. Changing someone else’s preferred text rendering to be less legible is very inconsiderate. If you must have lighter text, use a lighter weight instead of disabling subpixel rendering. Text-rendering engines Most operating systems use their own proprietary text-rendering engine, while others use the same open-source engine (though not necessarily with the same configuration). However, all of them support antialiasing and subpixel antialiasing but differ slightly in their implementation. In many operating systems, the choice of antialiasing method is user-selectable. On Windows, for example, subpixel antialiasing is called ClearType; on macOS, it is called LCD Font Smoothing. There are currently four major text-rendering engines: the Graphics Device Interface (also known as GDI) and DirectWrite on Windows; Core Graphics on macOS and iOS; and the open-source FreeType on Linux, Chrome OS, and Android. Generally speaking, a browser will use the text-rendering engine that’s native to the operating system it is running on. Chrome, for example, uses DirectWrite on Windows, Core Graphics on macOS, and FreeType on Android. Windows is unique in that it offers two text rendering engines: GDI and the newer DirectWrite. All modern browsers use DirectWrite, so you don’t need to worry about GDI save for one exception: some browsers fall back on the inferior GDI rendering if the machine has no dedicated graphics hardware. Online browser-testing tools and virtual machines often do not have dedicated graphics hardware, so text-rendering on these tools is not accurate. Ideally, all text is rendered using subpixel antialiasing because it creates the most legible text. Unfortunately, that is not always possible – for example, subpixel antialiasing is often disabled on devices that can be rotated, such as tablets and phones. When you turn the screen of these devices, the subpixels are no longer arranged in the pattern expected by the rasterizer and will cause subpixel antialiasing to look ugly. Further reading: from selection to optimisation, the Webfont Handbook shows you how webfonts can make the web a more visually diverse, efficient, and readable environment. Browsers also disable subpixel antialiasing in similar situations, for example when text is rotated or animated. In this case, the rasterized text no longer matches the subpixel layout of the text’s original position and would need to be rasterized again. This is expensive, especially for animations, so most browsers fall back on greyscale antialiasing, which doesn’t suffer from the same problem and works in any orientation. Some browsers – Chrome on macOS, for instance – also disable subpixel antialiasing on high-resolution screens to provide a more consistent user experience. Other browsers only enable subpixel antialiasing on small text, because minor changes in text rendering are less visible at larger sizes. There are several other cases where browsers disable subpixel antialiasing. The rules browsers use to select the antialiasing method are constantly updated as new corner cases, and problems, are found. These frequent changes make it very hard to keep track of what is going on with your text rendering. What once used subpixel antialiasing may fall back to greyscale with the next browser update. The only way to know for sure how your text renders is to test on actual devices. You’re probably used to testing your site in several browsers. Testing text rendering increases the amount of testing you need to do manifold. Not only do you need to check all combinations of operating systems and browsers, but also all common text rendering settings. Some devices may be preconfigured to use greyscale antialiasing while others use a mix of greyscale and subpixel antialiasing. To make it even harder, it is not possible to use online-browser testing tools or virtual machines, because the text rendering often differs from that of real devices. When testing, always use a representative sample of your content. A pattern library is ideally suited for testing type rendering because it includes a broad sample of your content: headers, body text, labels, background colours, and animation. Having examples of your content on a single page enables you to check all combinations of styles and background colours quickly. Be on the lookout for text that is not legible or appears thin on some operating systems. If you find an issue, change to a different weight in the same font family, make the text darker, or pick a different typeface. Good luck. This article was originally published in issue 301 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 301 or subscribe to net. Related articles: The 40 best free web fonts 68 best free fonts for designers 50 top typography tutorials View the full article

The first visual identity for the Houses of Parliament was unveiled earlier this week. As with all political matters, the news, in particular the logo design (above), has been met with a divided reaction. Created in collaboration between the House of Commons and the House of Lords with brand and digital design studio SomeOne, the new identity aims to make UK Parliament (as it's now referred to as a brand) fit for purpose on digital platforms. As part of the identity, SomeOne created a wordmark, typefaces, website guidelines, icon suites, digital guidelines and responsive templates. Logos created for digital optimisation were also included, and it's here where the project's £50,000 budget has started to bite. The new palette features high contrast shades including purples, greens, and whites At first glance, the new logos appear remarkably similar. The main differences seem to be a tidying up of an existing portcullis design, which includes the removal of a few dots and a uniform shape applied to the chain links. To onlookers eager to lay into government spending the apparently barely altered logo is a perfect target, especially when you factor in what looks like an exorbitant price tag. However this subtle smartening up was at the heart of the new identity, rather than a complete overhaul. "Clarity, Simplicity and Efficiency all drive the new design work, so that anyone can get to the information they want, when they want and how they want it," explains SomeOne co-founder Simon Manchipp on the studio's site. The new identity (on the right next to the old branding) provides long overdue uniformity Furthermore, the new identity extends well beyond the fine tuning of a logo. With more people interacting with government services digitally, it was time for Parliament to make navigation easier across these channels. This is where the new responsive iconography and palette of purples, greens and whites come into play. "Rather than repetitively stamping a single symbol on all communications, we’ve developed a more in-depth design system to accommodate any kind of application," says Cosmo Jameson, senior designer at SomeOne. And with UK Parliament's new identity hosted and managed on Cloudlines, anyone designing a new communication can access the brand's principles. New communications and icons have been made in the house style Spending public money on design frequently comes under fire, especially if the changes are as understated as they are here. Only last year another governmental hot potato, the NHS, came under scrutiny when it launched a strict new set of brandling guidelines. As far as rebrands go though, UK Parliament's is far from the most costly. We've already looked at expensive logos and what they teach us, and if we apply these lessons to the government's new identity you can see where the money went. First of all, this identity has been years in the making, with consultations held throughout the entire process. Secondly, does it work? The success of a rebrand and a logo lies in how well at works as much as how good it looks. If the consistent identity makes it easier for users to access government services, we're inclined to give it a pass. Only recently we've seen companies make minor changes to improve functionality. so why shouldn't politics follow suit? Take Ericsson, which tweaked its 'three sausages' logo ever so slightly in February so that it aligns with pixel grids better. This decision was made to promote simplicity and enhance productivity, which sounds like a manifesto pledge in itself. So is the UK Parliament identity a successful design that's worth the money? Well, we've seen politicians claim worse things on expenses. Related articles: How to price logo design services 5 logo design trends for 2018 5 fascinating stories behind unusual logo designs View the full article

Dewan Chowdhury, founder of MalCrawler, talks at SAS about the risks that companies face when securing their industrial control systems and robotics. View the full article

Whether you’re a freelance creative pitching for work, or an ambitious designer looking to take the next step in your career, your business cards have the power to propel you to the next level. Also read: 10 steps to go freelance this year Not only are they a key opportunity to leave a lasting impression with a prospective client, employer or collaborator, a cleverly designed and well-printed business card offers a unique opportunity to distinguish your brand from the competition. But where’s the best, easiest and fastest way to get them printed? For talented freelance illustrator James Boast, the answer was moo.com. The digital print and design company not only offers a wide range of premium paper stock and printing options for your business cards and promotional print materials (plus the opportunity to print up to 50 different designs for no extra cost) – it’s also incredibly easy to use. And you can have your new business cards delivered the next day, too. In the short video below, Boast demonstrates how easy it is to use moo.com to create stunning, tactile business cards in less than five minutes. From uploading your designs to choosing the right paper stock and special finishes, as well as how to get more from moo.com’s unique printing features, Blunt shares his pro tips and tricks for creating better business cards. 3 tips for printing better business cards As you'll see in the video above, it's incredibly easy to quickly create memorable business cards using moo.com. Here are some of our favourite tips from illustrator James Boast… 01. Choose your premium paper stock in one click moo.com gives you the choice of four high-quality paper stocks: Original (350 GSM), Cotton (298 GSM), Super (400 GSM) and Luxe (600 GSM). Selecting the option you want is as easy as clicking on your stock of choice. Then simply select the size you want from the drop-down menu, and choose whether you want square or rounded corners. If the price looks good, hit Start Making. 02. Print different designs with Printfinity For no extra cost, moo.com lets you print up to 50 different images on the back of your business cards with its exclusive Printfinity feature. It’s a bit like having your portfolio in your pocket: you can select different pieces of work for different prospective clients or employers. Alternatively, you can get creative with your designs and highlight different elements of your practice – after all, different projects require different skills. To use Printfinity, all you have to do is choose your photos, illustrations or designs, and hit Upload until your pack is full. It’s that easy. 03. Personalise with subtle design choices Before ordering your business cards, moo.com gives you the opportunity to further differentiate your cards. As well as confirming whether you want square or rounded corners, you can also choose whether you want to have a coloured seam. Matching or contrasting the seam of your business cards with your existing colour palette is a fantastic way to add extra personality to your designs. You'll find a host of fantastic tools on the MOO website for creating better business cards. Head over to moo.com to try them out for yourself. Also read: 10 steps to go freelance this year View the full article

With spring on its way, we're rounding up some of the best tools to take your art outdoors. There are a load of cool new books that focus on nature drawing. We've had a look at titles that teach you how to draw birds, trees, plants and woodland animals (our pick of the bunch, however, is Tom Kidd's firey monograph on how to draw a dragon). We've also picked out our favourite posh pencils: one brand that's earned a cult following among artists and writers and another that's been called the Rolls Royce of coloured pencils. Plus, we look at the coolest pencil sharpener you've ever seen. And, to keep them all in, a smart bag for 'urban creatives'. It looks much better than it sounds. 01. Drawing birds $19.95/£12.99 A recent study found watching birds is a good way to de-stress. Andrew Forkner's new book has step-by-step guides on how to capture them in your artwork, focusing on anatomy before working all the way up to birds in flight. Chapters are split into the various families of birds. Instead of colour, Forkner uses shapes, patterns, and shading to make his work pop. 02. Paint in 30 minutes: Trees & Woodlands $19.95/£12.99 Geoff Kersey's new book is a good excuse to take your art outdoors. It offers artists – at any level – 30 exercises that teach how to paint woodlands and trees. Each exercises takes about 30 minutes and focuses on a specific subject or technique, including outline drawings on tracing paper for absolute beginner. The British watercolorist Geoff Kersey is your teacher. 03. How to draw woodland animals $9.95/£4.99 Woodland trees tend to be more willing subjects than woodland animals. In artist and art historian Susie Hodge's new book, step-by-step lessons teach you how to capture all kinds of creatures. She starts off explaining how to draw basic shapes, which she develops into everything from birds and rabbits to badgers and chipmunks. Good luck trying to get a chipmunk to sit for a portrait. 04. Botanical drawing $19.95/£12.99 Spring is when indoor plants come back to life too, and Penny Brown's book shows you how to master the traditional art of botanical drawing. The book starts with simple line drawings and works up to more complex compositions. It also teaches botany for beginners and the history of botanical drawing. Finally, you can learn how to immortalise your favourite monstera with its very own portrait. 05. Fantastic dragons and how to draw them £12.99 The dragon is not, strictly speaking, a traditional harbinger of spring, but nonetheless, Tom Kidd's new book is a must for fantasy artists. Kidd breaks down the basic outlines and features of dragon anatomy – scales, wings, talons, teeth – then book becomes a kind of sketchbook-journal in which you record the development of your dragon designs. 06. Leda premium sketchbook $18.94/£16.98 Leda isn't as well known as some of its competitors, but the brand stakes a good claim for making the best sketchbook around. It comes with 160 tear and bleed-resistant pages of 120-gram paper, which will work well with pencil, pen, and ink, but also pastel, charcoal, and a light watercolour wash. It's stitch-thread bound too, so it lies flat when open. 07. Palomino Blackwing Pearl pencils $22.95/£25.20 Blackwing is to pencils what Moleskine is to notebooks: they have a cult following. Famous fans include writer John Steinbeck, composer Leonard Bernstein, and Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones. They're pretty much the best pencils ever made. The pearl is most recent edition to the range (read our review here). It's all an-rounder, perfect for sketching and laying down lines, but good for writing too. 08. Blackwing long point sharpener $11/£14 You might be reluctant to drop $11 (or £14) on a pencil sharpener. But, as with all the Blackwing stuff, this isn't your average bit of stationery. It has a "two-step sharpening process" (the first sharpens the pencil's wood case, the second the graphite core) and comes with two replacement blades. It gives noticeably longer, sharper point than most sharpeners. And, this being Blackwing, it looks dead cool. 09. Caran d'Ache Swisscolour pencils $37.83/£32 One reviewer called Caran d'Ache "the Rolls Royce of pencils." They usually carry a Rolls Royce price tag too, but this range is reasonably priced. You get 40 pencils in a mental tin, and they have a smooth feel and blend well. Materials come from responsible sources and everything's made the to Swiss brand's usually high standards. 10. Bellroy slim backpack $169/£149 Bellroy makes smart, practical bags for the artists and designers. This 16-litre backpack has loads of nice features: padded laptop pocket, internal storage to keep your art supplies or gadgets safe and secure, and a two-panel construction that means there are no seams running down the sides and the rain can't damage anything inside. It can be expanded too. One of the nicest work bags around … in spite of the brand using the term "urban creative". Read more: Improve your line work with these pro drawing tips 10 ways to convey emotion in your artwork Art techniques: top tutorials for painting and drawing View the full article