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Brand voice covers not only a company's tone of voice and the language used in its communications, but also what content and messages a brand shares and prioritises. 'Tone of voice' is the phrase you find in most brand guidelines, when you get to the section about language. But 'tone of voice' is only half the story and half the battle. After all, it covers how you speak, but fails to mention what you say. Video: Branding pros share how they nail brand voiceYour tone is all about the character that comes through in your language. Whether you say, 'Welcome, Ms Jones, how can we help you today?' Or, 'Hi Fran, what can we do for you?' Or, 'Come on in, Francesca, you're going to love this. Those choices tell audiences about the personality of your brand, making it more (or less) engaging. And that matters. A lot. But it misses out the content of your messages. When a new customer arrives, do you tell them you've been a trusted name in this industry for 150 years? Or that you've been voted Britain's Nicest Place To Work three years in a row? Or that you've just transformed investment banking with your new app? All three could be true, but how you prioritise them – and whether you mention them at all – will be just as critical as your tone when it comes to how you're perceived. That's why at Reed Words we prefer 'brand voice'. (That, and the fact it's the clearest, least pretentious term we can find.) British Heart Foundation's brand voice is positioned around 'Fight for every heartbeat,' and uses direct and clear messages to get its point acrossStyle is critical, of course: phrasing, formality (or lack of it) and whether you use quick, choppy sentences or long, flowing ones are all important aspects of a voice. But substance is just as vital. What does the brand want to achieve? Who are its competitors, and what are they saying? What is the audience looking for – and what can we say to persuade them we're the place to get it? A fully-fledged brand voice that balances tone and content is a strategic tool as well as a creative one – a red thread that runs through every touchpoint of the brand, if you like. And these days, that brand voice matters more than ever. Brand voice works as brand glue As we all know, brands project themselves in more complex ways than ever. You can now encounter an organisation in a tweet, live chat or Facebook post as easily as a TV spot or poster. Gone are the days when 'identities' could be 'managed' with a book full of logo sizes and Pantone numbers (if they ever really could). Brands now have much less control over how they appear. Often, they're embedded in someone else's platform – their own 'look and feel' becomes subject to someone else. So anything that can create that crucial 'red thread' through every touchpoint becomes an extremely valuable tool. Brand voice does that just beautifully. Twitter is an obvious example. On a mobile app, @Nike looks pretty much the same as @adidas. The two obvious differences are the logo – and the language. Looking at the two feeds, @Nike's copy is strikingly short, sharp and active – even in conversation. Very 'Nike', in fact. As I write, its most recent tweets (all @ replies) say: That's a pretty consistent voice – and we can probably all agree which is the weak link. The last one, by the way, is in response to a photograph of a Nike-swaddled baby. And @adidas? Again, here are the latest five tweets at the time of writing (all @ replies again): Apart from the obvious decision to end every tweet with an emoji, this voice doesn't seem as sharply defined as Nike's. You could reverse engineer some basic principles based on the Nike list. And many readers could probably guess the brand from those tweets alone. Both would be trickier with adidas. The point is, Nike's brand comes through powerfully, with zero visual support. That's voice as brand glue. If you can get the same tone and messaging running through your ads, tweets, app, website, packaging, and everything else, it reinforces the brand at every encounter, wherever it happens. That's not easy to achieve, obviously. In fact, once you get to any sort of scale, it's bloody hard. But it's a tremendously powerful asset. And brands have finally woken up to it – big time. Rewriting the rulebook? In a way, none of this is particularly new. The fact that you should change what you say and how you say it depending on what you're writing is kind of obvious. It's not like Bill Bernbach wrote every VW ad a different way. And David Abbott didn't write for Sainsbury's the way he wrote for the RSPCA. Copywriters – and audiences – have always understood that brands have personalities, which their voices should reflect. Even so, it's taken a long time for 'brand voice' to move from that sort of intuitive, background assumption into more of a recognised discipline. Perhaps that's because writing is one of those crafts that's easily overlooked. The best writing is often almost invisible. As George Orwell famously said, it's like a window pane: revealing its subject with beautiful clarity, but never drawing attention to itself. Simple calls to action paired with bold, clear images helped transform the way Alzheimer's Australia was seen by both citizens and the Australian governmentWriters don't help, to be honest. We tend to be a quiet bunch – very good at grumbling in pub corners about how little people understand or respect writing, but perhaps less brilliant about really getting out there and promoting it. Despite all that, voice has slowly edged into the branding limelight over the past 20 years or so. It's still establishing itself in many minds (and budgets), but we've come a long way from: 'Here are the layouts, can you just fill in the text boxes please?' How copywriting discovered its voice Looking back, things seemed to really get moving in the latter half of the 1990s. For me, a few points along the way seem especially relevant. First, in 1995, there was Howies. The clothing brand's clever use of copywriting fitted its products and catalogues perfectly, and helped take the brand to a new level – with customers becoming fans, not just consumers. In 1997, Interbrand gobbled up legendary British design firm Newell and Sorrell – swallowing, in the process, a chap named John Simmons. A passionate believer in the power of words, Simmons was frustrated that this side of the brand equation was so overlooked. He coined the phrase 'verbal identity' (an equal partner to visual identity), and built a division at Interbrand to offer it. That he could do this – that a major agency would support it, and clients buy it – was another big sign that words were gaining new currency in design and branding. The identity for Birmingham Hippodrome – by Purpose, in collaboration with Reed Words – was informed by the idea of 'a stage for life'Innocent burst onto the market in 1999, and as anyone who's attended a brand voice workshop knows, it changed the world. As its writer and head of brand, Dan Germain, has said, Innocent was a social brand before social media even existed. It even had its own hugely popular festival, Fruitstock. And arguably, it was Innocent's unique voice – silly, jolly and almost never about fruit – that was a massive contributor to its success. In the same year, D&AD recognised the emergence of Writing For Design with a new award category of that name. And in the years since, brands and consultancies have rapidly become more sophisticated in the way they use – and commission – writing. They've started involving writers at much earlier stages of branding – which makes sense, when you think about it. When you're trying to boil a complex offer down to a two- or three-word essence, it's worth having a wordsmith in the room. More and more, brand writers are doing what they should have been doing all along: helping shape and crystallise the strategies behind brands, as well as developing the guidelines and communication. The packaging for the Simple Value Argos range uses short and snappy copy to reflect the simplicity of the goods, and the honest tone reflects the products' solid quality and good valueLooking to the future Looking at the examples we've covered, it seems brand voice can be useful in everything from clothing to charity to chatting to customers on the phone. As as far as we can tell, the future looks rosy for brand voice. (Unless it's just our spectacles.) Partly, it's because of a need for coherence in an increasingly omnichannel world that never switches off. But it seems there's also a deeper recognition of how powerfully words can capture subtle, complex ideas in clear and compelling form. And as brands find more ways to talk (think artificial intelligence, for example), their voices can only become even more important in the future. This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 266. Buy it here! Related articles: Branding pros share how they nail brand voice The designer’s guide to using colour in branding Why the SYFY rebrand avoided traditional genre visuals View the full article

In 2017, exactly 60 years after the Moomins were created, a new Moomins animated TV series has surpassed its crowdfunding target, a Moomin Museum has opened and the first UK retrospective of Moomin creator Tove Jansson's stunning book illustrations and art has been scheduled. To celebrate all of this Moomin excitement, we headed to Finland to find out about the artist, her characters and the new Moomin reboot. Sitting in the late Tove Jansson's studio apartment in Helsinki, her niece – Sophia Jansson – is wondering how the Moomins artist survived with no kitchen in her home. “I suppose she lived on a diet of coffee and cigarettes,” she jokes. There are half-finished paintings and an abundance of books scattered across the modest living space, which comprises a bedroom, an open-plan living area and a mezzanine. Sculptures of Tove Jansson as a young girl, created by her father and fellow artist Viktor Jansson, are dotted along the shelves, and the steeple of the local church can be seen through the window. Jansson created the Moomins towards the end of World War II, eager to escape the monstrosities of everyday life The artist resided in the apartment for almost 60 years, after moving in 1944. Her life partner, fellow artist Tuulikki Pietilä, lived in the same building. While the pair didn’t hide their relationship, it was illegal to be gay in Finland at the time. Sophia Jansson tells us how the couple would often work on their projects in their homes and then join each other for breaks – for coffee and a cigarette, perhaps. Jansson originally created the Moomins towards the end of World War II, eager to escape the monstrosities of everyday life at that time. These characters went on to become one of Finland’s most beloved brands – and one of its most profitable, garnering over €700m in Moomin-related sales every year. The Moomin Museum contains the very first Moomin comic strip that Jansson ever drew, published in 1947 It’s no surprise then, that the world’s first Moomin Museum opened its doors in June in Jansson’s native Finland. Based in Tampere, the museum boasts 300 drawings and paintings and 30 tableaux, donated by Jansson before her death in 2001, alongside work by modern Finnish artists. An immersive and interactive experience, it’s testament to the Moomins’ longevity. So why do these little characters continue to inspire? Timeless illustrations and stories There’s a reason why the Moomins have stood the test of time. The strong moral messages of the tales, teamed with timeless illustrations and universal themes have allowed Jansson’s stories to reach far beyond Finland’s shores. Gutsy Animations’ creative director Tuomas Korpi – who is currently working on the all-new Moomin animation series – says it’s these universal themes that keep the Moomins modern. “The issues in the stories are universal, and the storylines combine the fantastical and the everyday so perfectly,” he says. The Moomins stories have stood the test of time There’s magic in everything Tove Jansson created – both the stories and the illustrations Jonna Uhrman “The characters are relatable, too – there’s an adventurous little Moomintroll in all of us, but sometimes we’re scaredy-cat Sniff,” adds Gutsy Animations designer and illustrator Jonna Uhrman. “And the family are so warm-hearted, you wish you could visit them. The stories are full of positivity and hope for the future, although there’s always an edge.” Jansson’s work continues to inspire Finnish designers today. “Her original artwork is so deeply impressive and well put together. There’s magic in everything she created – both the stories and the illustrations,” continues Uhrman. “There’s no doubt that she has had an impact on Finnish design and illustration – we’ve all seen and read her stories. In fact, I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t or who isn’t a fan.” “She is one of the few Finnish artists who have made it big internationally, and that alone is quite inspiring,” Korpi adds. “It makes people feel like success on that level is possible.” Tove Jansson the rebel In one of her very first paid commissions at the age of 15, Jansson openly mocked Hitler and Stalin Jansson was a rebel with a creative cause. She went against what was considered the norm and in turn, produced characters that every person around the globe could relate to. In one of her very first paid commissions at the age of 15, she openly mocked Hitler and Stalin in caricatures for liberal satire magazine Garm – a bold move for a country in the middle of a war. As we mentioned before, Jansson was also in a relationship with fellow artist Tuulikki Pietilä at a time when being gay was still illegal in Finland. They worked on a huge range of projects together, with many of their collaborative tableaus on show at the Moomin museum. Themes of acceptance and inclusivity run through the storiesJansson brought this rebellious edge to her Moomins – creatures who took a chance on life and opened their hearts to the unknown. There’s Little My and Sniff, who live happily in the Moominhouse despite not being related to the Moomins. There’s also the philosophical thinking of Moominpappa and the wandering vagabond Snufkin. And of course, there are all the life-changing adventures the Moomins embark on, never giving into fear and turning back. Jansson not only created Moomintroll and his parents, Moominmamma and Moominpappa, but a whole range of characters with a depth and charm of their own. The Moomins are all about acceptance, with Moominmamma ensuring that the Moominhouse is always a safe and loving place – both for her family and for visitors. These characters can inspire others, not just morally, but creatively, in terms of ensuring diversity. Like Jansson, it’s important to include things that aren’t always the norm. Giving nature a platform One of the biggest characters in Jansson’s work is not really a character at all – Moominvalley is perhaps one of the lushest and most visually stunning environments an artist and author has ever created. “Nature features so largely in her artwork – forests, islands, seas – which is partly a Scandinavian thing, but Tove always made them more exciting and exotic,” Korpi says. This Scandinavian influence runs throughout Jansson’s work, with Moominvalley mimicking Finland’s lush forestry. The Moomins Museum shows off its magical landscapes“One of her characters might wander into a normal-looking forest, but then stumble on impossible, giant flowers and a crocodile – not things you would normally expect to find. She created places that I wanted to visit, places that were familiar but new,” Korpi adds. Tampere, where the new museum is based, is a quaint city that sits between the Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi lakes, with the Tammerkoski rapids in between. You can spot the water (and its floating saunas) from the Pyynikki observation tower. Inside the Moomins museum On entering the Moomin museum, you're surrounded by the sights and sounds of another world. Due to the delicate nature of Jansson’s work – it’s mostly sketched on paper – the lights must be kept low, which only enhances the mood of escapism. One moment you're standing in a giant Hobgoblin’s hat, watching a flower spawn from your silhouette; the next, the sound of a comet shoots across the room as you stand below a fire-coloured glass sculpture. The world’s first Moomin museum opened its doors in JuneThe winter area offers a quiet, reflective atmosphere as digital snow falls in front of giant pebble-shaped seats, while an extraordinary Moominhouse tableaux takes attention to detail to the next level. One particular gem is the area created for visually impaired visitors, where attendees can feel what a Moomin looks like. The new Moomins animation Retelling the stories in a new medium – that is, cutting-edge animation – will create a new audience Tuomas Korpi The new Moomin animation series that Korpi and Uhrman are currently producing is testament to the Moomins’ versatility. “Retelling the stories in a new medium – that is, cutting-edge animation – will create a new audience, introducing more people to Tove and her incredible body of work,” says Korpi. “Plus, we need her stories of a humane and tolerant world more than ever.” “Love, peace and solidarity – there should always be room for those kinds of messages!” adds Uhrman. Gutsy Animations ran a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $250,000 towards the visual development of the new animation, and the Finnish production company will be joined by a team of award-winning British Oscar-, Emmy- and Bafta-winning designers, animators and illustrators. Using an innovative 2D/3D hybrid technique, the animation will be modern, while also paying tribute to the traditional aspects of Jansson’s work (as the video above shows). The all-new 52-episode animation series is set for release in spring 2019, directed by Academy Award winner Steve Box (Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). If the museum and animation aren't enough, Moomin fans can also grab the first Moomin novels in Special Collectors’ Editions in October 2017, released to coincide with the opening of the Tove Jansson retrospective at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. The Finn Family Moomintroll book will even include the original fold-out map of Moominvalley, says publisher Sort of Books. Read more: Pro tips for illustrators How to break into children's illustration 23 stunning book illustrations Iconic Moomin artist illustrates Alice in Wonderland View the full article

This year's San Diego Comic Con has already impressed designers thanks to the stunning visuals for the Thor: Ragnarok poster. But another film that's been getting a lot of attention is Ready Player One. Based on the novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One follows the journey of Wade Watts as he hunts for an Easter egg (not the chocolate kind, the hidden data kind) in a virtual reality game. Thanks to the creator of the virtual reality game in the book being a huge fan of '80s pop culture, Ready Player One is primed to be a nostalgia-stuffed cinematic experience for viewers, with Tron Light Cycles brushing shoulders with Back to the Future's DeLorean. 25 logo design tips from the expertsTo promote the movie, Pentagram's very own Emily Oberman has designed an ingenious retro logo (above) that combines puzzle solving and yesteryear visuals that tie into the main themes of the book. The big brassy lettering and gradient colouring calls to mind logos commonly associated with the notoriously gaudy decade, such as those for Transformers, Thundercats and Tron. Admittedly the logo for Ready Player One has toned down the '80s look so as not to frighten away viewers with more delicate retinas. But the real Easter egg can be found in a fun little maze puzzle made up of gaps in the lettering. It's a subtle piece of design that doesn't get in the way of the logo, but once you notice it's there you'll appreciate the design all the more. While the puzzle is pretty simple, we're happy to see designers not just relying on retro charm to communicate the message of a movie. See the completed puzzle route below. Spoilers: Here's the solution to the logo [Click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image]Related articles: 25 logo design tips from the experts 7 key typographic trends in Marvel movie logos Is your design retro… or just dated? View the full article

London-based creative production studio and VFX specialist Saddington Baynes has released a batch of inspirational 3D animation videos made by its research and development team, SBLabs. Ranging from videos celebrating Pride in London with a cherub doused in a rainbow of CG paint, to a dancer replicating the famous Gangnam Style jig through motion capture, the SBLab artists have created some imaginative videos that are sure to inspire 3D and VFX artists. The SBLabs team aims to train the company's artists to achieve perfect visual discipline in preparation for tackling demanding commercial projects. It also gives artists a chance to indulge in some hands-on training to develop their skills in a fun way. The resulting creative clips can be glimpsed in the showreel below. You can also find the clips in full on the Saddington Baynes Vimeo channel. Related articles: Behind the scenes on Transformers VFX How to break into the VFX industry How videogame graphics and movie VFX are converging View the full article

In this tutorial we will be creating a range images out of SVG triangles, and setting up an animated transition from one image to another on click. It’ll look something like the Faces of Power website. To kick off we are going to start with two arrays: one with the values we’re animating to, and one with the values we’re animating from. Every time a link is clicked, we are going to find the SVG that matches the href of that link and get the points attribute of each of the polygons in that specific SVG. We’re going to extract all the coordinates in the points attribute, get the fill colour of the polygon and then add these as properties of an object. Then we’ll add all these objects to one of the two arrays: the to array. We’ll use TweenMax to animate the values of the from array to the values of the to array. When the animation is complete, we’ll set the to array to become the new from array. On first run, the from array will contain all the points values and all the fill colours of the currently visible polygons. 01. Convert images to polygons How the image will look before and after being run through PrimitiveThe first step is to actually make the images. For this I used a tool called Primitive (check out the GitHub repo). The images used in the tutorial are personal images of a few friends. Run your chosen images through the Primitive utility using the command line: -n 250 specifies 250 polygons, -m 1 specifies a triangle shape, and -i input.jpg -o output.svg are the input and output. It’s important that all SVGs have the same number of polygons and are the same shape. Output.svg will be a collection of polygons. 02. Paste your SVGs into the HTML After creating the SVGs paste them into the body of the HTML. Duplicate the first SVG and give one of the duplicates the class .svg-holder. The .svg-holder is going to be the only one that is technically visible; it will be the holder for all the polygons that are animated in and out of it. Give all SVGs except the holder the class hidden and an id with a unique name. This should match the href in the links. The hidden SVGs will be hidden with display: none;. It’s important to make sure the href of each link matches the id of its respective SVG. Then declare the variables: 03. Extract polygon coordinates Now we have to run through each of our polygons and get the coordinates in the points attribute. We can do this using regex: 04. Update the polygon arrays Saved as an SVG, all triangles become elementsEvery time a link is clicked, we’re going to run a function that takes the href of the clicked link as an argument and find the matching SVG, get the points values, animate it, and update the from array. This function calls two other functions – createPolygonPointsObject and animatePolygons. createPolygonPointsObject converts all the polygon elements into objects that we can animate the values of, and animatePolygons animates the polygons inside .svg-holder. This uses our getCoordinates function to get all the coordinates in the points attribute and creates an object with each coordinate and the fill. It returns an array of objects. I decided to make them objects because that data type seems to be easier to work with when you are animating a lot of values at once. 05. Animate the polygons In the final version, the SVG polygons will transition via an animationLet’s use TweenMax to animate the polygons. On every frame of the animation, this loop animates the points attribute of the currently visible polygons in .svg-holder to the new values set above. The onUpdate method in TweenMax.to is called every time the animation updates, so here it’ll get run on every change in the values of obj.one, obj.two, obj.three, and so on. This way, the points values animate and the shape morphs to have different coordinates. Next we can animate the fill. For each polygon in .svg-holder, set the fill to the fill in the toPolygonArray that is in the same index. Now the polygons will animate their coordinates and their fill colours as expected. Read more: Supercharge SVG animations with GSAP Explore the exciting new features in SVG 2 3 of the best SVG animation tutorials View the full article

Have an idea floating around in your head that you've been trying to put down on the page? Final Draft 10 is the perfect tool to turn those ideas into reality. Write your script with a tool the experts trust and get it on sale now for 40% off the retail price! Final Draft 10 is the gold standard for screenwriting software. Odds are, your favourite film or TV show was written with it. Now it's your turn. Craft your own script with this powerful writing tool that will make it easy to form your work the way the pros do. You can start from scratch or use templates to build your script, create easy-to-follow outlines, and even collaborate in real time with a writing partner. Final Draft 10 usually retails for $249.99, but you can get it on sale now for 40% off that price. That means you pay just $149.99 (approx £115) for this powerful piece of software for writers, so grab this deal today! View the full article

Marvel fans were in graphic novel Valhalla yesterday as a new poster design was released for the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok movie. The promotional material, which was unveiled as part of the San Diego Comic Con festivities, has impressed designers and fans alike thanks to its refreshing and sophisticated visuals. Stunning poster designs to inspire youFeaturing Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and the villainous Hela (Cate Blanchett) flanked by an impressive lineup of supporting characters, the Thor: Ragnarok poster is a psychedelic Photoshopped masterpiece that goes against the idea that movie posters are in a design crisis. This isn't the first time Thor: Ragnarok's visual flair has wowed people. Back in April viewers were left blown away after the original trailer ended with a nostalgia-inducing logo containing a subtle nod to famous comic book artist Jack Kirby. Click the icon in the right-hand corner to enlarge the Thor: Ragnarok posterThe colourful and considered design is sure to reassure people who were let down by the hotchpotch of visuals that was the Spider-Man: Homecoming poster. Thankfully there are no Tony Starks in this poster to steal the focus, just a pantheon of fan-favourites that have left people itching to see the film when it comes out on 27 October. Some designers couldn't resist the opportunity to have a dig at the infamous Spider-Man: Homecoming poster. While others found more unconventional ways to 'fix' the design... Related articles: New Wolverine movie poster gets designers talking Stunning poster designs to inspire you Are these vintage concept movie posters better than the originals? View the full article

One web design trend that refuses to go away is parallax scrolling, which involves the web page's background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth that helps to result in a distinctive and memorable website. But to show how it should be done, we've collected together sites that employ the technique to good effect. In some cases the parallax scrolling is the star of the show; in others it simply adds a touch of depth that makes the foreground seem to pop out a little. 23 steps to the perfect website layout01. Made by Few The site for Made By Few uses parallax scrolling to enhance the handmade vibeMade by Few is an annual web conference hosted by Few, a design and development agency in Arkansas. Sally Nixon’s detailed, bright illustrations take pride of place on the event website. The staggered parallax effect enhances the handcrafted feel and adds energy. There are hidden gems scattered throughout the site (try hitting the Konami Code) to keep things fun. “At Few, we love pleasant accidents and encourage exploration, ” says Arlton Lowry, co-founder of Few. “We believe when you provide people with an open and fun environment, there’s no telling what will come of it.” 02. A-dam A-dam uses parallax to showcase its stylish underwearA-dam designs original boxer briefs and shorts for men with character, using GOTS-certified organic cotton and handmade by people with fair wages and normal working hours. They're an ethical and stylish alternative to your usual supermarket pants, and their site, created by Build in Amsterdam, showcases them nicely, with assorted parallax elements popping in from all directions as you scroll. 03. Myriad Bareface's site for Myriad shows off the furniture system's infinite possibilitiesMyriad is a range of modular office furniture by Boss Design that's designed to be flexible and reconfigurable, allowing you to build your own working spaces as you see fit. As part of its work on the launch, Bareface created a site showcasing Myriad's infinite possibilities with clever use of parallax elements, pulling in inspiring arrangements of furniture as you explore the site. 04. Firewatch Each layer of trees moves independentlyOne of the most beautiful examples of parallax scrolling we’ve seen is this website for the game Firewatch, which uses six moving layers to create a sense of depth. It’s great because there’s no scroll hijacking (something that often accompanies the parallax effect), and it’s only used at the top of the page – the rest of the site is still so you can read the information without getting seasick. If you want to see how it’s done, here’s a nice demo on CodePen. 05. Garden Studio Layering of the landscape makes it seem three dimensionalIn a similar vein, Garden Studio has also opted to use the parallax technique in a sensible and delightful way at the top of its site, before moving into a mostly static page. The shifting landscape is subtle and unobtrusive yet also the star of the show – we found ourselves scrolling up and down again and again. 06. GitHub 404 GitHub's 404 breaks the rules of parallax for a disorienting effectThis isn’t strictly parallax scrolling as the effect happens on mouse wiggle as opposed to scroll, but it’s a really fun page that uses layering to add depth. Unlike 'proper' parallax, the background moves faster than the foreground, creating a disorienting, otherworldly feel. 07. Jess & Russ Every illustration has a sense of depthIt's no surprise that design power couple Russ Maschmeyer and Jessica Hische's wedding website is a beauty to behold. The site charts their romantic story, with parallax scrolling used throughout to add depth to the illustrations. They got married in 2012, but the website is still well worth a look. 08. Old Spice Dream Runner Parallax scrolling ties in with the theme of movement hereDream Runner was an unusual online campaign in which Old Spice offered to turn customers’ run maps into fabulous prizes. Using geolocation data, users could draw their desired prize on screen by physically moving around. The results were loosely and hilariously interpreted by judges, with prizes spanning things like ‘a bent metal pipe’ and ‘inflatable shark leisure product’ as well as bigger ticket items like cars and holidays. The highly interactive site – designed by Wieden + Kennedy no less – fully embraced the ridiculousness of the campaign. In true Old Spice fashion, the splash screen parallaxed tigers in sunglasses, mythical creatures and old men in unitards in all directions as you tilted your phone or moved your mouse. The fun use of the gyroscope hinted that what was going to happen next would also involve physical movement. 09. Alquimia WRG Alquimia WRG uses parallax elements to simulate a 3D space environmentBased in Milan, Alquimia WRG is a digital agency that aims to create amazing and effective experiences for brands on digital media. Clean and minimal, and only black and white, the website uses a mixture of the usual suspects (HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript) to achieve a neat package. HTML5 canvas is used to animate the initial loading image. Subtle "parallax elements in the homepage are dynamically created and animated to simulate a 3D space environment through mouse movement," says Andrea Bianchi, creative director at Alquimia. Page navigation is achieved via a simple and smooth page sliding effect, which is implemented by changing CSS properties with JavaScript. The works page contains a simple list of selected projects, which, when selected, reveals further information in a smooth sliding effect. When such content is loading, a JavaScript animated preloading bar appears at the bottom of the screen, which is a nice touch. The site achieves its goal, which, as Bianchi says, "was to create an ideal balance between content, usability and user experience". Next page: More inspiring parallax scrolling sites 10. Costa Coffee The Graphite Design team chose an illustrative approach for more flexibilityThis impressive one paper website, The Costa Experience, is the brainchild of Brighton-based agency Graphite Digital. Having worked previously with Costa Coffee, the team was recently tasked with better communicating its products. The result was this visually rich, parallax website full of animated illustrations and interactive elements. 11. Make Your Money Matter Manage your finances with information and advice from Make Your Money MatterFinance and money are hardly the most interesting of subjects. But New York-based digital agency Firstborn are quids in with this dynamic parallax scrolling website Make Your Money Matter for the Public Service Credit Union. With the aim of teaching the public the benefits of joining a credit union, rather than using a bank, this brilliant site includes everything from how a credit union works, to where to find one and how to apply, as well as a calculator showing just how much banks profit from customer's deposits. 12. Seattle Space Needle Scrambled egg all over my face. What is a boy to do?The site for Seattle's iconic Space Needle starts at the base of the 605-foot tower and invites you to scroll up all the way to the top, taking in views of Seattle and the SkyCity Restaurant along the way. And if 605 feet isn't quite high enough for you, keep on scrolling and see what you find! 13. Madwell New York agency Madwell uses parallax scrolling to add a sense of depthDesign and development agency Madwell, based in New York, shows off its portfolio with a range of parallax scrolling effects to create a noticeable 3D style that adds a huge amount of depth. 14. Peugeot Hybrid4 Peugeot uses parallax scrolling to create an auto-playing web comicPeugeot has gone all out with using parallax scrolling to create an auto-playing comic in the browser. The comic plays as you scroll down the page (or use their autoplay feature which automatically scrolls) and helps to advertise the car manufacturer's new HYbrid4 technology. 15. Cultural Solutions The circles move at different speeds for a subtle 3D effectArts consultancy Cultural Solutions employs a subtle parallax scrolling effect to introduce depth to its homepage. Its main brand image is the use of colourful circles - the circles in the background move slower than those in the foreground, creating a subtle 3D effect. 16. Walking Dead Walking Dead uses parallax scrolling to pull you into its gory worldWe're big fans of TV zombie drama The Walking Dead at Creative Bloq, and we were gripped by this website launched to promote it. The imaginative site harks back to the show's comic strip origins and makes clever use of parallax scrolling to pull you into its sick and depraved world. "We came at this as fans of the show, first and foremost," says lead designer Gavin Beck. "With this drive, we wanted to create a world within the Walking Dead that fans could explore and appreciate. "To achieve this, we looked to several existing technologies and techniques such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript/jQuery, Web Audio/HTML5 Audio, and parallax scrolling. The challenge was to find a unique approach to incorporate all these methods into a single engaging experience across all platforms." 17. New York Times: Tomato Can Blues A beautiful experience is to be had with this parallax scrolling New York Times articleIn today's era of low attention spans and bite-size media, how do you attract people to longform journalism? Here's a great response to that problem from the New York Times, combining some clever web design techniques with storytelling and comic-inspired illustrations created by Atilla Futaki. One of the best examples of parallax scrolling we've seen lately, the article takes you through the story of a cage fighter written by Mary Pilon. As you scroll through the content, the illustrations come alive with clever animations and alterations, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the content. Futaki's illustrations were based on police records, witness accounts, photographs and the reporter's notes, and the attention to detail shines through. All in all it's a great reading experience – is this the future of online journalism? 18. Snow Fall The New York Times' 'Snow Fall' article kickstarted a whole new craze for rich parallax sitesOne of the first sites to really push the boundaries on what you could do with longform editorial content online, the New York Times' 'Snow Fall' article combines a range of different elements, including parallax scrolling and web video. The article, about the horror of an avalanche at Tunnel Creek, was published online in December 2012 but still stands strong as an example of what you can do with parallax scrolling. The newspaper presented the Pulitzer-winning article in an innovative way that grabbed the design community's attention worldwide. Related articles: 5 quick ways to improve your portfolio dramatically 11 great UI designs 23 steps to the perfect website layout View the full article

If you want to create great designs, you need to find great images, and you need to use these images in the right way. Research shows that content with relevant imagery gets 94% more views than content without imagery. And there’s a simple reason for that: visuals are processed 60K times faster in the brain than text. So using pictures the right way couldn’t be more important. In this post, we’ll look at 10 ways you can use images more effectively to better connect with your audiences and keep your clients happy. In an ideal world, of course, you’d always be able to commission your own bespoke imagery. But timescales and budgets don’t always allow for that. So if you’re in need of high-quality, royalty-free images fast, head to iStock. Here you’ll find millions of exclusive, royalty-free stock files, and powerful search tools to help you find the perfect images quickly. 01. Use images that tell a story 'Hikers under the Northern Lights' by powerofforever At its heart, design is about forming an emotional connection. And a story that’s begging to be shared is the ideal way to evoke a tangible reaction in your audience. The key to that, most of the time, lies in imagery. After all, research shows that visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. Take the image above, showing people hiking through the cold to experience the majestic spectacle of the Northern Lights. Imagine you were creating poster designs for a travel company aiming to target students organising their Gap Year. Depending on how it was used, this image could be used to convey a story of people seeking that special connection with nature and a once-in-a-lifetime experience that every young traveller would identify with. For another great example of images that tell a story, From Love to Bingo the Cannes Lion film (above) by Almap BBDO and Getty Images, shows the journey from youthful love to old age in just over one minute, using 873 individual stock photographs. 02. Seek out images with meaning 'Working on a blueprint' by Aleksandar Nakic Every day, 300million images are shared through Facebook and 70 million via Instagram. It’s a torrent of visual noise, so how can a single image get anyone’s attention? The simple answer is that the images we pause for tend to be those that have a degree of meaning to us. In short, we ignore anything emotionally neutral and subconsciously seek out a personal connection. According to research by The New York Times’ Customer Insight Group, people share content online for five key reasons. They are: to bring valuable and entertaining content to others, to define themselves to others, to nurture relationships and stay connected, to feel more involved in the world, and to support causes or issues they care about. In other words, the imagery you use in your designs should connect you to your audience by meeting one of those needs, just like this Stop Deforestation. Stop The Killing. poster campaign by Malaysian Nature Society. Or take the blueprinting image above. Imagine you were creating designs for a business-to-business app aimed at young entrepreneurs. This image of a young woman working “in the zone” conveys a spirit of quiet determination that could be used to evoke a real sense of empathy in that target audience, and make them feel you understand where they’re coming from. 03. Match your brand values 'Summer day: three young adults jump from jetty into lake' by fotografixx Brand values are the link between a company and its audience. But it’s not just enough to state these values in a design manual. Every single piece of branding for that company has to embody them, in a meaningful way. Take beauty brand Shiseido, which states its goal is to help people live more beautifully (in its own words – ‘This moment. This life. Beautifully’). Its ‘High School Girl?’ campaign (below) with the tagline ‘Everyone can be pretty’ and eventual clever twist, resonates completely with these values, allowing it to make a very human, emotional connection with its audience. As a designer, then, whenever you’re choosing imagery for a campaign, you need to ask yourself not just ‘Is this a good image’, but ‘Does this image fit with the client’s core values?’. 04. Let images breathe on social media 'Tattoos say who I am without having to speak' by People Images We’re all taught at design school to make tactical use of white space: to leave judicious amounts of space (which doesn’t actually have to be white) around an element to bring focus, establish clear hierarchy and provide balance. And social media makes this principle more important than ever. With more and more visual noise assaulting us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and elsewhere, good use of white space can make it easier for audiences to understand and read an image when scrolling quickly. For example, the integrated advertising campaign The Line by Our Watch was created to raise awareness of violence in relationships. The campaign imagery makes excellent use of white space (in this case, it’s actually blue) to help make the point clearly and concisely. 05. Feature real people, with real emotions 'Mixed race lesbian family portrait' by funky-data There was once a time when people expected to see polished, flawless models in agency design. But the rise of social media has changed all that. Now what our increasingly sophisticated audiences are looking for is authenticity, and they can smell fakery a mile off. Visual content that features real people and explores raw emotions – from a thrill-seeker’s exhilaration to a parent’s love – hits the sweet spot for sharing. And a great example can be found in skincare brand SK-II’s Marriage Market Takeover campaign(below). Like Dove’s Real Beauty campaigns before it, this aims to empower Chinese women and shatter stereotypes. By focusing on human relationships and the stories of real people, SK-II’s video is able to move its audience to share and connect. To see more examples of real women with real emotions, check out iStock’s Gritty Woman Collection. 06. Use targeted social media images to support wider campaigns 'Junkboat in Hong Kong' by deimagine These days, even if a brand campaign is mainly taking place across mainstream media, you should still be thinking about how creating custom visual content for social media channels can support it. Having a presence on primarily visual channels like Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat allows you to connect with people that traditional methods can’t reach, and here, the importance of using the right eye-catching imagery cannot be stressed enough. In New Zealand, the NZ Transport Agency’s Snapchat anti-drug-driving campaign (above) offers an innovative example of using point of view imagery to make a powerful connection with a hard-to-reach audience. It shows clearly spending time creating visual content for social media can help widen your reach, boosting awareness and driving traffic back to your website. 07. Optimise your alt text Getting your alt text right is key to people finding your content online Yes, we know it’s tedious. But optimising the alt text (short for ‘alternative text’) of the images on your website or blog is incredibly important for boosting your traffic from image search results. That’s because (although we’re sure they’re working on it), Google Image Search can’t yet decode images on web pages to determine what they are, but relies heavily on the alt text that website owners include to describe them. Alt text is also used by screen readers for the blind or visually impaired. So think about your alt text carefully. Above all, it should be brief and describe what the image portrays, as the examples above show. 08. Use colour strategically 'Abstract coloured background with beautiful flowers, tulips and soft hues' by Maxiphoto As we stated earlier, the goal of any design is to encourage an emotional connection in the viewer. And it’s important not to ignore the powerful role that colour plays in provoking emotions. So don’t choose a colour simply because it looks good. Consider correlating the different hues you use in your imagery with the emotion or characteristic you want to invoke. This will largely depend on the context and the target audience, of course. But as a general rule of thumb: red = action and excitement; blue = trust and strength; green = peace, growth and health; grey = balance and calmness; orange = friendliness, cheerfulness and confidence; yellow = optimism, clarity and warmth; and purple = knowledge and imagination. To discover a great selection of colourful and eye-catching photos, check out iStock’s ‘Colour Surge’ category. 09. Represent your audience 'Shaving time' by Aleksandar Nakic One key ingredient to creating a design that connects with your audience is, of course, knowing that audience. And once you’re clear who it is you’re targeting, why not make that explicit by featuring similar people in any imagery that you use? Nowadays, image libraries like iStock have a diverse selection of fresh, authentic-looking imagery. So take time to find the right images, and narrow down your selection by using conceptual keywords (eg, family, togetherness, authentic) as well as geographic keywords (to ensure culturally appropriate imagery). 10. A/B test your images 'Exercising with kettlebells gym' by Ryan J Lane At the end of the day, there is no infallible, scientific way to ensure your images will resonate with your audience. But, online at least, there is a way to be clear about what works and what doesn’t: by trial and error. So try A/B testing how well different images in your designs fulfil your client's stated goals on social media, its own website and other sites where it has a presence. Of course it’s easy to jump to the wrong conclusions, so first read A/B Testing Checklist to avoid making mistakes in your interpretation of the results. Get your imagery right At the end of the day, imagery is the main way we as humans communicate, transcending all language and cultural barriers. Finding the right images and using them correctly is key to creating designs that resonate with your audience, and nobody knows that better than iStock. With so many people around the world visiting iStock’s website every day, it’s able to keep track of the latest visual trends on a day to day basis (check out our iStock trends for 2017 post). And that means it’s able to provide millions of exclusive and authentic images that fit exactly what designers need. Best of all, thanks to Creative Bloq’s partnership with iStock, we’re able to offer an amazing 10% off all iStock credits: just use code ZNKPC46N today at iStock.com. View the full article

Between research, design, client interaction and team collaboration, there may not be much time left for a UX specialist to think about creating web design documentation strategically. Is it even worth spending time perfecting UX documentation? Well yes and no. It depends on the purpose, and usefulness, of the documentation. For example, generalised documentation, created for no other reason than to leave a paper trail, is too general to be useful, and (effectively) purposeless. Highly focused documentation, on the other hand, can be both useful and purposeful. In order to ensure that the documentation you create isn’t taking away from time that could be better spent on design and research, consider the following questions: Is the UX documentation going to drive decision making?
 Is your UX documentation usable by your team? Here we'll present a three-step plan to making your UX design documentation as useful as possible. 1. Give your UX documentation purpose UX documentation has purpose if it drives decisions. UX documentation has a wide variety of end users – including designers, developers, QA specialists, stakeholders, and managers. All of these people might use a particular document to make informed decisions during the course of their work. One particular document may impact one particular activity in the Agile Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), while a different document may affect a number of subsequent activities. So it’s extremely important to take into consideration the lifecycle of the document – what path will it take, from user to user, before it's no longer needed? It’s a matter of ROI. In general, the longer a document remains relevant, the greater the return on the time spent perfecting it. UX specialists need only make documentation where it is really needed. Otherwise, you’re wasting time and money. The document lifecycle You may be wondering how it is possible to determine the lifecycle of a document before you’ve even made it. Well, it's as simple as looking at the document's various use cases. Take, for instance, the following empathy map. An empathy map created by the Codal team for a client [click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image] Let’s investigate the lifecycle of the above empathy map, considering who will likely use the document, and for what. In this case, the document in question is a compilation of user research results. User research results drive the entire product strategy during the software development lifecycle. Even if developers and PMs don’t own the document, its insights will inevitably influence their work. If we follow the logic presented earlier, then an empathy map is an incredible investment in the future of the product. It's a document that’s always worth creating – and the earlier, the better. 2. Make your UX documentation useful A document can drive decision-making, yet be useless at the same time. Developers don’t always have equal say in how to lay out a particular page – they might just follow the designs created by the UX and UI designers. Thus, the design documentation, however poor it may be, will drive development decisions. In other words, ‘driving decisions’ is one concept, and ‘driving good decisions’ is something else altogether. Keeping in mind that documentation has not only a purpose, but also a target audience, is likely to help stimulate good decision-making among targeted users. The reverse is also true. Documentation that doesn’t consider the audience’s specific requirements is liable to miscommunicate the intentions of the UX specialist. Avoiding the pitfalls of non-targeted documentation is simple: Determine the target user-base Analyse how the document will be used Craft the document so it speaks the language of the user This interactive wireframe targets the document's users [click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image] Consider this interactive wireframe. You can determine the target users of any document by examining its purpose. Static wireframes are typically used as visual scaffolds so the interface designer may craft a pixel-perfect mockup of the UX designer’s vision. Interactive wireframes, however, have a wider audience. They can be used by developers to gauge dependencies and interaction models. Product managers can use them to quickly assess the feature breadth and depth. QA specialists may even use the interactive wireframe to double-check the work of the developer when recreating the functionality. As such, the target audience for an interactive wireframe includes UI designers, product managers, web/mobile developers and QA specialists. In order to ensure the document is useful, it must cater to the specific needs of each of these users. An annotated prototype created in UXPin for a healthcare platform [click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image]
As shown in the annotated prototype above, here’s how you can quickly tailor the document to each audience. UI designers: Estimate image and layout dimensions 
Product managers: Note any ‘wobbler’ features that may provide additional value, but exceed current scope Developers: Add notes to clarify complex functionality and ask for input on feasibility QA specialists: Note which functionality is up for discussion, and which the team accepts 03. Make your UX documentation usable Documentation, like software, depends heavily on usability. No matter how much good content you include in your documentation, it’s for nothing if the reader struggles to understand it. To improve document usability, you need focus. Often, UX specialists have so much to say about their work that it gets in the way of the data that must be communicated. This can be the source of many problems, especially when the data gets lost in translation. Human beings don’t like to read extraneous details. How many times in your life have you been thrilled to read a 20-30 page document? You need to keep it focused. For this sitemap, Codal worked to keep things focused [click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image] Take, for instance, the sitemap above, created for one of our client projects. This is a focused document. There are no extraneous details, no excessive notes, and everything is confined to one page. The target audience is able to consume the intended data – nothing more, nothing less. Achieving focus in UX documentation is simply a matter of applying the core principles of purpose and usefulness, as discussed previously. The above document illustrates this point quite effectively. UI designers and developers might not need to hear all the reasoning behind the choices that you’ve made. Either save it for an in-person discussion, or only highlight the top five or so decisions. There are exceptions, of course. If the document is intended for a member of the QA team, you might need to explain all your reasoning so they can adequately test the functionality of the software – but even then, it’s not always needed. Documentation isn’t a paper trail Respect your own time, and that of your coworkers. Don’t waste time crafting documentation that isn’t focused. Remember to keep it useful and purposeful, and remove extraneous details. Ensure the documentation you create will be used to drive decision making, otherwise you're simply wasting your time. For more design process best practices, download the free ebook Real-life UX Processes: How Top Companies Build Products. The guide includes step-by-step processes from Slack, Autodesk, 3M, and other companies. Yona Gidalevitz is a technical researcher at full stack mobile app development and UX and UI design agency Codal. Read more: Are microframes the future of wireframing? 10 essential TED talks for UX designers 5 UX lessons you can learn in the toilet View the full article

Discover the best iPad apps for designersThe iPad can be an incredible tool for designers, but like any tool you have to know how to use it well before you get the most from it. For a device like this, knowing what apps you should add that will make your life as a creative professional better is the key, which is why we've put together this list of suggestions. Load an iPad up with all these apps and you'll have a formidable, hugely capable partner in your work. Now, at this point, most articles of this kind would list the best drawing apps for iPad, because that's all designers spend our days doing, yeah? Daubing colours on a canvas? Well balls to that; the life of a creative pro is about much more – worse luck – than dreaming up ideas on a sketchpad, so our list is much more pragmatic and realistic; these really are the best iPad apps for designers to take care of all aspects of your job. 01. Trello Trello helps you keep things organised, wherever you are Requirements: iOS 9.3 or later Price: Free Whether you're coordinating a big design project or just trying to organise a cleaning rota, Trello is a great tool for getting stuff done and staying organised. It makes it easy to invite people to collaborate on projects, and you can create custom boards for whatever you're working on. The iPad app is optimised for iPad Pro with plenty of tweaks to take advantage of its larger screen, and if you absolutely need project updates wherever you are, there are also apps for Apple Watch and even iMessage. 02. FontBook Expand your typographic horizons with FontBook Requirements: iOS 8.0 or later Price: $0.99 Key to most design projects is getting the typography right, and if you want to avoid falling into the trap of relying on a handful of go-to fonts, it's good to have a decent font reference to hand. Monotype's FontBook is just that kind of reference; it documents the libraries of 150 type foundries, covering 1,805 designers, 46,718 typefaces and 9,479 font families. You can browse fonts by class, foundry, designer, year or name, and the iPad app enables you to bookmark favourites and also share samples on Twitter and Facebook. 03. Procreate All right, we lied a bit when we said no drawing apps Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later $5.99/£4.49 Okay, so a part of our lives is sketching and painting – and if you're going to do that, you need a great tool. So next in our list of the best iPad apps for designers is the mighty Procreate. This is a truly wonderful natural media app, and it's very fast – especially on more recent iPads where it can take advantage of their huge power. What's more, it's optimised for the iPad Pro, with massive, ultra-hi-definition canvases, and will work with the Apple Pencil too. Other drawing apps to consider include Tayasui Sketches, Photoshop Sketch and ArtRage. 04. Parallels Access On a train and need those San Francisco financials? Sorted Requirements: iOS 8.0 or later Price: Free However good any iPad app is, sometimes you just really need to use one of your full-fat desktop packages. And while there are plenty of remote desktop apps such as TeamViewer that you can use to get to your actual desktop from your iPad, they're heavy on bandwidth and there's something not quite right about wrangling a mouse-driven interface on a touchscreen. Parallels Access does things a bit differently, giving you full access to your desktop and using its special 'Applification' technology to render your desktop apps as native apps, making them much easier to use on the go and also ensuring you can work without a fat internet connection. It'll even work on 3G. 05. Noteshelf Write notes, sketch and record memos with Noteshelf Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later Price: $9.99 If what you want is the digital equivalent of a sketchbook, rather than a canvas – somewhere to write stuff down, doodle out a few ideas, take notes in a meeting – get Noteshelf. Its ability to mix typed, audio and handwritten notes – with beautiful ink effects – annotate documents and images, and even define custom paper designs to make it easy to create, say, iPhone wireframes for sketching app designs makes it an extremely handy iPad app for designers. It pairs with a range of third-party styluses too, for pressure sensitivity and wrist rejection. 06. Adobe Comp CC Adobe Comp is perfect for mockups and wireframes Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later Developer: Adobe Price: Free Adobe makes loads of apps for iOS, but this one is especially great on the iPad. With it, you can quickly and easily create mockups and wireframes for designs for web, print and more, and you can export them to Creative Cloud stable mates InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop to work them up further. It's a great way to make productive use of commute time, say – though of course just staring blankly out of the window can be just as effective! It's worth adding Shape CC (which can create vector shapes from doodles) and Illustrator Draw, also from Adobe, to your iPad too. 07. Things 3 for iPad Things occupies the sweet spot between Reminders and Omnifocus Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later Price: $19.99/£14.99 Apple's Reminders app is actually more useful than most people give it credit for – especially if you set up reminders lists that can be shared among a team – but there's no doubt a more accomplished to-do manager will help you keep on top of complex projects more easily. Some swear by OmniFocus, but for us it's just a little too daunting in its power. Things, though, lets you define some sensible groupings, makes it simple to add and sort new tasks, and lets you easily see what deadlines are imminent. Look here for details of what you'll find in the new version of Things. 08. OmniPlan 3 Big projects come together a lot easier with OmniFocus Requirements: iOS 10.0 or later Price: $74.99/£54.99 While we've rejected The Omni Group's to-do app for being a little too complex for the kind of to-dos we creatives want to track, it's precisely that complexity that makes its project planning app a must-have – though only for big projects, and only for senior folk (if you're self-employed, mind you, or work in a very small team, guess what? You're the senior). With OmniPlan, you can create Gantt charts to allocate time and resources to specific parts of a project, and because each part is interrelated, you can keep focussed on what the material effects will be of the wireframing process, say, taking longer than you has anticipated. Everything is live and shared, and it will help you resolve scheduling impossibilities. Basically: if you wanna hit deadlines for big projects, get this. 09. Slack Slack's great for team communication (and sharing hilarious GIFs) Requirements: iOS 9.0 or later Price: From free Hate how much time you spend in email? Us too. Make your team try Slack – it starts free with some limitations – and marvel at all the time you get back. While it's ostensibly just a simple instant message tool, its become hugely popular in recent years (especially with remote working teams) thanks to the fact it integrates beautifully with a huge range of other services such as Dropbox and Google Docs, and so makes everything so much smoother. 10. Duet Display Turn your iPad into a second display and become more productive Requirements: iOS 8.0 or later Price: £14.99 One of the easiest ways to be more productive as a designer is to add more screens to your computer, whether so you can have source material on one while working on the main display, to keep an eye on email (or Slack!) while you work without switching between tasks, or just as somewhere to put your palettes so you're not covering up your work. It's not always convenient, though – maybe you're rushing to hit a deadline in an airport departure lounge, or you're hotdesking in a coworking space. However, if you have an iPhone or iPad, you can turn it into a second display for your Mac or PC with this app, which earns it a spot in our list of the best iPad apps for designers. While earlier apps that did this worked wirelessly (convenient, but laggy and compressed), Duet Display works over the cable, whether Lightning or 30-pin, with full support for Retina and touch. You might also want to investigate Astropad, which turns your iPad into a Cintiq-like graphics tablet for your Mac. 11. Invoice2go Invoice2Go is the ideal way to manage your invoicing Requirements: iOS 9.3 or later Price: Free When the work is done, it's too easy to forget to invoice for it, but with your iPad (or iPhone or even Apple Watch) you can easily create, send and track invoices wherever you are. There are plenty of systems available, and if you already use, say, FreeAgent then get its app but Invoice2go is a good option if you haven't got started with one yet. 12. Digital magazines Probably the best design mags on the planet (unbiased) Various OS requirements Various publishers Various prices You'd expect us to recommend reading more magazines, sure, but that doesn't mean to say it's not true. Your iPad doesn't have to be just a relentlessly practical workhorse; use it in your downtime too, to get inspiration and note new techniques you can use by subscribing to some digital magazines for your sector. Of course we're going to suggest our own Computer Arts, net, ImagineFX and 3D World titles, but there are plenty more, such as Adobe Create magazine (formerly Inspire). Related articles: 3 great iPad pens for designers 20 top tools for freelancers 10 top iPad cases for designers View the full article

This month's Computer Arts went to press from the middle of the bustling hub of creative energy that is D&AD New Blood – the culmination of another year’s action-packed graduate show season – and it's packed with the very best new talent the team could find. Buy Computer Arts issue 269 now! So if you’re looking for designers to inject new life into your studio, on the hunt for your next creative collaborator, or just hungry for new sources of inspiration, the expansive 28-page special report at the core of the issue is a great place to start, and includes 30 hand-picked graduates to watch. Santa Cielava from LCC opens the graphic design section CSM graduate Noah Petri is one of CA's illustrators to watch Stunning cover treatment The cover of the print edition was created by Camelia Pham, winner of CA's fourth-annual cover design contest, in partnership with D&AD New Blood and specialist print finisher Celloglas – which provided a luxurious silver Mirri finish for the cover to be printed onto. See the Top 10 shortlist of the Computer Arts cover design contest 2017 here, and find out more about the printing process in this video: Meanwhile, if you’re graduating yourself this year, CA issue 269 also includes an in-depth guide to landing your first job in design – whether that involves wowing through an internship, nailing an interview or exploring what a recruitment service can offer. Get your first job in design with Computer ArtsCA's ongoing series in partnership with D&AD New Blood also concludes this issue, with advice on future-proofing yourself as a young designer in an ever-changing industry. Top tips for future-proofing yourselfAlso in Computer Arts issue 269 How Frost*collective created a bold new environment for creative play centre Nubo Make your studio a fun place to work, with advice from Bristol-based Halo Plus: inspiring work from across the global design industryBuy Computer Arts issue 269 here. Subscribe today and get 5 issues for £5! Like what you see? Subscribe to Computer Arts before the end of August to trial five issues for just £5 in the amazing summer sale. More posts from Computer Arts: The designer’s guide to using colour in branding Why graphic designers need beautiful websites How to animate the Disney way View the full article

With fonts, as with people, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. After all, one designer's Futura could be another's Jokerman. With that in mind, we've put together 10 fonts that we're sure someone, somewhere will find beautiful. They might not all be your cup of tea, but we hope that thanks to the laws of averages at least one font on this list will make you swoon. 50 best free fonts for designers01. Bibliophile Script A perfect font for bookwormsFormat: OTF The elegant Bibliophile is a mish mash font made up of lettering from the hand of Louis Prang, a Prussian-American painter and publisher. Available in two weights, both of which contain over 900 glyphs that cover all the latin languages, Bibliophile usually retails at £78.99, but you can grab it now for just £39.50 (around $51). 02. Hello Beautiful Don't forget to dot your letters with a heartFormat: OTF, TT Looking for a bit of affection from your lettering? Well, with Hello Beautiful, you can kid yourself that the typeset is admiring your good looks every time you fire it up. Available as a trio of fonts, Hello Beautiful has a rough and casual hand-written feel that's sure to give your designs a personal touch. You can get your hands on the font family of three for just $18/£12.99. 03. OL America the Beautiful Making typography great againFormat: OTF, TT One for the patriots, this. Designed by New York City-based Dennis Ortiz-Lopez, OL America the Beautiful celebrates the designer's affection for his homeland. Thanks to its gradient shading and distinctive colours, there's no missing this font that's as loud and proud as the country that inspired it. OL America the Beautiful includes six different styles that you can download for £172.99 (around $225). 04. Kiwi This beautiful font looks good enough to eatFormat: OTF, TT Don't worry, this font isn't furry on the outside. Instead, Kiwi takes inspiration from its fruity namesake by offering "sweet and spirited forms and a variety of tasty options." As well as including playful letter shapes, Kiwi font is accompanied by the delicious Kiwi Fruits, a collection of graphic fruit illustrations by Amy Dietrich. Download the pair for £34.99 (around $45). 05. Beach Please Life's a beach with this chilled out fontFormat: OTF What's more beautiful than a beach? Thanks to their stunning waves and golden sands, beaches have inspired countless paintings, motivational posters, and now a family of seven beautiful fonts. These handwritten fonts have been designed with pointed brushes and watercolours to create a relaxing and energetic set of letters. No trip to the beach is complete without snacks, so this family also includes tropical and fruity icons. Grab them all for $38/£79. 06. Gessetto All the fun of chalk without the horrible blackboard-scraping noiseFormat: OTF Chalkboard lettering has a character and style all of its own that's hard to replicate anywhere else. However, the team behind Gessetto has pulled it off by creating an extensive chalk font family that contains script, sans, roman, figures and ornaments. This family includes nine different variations, all of which you can download for $60/£119. 07. Liesel Step back in time with this historical calligraphy fontFormat: OTF Loosely based on traditional hand-drawn lettering, Liesel claims to reflect "a warm, antique aesthetic." Made up of eight fonts that are designed to be layered and experimented with, Liesel gives typographers plenty of room for experimentation. Grab them all on sale now for £71.80 or buy only the Liesel Printed Family for $36 or the Liesel Brush Family for $36. 08. Superb This high contrast font is easy to readFormat: OTF Superb is a glamorous font family that takes is cues from stylish real brush pen script designs from the '60s and '70s. Packing various swashes with volume and curls, Superb also includes negative figures and a full alphabet set with cut out shapes. You can download Superb for just $39/£32. 09. Kayto This unique family is an exploration of pointed brush calligraphyFormat: OTF, TT Natural gestures feature in this beautiful font, which is the second collaboration between calligrapher Erwin Indrawan and typeface designer Dexsar Harry Anugrah. Made with a real brush held perpendicular to the paper to channel the movements of the hand, Kayto is a seven font family that you can download for the equally beautiful price of $25/£17.99. 10. Asterism Shine bright like a diamond with AsterismFormat: OTF A more whimsical calligraphy font rounds off our list of beautiful fonts. Meet Asterism, a single style family with "a moving baseline and lots of shining personality." Based on the hand-written look of designer Molly Jacques Erickson's signature calligraphy styles, this set can be yours to download and own for $30/£20.99. Related articles: 7 best new fonts of 2017 15 fantastic logo fonts 50 best free fonts for designers View the full article

The eyes of everyone in the CGI and digital content creation industry will be turned towards Los Angeles this summer, as SIGGRAPH 2017 takes place – the event's 44th outing. As one of the biggest shows in the industry, with representatives from Autodesk, Maxon, The Foundry, AMD, and NVIDIA among many others, SIGGRAPH is a must for CG artists. 30 inspiring examples of 3D artMarvel at new research The Technical Papers include how Clensch maps can be used for visualisation and processingSIGGRAPH's Technical Papers presentations let attendees explore the science behind the pixels. These papers have earned the event its reputation as one of the most esteemed and influential forums for research in the world. This year, from 439 submissions, 127 papers will be showcased (scroll down for an overview video). And there are plenty of new areas of research to get excited about. “In addition to the continuation of research in geometric modelling and animation, rendering and imaging, I was surprised and excited, to see the extension of cinematography techniques to VR videos," says Marie-Paule Cani, chair of the Technical Papers program. "I’m also excited about the design of novel devices that capture micro-motion or are able to capture 3D fluid flows, and a printing technique that uses embedded magnetic flakes to create printed pictures that change with the lighting.” Learn how a new multi-species model can simulate the interaction between water and sandDive into machine learning Machine learning is one of the hot topics in computer science at the moment. Cani has noticed a trend in computer imaging in particular: the use of deep learning to generate new content, be it images, videos, speech or motion. For those interested, there are several sessions dedicated to this area, including Deep image processing and Speech and facial animation. Discover how ‘dip transform’ can aid reconstruction of 3D shapesDip into another specialism The papers at SIGGRAPH offer an incredibly wide range of topics, meaning that attendees can gain some really valuable insights into areas that they may not otherwise discover. “Look for inspiration from a diverse set of presentations,” advises Cani. “Attending sessions from a different sub-domain may be a good idea, since our field is advancing thanks to cross-fertilisation – for example, editing or transfer techniques first introduced in imaging later inspiring those who developed in shape modelling." Plan your trip For those who are new to SIGGRAPH and want to see as many presentations as they can, the sheer amount of papers on offer can be overwhelming. For an overview of this year's content, take a look at the trailer below: You might also like to attend the Technical Papers Fast Forwards session on Sunday 30 July. SIGGRAPH 2017 runs from 30 July to 3 August. Visit s2017.siggraph.org for more information. This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 224. Buy issue 224 here or Subscribe here. Related articles: 8 best 3D tools of 2017 so far How videogame graphics and movie VFX are converging Create ornate tiles in Substance Designer View the full article

It’s Friday. Fancy a spot of trippy animation eye-candy to ease you through the day? Then please, allow us. Our favourite new animation this week by far was Adult Swim’s trailer for the new season of eccentric animation series Rick and Morty. Titled Exquisite Corpse, the insane short features sequences created by a stellar cast of top animation talent, taking you on a journey through some 22 different animation styles. Greatest animated music videosThe clip, which was directed by illustrator Matt Taylor, takes inspiration from the surrealist drawing technique of the same name – Exquisite Corpse – in which different artists draw a section of a body without seeing the others beforehand. Aided by an instrumental version of Run The Jewels’ Thursday in the Danger Room, it’s makes for the perfect Friday viewing – and a cracking way to gear up for the weekend. The all-new Rick and Morty episodes begin 30 July. Related articles: Understand the 12 principles of animation How to get started with animation A beginner's guide to designing interface animations View the full article

When web developers need to get their sites online with the assurance that all their designs will work as expected, they turn to Arch Hosting Web Hosting. You can get a lifetime subscription to this powerful service for just $29.99 (approx £23). Arch Hosting Web Hosting has everything you need to get your website up and running at full speed. This performance-oriented host understands the importance of having no downtime and quick load times, and will optimise your site with its lightning-fast network. Get 2GB of storage space and 500GB of bandwidth for your domain, which you'll get free for one year with this offer. You can get get a lifetime subscription to Arch Hosting Web Hosting for just $29.99 (approx £23). That's a saving of 91% off the retail price for a service that will get your site up and running, so grab this deal today! View the full article

Google’s stripped-back homepage is recognised the world over. The vast white space containing just a simple logo and search box has been in place since the search engine’s launch in 1996, and offers a classic example of extreme minimalism in action. But is Google about to buck one of 2017’s biggest web design trends with its proposed new design? According to the Guardian, Google is set to undergo a “radical change” with the addition of a Facebook-style personalised newsfeed in the “near future”. The new design will bring it in line with Google’s mobile apps for Android and iOS, which already feature a news and events-based feed. “You’ll see cards with things like sports highlights, top news, engaging videos, new music, stories to read and more. And now, your feed will not only be based on your interactions with Google, but also factor in what’s trending in your area and around the world,” said Shashi Thakur, vice president of engineering at Google. “As the world and your interests change, your feed will continue to grow and evolve along with you. You’ll notice that your feed will also reflect your interest level for various topics – for example, if you’re a photography enthusiast but just casually interested in fitness, your feed will show that.” Goodbye white space While there are no firm design details as yet, this news feed experience could lead to a cluttered-looking search engine – which would position Google firmly against the year’s continued web design trends of minimalist design and ample white space. As yet, however, we don’t know how complex the desktop feed will be. As our sister site TechRadar points out, you might have to log in to your Google account to use the new system – “as personalisation is the name of the game here, particularly when it comes to elements such as linking in your calendar or Gmail inbox to scrape flight booking details and so forth.” Right now, it’s all eyes on Google for the next few weeks, as we wait to see exactly how radical the new homepage design will be. The company has said the new feed additions will roll out to US users immediately and international users in the next few weeks. Related articles: Get Computer Arts' Self-Promo issue completely free! 20 amazing free Google web fonts 11 web design tools you can't live without View the full article

Last September, we experienced a design event like no other. OFFF By Night transformed a cavernous warehouse space in Antwerp, Belgium into a bustling hub of food, fun and flashing screens for a three-day creative extravaganza, where the talks finished at midnight every night. It's back for a second year from 23-25 November 2017, now called Us By Night – but still curated by Rizon Parein, the hugely passionate Belgian-born designer who first dreamed it up. Here, we caught up with Parein to find out why designers should mark it in their calendars now... Innovative design event format Last year’s event introduced a brave and innovative new format, are you continuing in the same vein for 2017? Rizon Parein: It was indeed a big wild guess, which turned out to be a huge success. Last year we had to sell a new concept, and convince people... now we know the fundamentals of our concept were bang on, this gives us the confidence and motivation to explore the whole 'nightlife experience' even more. The conference room itself with its massive screen will probably not change much, but the night market we’re gonna take to the next level, adding a lot more games and sports, an improved Q&A saloon, more massive LED screens, dirty green lasers, light installations, shops and so on... think Blade Runner. A full house for the Q&A stage at OFFF By Night 2016"A theme park for creativity" In big-picture terms, how are you making the event bigger and better for 2017? Did you get any ‘difficult second album’ type fears? RP: The lineup the first year was mindblowing – as I frequently visit design conferences myself I just put together my personal best of the best. For the sake of nostalgia alone, I would have loved to invite every single speaker again but that of course would not be a clever thing to do. I love the community aspect, the same vibe as when travelling back in the day from one graffiti jam to the other. It's one big family, sharing the same interests and up for a party. So it was quite a challenge to build this new lineup to match last year’s fireworks, but so much fun digging into artists. It kind of educates you, scouting all these talents. I’ve been suggested a bunch of names by Michael Spoljaric, senior creative director at Nike Basketball, who has worked with the cream of the crop of the design world and has a really good view of what’s happening in the scene. Also Playgrounds, the well known design festival in Amsterdam, will be curating a few names especially in the field of film and animation. For the Q&A saloon we are collaborating with lots of curators, which makes our lineup even more diverse than last year... to name a few: Alice Gallery, Vice, Kris Hoet, with more TBC. We like to see our event as a platform where creatives can plug into. It’s not an ego show, it’s a theme park for creativity. The warehouse space in Parkloods, Antwerp is transformed – but keeps its urban edgeLast year's night-time format is pretty unusual in design conference terms. What were the biggest lessons you learned from doing so? RP: Well as I said, it was a big hit. It was so, so much fun, and what we did last year we will do this year but even better. We are working on the food and beverages aspect in particular. I truly swear by local, honest products, but this comes with a pricetag so it's hard to compete with typical festival fast food. We’re now looking into a way to serve, next to our food stalls, quality food at a lower price. One idea is a huge long table that you can book for one massive dinner a night: a fun way to eat and network at the same time. As well as food stalls and LED screens, the night market includes games such as ping pongThe creative lineup Talk us through the 2017 lineup. How did it take shape, and who are you most excited about coming along? RP: Artists I'm looking forward to? All of them, otherwise I wouldn’t ask them :) What surprised me last year was how many of us were involved in graffiti, like a third of the lineup. So I’ve invited a few of my old-skool graffiti heroes, like Mode 2 – what this guy's done for the graffiti scene you can't imagine. Also, last year a few people were calling our event Nike by Night, because so many of the speakers had Nike stuff in their keynote. It's hard to avoid, since Nike works with the best and many of us see it as our dream client. To have some counterweight, we have this year ex-Wieden+Kennedy José Cabaco, who has a very important role in the future storytelling of Adidas. I'm really curious about what his talk will bring. The main stage played host to a packed-out audience in 2016Finally, what advice would you give to a fellow design event organiser who’s trying to evolve and grow their offering? RP: Bigger screen, bigger bar. No, it’s not that simple. We had some offers to start our event abroad, but what is key to our success is our venue – we could not just land with our concept anywhere else. General advice is hard, as each venue has its own story. I'd say try to make it unique, give it that extra touch, keep it human and definitely don't make it too corporate. What's your ambition for Us By Night in the next five years? RP: An open air edition, of course at night, at the Hollywood Bowl :) Us By Night will take over Parkloods in Antwerp, Belgium from 23–25 November 2017. Don't miss out: buy your tickets now! Related articles: How to network successfully: 19 pro tips Have designers become lazy? New talent 2017: Best graduates from London's top colleges View the full article

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3D software developers know that 3D artists have a creatively fulfilling but deadline-filled job with long hours, so they’re constantly striving to find new ways to make your life easier. In this post, we round up the 3D tools that have made the biggest strides forward so far in 2017. (So for instance, 3ds Max may be the industry standard, but version 2018 still didn’t make our list because the improvements weren’t exactly mindblowing.) 01. Unreal Engine 4.15 Unreal Games now supports the Nintendo SwitchFebruary saw the arrival of version 4.15 of Epic Games’ popular open source game engine, Unreal Engine. The new release sports 79 improvements submitted by UE developers on GitHub. The biggest attention grabber is support for the Nintendo Switch, albeit experimental for now. Version 4.15 also comes with the long-awaited addition of High Dynamic Range (HDR) display support, GPS Data accessibility in Android and iOS, and Playstation VR Aim Controller support. Elsewhere, compile times have been reduced by up to 50 per cent, there’s a new Blendspace editor, and animation blending is now possible in Sequencer. You can read about all the new features in Unreal Engine 4.15 on the Epic Games site. 02. Modo 11.1 Modo now plays nicely with Unreal EngineJune saw the Foundry released Modo 11.1, the second of the three updates to its 3D modelling, rendering and texturing tool. And the feature everyone’s talking about the new Unreal Bridge, which allows you to work in an uninterrupted flow between Modo and Unreal Engine. You can work between the two tools either on the same computer or remotely across two or more computers on the same network. There’s also a new Box Transform tool for moving and positioning UVs more fluidly, a UV coverage indicator for arranging UV Maps more efficiently, and support for object space normal map baking. You can discover the full range of new features and improvements in Modo 11.1 on the Foundry site. 03. Clarisse 3.5 Clarisse’s new scattering system is the headline feature of its latest versionIn May, Isotropix unveiled version 3.5 of its image-centric 2D/3D rendering and animation software for VFX artists, upgraded from version 3.0. The new release includes a new scattering system, which allows you to scatter instanced objects, such as rocks or plant-life, by directly painting particles across a surface. That’s along with collision detection to control the spacing of instances, improvements to groups and file referencing, new Standard PBR material inspired by AlSurface, and a free student edition. You can learn more about the new features in Clarisse 3.5 on the Isotropix site. 04. iClone 7 iClone 7 comes with a new facial rig and animation systemThis time last year, real-time 3D animation and renderer Character Creator for iClone 6 hit, and back then we were most impressed with it. Towards the end of June, makers Reallusion launched version 7, with a ton of new features. Standouts among them were real-time Global Illumination and PBR rendering, new facial and morph animation tools, and camera settings that replicate the movements of real-world production cameras. iClone 7 also comes with a new pack of embedded content plus two new stock 3D characters. You can discover the full list of features in iClone 7 in the video below. 05. Substance Designer 6 The new version of Substance Designer comes with 32-bit floating point compositing (Model by Christian Le Roux)Allegorithmic’s material authoring and scan processing tool reached version 6 in March, with a flurry of new features since Substance Designer 5.5. The feature that most caught our attention was the arrival of 32-bit floating point compositing. There are some cool new scan processing tools that let you create accurate, scanned materials from a set of pre-lit photos. Just take four to eight shots with a camera or even a smartphone, feed them in, and the software does the rest. Version 6 also comes with 8K bakers, a proper text node and a new Curve node, which allows you to define a curve profile to remap colour data. Read the full release notes for Substance Designer 6 on the Allegorithmic site. 06. Substance Painter 2017.1 Substance Source can now be accessed from within the Substance Painter interfaceAllegorithmic has certainly been busy bees of late. In February, its 3D painting tool Substance Painter got an update to 2.5. This added opacity control and colour management to the mix since Substance Painter 2.3 and 2.4, and incorporated support for all the new nodes and features in Substance Designer 6. Two months later came version 2.6, which saw an extension of the scripting API that allows you to update resources in an existing project via a new plugin. Then in June, it released another new version, and the start of a new naming convention. Substance Painter 2017.1 is firmly focused on bringing Substance Source and Substance Painter closer together for a smoother workflow. So the latter is now integrated into the former’s UI and 300 new customisable alphas and patterns have been added to the Shelf, from Celtic symbols to geometric shapes, along with new fonts and new filters. You’ll find full details of the new features in Substance Painter 2017.1 on the Allegorithmic site. 07. Arnold 5 Decreasing melanin content in Arnold’s new standard hair shader (Model courtesy of Zeno Pelgrims)Global illumination ray-tracer Arnold got a big new release this April, with version 5. The biggest change is actually invisible to users, though, as maker Solid Angle has transitioned the software to a brand new architecture. This, it says, will allow it to make major improvements in future. That said, there are still plenty of new features to enjoy right now in Arnold 5. Both render startup and ray trace time have been speeded up considerably, with the company promising a 10x speed boost when pre-processing textures in Arnold’s .tx format. There are also several new shaders, including Standard Volume, a new physically based volumetric shader. And perhaps the biggest news for users is that support for Arnold 5 is also one of the key features of 3ds Max 2018. You’ll find full details on the new features in Arnold 5 in the video below. 08. Project Felix 0.3 An abstract city of bottles created by Vladimir Petkovic using Project FelixWhile it’s aimed at graphic designers rather than 3D artists, Adobe’s beta application – which we reviewed in March – is still a great tool for compositing 2D and 3D shots. You can use it to place, scale and rotate 3D objects, select and customise their materials, and alter the lighting, while a realtime render preview powered by V-Ray shows how the final image will come together, and you can export the result as a layered PSD file to composite in Photoshop. First released for download in January, the most recent update to Project Felix includes the neural network-powered ability to realistically recreate lighting inside a 3D drawing. There’s also a more intuitive user interface, a bookmarking feature, and rendering has been speeded up. You can learn more about Project Felix 0.3 in these release notes. View the full article

Doodling is a great, fun way of expressing yourself. But it's often underrated as an art form. Yet doodle art can help you learn how to draw and make a great addition to your design portfolio – as highlighted by these brilliant examples. Combining child-like doodles with expressive illustrations, they show how doodling can be used to create beautiful and arresting designs. Who knew there were so many doodle art styles? 01. Hattie Stewart Hattie Stewart designed this cover for Bavarian Opera magazine Max JosephBold and beautiful, this gorgeous piece is the work of illustrator Hattie Stewart (as is the opening image). Commissioned by graphic design studio Bureau Mirko Borsche, Stewart doodled this awesome cover for Bavarian Opera magazine Max Joseph. Best known for her 'doodle bombs', Stewart frequently redesigns magazine covers with her own twist. Her unique style has landed her work with many leading brands, including Adidas, Diesel, and Marc by Marc Jacobs. 02. Jon Burgerman Jon Burgerman's 'I stare out of the window' is a doodley twist on stained glassJon Burgerman is best known for his colourful, fluid and playful creations and this one is no exception. Titled 'I stare out of the window', Burgerman was commissioned to create this piece for one of the New Art Gallery Walsall's large-scale windows. The brief was to depict the trials and tribulations of being an artist, including creating a concept, playing with ideas, taking a break and checking emails. 03. Tessa Shearer Tessa Shearer sells her doodled designs through her own online storeBased in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Tessa Shearer is a designer and illustrator who specialises in the cheery and quirky. Her eye-catching doodle style is inspired by a strange mix of Japanese and vintage artwork, as well as the tastes of her three young children. If you like what you can see you can buy her range of limited edition art, jewellery and accessories at her online store, House of Wonderland. 04. Eva-Lotta Lamm Why take notes when you can take sketchnotes?User experience designer Eva-Lott Lamm does web and interface design for Google as her day job, but enjoys graphic design and illustration as well and has made a name for herself with her series of sketchnotes: doodled notes from conference talks that add a fantastic visual element to boring old note-taking. She's even collected her sketchnotes into four books as well as a series of posters; find them all here. 05. Kim Jung Gi This South Korean artist is the master of the doodle. Taking to blank walls when he's not capturing his improvised art in a sketchbook, Kim has become world famous for his on-the-spot epic doodle masterpieces. Equally happy filling sketchbook or drawing directly on a wall, Kim has only recently received global attention, though he's been drawing all his life In Kim's case, seeing is believing, and thankfully his YouTube channel is chock full of brain-tinglingly amazing pieces. The artist says: "I observe things all the time. I don’t take references while I’m drawing, but I’m always collecting visual resources." Take a dip into his sketchbook! 06. Viktor Kalvachev Flicking through Viktor's sketchbook, you're likely to find many beautiful pin-upsBorn in Bulgaria, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts, Viktor moved to the US to work in video games, and produced the graphic novel Pherone and crime series Blue Estate, the latter of which received two Eisner nominations. He now lives in Paris where he’s opened a studio and developed a video game. 07. Mattias Adolfsson Mattias Adolfsson lets us inside the pages of his ever-impressive notebooksWorking with everything from computer games to children's books, you will be hard pressed to find a better doodler than Swedish based illustrator Mattias Adolfsson. Take a look through the pages of his sketchbooks to see what we mean. 08. Faith Georgia Just one of many beautiful doodles created by artist Faith GeorgiaThis energetic, yet calming doodle was created by artist Faith Georgia. A super-talent, Georgia has created numerous, beautiful, black and white and colour-filled doodles, all of which can be found in her awe-inspiring Flickr portfolio. 09. Matt Lyon A bundle of beautiful chaos by Matt LyonMatt Lyon is the London-based graphic artist and illustrator behind this colourful and chaotic doodle. He comments on his website: "My work stems from incessant doodling, often laced with wild colours, shapes and patterns." Indeed it does. And we love it! 10. Snippy Snippy Crab Kristine This talented artist creates beautiful artwork while procrastinatingAfter months of procrastination, the artist that goes by the name of Snippy Snippy Crab Kristine completed this completed this set of entirely random doodles. This talented artist spends much of her time creating gorgeous Manga artwork, with any spare minutes spent doodling lovely creations such as this in her skecthbook. 11. Matthieu Bessudo Bessudo's doodle art features a mind-blowing amount of detailMatthieu Bessudo, aka McBess, is a French illustrator living in London. With a passion for illustration and music, Bessudo always tries to mix the two in his work. A super-talent, his doodle art features a mind-blowing amount of detail. 12. GenerallySpeaking Artist Michelle began this piece with the large swirl in the top right of the pageHigh school student Michelle aka GenerallySpeaking is the lady behind this intricate ink doodle. Covering a book from one of her notebooks, this is doodle art at its best. Using a simple biro, Michelle began the detailed illustration in the top-right corner, allowing organic shapes to flow around it until covering the entire page. 13. Helen Kaur The vibrant colours in Helen Kaur's doodle really makes it stand outHelen Kaur is a full-time graphic designer and part-time illustrator from Singapore. As part of her development and illustrative work, Kaur creates vibrant doodles in her spare time. And while we're not taking anything away from black and white doodle art - it rocks - it's great to see such a mixture of colours amongst all the detail in this drawing. 14. Pat Perry When Pat Perry's mind wanders, magic happensPat Perry is a superbly talented artist who, as his mind wanders, inscribes in ink some truly surreal and attention grabbing imagery. A daily practice for the Michigan born artist, drawing helps Pat to work through the complexities of life and thankfully for us acts as a remedy for all we find mundane in day-to-day living. 15. Géraldine Georges Géraldine Georges' weird and wonderful doodle artGéraldine Georges worked as a graphic designer for seven years before starting to freelance as an illustrator in 2006. The Belgian artist's collages are a perfect blend of photography and illustration, beautiful and elegant images that seep emotion. Next page: more inspiring examples of doodle art 16. Fred Blunt Fred Blunt is inspired by some of your favourite childhood shows and booksInspired by The Muppets, Quentin Blake and the Flintstones, Fred Blunt has been a compulsive doodler since he was in hand-me-downs. His cute characters are an instant source of cute and child-like inspiration that'll have you harking back to your childhood. 17. Justine Ashbee Beautiful doodle art from Justine AshbeeJustine Ashbee takes a line for a walk and your eyes go along for the ride. Lines and forms evolve and grow organically in her vast amorphous drawings. Intuitively composed, the Brighton based artist's drawings start with a curve and end in a mesmerizing undulating visual experience. 18. Billie Jean Billie Jean goes all postery with this doodle artBillie Jean is not my lover. Billie (a 'he' in case you're interested) has created entanglements of ballpoint pen for many notable clients. Creative Review and Nike can be counted amongst the many who have commissioned the services of this London based, tree climbing, doodle maestro. 19. Eric Olmstead Eric Olmstead's brilliant artwork is inspired by travelIt's hard not to be a little jealous of artist Eric Olmstead. Not only is he super-talented, he's also travelled all over the world, capturing the essence of each destination through brilliant illustrations and collages. This is just one piece Olmstead created in Brazil during a six-month tour of South America. He's also spent 18 months in Japan, been to Australia, New Zealand, the US - and there's at least one sketchbook full of amazing artwork for each. 20. Lizzie Mary Cullen Lizzie Mary Cullen delves into the world of hand-drawn psychogeography in this Brick Lane illustrationLizzie Mary Cullen is a multi award-winning artist based in London. A natural talent with pen and ink, Cullen's doodle art has attracted the attention of many leading brands, including the BBC, MTV and Harvey Nichols. This intricate depiction of Brick Lane, is just one from Cullen's brilliant series titled London psychogeographies. 21. Mike Rohde Designer Mike Rhode tells the tale of his travels with hand-drawn typography and little sketchesMike Rhode is a designer who loves to read, write and draw. For the latter, he takes a Moleskin sketchbook everywhere, keeping a visual journal of his travels. We particularly like this piece taken from Rhode's Portland sketchnote travelogue, in which he records facts and thoughts with brilliant little sketches and typography. 22. Amaia Arrazola Talented illustrator and designer Amaia Arrazola loves silly drawingsWe love the playful style of Spanish illustrator and designer Amaia Arrazola. After working in an advertising agency for a couple of years, Arrazola now works as a freelance artist in Barcelona. She comments on her website, "I like silly drawings, graphic design, serigraphy and typography." 23. Richard Romare Web designer Richard Romere created this piece in roughly 10 hours over five daysRichard Romare is a web designer based in the Philippines who also works as a freelance multimedia artist. Wanting to experiment in different artistic disciplines in his spare time, Romare comments on this one-off piece, "I'm not that comfortable with doodle arts, I was just trying something different." 24. Delphine Durand Illustrator Delphine Durand drew this intricate piece on a restaurant napkinArtist Delphine Durand has a treasure trove of sketchbook work online. For the most part, she creates magical and bizarre monsters and characters, some of which have been used to illustrate Chronicle Book's Big Rabbit's Bad Mood. As well as commissioned works, Durand spends much of her spare time doodling unusual worlds and creatures, like this piece hand-drawn on a restaurant napkin. 25. Kerby Rosanes Kerby Rosanes' work features incredible attention to detailKerby Rosanes is a graphic designer and SEO specialist with a passion for art and doodling. His work, which he post regularly on his Sketchy Stories blog, exists at various scales and his striking attention to detail makes each piece unique and original. 26. Irena Zablotska Irena Zablotska's doodles evoke an original and imaginative worldIrena Zablotska is a talented illustrator who uses multiple techniques to communicate the original world she's created through illustration and doodle art. Her art has been exhibited across the world, from St Petersburg to San Jose. 27. Jabson Rodrigues Jabson Rodrigues beautiful 'Falling' illustrationIf you like this particular style of doodle art then you should definitely check out the Flickr account of Jabson Rodrigues, which is overflowing with stunning sketches like the above. Titled 'Falling', the illustration features two people intertwined by Rodrigues' gorgeous, fluid doodles next to the words 'Sky should tumble and fall'. Just beautiful. 28. Saddo Jdero Saddo Jdero creates intricate, intriguing worldsThis remarkable Romanian illustrator and artist is another example of how doodle art can be taken to a commerical, professional level. The intricate imaginary worlds he creates are both fascinating and unique. 29. Lisa Krasse Lisa Krasse's doodle art on Converse sneakersCraft, drawing, and fashion combine in one amazing project. Lisa Krasse has combined her love of doodling with a love of Converse shoes to create these amazing sneaker designs. Check out the rest on her Behance profile. 30. PodgyPanda PodgyPanda creates cute digital illustrations, apparel, design toys and of course, doodles!PodgyPanda, or Richard Kuoch as his parents like to call him, is an artist, illustrator, animator and graphic designer from Auckland, New Zealand but is now living it up in London. Creating cute digital illustrations, apparel and design toys such as Jerk Jigglypuff, PodgyPanda also doodles. A lot. Next page: more great examples of doodle art 31. Jim Bradshaw By day, Jim is an art director. By night, he is a doodle extraordinaire!New Jersey illustrator Jim Bradshaw has been doodling away since he could pick up a pencil. By day, he works as an art director but by night Jim tackles all things creative and is never far from his Moleskine. His doodles open up a weird and wacky world that often includes creatures from outer space and walking tree stumps. We love it! 32. Chris Piascik Just one of the doodles taken from Chris's book '1000 days of drawing'Describing himself as an 'illustrator, formerly known as designer', Chris Piascik fast became a well-known face in the doodle art world. Based in New England and with more than eight years of professional experience, Chris embarked upon a 'daily drawing' challenge back in 2007. Once he'd done 1000, he published them in a book entitled '1000 days of drawing'. He continues to doodle to this very day. 33. Kate Bingaman-Burt Kate documents every purchase she makes with a quick doodleBecoming obsessed with consumerism back in 2006, illustrator Kate Bingaman-Burt decided to document her daily purchases with a doodle. Staying with the consumption theme, Kate draws her doodles on to receipts and credit card statements. What a creative and fun way to showcase your personality and your buying habits! 34. Lapin Lapin draws his doodles onto old accounting booksLapin is a French illustrator, living between Barcelona and Paris. He travels daily with his sketch books, documenting his day-to-day escapades. He has already filled around 150 sketchbooks for the last 10 years and particularly appreciates sketching on vintage accounting books that he finds in flea markets. He even leads doodle workshops at universities and art schools. 35. Faye Moorhouse You'll fall in love with the weird and wonderful doodles of Fay MoorhouseWinning the D&AD New Blood award back in 2011 was just the start of Faye Moorhouse's impressive illustrative career. Her portfolio is packed full of weird and wonderful creatures, characters and doodles and this one is a particular favourite. 36. Davivid Rose Davivid Rose describes himself as a poet and hallucinographic designerDavivid Rose also goes by the name of jdy333 and describes himself as a "poet and hallucinographic designer". His doodles offer a weird and wonderful insight into his creative mind, including this colourful creation which took "lots of patience and lots of coffee". 37. Sagaki Keita The doodles blend together perfectly to create the final imageJapanese artist Sagaki Keita specialises in recreating classic masterpieces by covering them in these gorgeous child-like doodles. Even though the doodles themselves are simple, once you look further away from the drawing, you realise that Sagaki has taken the time to ensure they blend together perfectly. 38. Paperchap Paperchap completes his drawings in the time it takes him to get to workWe don't know much about UK artist Paperchap but what we do know is that he is a commuting doodler. Every day, he travels between Shoreham By Sea and London Victoria, which leaves him with rather a lot of idle time - so her doodle all over the newspapers. Now, that's a creative commute. 39. Starchild Starchild creates a visual language to explain a culture which is vibrant, dark yet familiarStarchild is an artist with a mission - to create a visual language to explain a culture which is vibrant, dark yet familiar. Using mixed media he'll "cut, paste and create from the giant pile of junk that is the Universe". Each of his pieces tells a different story and could be interpreted in hundreds of ways. We love how he has encorporated mixed media into the doodle artform. 40. Ted McGrath Ted shows that the imperfections of doodle art can come together to create stunning workTed McGrath basically represents what doodle art is all about. It's about the imperfections that come together to make a stunning creation. His notepad is jam-packed full of colours and sketches that span an array of subject matter. We think this car/boat offering is definitely one of his best. 41. Lei Melendres Lei Melendres' page-filling doodle art is fun that you can stare at for ages!When artist Lei Melendres has nothing better to do, he doodles. And this is just one of many pieces he has created as a result. Fully utilising his spare time, the crazy-talented illustrator uses a black marker, neat lines and no space left un-doodled in his work. 42. Flavio Melchiorre Flavio Melchiorre created this for a Japanese fashion magazineFlavio Melchiorre, is an Italian artist, award-winning designer, illustrator, painter and founder of creative design studio IDRO51. Best known for his distinctive hypnotic style, Melchiorre created this gorgeous piece for the Japanese fashion magazine commons&sense, inspired by the Fendi autumn and winter 2012/13 collection, designed by Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Venturini Fendi. 43. Andrea Joseph Andrea Joseph created this gorgeous illustration using only ballpoint pens and paperNow this gorgeous illustration by Andrea Joseph takes us back to the days of school exercise book scribblings and random jottings. Although ours looked nowhere near as good as this! Joseph created the brilliant design using only ballpoint pens, which features a beautifully worn pair of Converse and frighteningly realistic stationary. Absolutely stunning. 44. Johanna Basford This gorgeous wallpaper design by Johanna Bashford features on the wall of Vigo St Starbucks store in LondonThe unique doodling style from artist Johanna Basford managed to bag her this commission from international coffee company Starbucks. After persistently sending the company paper cups with her artwork on, Johanna was asked to design a wallpaper for the redesign of Starbuck's Vigo Street store in London. Hidden within the flourishes are tiny coffee cups, elusive birds, and the odd Frappuccino... 45. Eklektick Artist Kristin Krause spent a month depicting her random thoughts through sketches to make this gorgeous homemade decorWe love the fun and playful mind of US-based artist Kristin Krause aka Eklektick. Both her home and studio are full of colourful artwork such as these random doodles titled 'Thought Mess'. For one month, Krause stuck sheets of paper to her walls and then wrote and sketched her thoughts on each. A brilliant idea from a very talented artist. 46. Rowan Tedge Artist Rowan Tedge's artwork has crazy amounts of detailSuper-busy is the chosen style of talented artist Rowan Tedge, who, believe it or not, doesn't draw for a living. Many of his designs are created on his train journey to work. With limited space on public transport, Tedge works in small sections at a time adding more incredible detail each day. 47. Uberkraaft Gorgeous illustration by artist Matt Williams aka UberkraaftThis colourful, fun and playful artwork was created by freelance illustrator, artist and designer Matt Williams aka Uberkraaft for the Umbraco community. Keen to not stick to a particular style, Williams says on his website: "I'm anti-style and work across a lot of media adapting my work to fit the brief. I can practically turn my hand to any style to fit any project." 48. Tower Hamlets College Tower Hamlets College tutor Zak Peric and 11 of his commercial graphics and digital illustration students were behind this cool wall doodle. Using only back ink, the team worked on this piece of doodle art for three full days, the aim of the project being to encourage students positively by using a one liner motivational text. 49. James Jean James Jean's tri-colour doodle artJames Jean retired in 2008, leaving the illustration world behind he redefined himself as a fine artist. Whilst known for his award winning DC Comics cover illustrations, commercial work for Prada, and now critically acclaimed paintings, the Taiwanese American artist's sketches are also truly to die for. 50. Chris Glasz Chris Glasz's Inception doodle art is like a doodly infographicWe're big fans of 3D movies here at Creative Bloq, so we we're thrilled to find this series of movie doodle art by US-based artist Chris Glasz. Owner of Tumblr blog In Doodle Format, Glasz has chosen a number of popular films and illustrated them as creative doodles. Often using just a simple black Sharpie, so far, the talented artist has celebrated 11 well-loved films, including Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Inception (above). We're a little in love with these illustrations, which are far more original than most of the fan art we see. It's also hard not to be a little in awe of this guy's talent with a Sharpie. 51. Heike Weber Heike Weber's doodle art fills entire rooms!Not only is Germany-based artist Heike Weber a bit of a whizz with a permanent marker, she must also have the patience of a saint when creating these mesmerising repeat pattern installations. Weber creates her artwork by tracing thousands of lines on the walls, floor and sometimes even the ceiling of the space she's decorating. Starting by drawing the pattern on a sheet of paper, she then transfers the design onto each surface. They may look like pretty random designs but Weber very carefully selects the amount of white space between each line to give the impression of movement. We can't even begin to imagine how long these painstaking installation take to complete - we wonder if Weber felt as dizzy creating them as we do looking at them? 52. Irvin Ranada Beautiful use of contrast between space and doodle-infestationStudent Irvin Ranada currently studies Fine Art at the Far Eastern University in the Philippines. In his spare time, he's an avid doodler and has creating numerous, intricate doodle illustrations. A master of composition, Ranada's drawings are a perfect reminder of just how special doodle art can be. Related articles: 100 amazing Adobe Illustrator tutorials The 40 best Google Doodle designs How to be an award-winning illustrator View the full article

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One of the most interesting web design tools to surface this month might be ARKit, an augmented reality toolkit in Apple's iOS 11 that has some exciting and powerful features for building AR into your projects. We also like the look of Paralayout, a tool designed to make UI design easier. Read on for loads more useful web designer tools released this month. Web design inspiration: 28 outstanding examples of CSS01. API Fortress Set up your testing via a dedicated interfaceAccording to this organisation, only 10 per cent of API errors are caught within the first day of launch, so longer term monitoring is needed to make sure everything is working properly. This service provides live monitoring and thorough testing of your APIs, and you can set everything up using an interface as opposed to wrangling with code. 02. Paralayout Create iOS layouts quickerThe Cash iOS team at Square found Apple’s Autolayout frustrating, so they built their own layout helper, Paralayout, and kindly open-sourced it so that the rest of us can benefit. It focuses on making your process for creating layouts fast, maintainable, readable and performant. Read more in this Medium post. 03. BetaTesters Get feedback on your beta designs quickly and easilyIt can be a struggle to get beta testers for your site or app, so this platform provides a handy way to get a bunch of people using your app and giving you helpful feedback. It’s also great because you’ll hopefully get a user base established prior to launch. 04. fractures fractures aims to make UI design simplerfractures is an atomic CSS toolkit for bootstrapping your projects. It aims to make UI design simpler by providing a set of utility classes. Plus it’s good for fast prototyping and can also be used for production. 05. SiteStacks Dig into the technical stack for any websiteThis site enables you to have a look at the tech stack for any website. If the URL is already listed (its database includes hundreds of thousands of sites) the process is instant. If not, don’t worry: submit the site you want and the creators say they’ll do a quick check straight away and a more detailed one within two weeks. 06. SQLify Convert your JSON files to SQLThis service has a simple function: it enables you to convert any JSON or CSV file to SQL – or indeed any text format. There are also other options here to convert to MySQL, SQLite and more – just check through the 'Other versions' list in the site's footer. 07. Style Guide Guide The latest from Brad FrostThe father of Atomic Design has put together a boilerplate template for building style guides for design systems. Brad Frost’s Style Guide Guide imports and displays HTML from a separate pattern library, and updates instantly. Usage guidelines are added in Markdown, making it simple for your whole team to contribute. Find out more in this Big Medium post. 08. ARKit Explore augmented reality effects on iPhone or iPadiOS 11 has a cool new tool called ARKit for creating augmented reality effects on iPad and iPhone. There are some clever features, such as the ability to detect planes and surfaces in the surrounding area, and also light levels, so the correct lighting can be applied to virtual objects. Looks pretty fun to us. Read more about iOS 11's new features in our iOS 11 preview for designers post 09. UX Flow A library of wireframes, ready for customisationUX Flow is a huge library of wireframes and flowcharts for Sketch that enables you to quickly create great-looking prototypes for web and mobile. You can style them up and customise them any way you want, making it easy to plan your projects in a smart way that’s great for presenting to clients. 10. Drag Drag is a free Chrome extension that transforms your Gmail into organised task lists. The makers liken it to Trello, for Gmail. It's perfect for users whose inboxes are filled with requests that quickly end up at the bottom of the list. 11. Remote Starter Kit Keep things running smoothly when working remotelyChances are, your dream team for a project is not comprised of people who happen to live in the same place. If you’ve put together a remote team for the first time, figuring out your processes and tools is key to getting things running smoothly, and this roundup of resources will help you get off to a cracking start. 12. Canivete A helpful collection of multipurpose JavaScript functionsThis is useful if you’re fairly new to JavaScript (and possibly even if you’ve been coding for a while): it’s a collection of generic, multipurpose JavaScript functions. The name means ‘swiss army knife’ in Brazilian Portuguese and it’s great for getting a look at efficient ways to do things. Read more: How to convince users your site is faster than it really is The best free graphic design software How to code an augmented reality marker View the full article

Apple released iOS 10.3.3 Wednesday that serves as a cumulative patch update for multiple vulnerabilities including the high-profile BroadPwn bug. View the full article

In this geisha illustration I wanted to capture a grungy, dark, urban vibe, laced with elegant traditional Japanese elements. The idea that kept coming up again and again was to make her ‘bad-ass’. That’s the core essence of Geiko – she's a geisha turned self-serving samurai, a vigilante within a dangerous cyberpunk universe. I got the idea from a competition to design a geisha or samurai character. Here, I’ll explain how I developed this Geiko illustration, and my whole thought process and approach to the design. You’ll pick up tips on how to push your ideas forward and craft the final details. I want to leave you with concepts and methods you can adapt and use in your own work. So let’s start with the most crucial bit... How to draw and paint - 100 pro tips and tutorials1. Visualise the big idea Geiko is a young geisha doll, driven by anger and revenge, roaming the streets as she takes down all the bad men that hurt people like her (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)The very first step is deciding the look and feel of the character and capturing it all with a rough sketch. The most important thing is knowing exactly how you want your audience to feel about your character, because this will drive your whole thought process from start to finish. My core idea was to design Geiko so that people’s gut reaction to seeing her is: “That’s bad-ass!” 2. Generate thumbnails Develop initial rough ideas that fit in with the big idea (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)With that clear goal in mind, I jump into SketchBook Pro and use the Triangle brush to sketch my ideas out, exploring and pushing them further while staying true to the original Geiko essence. I keep it loose and gestural at this point, making notes on the ideas that I’d like to take forward. Throughout this process I keep asking myself, “Is she bad-ass enough?” 3. Finalise the idea Play with your favourite ideas to try out variations (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)This is where I take all my favourite ideas that came out of the thumbnail process and explore how they can better capture Geiko’s essence. I duplicate my favourite thumbnail several times and try out those ideas, mixing more Japanese cultural elements back in with an urban cyberpunk twist. Don’t add too many details just yet. All you want to do here is finalise your big idea. 4. Polish and craft the design Refine the final character more (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Everything from this point on is just polishing up. You’ll still be making some design choices, but the core essence shouldn’t change. I usually start with the face, because it’s the most important part of any character. If I get it right, the rest falls into place. There are no secrets here. I sketch with the Triangle brush and Eraser, pressing S to quickly flip between the two brushes. 5. Refine the clothing Use references to draw realistic clothes (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)The next major element to get right is her kimono. I start by grabbing some references. (But remember: references are just guides, so don’t feel bound by them.) Then I create a new layer and make a rough sketch, focusing on the design and flow of the wrinkles. For the final look, I use the Eraser to follow my initial line work on the black kimono and create the white-on-black effect. 6. Accessories and props You can build the character's personality through accessories (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Using references, I work on the swords on her back, making a quick sketch in red to explore the function of the strap, while also playing with the idea of adding kunai knives. I also try to add clues about her personality, like a Totoro charm at the end of one of her swords. It’s subtle, but it helps make the character seem more well-rounded. 7. Bring in detail on her boots White highlights create the impression of glossy leather-like fabric (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Next I start cleaning up Geiko’s boots. In a similar way to how I did the clothing, I use the Eraser to create the line work, which is consistent with the style of the image. Her footwear is inspired by a mixture of high-heeled boots with a sporty twist and Japanese ninja sandals. I want to create a glossy type of material for her legs, so I add white highlights to achieve that look. 8. Create the mechanical gauntlet Tweaking details like this can bring them to life (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)I want to keep the essence of my sketch, so I use the base silhouette of the gauntlet and start cleaning it up, erasing panel lines in, and drawing exposed wires to make it feel more customised instead of being built in a factory. I flick back and forth with the S key throughout, drawing lines in and erasing where necessary. I realise that the silhouetted gauntlet is blending in too much with her kimono, so I opt for a lighter version that helps to create a better read. 9. Stop… it’s paintover time! A quick paintover puts the character in context (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Now that I’m almost done with the design, I take a step back and look for any bits I can push further. A quick paintover enables me to explore how I can exaggerate Geiko’s bad-assery. I add a more well-rounded toolset of weapons including samurai gun-swords and a traditional Japanese umbrella. Then I push the storytelling with dripping blood and bullet holes, along with a smoke trail that adds movement, mystery and depth. 10. Detail Geiko’s primary weapon Build up details that add to the character's story (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)From the loose sketch done in the paintover stage, I begin to finalise the main sword design. I don’t want her weapon to be elegant or well-crafted, but to feel more imposing and threatening, so I choose to go with an exaggerated butcher’s knife. I use the Ruler and Lazy Mouse features in SketchBook Pro to create the long, sweeping arcs in the blade, ensuring the line work feels rough and grungy. 11. Add the finishing touches Even discreet Japanese writing needs to be accurate (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Before finishing up the design, I take the time to polish it up. I decide to add more details to her mask and sword, tweak the design of her cross-body strap and give her some branding and tattoos, making sure I use the correct Japanese phrases. Details like these count. I also include a shadow pass to add more depth, as well as the juxtaposition of her red demon eyes and rosy red cheeks. 12. Establish the background The story becomes more believable with a background for your character (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)With the character done, I jump into Photoshop to create the background and atmosphere to round off the piece. I imagine Geiko in a back alley, fresh from a fight. So I add a floor and wall pattern, making these more sci-fi and grungy looking to enhance the cyberpunk feel. I add a quick gradient to them, which helps pop the character from the background and add more depth to the image. 13. Build background details Custom brushes and textures push the realism (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)I now add extra details and textures to the environment. Bullet holes, dust particles and dripping blood help tell more of Geiko’s story and push the final illustration. I use masks to blend some of the line work out, and use texture on the background and character with custom brushes to help it appear less digital. 14. Bring in action cues to push the mood Use quick movements to draw puffs of smoke (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)For even more depth and mood, I add action cues like smoke at Geiko’s feet. I use the Lasso tool to create the shape of the smoke, taking into account the wind direction that may tilt it slightly. I do this quickly to capture the motion, instead of lingering on it too long and making it too refined. Once I fill in my selection, to make it appear more like smoke I reduce the Opacity and use a mask to blend out specific parts even more, letting the background elements pop through. 15. Add a brand to your work Identify your work as yours (Click the icon in the top-right of the image to enlarge the picture)Branding, like your logo or signature and website URL, helps make your illustration yours wherever it ends up. People will always know whom to credit and future clients can contact you easily. Don’t forget to give it a title, too. It’ll help finish it off and make the piece feel more considered and complete. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 149. Buy it here! Related articles: How to create a comic page How to draw manga Draw a figure in under five minutes View the full article