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If you're hungry to create unique digital experiences, the iconic Awwwards conference in Amsterdam is the place to be. This year's event, which kicks off today, will see hundreds of designers, web developers and digital thinkers gather to gain insight and expertise on all the latest and greatest developments in the world of digital design – and you can have a front row seat, courtesy of Adobe. Already helping to shape the future of experience design with its open source prototyping tool Adobe XD, Adobe will host a two-day livestream of Awwwards, from 1000 – 1600 (CET)/ 0900 – 1500 (GMT) on the 14 and 15 February, so you can enjoy all the action from the comfort of your own home. In a line-up you won't want to miss, you'll hear from many of the senior Adobe design team, including Principal Creative Could Evangelist Rufus Deuchler and UX/UI Design Evangelist Stephanie Maier. The Adobe livestream will also feature inspiring talks from leading UX and VR experts, including Active Theory, Moxy, Peter Smart, Anrick Bregman, Simon Widjaja & Ingo Eichel, Clive K. Lavery & Claire- Lise Bengué, and more. Hear their tips for good experience design, ask them questions live online, discover new UX trends and updates in Adobe XD CC. Register now to watch the Adobe Live session Registering for the Adobe Live session couldn't be easier, simply follow the link above, provide your details and voila! You'll also receive an email reminder before the livestream starts so you don't miss anything. When? Join Adobe on the 14 and 15 February from 1000 CET/0900 GMT. Where? The Abobe livestream will be held on Behance. All of the live sessions will be held in English. Don't miss the chance to be a part of this inspiring event and connect with the Adobe community. And as an extra bonus, you'll get a recap of all the latest Adobe XD updates requested by the community. What's new in Adobe XD? Speaking of XD, whether you're a seasoned user, or someone with an interest in UX design, Adobe XD is the fastest way to design, prototype and share any user experience. A leading authority in the world of web design, Adobe works closely with the UX community on the continued development of Adobe XD to maintain and enhance its already impressive toolset. Give Adobe XD a try for free today and see these key new features in all their glory: Voice triggers and speech - Interact with your prototypes like never before. Voice triggers and speech playback let you take users beyond the screen. Auto animate in the browser - First launched in October 2018, Auto-Animate is now accessible via web browsers, enabling users to view animations in prototypes and get the animation property values. This will make it easier for designers showcase their designs to stakeholders and other partners. Record interactions with audio - The desktop preview app now allows you to record your own voice along with any click-through interactions and share it as an MP4 file (Mac only). Voice language and accent support - Since January, 2019 XD allows users across a variety of countries and regions to access voice capabilities and work in multiple languages, including English, French,German, Korean or Japanese. XD also supports regional accents for voice commands with the ability to understand accents in various regions such as English-UK, French-Canadian or Australian. The update also includes a range of personalities and genders. View all comments across artboards - Adobe XD also enables you to view all screen comments across artboards. Users can now turn on the All Screen Comments feature in XD, which allows the ability to see all comments made on a prototype in a single list, making it easier than ever to collaborate and share feedback with colleagues and partners. Linked Symbols - It’s easier to stay on top of changes when symbols that are copied from one document and pasted into prototypes remain linked. Now when changes are made to the source file, you’ll be notified and have the option to accept updates. View the full article

The issue affects default installations of Ubuntu Server and Desktop and is likely included in many Ubuntu-like Linux distributions. View the full article

There are no permission dialogues for apps in certain folders for macOS Mojave, which allows a malicious app to spy on browsing histories.. View the full article

Renowned costume designer Ane Crabtree isn't one to mince her words. In a recent interview with Creative Bloq, this legendary creative pulled on her 28 years of experience in the industry to share a wealth of insight on how aspiring designers can realise where their creative passions lie. Strong and direct, while passionate and warm, this is one woman who isn't afraid to tell it straight. For those of you not familiar with her work, Crabtree made an immediate and lasting impression when she created the look for The Sopranos in the original HBO pilot. Since then she has worked on a number of hit TV shows, but is now best known for being the woman behind the blood red robe and white wing bonnet costume from American dystopian drama The Handmaid's Tale. Costume designer Ane Crabtree is best known for creating the now infamous red robes and white wing bonnets in The Handmaid's Tale. Image credit: Nathan Cyprys Crabtree's path to Hollywood was anything but traditional, but that just makes her all the more alluring. Best seen – and heard – in person, Crabtree will be taking the main stage at this year's Design Indaba, with what looks set to be an unmissable keynote. To whet your appetite before then, here, she shares some inspiring insight on how to figure out your creative passion, plus more on what she has in store for Design Indaba attendees. 01. Have an interest in mankind "I think anyone giving advice is a fool because they are always just saying what works for them, and you never know what's going to work for others," Crabtree begins. "But what I tell everyone I try to help, is the thing that helped me most in my career: having an interest in mankind is the greatest education. "You have to have an interest in people, in their pathos, in their journey and their interior more than their exterior. You have to learn the art of being immersed in humanity and you have to study history to know where we've been and where we're headed. And don't just do a lazy look-up on Google." 02. Visit the places you don't want to go Crabtree's wasn't always Hollywood glitz and glamour. Born in South Dakota and raised in Kentucky as part of a multi-racial family came with its difficulties. "I came from extreme poverty in Kentucky, and some of my really early childhood memories are of my mom not being able to just go and buy clothes," she says. "So instead she made them so I could fit in with the rest of society." But Crabtree is a great believer of drawing on your experiences to inspire your creativity, even the ones you might not want to remember. "It wasn't until I was 40-something, when I worked on FX's pilot Justified that I had to research Kentucky. Up to that point, I just used to not deal with that because it was bad news for me. So it was the first time I started researching where I grew up, Appalachia in particular, and I just fell in love with it. I call these things 'ugly pretty' gifts. "I think the things that are the most discordant in your life and the things that are the most seemingly nightmarish have a way of karmically creatively turning around and inspiring you later." 03. Leave your home town "I would also say to every young person, leave your home f**king town," Crabtree advises. "I needed to because it was too much. Leave your comfort zone and go to a different school, environment or place – travel! "Whichever you do, just get engaged in your world and in worlds that are not your own, and get engaged with histories that are not your own and apply that to the characters or designs you are creating. Put your phone down and engage with somebody and learn why they move like that. What are their fears? What are their influences? And throw that into a character. That has been the most helpful thing for me." 04. Know who you are "Other people have told me that when I'm in a room, I'm used to sell a project," she says. "I'm used to sell a project because I'm a great salesperson, but my sales person connection is: 'I want your life to be better because of the creativity and I can give you that'. "You can call that ego, but I call it love, in a base form. There's definitely something in having an awareness of who you are and what that is, you know, that's going to bring something different to the table." See Ane Crabtree live at Design Indaba 2019 Design Indaba, Cape Town's premier creative conference, is just a couple of weeks away now, but there's still time to get a ticket and see Ane Crabtree live on stage. Here's what she had to say about what she has up her sleeve for the conference: "The overall themes are death and rebirth and man vs nature. I'm going to try to convey a very abstract idea how the influences of nature have inspired my work and also how it's kind of been there since birth, in everybody. And how you have to go into dark places to find those answers." Design Indaba kicks off on 27 February 2019 – and we can't wait! View the full article

The Adobe Creative Suite is and probably always will be ubiquitous in the creative field. Its tools remain the gold standard for graphic design, photo manipulation, video editing, and more. If you want to make the most out of every app, you can rely on the Complete Adobe Mastery Bundle to show you the ropes. Across 11 courses and over 70 hours of premium training, you'll explore and master the functionalities of the top Adobe programs including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Lightroom. You'll learn how to transform dull photos into dazzling imagery, create compelling videos, design marketing materials, and tons more. By the time you finish, you'll have all the skills that you can apply to your own creative endeavours. Get Adobe Creative Cloud here You can get the Complete Adobe Mastery Bundle today for only $39 – a saving of 98 per cent. Related articles: 5 best laptops for Photoshop 80 best Adobe Illustrator tutorials The 18 best Adobe Illustrator plugins View the full article

You're reading Startup 3 Coming Soon, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! We told you it was coming, and now we’ll give you a sneak peek into the release of Startup 3, (read about our plans for 2019 here). Today, you’re getting the first information about the new Startup 3 🚀. View the full article

OFFSET Dublin's 2019 is nearly upon us, and this year looks set to be better than ever, as the creative conference celebrates its 10th anniversary. The conference takes place 5-7 April at The Point Square, Dublin, and early bird tickets are still on sale – buy your tickets to OFFSET here. But what can you expect from this year's extravaganza? Which big speakers are coming to the event? And what else can you look out for? Here are three things we're looking forward to at OFFSET Dublin 2019... 01. Inspiring speakers Ariane Spanier is known for her innovative use of type and texture OFFSET is known for curating stellar line-ups from across the creative industries, and this year is no exception. There are too many cool speakers to mention here, and more are still to be announced, but we're particularly looking forward to seeing design legend Lance Wyman, type genius Ariane Spanier and advertising gurus Alexander Nowak and Felix Richter of DROGA5. Other big names include Edel Rodriguez, Yumi Suzaki of Pentagram and James Victore. 02. OFFSITE OFFSITE often involves speakers doing workshops. Fingers crossed that Lance Wyman, who created Mexico's Olympic 1968 logo, will be running one this year OFFSET's fringe festival, OFFSITE, is also worth checking out. Details of this year's events have yet to be announced, but last year saw workshops, exhibitions and panel talks take place across the city in the days around the festival. These events are often when you can get up close and personal with your heroes, as well as swap tips and tricks with other OFFSET attendees, so stay tuned for more details. 03. Creative community OFFSET directors Lisa Haran and Bren Byrne have recently been awarded the IDI President's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Design at the 2019 Irish Design Awards, and their commitment to the creative community shows at OFFSET. The creative buzz around the event, and Dublin's general fun atmosphere means your time at OFFSET is bound to be exciting, inspiring and sociable. Buy your tickets for OFFSET here. 76 best free fonts for designers 5 dos and don'ts for new illustrators 5 ad campaigns which embraced a stupid idea View the full article

The affected SICAM 230 process control system is used as an integrated energy system for utility companies, and as a monitoring system for smart-grid applications. View the full article

In its February Patch Tuesday bulletin Microsoft patches four public bugs and one that under active attack. View the full article

Users of the popular plugin, Simple Social Buttons, are encouraged to update to version 2.0.22. View the full article

A fundamental component of container technologies like Docker, cri-o, containerd and Kubernetes contains an important vulnerability that could cause cascading attacks. View the full article

Data isn't a thing that's easy for the average person to grasp. While some can look through a spreadsheet and instinctively find the information they need within a mass of figures, the rest of us need a little help, and that's where data visualisation can be a real help. For the designer, the challenge is not only in rendering a set of data in an informative way, but also in presenting it so that it that stands out from the mass of competing data streams. Get Adobe Creative Cloud One of the best ways to get your message across is to use a visualisation to quickly draw attention to the key messages, and by presenting data visually, it's also possible to uncover surprising patterns and observations that wouldn't be apparent from looking at stats alone. And nowadays, there's plenty of free graphic design software to help you do just that. As author, data journalist and information designer David McCandless said in his TED talk: "By visualising information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you're lost in information, an information map is kind of useful." There are many different ways of telling a story, but everything starts with an idea. So to help you get started we've rounded up some of the most awesome data visualisation tools available on the web. 01. Chart Studio Chart Studio from Plotly can produce some very slick graphics Make charts, presentations and dashboards with this flexible software. You can perform your analysis using JavaScript, Puthon, R, Matlab, Jupyter or Excel, and there are several options for importing data. The visualisation library and online chart creation tool allow you to make great-looking graphics. 02. DataHero Anyone can use this to make sense of data from multiple services DataHero enables you to pull together data from cloud services and create charts and dashboards. No technical abilities are required, so this is a great tool for your whole team to use. 03. Chart.js Chart.js is perfectly suited to smaller projects Although armed with only six chart types, open source library Chart.js is the perfect data visualisation tool for hobbies and small projects. Using HTML 5 canvas elements to render charts, Chart.js creates responsive, flat designs, and is quickly becoming one of the most poplar open-source charting libraries. Read more about how to use Chart.js here. 04. Tableau Create and share data in real time with Tableau Packed with graphs, charts, maps and more, Tableau Public is a popular data visualisation tool that's also completely free. Users can easily drag and drop data into the system and watch it update in real-time, plus you can collaborate with other team members for quick project turnaround. 05. RAWGraphs RAWGraphs is an open web app with a simple interface Open, customisable, and free to download and modify, RAWGraphs lets users create vector-based data visualisations. Data can be safely uploaded from apps to computers, plus it can be exported as an SVG or PNG and embedded in your webpage. 06. Dygraphs Help visitors explore dense data sets with JavaScript library Dygraphs Dygraphs is a fast, flexible open source JavaScript charting library that allows users to explore and interpret dense data sets. It's highly customisable, works in all major browsers, and you can even pinch to zoom on mobile and tablet devices. 07. ZingChart ZingChart lets you create HTML5 Canvas charts and more ZingChart is a JavaScript charting library and feature-rich API set that lets you build interactive Flash or HTML5 charts. It offers over 100 chart types to fit your data. 08. InstantAtlas InstantAtlas enables you to create highly engaging visualisations around map data If you're looking for a data viz tool with mapping, InstantAtlas is worth checking out. This tool enables you to create highly-interactive dynamic and profile reports that combine statistics and map data to create engaging data visualisations. 09. Modest Maps Integrate and develop interactive maps within your site with this cool tool Modest Maps is a lightweight, simple mapping tool for web designers that makes it easy to integrate and develop interactive maps within your site, using them as a data visualisation tool. The API is easy to get to grips with, and offers a useful number of hooks for adding your own interaction code, making it a good choice for designers looking to fully customise their user's experience to match their website or web app. The basic library can also be extended with additional plugins, adding to its core functionality and offering some very useful data integration options. 10. Leaflet Use OpenStreetMap data and integrate data visualisation in an HTML5/CSS3 wrapper Another mapping tool, Leaflet makes it easy to use OpenStreetMap data and integrate fully interactive data visualisation in an HTML5/CSS3 wrapper. The core library itself is very small, but there are a wide range of plugins available that extend the functionality with specialist functionality, such as animated markers, masks and heatmaps. It's perfect for any project where you need to show data overlaid on a geographical projection. 11. WolframAlpha Wolfram Alpha is excellent at creating charts Billed as a "computational knowledge engine", the Google rival WolframAlpha is really good at intelligently displaying charts in response to data queries, without the need for any configuration. If you're using publicly available data, this offers a simple widget builder to make it really simple to get visualisations on your site. 12. Visualize Free Make visualisations for free! Visualize Free is a hosted tool that allows you to use publicly available datasets, or upload your own, and build interactive visualisations to illustrate the data. The visualisations go well beyond simple charts, and the service is completely free, plus while development work requires Flash, output can be done through HTML5. 13. Better World Flux Orientated towards making positive change to the world, Better World Flux has some lovely visualisations of some pretty depressing data. It would be very useful, for example, if you were writing an article about world poverty, child undernourishment or access to clean water. This tool doesn't allow you to upload your own data, but does offer a rich interactive output. 14. FusionCharts A comprehensive JavaScript/HTML5 charting solution for your data visualisation needs FusionCharts Suite XT brings you 90+ charts and gauges, 965 data-driven maps, and ready-made business dashboards and demos. FusionCharts comes with extensive JavaScript API that makes it easy to integrate it with any AJAX application or JavaScript framework. These charts, maps and dashboards are highly interactive, customisable and work across all devices and platforms. 15. jqPlot jqPlot is a nice solution for line and point charts Another jQuery plugin, jqPlot is a nice solution for line and point charts. It comes with a few nice additional features such as the ability to generate trend lines automatically, and interactive points that can be adjusted by the website visitor, updating the dataset accordingly. 16. D3.js You can render some amazing diagrams with D3 D3.js is a JavaScript library that uses HTML, SVG, and CSS to render some amazing diagrams and charts from a variety of data sources. This library, more than most, is capable of some seriously advanced visualisations with complex data sets. It's open source, and uses web standards so is very accessible. It also includes some fantastic user interaction support. 17. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit includes a handy modular structure A fantastic library written by Nicolas Belmonte, the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit includes a modular structure, allowing you to only force visitors to download what's absolutely necessary to display your chosen data visualisations. This library has a number of unique styles and swish animation effects, and is free to use (although donations are encouraged). Next page: More top tools for data visualisation... 18. jpGraph jpGraph is a PHP-based data visualization tool If you need to generate charts and graphs server-side, jpGraph offers a PHP-based solution with a wide range of chart types. It's free for non-commercial use, and features extensive documentation. By rendering on the server, you're guaranteed a consistent visual output, albeit at the expense of interactivity and accessibility. 19. Highcharts Highcharts has a huge range of options available Highcharts is a JavaScript charting library with a huge range of chart options available. The output is rendered using SVG in modern browsers and VML in Internet Explorer. The charts are beautifully animated into view automatically, and the framework also supports live data streams. It's free to download and use non-commercially (and licensable for commercial use). You can also play with the extensive demos using JSFiddle. 20. Google Charts Google Charts has an excellent selection of tools available The seminal charting solution for much of the web, Google Charts is highly flexible and has an excellent set of developer tools behind it. It's an especially useful tool for specialist visualisations such as geocharts and gauges, and it also includes built-in animation and user interaction controls. 21. Excel It isn't graphically flexible, but Excel is a good way to explore data: for example, by creating 'heat maps' like this one You can actually do some pretty complex things with Excel, from 'heat maps' of cells to scatter plots. As an entry-level tool, it can be a good way of quickly exploring data, or creating visualisations for internal use, but the limited default set of colours, lines and styles make it difficult to create graphics that would be usable in a professional publication or website. Nevertheless, as a means of rapidly communicating ideas, Excel should be part of your toolbox. Excel comes as part of the commercial Microsoft Office suite, so if you don't have access to it, Google's spreadsheets – part of Google Docs and Google Drive – can do many of the same things. Google 'eats its own dog food', so the spreadsheet can generate the same charts as the Google Chart API. This will get your familiar with what is possible before stepping off and using the API directly for your own projects. 22. CSV/JSON CSV and JSON are both common formats for data CSV (Comma-Separated Values) and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) aren't actual visualization tools, but they are common formats for data. You'll need to understand their structures and how to get data in or out of them. 23. Crossfilter Crossfilter in action: by restricting the input range on any one chart, data is affected everywhere As we build more complex tools to enable clients to wade through their data, we are starting to create graphs and charts that double as interactive GUI widgets. JavaScript library Crossfilter can be both of these. It displays data, but at the same time, you can restrict the range of that data and see other linked charts react. 24. Tangle Tangle creates complex interactive graphics. Pulling on any one of the knobs affects data throughout all of the linked charts The line between content and control blurs even further with Tangle. When you are trying to describe a complex interaction or equation, letting the reader tweak the input values and see the outcome for themselves provides both a sense of control and a powerful way to explore data. JavaScript library Tangle is a set of tools to do just this. Dragging on variables enables you to increase or decrease their values and see an accompanying chart update automatically. The results are only just short of magical. 25. Polymaps Aimed more at specialist data visualisers, the Polymaps library creates image and vector-tiled maps using SVG Polymaps is a mapping library that is aimed squarely at a data visualisation audience. Offering a unique approach to styling the the maps it creates, analogous to CSS selectors, it's a great resource to know about. 26. OpenLayers It isn't easy to master, but OpenLayers is arguably the most complete, robust mapping solution discussed here OpenLayers is probably the most robust of these mapping libraries. The documentation isn't great and the learning curve is steep, but for certain tasks nothing else can compete. When you need a very specific tool no other library provides, OpenLayers is always there. 27. Kartograph Kartograph's projections breathe new life into our standard slippy maps Kartograph's tag line is 'rethink mapping' and that is exactly what its developers are doing. We're all used to the Mercator projection, but Kartograph brings far more choices to the table. If you aren't working with worldwide data, and can place your map in a defined box, Kartograph has the options you need to stand out from the crowd. 28. Carto Carto provides an unparalleled way to combine maps and tabular data to create visualisations Carto is a must-know site. The ease with which you can combine tabular data with maps is second to none. For example, you can feed in a CSV file of address strings and it will convert them to latitudes and longitudes and plot them on a map, but there are many other users. It's free for students; for everyone else, there are various monthly pricing plans. 29. Processing Processing provides a cross-platform environment for creating images, animations, and interactions Processing has become the poster child for interactive visualizations. It enables you to write much simpler code which is in turn compiled into Java. There is also a Processing.js project to make it easier for websites to use Processing without Java applets, plus a port to Objective-C so you can use it on iOS. It is a desktop application, but can be run on all platforms, and given that it is now several years old, there are plenty of examples and code from the community. 30. NodeBox NodeBox is a quick, easy way for Python-savvy developers to create 2D visualisations NodeBox is an OS X application for creating 2D graphics and visualizations. You need to know and understand Python code, but beyond that it's a quick and easy way to tweak variables and see results instantly. It's similar to Processing, but without all the interactivity. 31. R A powerful free software environment for statistical computing and graphics, R is the most complex of the tools listed here How many other pieces of software have an entire search engine dedicated to them? A statistical package used to parse large data sets, R is a very complex tool, and one that takes a while to understand, but has a strong community and package library, with more and more being produced. The learning curve is one of the steepest of any of these tools listed here, but you must be comfortable using it if you want to get to this level. 32. Weka A collection of machine-learning algorithms for data-mining tasks, Weka is a powerful way to explore data When you get deeper into being a data scientist, you will need to expand your capabilities from just creating visualisations to data mining. Weka is a good tool for classifying and clustering data based on various attributes – both powerful ways to explore data – but it also has the ability to generate simple plots. 33. Gephi Gephi in action. Coloured regions represent clusters of data that the system is guessing are similar When people talk about relatedness, social graphs and co-relations, they are really talking about how two nodes are related to one another relative to the other nodes in a network. The nodes in question could be people in a company, words in a document or passes in a football game, but the maths is the same. Gephi, a graph-based visualiser and data explorer, can not only crunch large data sets and produce beautiful visualisations, but also allows you to clean and sort the data. It's a very niche use case and a complex piece of software, but it puts you ahead of anyone else in the field who doesn't know about this gem. 34. iCharts iCharts can have interactive elements, and you can pull in data from Google Docs The iCharts service provides a hosted solution for creating and presenting compelling charts for inclusion on your website. There are many different chart types available, and each is fully customisable to suit the subject matter and colour scheme of your site. Charts can have interactive elements, and can pull data from Google Docs, Excel spreadsheets and other sources. The free account lets you create basic charts, while you can pay to upgrade for additional features and branding-free options. 35. Flot Create animated visualisations with this jQuery plugin Flot is a specialised plotting library for jQuery, but it has many handy features and crucially works across all common browsers including Internet Explorer 6. Data can be animated and, because it's a jQuery plugin, you can fully control all the aspects of animation, presentation and user interaction. This does mean that you need to be familiar with (and comfortable with) jQuery, but if that's the case, this makes a great option for including interactive charts on your website. Related articles: The 65 best infographics 17 incredible tools for creating infographics Cool CSS examples to recreate View the full article

Overall, Adobe patched 75 important and critical vulnerabilities - including a flaw that could allow bad actors to steal victims’ hashed password values. View the full article

You're reading Tiny Trend: Mouse Interactions, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Micro-interactions were one of the biggest trends in 2017. Like a Bitcoin, it was the talk of the office. We happened to witness not just willingness, but eagerness, of developers to change the UX to something better. Slowly, we are … View the full article

Animation is an important part of modern UX and is easier than ever to implement with CSS. While it may seem limited or a lesser tool when it comes to animation, CSS is actually a really powerful tool and is capable of producing beautifully smooth 60fps animations. In this feature we'll explore everything from reasoning and planning to implementation. Read on to learn about CSS transitions, or jump to page 2 for CSS keyframes, page 3 for a closer look at animation performance, page 4 for a guide to animating SVG. Or click through to page 5 to see how to bring it all together to create a UI animation. Need some more inspiration? Take a look at our roundup of awesome CSS animation examples (and how to code them). CSS transitions Put simply, CSS transitions are a way to provide animation between two property values. For the animation to trigger, something needs to change in the application or website. CSS transitions can be used to achieve a number of animated effects, from a simple colour change to more complex transitions. Transitions in CSS are simple, we just need to choose what elements to transition and when. For example, if we have a button and we want to change the background colour gradually instead of instantly when the user hovers over the button, we use a transition. Transition syntax Transitions in CSS are made up of four properties. These give us control over how the transition will animate. transition-property This enables us to choose which properties we want to animate. We can transition a number of different properties. See a full list of transition-property properties. transition-duration This property enables us to control how long the transition from one property value to another will take. This can be defined in either seconds (s) or milliseconds (ms). transition-timing-function Timing functions, or 'easing', enable us to adjust the rate of change over time. There are a number of keywords we can use. For example, the linear keyword will transition from A to B at an equal tempo, whereas ease-in-out will start slowly, speed up in the middle and slow down towards the end. Custom timing functions can also be defined using the cubic-bezier property. See a full list of timing keywords. transition-delay Transitions can be delayed using this property and is set using seconds or milliseconds. Transition shorthand All of the transition properties listed above can be combined into a shorthand statement using the transition property. We are free to omit the values we don't need in order to set the defaults. Combining transitions You can combine multiple transitions to create choreographed animations. Check this example: Browser support Support for transitions and animations in modern browsers is really good. Everything from Internet Explorer 11 or above is going to support the majority of the code needed for animation. There are exceptions with some of the newer animation properties; CSS Motion Path, for example, or when using SVG or custom properties (CSS variables) as part of the animation. Prefixing for the most part is probably not needed unless we need to provide support for Internet Explorer 10 and below. There are several ways we can prefix code if needed. Auto-prefixer is a really useful tool that can be used as part of a build process or manually at the end of a project. It enables us to configure the browser support you need, then it will automatically prefix our code where needed. We can also check the support for any property using the amazing tool CanIUse. Simply type in the property we want to use and see which browsers are supported. Next page: A guide to CSS keyframes CSS keyframes are used for complex or repeatable animations. They enable us to define multiple property values to animate between. Keyframe animations can be reused and repeated, unlike CSS transitions. CSS keyframe animations are defined using the @keyframes syntax. This works much like a media query where we nest elements inside of the @ statement. Inside the keyframe declaration we have two options: we can use the keyword to and from or we can define our timeline using percentages. Keyword animations When the animation we're creating only has two points to animate between, we can use the to and from syntax, in fact we can use just to, providing the original property value is set on the element we're going to be animating. Percentage animations When creating animations where we need to define more than one point to animate, we can use percentages. This enables us to have precise control over our animation. Applying an animation Animation in CSS has a number of properties we can set in order to have precise control over the playback of our keyframe animations. Some, like animation-duration, animation-delay, animation-iteration-count, animation-play-state and animation-name are all fairly self-explanatory, while some of the other properties can be a little trickier to learn and utilise to their full potential. animation-timing-function Timing functions in animation are the same as transitions – we can use either keywords or set a custom timing function by using the cubic-bezier value. Take a look at a full list of timing keywords. animation-direction When applying our animations, we have the ability to play them back in a number of ways. The default value is normal, which will play the animation forwards. We can also play the animation in reverse or alternate the animations playing forwards and backwards. animation-fill-mode The fill mode value enables us to choose what should happen at the end of an animation to the value that we have changed. For example, setting the value to forwards will keep the property values from the end of the animation, whereas the default value none will return the elements to their original state after the animation has finished. Animation shorthand All of the animation properties can be combined into a shorthand statement using the 'animation' property. We are free to omit the values we do not need and want to leave as the default values. Next page: Learn how to manage the performance of your animations Page speed and performance is an important aspect of any application or website. If you are using animation as part of your project, it can be a good place to start when trying to optimise performance. Animating too much or too many properties will cause animations to stutter. Firstly you can check that you're not using too many animations all at once on the page: as well as being bad for performance, it is also bad for your users' experience. Multiple animations on different parts of the page will be fighting for their attention as well as potentially causing performance issues. Being aware of the number of animations will help to address both of these potential issues. What causes janky animations? In order to achieve a smooth 60fps animation, the browser has only 16.7ms (1000ms/60) to achieve all of the work that needs to be done per frame. If the browser can't complete all of the operations needed, it will stop and move on to the next frame, starting the calculation and redrawing process all over again. This is when we start to see dropped frames, causing janky or stuttering animations. How to avoid janky animations While the list of animatable properties is extensive, at the moment we can only safely animate a handful of these properties to keep within the necessary 16.7ms. These properties are transform, opacity and filter. The reason for this is that animating any other property will cause the browser to have to repaint the page, and this is an expensive process in terms of performance and will likely take longer than 16.7ms to calculate and draw each change. We can also give the browser a helping hand by utilising the will-change property, which gives it a heads up that a property is going to change. This enables the browser to perform some optimisations before your animation even starts. The future of web animation performance The new Firefox Quantum project is taking amazing strides towards making every animatable property perform well, as well as many other improvements to rendering content on the web. It's also worth noting that the newest versions of the iPad will play animations back at 120fps, which will reduce the time in which the browser has to calculate and paint each frame to 8.35ms. Timing and choreography Utilising the correct timing and delays will produce animations that look better and are easier to comprehend. When animating any elements, it's important to choose a duration that is appropriate to its context. For example, an animation that's applied to a button interaction should be short, usually less than a second. Utilising long animations for common interactions is tedious and annoying to the user and can make your application or website feel sluggish and slow. However, providing an animation duration that is too short can cause confusion and provoke the wrong emotions and feelings for your audience. Once you have chosen a comfortable animation duration, you should use this in every aspect of your website or application. When animating, multiple elements or property delays should be used to enhance comprehension. It's much easier to see what's happening in an animation when one thing happens at a time instead of all at once. Next page: Learn how to animate SVG SVG has many benefits – its vector nature is great, and we don't get any of the problems we get with bitmap images when displaying an image too big or too small or on devices with differing DPIs. SVG is also much smaller in size. SVGs are basically instructions for the browser to draw the image contained within. How do I animate SVG? SVG enables us to create intricate drawings and images, where all of the elements inside SVG can be animated using CSS. Animation in SVG works exactly the same way as it does with any element on the page. We need some way to target the element we want to animate, and then apply the animation. The main way in which animating SVG elements differs from regular elements is the transform-origin property. Normally we would use percentages or keyword values in order to set the point at which a transform operation takes place. So if we can't use keywords and can't use percentages, how do we set our transform origin? The answer is to use pixel values. Further complications come into play because, unlike regular elements that would measure the pixels from the top left corner of itself, SVGs will measure from the top left corner of the parent SVG canvas. This blog post covers the topic in detail. Finally, a note on browser support: CSS animation when used with SVG requires the SVG to be inline in the page for the majority of browsers. This means we can't use the image tag to include our SVG and perform animations; we need to have our SVG inside an SVG tag on the page. Custom properties Custom properties, or CSS variables, can be used to create configurable parts of your animation. Animations and movement can cause motion sickness in some users. We can use custom properties in order to effectively remove animations for users who have indicated preferring reduced motion. By changing the timing to 0, we stop the animation from running when the user has requested it. While this media query isn't yet widely supported, it is by iOS. We can use custom properties to define other parts of our animation, such as the colour or size and use. This is useful if we have a part that's configurable and we're using that property as part of an animation. Next page: Bring everything together in a UI animation In this final tutorial we'll look at how we can combine all of the elements we've covered in the article into one single animation. We'll be creating a record player animation where the arm of the record player moves into position over the record, as well as rotating the record itself at two different speeds. We'll create the animation using SVG transitions and keyframes, and we'll be using custom properties in order to make our animation configurable. 01. Create and export our SVG The first step is to create and export our SVG code. You can do this using many different graphics editors (the example is Sketch for Mac). The shapes being used are simple – mostly straight and poly lines combined with circles. We want to create the SVG in the initial state of our animation. 02. Optimise our SVG When we have the exported code from our editor we need to optimise that code to make it easier for us when creating our animation. Firstly we'll run it through SVGOMG making sure to only optimise the parts we need. Once we've done this, we'll paste our code into CodePen and create some basic page styles. We'll be using Sass to take advantage of the nesting capability. 03. Edit by hand Next we will need to edit our SVG by hand. We are going to need to remove any inline transforms on elements that we are going to animate into our CSS. Doing this will make it easier to animate, because we'll be able to see all of our transform properties in one place. 04. Animate the arm We can achieve most of what we are trying to do using transitions. We will start with the record arm and animating the arm into position over the record. To do this we will need to rotate the arm of the record from -90deg to 0deg. In order to transition rotation we need to use the transform property. This means we also need to keep any other transform properties the same when changing the rotation. 05. Slowly rotate the record Next we can use another transition to complete the first, slower rotation of our record. To do this we will need to target the container and apply our transition code, much like we did in the previous step, except this time we will be adding a delay of a quarter of the time it takes for the arm to move into position. 06. Speed up the rotation In order to speed up the rotation, and for it to repeat infinitely, we'll need to use a keyframe animation. The animation we need to create is simple, we just need to rotate the record 360 degrees. Then when we're applying our animation, we need to make sure to set the delay correctly so our animation starts at the end of the container stopping. 07. Reverse the movement Everything is working now and our animation is complete – until the interaction stops. At that point, both the arm and record stop animating and jump back to their original positions. This is where the setup of our SVG is important. The record element itself sits inside of a container. By animating the container using a transition we can also perform another transition in reverse with just a couple of lines of code. 08. Introduce custom properties Now we've got our complete animation, we'll make it configurable with custom properties. We can do this by setting our custom properties on the root element in our CSS. We can then apply them to the property values where needed, making sure to provide a fallback for each one. We can also use custom properties as part of calc() functions, which is particularly useful for sizing and for creating durations and delays. 09. Make the duration configurable We can utilise the calc() function in order to make the animation duration configurable. Firstly we need to set a new custom property for our duration with a value, in seconds. We can then use this value in order to set all of the other animation time values. Given the custom property --animation-duration being two seconds becomes: By doing this for every time value in our animation, we can control the speed of the entire animation by simply changing the custom property at the top of our CSS. 10. Optimise the animation Now we can add our accessibility options for prefers-reduced-motion and add the will-change property to all of the elements. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 282 or subscribe. Read more: 10 amazing new CSS techniques 34 web design tools to help you work smarter in 2019 Which is the best CSS preprocessor? View the full article

Designers and illustrators are always on the lookout for their next big project, hoping for that ideal commission; the one that puts their skills to the test, appeals to their passions and allows them to truly express themselves creatively. Hopefully, it will also be in complete harmony with their personal, ethical and social sensibilities. You can wait a very long time for a client to hand you that perfect commission, but instead of waiting you could go ahead and turn one of your own ideas into a reality. For many creatives, self-publishing offers the opportunity not only to elevate their creativity but also to advance their careers and earnings. 33 books every graphic designer should read There’s always the risk that your creation will be a drain on your time and resources. It may ultimately fall flat. On the other hand, you’ll use an array of skills you already have, and you’ll most likely learn a great deal about creating content, production, print processes, marketing, promotion, sales, distribution and so on. These things alone make it a worthwhile experience but, crucially, if you don’t give it a shot you’ll never know how good your ideal project could have been. Here, we talk to those who have successfully self-published books, and see what tips we can learn from their experiences. 01. Don't wait around Radim Malinic wrote, designed and sourced imagery for his book One of the latest self-published design books is Radim Malinic’s Book of Ideas – vol 2, which follows on from his first, published in 2016. Inside, the London-based designer behind design studio Brand Nu shares his advice on how to make it in the creative industries, while at the same time letting his own design approach flourish via colourful abstract illustrations, photography, typographic treatments and more. Across an impressive range of chapters, he covers how to work creatively and in a mindful way. He wrote all the copy, designed the book and provided the imagery himself. “I didn’t want to wait or look for a publishing deal — it would take years to achieve that. So I decided to take the power into my own hands and do it all myself,” says Malinic. “I’ve worked with many small independent record labels and could see that you don’t need more than one person to get something significant off the ground. I felt I had a few industry observations and thought processes to share with the world, so I decided to publish them myself.” 02. Get a hybrid publishing deal Ben Tallon got a hybrid publishing deal for his book A similar kind of inspiration struck the Manchester-based illustrator Ben Tallon when, just as his career was taking off, he hit a barren spell. It eventually led to the 2015 publication of Champagne and Wax Crayons, the 200-page book in which he discusses the common experiences of creatives across the industry – the highs, the lows, the frustration, the jubilation. Ben worked with LID Publishing under a hybrid publishing deal to make it a reality. The company took care of printing, sales, distribution and overseas rights but Ben handled the editorial style, illustration, layout and a great deal of the promotion. Like Malinic’s books, Champagne and Wax Crayons has really resonated with young British and American designers. It has also been translated and published in Japanese. 03. Relinquish some control While it’s tempting to see a self-publishing project as your baby, and to try and do everything, what Tallon learned from the experience is that in some areas you just have to let go. “It’s crucial to find ways of working with specialists in each field – editorially, on art direction, in sales, rights management and so on,” he explains. “Asking a lot of questions and not being too proud to admit that you need to be walked through certain parts of the process in order to understand how it works is important.” Learning about the various aspects of publishing while creating the content and looking ahead to how you’ll promote your project does make self-publishing seem like hard work. It is. But if you get it right it’s certainly rewarding. 04. Take care of your finances Unit Editions focuses specifically on books about design Nearly a decade ago, Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook launched Unit Editions. They wanted to create not just one, but many books about their favourite subject: graphic design. The first was Studio Culture – a guide to setting up a studio. Since then they’ve published 40 titles, including a Paula Scher monograph, two stunning slip-cased volumes of British graphic designer Vaughan Oliver’s works, and a fascinating book of lost Soviet designs. Their next publication is a new book about The Designers Republic. Publishing is a wonderful way to lose money Adrian Shaughnessy The hard work is one thing, according to Adrian Shaughnessy. The other is that you have to keep an eye on the money side of things. Designers have most of the skills needed to be publishers, but financial management proves to be such an important factor that it can’t be overlooked. “Publishing is a wonderful way to lose money,” he says. “The third Unit Editions partner is Trish Finegan. Trish looks after the finances. Without her we wouldn’t be here. “It’s also worth mentioning the power of crowdfunding,” he continues. “We’ve had success with Kickstarter and five or six of our books have been funded this way. It has enabled us to make some important books on a scale and of a quality we couldn’t achieve without funding.” 05. Consider crowdfunding Rick Banks raised over £50,000 for his book on Kickstarter Crowdfunding has been the crux of so many fantastic self-publishing efforts. It doesn’t only give hope to someone with a fresh idea, it actually gets them really excited. Rick Banks of the type foundry Face 37 used it to support his brilliant book Clubbed; the illustrator Lapin crowdfunded his vintage car sketchbook Oldies but Goldies; and Kickstarter funding drove Laura Jane Boast’s incredible mag Design Giving. A site like Kickstarter will carry out multiple functions for a project. Firstly, it will help spread awareness on social channels. Secondly, it can help you gauge interest in your project and thereby scale your effort and personal investment in it. And thirdly, the sales revenue you receive through pre-orders will, as the name suggests, kick-start your self-publishing venture. "The book was super-successful, raising £56,000 in the end,” says Rick Banks. “Kickstarter’s back end is very sophisticated – it gives you analytics to show where all the visits come from. Facebook and Twitter were the biggest referrers. In terms of admin it was great, too. It automatically generated spreadsheets with the ability to add notes about specific customers. One of the biggest errors I made was offering free shipping. I didn’t think the book would be so heavy – by the end it was £15 to ship each one abroad.” 06. Make a digital edition first Illustrator Rohan Eason created Benice with author Metin Karayaka We all love print. We love it to death. But the cost can be formidable. The printing of Malinic’s latest book was financed through a partnership with Adobe. Another way around the issue is to launch digitally first, build up sales and awareness, then take the publication into print if it’s viable. This is the route taken by London-based illustrator Rohan Eason and author Metin Karayaka, creators of the young adult adventure Benice, which is selling now on Amazon, Google Books and Bookshout. Eason created 22 full colour illustrations plus the covers, and the book is being published by Yunka, a company set up by Metin for the project and hopefully for future titles. The book began as solely a digital edition, and has now been printed. Why digital at first? “This is to get a feel for the market size and build up a good amount of positive reviews before going to print. Metin can then publish quotes from good reviews on the back of the book, and have extra strength to push the book to distributors.” When we spoke to him, Eason had been visiting every independent bookshop in London with a box of samples to drum up interest. He was paid up front for his illustrations but will also gain a passive income through royalties based on sales. All the bookshop owners were surprised to meet an illustrator so passionate. 07. Use it as a chance to experiment Creatively, the attraction of this self-published project for Eason was the opportunity to experiment. Black and white, highly detailed ink illustrations are what he normally produces and that’s what most publishers commission him to do. With Benice he’s been able to extend his style on his own terms. “A publisher will require you to give them exactly what they want, giving little scope for experimentation or exploration,” he says. “In this book I added colour ink in blocks to my black and white images. It’s a new method for me, and I’m happy to say it’s been very successful.” 08. Do your research Design Giving has four sections: Design, Thinking, Thoughtful and Giving Imagine an illustrator trudging across London, meeting booksellers directly and pitching an independently published book to each of them over and over again. The true level of commitment required to self-publish begins to become clearer. Your skills and creativity will go into the project. You’ll more than likely spend some money on it. Passion is essential. But it’s also going to eat into your time. Tallon spent three years writing and revising his book. Malinic also spent years building up to the release of his first Book of Ideas. Boast, the Manchester designer behind the magazine Design Giving, spent six years developing what turned from an embryonic idea into the beautiful publication you can see today. At every level it has been lavished with care and consideration. “First came the name, Design Giving, which I derived from the compression of the phrase ‘where design thinking becomes thoughtful giving’ – which was my way of being able to describe a process and a way of designing that is more considerate to both people and the planet,” she explains. “This phrase shaped both the structure of the magazine’s four feature sections – Design, Thinking, Thoughtful and Giving – informing the brand’s aesthetic and the type of content featured.” A deep interest in independent, environmentally-focused design is what inspired Boast, and over time she identified a wide range of creators and companies to work with. “When I was ready for content, I had a big list of designers I’d admired from afar, or had previously met at design fairs that I wanted to feature. After the initial email outlining the idea, we worked together to individually tailor the stories and interviews based around the magazine structure.” Now that the first issue is out, the style has been defined and Boast has built up a network of contacts and a following via the Kickstarter campaign she used to fund it. Her next step will be to publish editions annually. 09. Involve readers from the beginning Readers were involved in every step of Works That Work magazine Based in The Hague, Netherlands, Typotheque founder Peter Bil’ak wanted to go even further when he started publishing the magazine Works That Work. Focusing on functional design in unexpected places, the magazine had a team of five and a variety of contributors were heavily involved in its creation. More than that, Works That Work recruited its readers to participate in its distribution. And it worked. “We involved our readers all the way,” says Bil’ak. “They would contribute content to the magazine, they fully financed it and they helped to distribute it. Forty per cent of the print run – 5,000 copies – was sold using our unorthodox ‘social distribution’ method. This meant we bypassed any distribution and shops, and readers would buy boxes of magazines for their social circles, for schools and offices. The feeling of inclusivity and community involvement was the main motivation for people to help us Peter Bil’ak ”Readers who supported the magazine in this way were rewarded as well, receiving the same cut as a distributor would get for its work. “But more than the money, the feeling of inclusivity and community involvement was the main motivation for people to help us,” continues Bil’ak. 'If it worked so well, then why did it close after 10 issues?' you might be thinking. The answer illustrates another important point about self-publishing. Bil’ak always planned to close Works That Work after 10 issues – its very lifecycle was by design. A self-publishing project begins with a celebration, but even a runaway success can eventually start to feel like regular job, an obligation, possibly even a slog for those responsible for its founding. This way everyone who contributed to Works That Work could enjoy it while it lasted, and never consider it to be a burden. 10. Focus on the positives Rumi Hara sells her children's books and comics on Etsy Still, for those who haven’t even started self-publishing yet, thinking about the end perhaps isn’t the best beginning. The main thing to focus on is positive reasons to launch your project, rather than the reasons to avoid pursuing it. Illustrator Rumi Hara is enjoying growing success creating her own children’s books and comics and selling them on Etsy. She offers the perfect endnote: “I’ve actually met a lot of people who want to self publish, but won’t actually do it,” says Hara. “There are so many reasons not to, like, what’s the point? Why spend so much time and energy on something that may not lead to anything? But you’ll end up with a real, physical book that you made yourself and someone can read it. That’s an incredible thing.” Read more: The best children's books of all time How to illustrate a children's book How to design a contemporary book cover View the full article

You're probably aware of the pain of having to scour the web for design resources every time you have a project. To streamline your design process, do yourself a favour and get a Webmaster Design VIP subscription for an extensive package of designer assets. A gold mine of design elements, this offer grants unlimited access to thousands of stock photos, textures, mockups, vectors and so much more. Once you download an asset, you're free to use it forever. Plus, you'll also get to download every addition to the collection in the future at no extra cost. Start beefing up your resource collection and snag a lifetime subscription to Webmaster Design VIP today for only $49 – 95 per cent off the usual price. Read more: Art techniques: top tutorials for painting and drawing The best online art classes right now The 23 best places to find vector art online View the full article

It's no secret that Instagram can be a very powerful marketing tool. Use it right, and it can help you grow your brand and tap into entirely new audiences. But like any promo tool, getting the best from Instagram can be tricky. Someone who has well and truly mastered the platform is Dot lung, the self-styled 'Mother of Social Media Dragons'. Earlier today, she revealed her fail-safe formula for gaining and retaining followers to a packed room at Digital Design Days, and we caught up with her afterwards to find out a bit more. Here are five hot tips for hacking the Instagram algorithm. 10 social media tricks you didn't know about 01. Talk, talk, talk Rule one is: create a dialogue. "Social media is not a one-way street; it's a two-way tango," says Lung. Instagram shouldn't just be you putting out content and forgetting about it. Read your comments and start conversations with your followers. The more people speak to you, the more you'll grow your reach. If you're a brand, you're probably going to need to make announcements from time to time, but make sure you balance this with conversations. Make sure your followers are getting something back. To help with this, it's time to get opinionated. Figure out what your brand stands for and let people know; opinions help open up a dialogue. 02. Make your audience feel something Keep your content relevant, and remember, emotional content is much more relatable to people. "Everything you create should make your audience feel something," says Lung. While what will resonate most with your audience will of course vary hugely from group to group, there are some universal human emotions that the internet loves. "One of them is humour. If you can make them laugh, it's automatically shareable," says Lung. "If you can make them say, 'Oh my god, me too', that has the possibility to be viral." Further to that, use what you know about your audience to tailor your feel to what will make them tick. 03. Don't be perfect The key thing with Instagram is that what you put out genuinely reflects your brand personality. Real and organic wins out over perfect and packaged every time, says Lung. It's might require a bit of a mental shift, given that crafting the perfect image is something that companies have historically invested an awful lot of time and effort into. She goes on to qualify her earlier statement that a little. "Research shows that millenials trust brands that are authentic. So that might be raw and real, or you might be authentically polished and prim - that's OK too." The message is to find your authentic voice, and be consistent in your messaging. Keeping things consistent is key to brokering that trust with your audience. Remember: Your vibe attracts your tribe. If you push out a fake persona, you're not going to attract genuine followers. How to change the font in your Instagram bio 04. Niche down On Instagram, the more curated your content is, the better. Don't believe us? Take a look at House of Magazines, which curates content from super-niche Instagram communities. Whether you're into cacti, David Bowie, or the colour yellow, there's a dedicated magazine on here for you. The follower numbers are testament to just how popular very specific channels can be. So how do you find your niche? "What is your true passion? What are you so hot and crazy about, and would geek out to... figure out what you don't mind spending hours and hours looking at and thinking about," suggests lung. "You have to be obsessed. I mean... you don't have to, but it's easier if you are." 05. Try new tools There's a bunch of tools to help you create slick content and ensure your posts jump out in someone's feed. As well as the hugely popular VSCO filters ("everyone has them"), Lung picks out Unfold as the hottest tool right now. Use it to create professional-looking Stories quickly. CutStory is another favourite - used for chopping your videos into 15-second chunks - but Instagram has recently rolled out a feature that does this automatically. "I still like to use it because you don't always need to post everything," Lung adds. To make your Stories creative, Lung suggests exploring the features within the app itself. "It's crazy - there are so many features and so much stuff you can do with Stories." Read more: A designer's guide to Instagram Stories 5 golden rules for social media strategy How to make money on Instagram View the full article

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It goes without saying that coding is one of the most incredibly marketable skills today. If you've always wanted to learn how to build websites and digital products, you can get ample training from The Complete Web Developer Course. This fully immersive learning package features over 30 hours of content to cover everything code. On top of getting you to grips with the fundamental programming languages like HTML5, CSS3, Python, and PHP, you'll also get hands-on training by building 25 different websites. You'll develop blogs and ecommerce sites, as well as a Twitter clone to put your newly-acquired knowledge into action. As a bonus, you'll also get free unlimited web hosting for one year. The Complete Web Developer Course can be yours today for only $11.99 – that's a 91 percent discount off the usual price. Related articles: 20 awesome books for web designers and developers Agile development: why and how to use it in your web and app workflow 6 must-have skills for young web developers View the full article

Frameworks like React only send JavaScript down to clients, which is then used to create the elements onscreen. The HTML that loads on the page is minimal, as all of the content is generated on the client side after everything has loaded. In projects that have dynamic data, such as a blog or a shop, the JavaScript has to come down first before any other data can be fetched. Even when using speed-boosting techniques such as code splitting, if the bundle fails to download, the entire site will stop working. 34 web design tools to help you work smarter Static-site generators take dynamic content and create pre-built pages ready to serve. If the data does change, the project can be rebuilt and the new content served. The end result is improved speed, scalability and – without constant connections to a database – security. While the approach is not ideal for constantly changing data such as a rolling news site, many projects can benefit. Gatsby is a static-site generator that is built upon React. Through the use of GraphQL and plugins, it can take data from different sources and pass them into components. Once this is done, it analyses the project and generates HTML files to serve to clients, while React and the application logic gets downloaded in the background. Download the files for this tutorial. 10 best static site generators Get started After it has been initialised, Gatsby provides an example site to get started, including two basic page components To start off, we can have Gatsby scaffold out a basic project for us. It provides a development server we can use along with a few useful developer tools. Make sure Node and npm are up-to-date and run npx gatsby new gatsby-site on the command line, with "gatsby-site" being the folder to build into. Within that folder, Gatsby provides a few commands as part of the initialisation process. Running these will make building the site much easier. Run npm run develop to start the development server and see any changes update automatically in the browser. All content lives within the /src folder and any setup files are prefixed with "gatsby-" in the project's root. Everything works through components, which do not need to have any additional structure or behaviour in order to be pre-built with Gatsby. The contents of the /src/pages folder is special. Gatsby will pick up any component within that folder to create a page. Open up index.js and clear out the contents of the component. Notice that the page updates in the browser as we save. Build a page Each blog post needs its own page. It's possible to make a page component for each new post but this creates a barrier for those not used to React and will also require more maintenance in the future as designs change. Gatsby has a library full of plugins ready to change the way it generates pages, which can be found at gatsbyjs.org/plugins. There we can find two types of plugin – 'source' and 'transformer'. A source plugin will take data from a source and convert them into 'nodes', which is how Gatsby deals with the information within a site. The data can be fetched locally for files like images or remotely for external data such as a database. A transformer plugin can then take these nodes and create new ones to make things easier for Gatsby to work with. For example, YAML files can't be parsed by default but a transformer plugin can turn the nested syntax within them into objects to read inside components. Markdown is a common format used for text because it's versatile, easy to read and can be converted to HTML. The source plugin "gatsby-source-filesystem" can take files locally and convert them to nodes, while the transformation plugin "gatsby-transformer-remark" uses Remark to convert Markdown into something we can pick up and query with GraphQL. The starter project already comes with the source plugin. Install the other by running npm install gatsby-transformer-remark. Please note that the development server may need to be restarted for it to be picked up. Set up plugins With the plugin installed, Gatsby needs to be told how to use it. All this logic is held within the "gatsby-config.js" file generated at the start. It comes with a few plugins already set up out of the box but we need to add ours to the mix to be able to pick up and use Markdown. Simple plugins that have no set-up procedure can be added in as strings. As the transformation plugin has only one job, it does not need setting up. However, the source plugin has to be told where to find the posts. Add them to the bottom of the plugins array. Because each post will become its own page, it makes sense to add them to the src/pages folder. These setting options are telling Gatsby to look into that folder and pull out any files. Create a blog post Helmet can be used to add <meta> elements on a per-post basis, such as using post tags as keywords With the plugins in place, we can create our first post. Create a folder called "my-first-post" and add a "my-first-post.md" Markdown file within it. This convention enables us to add any related files – such as images – alongside the post itself. We need to add some Markdown to this post so we know that it's working as expected. The content between the dashes at the top of the file is called 'front matter'. This will contain metadata around the post that is being written, such as the date and title. All of this data will be picked up by Remark and can be queried for within GraphQL. The crucial piece of front matter in this case is the path value. This is where the post will live and will need to be unique. Gatsby will read the path and make a new page there. Before we can show the posts, we need a page component to display the post. It will need to be able to take the values as props and display the content as a block of HTML. Create a new component at "src/BlogPost.js". The information about each post will come through as a data prop from GraphQL. The "react-helmet" package bundled with Gatsby enables us to update values that would usually live within the <head> of a HTML page. Here we are setting the title of the post to be the <title> of the page itself. There are plenty of other options it accepts, which you can find out more about at github.com/nfl/react-helmet. Query for data Gatsby comes with GraphQL, which can be used to help test out queries. Run the development server and head to localhost:8000/___graphql At this point, Gatsby has no data powering this page. We need to fetch data from the Markdown files to populate this information. To do this, we can use GraphQL – a querying language created by Facebook that pulls in relevant data into React components. In short, GraphQL defines the structure the data will be returned through the use of nested objects. That way, we only query for data we will actually be using. Gatsby provides a template literal function that can interpret the queries. It will detect any use of it and pass its results as props into the component. This means we can add the query within the same file and keep related logic together. Inside this query, we are asking Gatsby for all the Markdown nodes with a path that matches the page we are on. If it finds one, it will then pass the rendered HTML, date and title of the post on to the component. Writing queries this way is limited only to page components. Any other components that need query for nodes must use <StaticQuery> and load it up front. At this point, the development server may warn about this for the BlogPost component, but this is because it is not aware it will become a page component yet. Let's change that. Generate pages If you see a "getNodesByType is not a function" error, an outdated version of Gatsby has been downloaded. Running npm update fixes this By default, Gatsby only makes pages for components within /src/pages, meaning that we need to create pages some other way. Gatsby exposes a few methods from its build process to help access the data nodes. These can be accessed through "gatsby-node.js" in the root of the project. In this case, we will use GraphQL to fetch all the blog posts and let the createPages callback generate a page for each one. As this is an asynchronous action, we need to return a Promise so Gatsby can carry on with the build process. The first part of the callback is a query that fetches the path for each post, as each individual page will then get its own data. The GraphQL call returns a Promise that will contain all the posts. We can use the data from that to generate some pages. If the query encounters an error, halt the build process to figure out why. If everything is fine, fetch the component made and call the createPage method to generate a page at the provided path. With the pages generating, all that's needed now is a way to find them. We can use a query on the existing index page component to do that. In this query, we are only interested in the titles and path to the post. We also pass some parameters to Remark to get the most recent posts in reverse order. This query in particular is checking the date from the front matter on each post. The syntax for each query will depend on the plugin used to generate it. With the content in place, the blog can be styled using any CSS technique, including CSS-in-JS solutions such as styled-components Lastly, the component needs updating to make use of the data. The "Link" component supplied by Gatsby enables it to know which components it needs to render that link and will make sure it fetches the right bundles accordingly. With that, our blog is done. All that remains is to smarten it up and have Gatsby build a production-ready website. By running npm run build it can strip out any enhancements used for development and generate bundles ready to deploy. Once finished, the "public" folder can then be uploaded anywhere that can serve static sites. This article was originally published in issue 314 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 314 here or subscribe here. Related articles: The 16 best free blogging platforms Use WordPress as a headless CMS How to code faster, lighter JavaScript View the full article

Marvel's promotional website for its latest film, Captain Marvel, will either fill you with a warm nostalgic glow, or serve as yet another reminder that you are now very, very old. In line with Captain Marvel's 1995 setting, Marvel has launched a retro website that tells you everything you need to know about the upcoming superhero movie starring Carol Danvers. That's as long as you're willing to navigate your way through an old-school website layout and eye-straining font choices. For visitors who grew up on a diet of Pogs and Tamagotchis, the website is a charming throwback to an era when accessing a website meant that you couldn't make phone calls. Meanwhile, younger visitors will get a kick out of this glimpse at the archaic aesthetics that 'old people' once enjoyed. Explore the Captain Marvel website here You can practically hear the dial-up tone Familiar elements from the internet of yesteryear include a guestbook, hit counter and a modem-crippling amount of animated text. All it's missing is a flock of flying toasters. However, in terms of promotional design, this website is so bad it's good. Some of our favourite touches include the old lady Skrull who pops up every now and then – visitors can click to punch her in the face. The ancient Windows Media Player and underwhelming quiz are sure to raise a smile too. And while it might look like zany fun on the surface, this site is practical as well – a 'get tickets' button is in prime position when you land on the page. Remember WordArt? Tongue in cheek internet killjoy and executive editor at The Verge, Dieter Bohn, has pointed out that this site isn't an exact replica of a nineties website because it clocks in at a whopping 10MB, which would have taken forever to load on the era's 28.8k modems. He also highlights the fact that its guestbook is filled with references to events that happened after 1995. This doesn't ruin our enjoyment of the site though, especially when you learn that the whole thing was built in FrontPage and hosted with Angelfire. Related articles: New Adidas site takes it back to the '90s The 7 deadly sins of web design The good, the bad and the ugly of movie posters View the full article

The camera is probably the single most important tool in the world of CG. It is more important than modelling and animation, and if the camera is pointing the wrong way, even the lighting won’t be seen. Therefore, mastering how 3D software handles camera manipulation is crucially important. Here, we take a look at the terms and information you need to know to be able to successfully work with the camera in 3D software. If you'd like more information on the different types of software and what they do, then see our roundup of the best 3D modelling software right now. Get free admission to VERTEX 2019, the ultimate event for 2D and 3D artists Focal length in 3D art Focal length information is vitally important as it determines the zoom or field of view (FOV), and this dictates what the camera is seeing. Learning about focal lengths and how they can be used for scene manipulation is incredibly important for making shots believable in terms of scale, and once this has been mastered it can become a great tool for manipulating images for more fantastical briefs. Most CG cameras default at a focal length of around 35mm, which is a very common focal length for cameras as a ‘do all’ solution. However, if the scene is of a portrait of a CG head bust for example, then a 80-100mm focal length would be more suited, as the longer a focal length the less perspective distortion occurs, making the bust look more realistic. Naturally the best way to learn about focal lengths is to use an actual camera, and this knowledge will easily transfer to your CG projects. The best camera for creatives right now Camera objects in 3D A camera object works in a similar way to real-life cameras One of the most common assumptions for a new artist working in CG is that the perspective view is the camera. While this is technically true as the software has created a virtual camera to view the scene in the viewport, this is not the same as an actual camera object. A camera object is usually identified as a film-style camera wireframe in the viewport, and typically has a properties palette full of information which makes it analogous to real-life cameras. A camera object usually has options for controlling focal length, and as it is an actual ‘object’ in the scene, it makes animating it a lot easier. Some applications allow the default front, top and side cameras to actually be seen and exported, but be mindful of these as usually they are best kept hidden. ZBrush doesn't have a typical camera object Not all digital content creation software comes with an easily recognisable camera object. A good example is ZBrush – however, the focal length can be adjusted in the main view to create more compelling renders. Also, files can be exported with camera data into formats such as Alembic and FBX, which can be imported into a wide range of applications to ensure that the camera view when using a painting application such as Substance Painter matches up with the original scene. Wide-angle lenses You can capture more in a scene with a wide-angle lens Wide-angle lenses (which tend to be classed as anything lower than 35mm) are good for wider scenes as they can catch a lot more detail. They are not great for close-up work as they distort features, so are unflattering for character work. Extreme wide-angle lenses are common in architectural work, but be mindful to straighten vertical lines; this effect can be achieved with tilt-zoom lenses, commonly used in high-end architectural photography, but can be re-created easily in software. Telephoto lenses Telephoto lenses are great for portraits Lenses that are longer than 50mm tend to be called telephoto lenses and are commonly used for character and close-up work, but they also tend to be used for macro work. Most portrait work is done in the 80-100mm range. Additionally, long telephoto lenses in the 150-200mm range can be great for certain types of scenes as they can be used to create interesting contrasts between the foreground and background. Zoom lenses A 'dolly zoom' effect can be achieved with a zoom lens Zoom lenses are often seen as the ‘poor cousins’ of prime lenses, which have a single focal length, but good use of zoom lenses in a scene can be a great way of achieving some creative effects and looks. The ground-breaking spaceship work in the TV reboot of Battlestar Galactica depended on zoom lenses, and they can be used to create a dolly zoom effect – a technique in which there is an object in the centre of the screen while the background appears to zoom in or out. This article originally appeared in issue 242 of 3D World, the world's leading magazine for 3D artists. Buy issue 242 or subscribe here. Read more: The 17 best ZBrush tutorials The 10 best 3D movies this year The top cities for 3D artists View the full article

You invest a huge amount of effort, time and resources into getting your designs right. So, the last thing you want is for them to come back from the printers looking less than perfect. That said, it’s easy to get swept up in the creative process and forget about how your artwork will translate in to print. But leaving these considerations until the end of a project can lead to costly mistakes, which is why having a deep understanding of the print process and how it can add value to your artwork - and therefore your clients - is vital. And that’s where this free booklet from Route 1 Print can help. A fantastic resource, this handy-sized guide explains and showcases multiple ways in which print can really compliment a design. The perfect finish Each page of the booklet features expert advice about the print process, all of which is printed on various different stock and finish choices, providing tangible examples for you to feast your eyes and hands on. Stock options include Mohawk Felt Cream, Ice Gold and Kraft Paper. There’s also Spot UV examples, as well as matt, gloss and soft touch lamination finishes. All you have to do is choose the print option best suited to your work and flip the page for details of the exact colour and gsm (grams per square meter). The third and final chapter of Route 1 Print’s guide, Clashes, highlights the designs and printing methods that don’t get along quite so well, and why you should try to avoid the use of excessive ink and Spot UV where possible. All in all, 10½ ways to bring Print and Design Together is a comprehensive guide to the print process. It’s (almost) pocket size means it will won’t take up much room on your desk and easily fit in most bags if you need it for reference on the go. And the best part? It’s totally free! So, what are you waiting for? Get your free booklet and have all the print advice you’ll ever need at your fingertips. View the full article

You're reading Sit at a Computer All Day? You Need These Glasses, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! If you are anything like me, you probably sit in front of a computer most of the day. (That’s just the nature of design work.) And as much as we get up, move around and do other things, there are … View the full article