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Pairing font is a constant challenge for designers and typographers. Putting the wrong fonts together can create a discordant look that ruins a design, while letters that share similar themes or measures can bring a project together. To help creatives match their fonts successfully, Fontjoy has turned to deep learning to make the whole process quicker than ever. Created by designer and engineer Jack Qiao, Fontjoy builds on a similar font mapping tool released earlier this year. By extracting the feature vectors from images of nearly 2,000 fonts, Qiao was able to create a formula that can systematically sift through styles and find fonts that share key characteristics. Users click on a letter to choose a fontOn Fontjoy you can play around with font pairings by selecting styles from the options in the sidebar. Simply choose how similar or contrasting you want the fonts to be by adjusting a scale at the top of the site, then click generate to instantly find a match. The controls take a bit of getting used to, but once you get the hang of Fontjoy you'll be able to lock you favourite fonts and experiment with pairings in no time. Fontjoy saves an age-old problem for designers and typographersFor experienced designers Fontjoy might prove to be little more than a starting point for your own experimentation, but for beginners the site is a useful tool in understanding how font styles can work together or against each other. And with Qiao explaining how he created the mapping algorithm on Github, there's even some insights for those who want to start getting into machine learning. Related articles: Great uses of typography in portfolios 10 different fonts to give your projects a unique edge Genius map tool sorts fonts by how they look View the full article

OpenVPN patched four vulnerabilities privately disclosed by Dutch researcher Guido Vranken, including a critical issue that could lead to remote code execution. View the full article

Pearlfisher originally specialised in packaging, but over its 25 years in business the agency has shifted focus to branding, working with iconic clients such as Cadbury, Starbucks and Innocent. Brand strategists Molly Rowan Hamilton and Kristoffer Fink Parup explain how Pearlfisher's Strategy division works, and reveal some of the tools and techniques they use to get to the heart of a brand. Here are their four golden rules for developing a brand strategy: 01. Look to the future to see the present "The big question always is: 'What do you want your brand to become ultimately?'" argues Fink Parup. "'Where is it 10 years down the line, and why is that so?'" By asking this kind of open question, he adds, you can reveal the deeper thinking behind a brand, as well as any underlying issues or blind spots. "We might have a different opinion about what's going to be relevant, how the industry is shifting, and we can have a conversation about that." 02. Engage in informal conversations Interacting with clients on a conversational level feels less like an interview and helps to humanise the process. "Often clients will express things they don't necessarily realise they're expressing," observes Rowan Hamilton. "Ideas and solutions can just come about, and it's our job to see them, and to extract meaning." When it comes to challenger brands in particular, she continues, it often helps to start by asking what their competitors are doing wrong. The design language Pearlfisher created for non-alcoholic beverage Seedlip is influenced by the distillation of natural ingredients03. Understand the brand's trajectory Pearlfisher works with challenger and iconic brands, and everything in between: "We map brands out on their trajectory upwards towards iconic," explains Fink Parup. "Of course, once you reach iconic status, there's still competition – it's not like some kind of nirvana where nobody's going to touch you." It can still pay to have that scrappy challenger mentality to shake things up, and Fink Parup gives Virgin as a great example of that. 04. Tailor strategy to market position Depending on where a brand is on that trajectory, the goal of the strategy is different. "For a challenger brand, you need to know what to challenge, and how," Rowan Hamilton points out. "For iconic brands, it's more about nurturing – understanding why people love you, and cherishing that to keep you as iconic as you possibly can be for as long as possible." Often, she adds, people's affection for a brand originally stems from its original challenger mentality. Want to learn more from Pearlfisher's branding experts? You can watch our interviews with them: Build an iconic brand Develop your studio culture Design with strategy in mind This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 265; buy it here! Related articles: Create the perfect brand voice 4 expert tips for creating a killer brand strategy 10 top tips for branding success View the full article

Working from home seems like heaven – the commute is non-existent, there are no arguments about whose turn it is to make the tea round, and you can even work in your pyjamas. Designers and artists especially can gain the most from working from home as it allows the creation of a personal work environment and schedule suited to you and you alone. Personally having the ability to work from home has enabled me to see much more of my family and also work with a wider range of clients than potentially are available if I was just working as a studio freelance artist. However, there can be problems. It can be hard to manage client expectations, and there are all those little home chores to distract you. There are also issues that might not have even crossed your mind: can you send large files from home? Is your free graphic design software up to the task? Will you still know how to network after being stuck at home all day? After freelancing for several years for clients both at their studios and from my home base, I'm going to share some of my tips for working from home effectively. 01. Make your own space Making your own space is critical to working from homeThe most important element for any creative work is to find a dedicated work space. If you're sharing with a partner or housemates (and especially if kids are at home too), putting a laptop on the kitchen table and thinking that is an office is not going to work – for you, or the people you live with. It's their home as well. 10 things nobody tells you about going freelanceIn my case I am lucky to have an old shed with power (but no heating) that I work in during the day, and when I need to work at nights I have desk set up away from the main living space. This enables me to work and not get in the way of my wife when she wants to relax. So try and find a space in the house, which is not a bedroom, that can be dedicated to work. 02. Give your clients access Tools like Dropbox can make working from home with clients a seamless experienceThe most important bills I pay as a home-based freelancer are not for software upgrades or for new computers, they are for unlimited fibre internet, Dropbox Pro and my smartphone. These give me the ability to be available to my clients, through Skype and screen sharing. I keep my work files on Dropbox grouped by client. I then share them with my clients so that they can have immediate access to my work files if they need. This system has worked with clients from Soho to San Diego, and helps dispel any worry a client may have in not having direct involvement in the work that they are paying for. Dropbox also keeps my computers in sync, which means if I am travelling to meetings or am away from the house I know I have access to all of my work files in the cloud on any device. For more options, take a look at our post on free tools for sending large files. 03. Be disciplined Dedicate quiet periods to useful tasks such as updating your portfolio website Working from home successfully is dependant on treating it as seriously as working in an office. It may sound counter-intuitive but I still find it is useful to get ready for work if I am working from home. I get dressed in clothes that I would be happy to wear if I was working at a client's studio, and make sure I am available to clients from 8.30am to 6pm when I am working from home. If you do not have any billable work due on that specific work day, try not to make that a reason to switch on daytime TV. Instead, make yourself the client: update your design portfolio, website or your showreel, check in with existing clients or potential new ones, spend some time doing training, and if you spend that day on personal work, make sure it is in a format that can be used for self-promotion. 04. Work when it's best for you Smartphones and tablets mean you can stay in contact with clients when you're outThe payoff for this personal discipline is that you can organise your day around when you're naturally at your most creative or productive, as well as scheduling things like rendering or application compiling at a time and location that suits you. The caveat is to make sure you're not suddenly working a schedule that impacts on downtime. Try to maintain the number of hours you would want to work if you were working in a studio. The key reason for this is to avoid burnout, but it also ensures you're not losing money if you're working to an agreed day rate with your client. 05. Stay active Build some exercise into your routineOnce you've managed to get ourself into a routine where you are successfully working from home it can be easy to forget that there are some benefits to working in a studio. As much as we all hate the commute, at least the walk to the car or train is exercise. So try and get out of the house at least once a day – even if it is just to buy some lunch. Personally I took up running. My least productive part of the day is between 10am and 11.30am, so using this time for a run and making it an early lunch hour means at least I feel I am doing something useful with my time, as well as being reminded why I work at home in the first place (I live in the South Downs). 06. Don't become a hermit Consider meeting clients in coffee shopsThe other thing that working in a studio offers is human contact. While Twitter and other forms of social media are brilliant for news and banter and can keep the hermit tendencies at bay, do try to make a couple of days every few weeks to meet with clients, have lunch with friends and generally get out of the house and see things other than the wall behind your computer screen. Related articles: How to conduct a successful project debrief 85% of freelance graphic designers were asked to work for free last year 6 must-have skills for young web developers View the full article

http://thehackernews.com/2017/06/online-form-privacy.html … View the full article

It's a mixed bag this month. As always, we round up the best new art books: there's a love letter to the Arctic by an artist who has undertaken several expeditions to paint its wildlife, people, and places; there's a book about art and magic and advertising; and there's another that teaches you the techniques of the 'Famous Artists School’. Fancy having a crack at Chinese brush painting? We've got that covered, too. We're exploring the art of the old American west and street art from New York City in the 1980s. Plus, we've got some nice gear to smarten up your workspace. And we've also got a cool new product from the PANTONE Living range. 01. Beginning Chinese Brush Learn to paint birds, flowers and traditional Chinese landscapesThe new book in the 'Special Subjects' series offers everything you need to get into Chinese brush painting. Artist Monika Cilmi is your guide. She helps you to pick the right brush, learn basic techniques, brushstrokes and composition, as you practice painting birds, flowers, and traditional landscapes. Cilmi also shows you how incorporate these traditional methods into your own artistic approach, whatever that may be. 02. Wolf hair Chinese brushes These top-rated Chinese brushes are an affordable option for beginnersThese top-rated Chinese brushes, made of wood and wolf hair, come in three sizes. They hold a lot of water, handle ink well, and are nicely balanced. We’d recommend them as a good entry-level brush, but they are also capable of tackling more advanced projects. Plus, they’re very affordable, so you don't need to spend a ton of money to make a start in traditional Chinese writing and painting. 03. Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artists School This book follows the renowned Famous Artists School's courseThe Famous Artists School is an art correspondence course founded in 1948 by Albert Dorne, Norman Rockwell, and other members of the New York Society of Illustrators. This book is based on the course, and takes you through the processes of these artists. Each chapter takes you through lessons and exercises in classic drawing technique. There's also a ton of pieces taken from Norman Rockwell Museum and the Golden Age of Illustration, but particularly interesting are the before-and-after examples of student work. 04. Keith Haring: Posters exhibition See 100 posters from the American artist and activist's short careerThis month's oh-man-I-wish-could-go-to-that exhibition takes place at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. Keith Haring: Posters features 100 posters that show how the American artist and activist's style developed over his short career. It features work in support of human rights, tolerance, education and AIDS awareness, as well as stuff Haring sold in his New York Pop Shop. The exhibition is a cool retrospective on the work of one of the late 20th century’s most influential artists. 05. Once Upon a Time ... The Western The book explores the American west's impact on art, culture and societyThis new book explores the facts and fictions of the American west, the 'story of nation-building, triumphs, failures and fantasies.' It features art by American west artists like Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington, but also works by modern artists such as Andy Warhol and Kent Monkman. The book looks at the Western in film too, from early works by John Ford and Sergio Leone, to recent productions by Quentin Tarantino and Joel and Ethan Coen, all the while exploring the genre's impact on art, culture, and society. 06. Holiday Art Creative Gift Box Dip into travel journalling with this dedicated setThis new art travel set from Snapdragon has a travel diary with alternating blank and lined pages so you can keep a written and illustrated journal of your travels. The Scottish brand also includes an eraser, pencils, a pencil sharpener, and a pencil case to keep them all in, stackable watercolour paints and watercolour postcards, and lead holder and spare leads – everything you need to take your art on the road. 07. Illusions: The Art of Magic This book offers a fascinating insight into the early days of art and advertisingDuring the ‘golden age of magic' – between the late 19th and early 20th centuries – magicians fought an advertising war. Devils, demons, skulls, skeletons, and glamorous assistants, pictured on elaborately designed posters, were used to pull in an audiences. This book contains 250 of those posters. Experts look at the social context in which the posters were created and the artists employed to create them. It's a fascinating look at the early days of art and advertising, and how the two overlap. 08. PANTONE water bottle Looking for some unnecessary but cool homeware?The new PANTONE Living range has a loads of cool lifestyle stuff that you don't really need, but you do really, really want. Made from impact-resistant material, with a stainless steel screw-top, this is a tough, long-lasting water bottle. It's good for the environment and all that, but mainly it just looks dead smart. And, obviously, the bottles come a range of colours – Black 419 being our favourite. 09. Personalised oak pen and pencil holder Smarten up your studio with this range of oak stationeryBespoke & Oak Co. – a British company based in the Forest of Bowland – has a new range that includes some cool stuff to smarten your studio. This handmade solid oak pen/pencil holder comes with a personalised message on the bottom. There's also ton of matching gear, so, if you’re so inclined, you can completely oak-ify your workspace with everything from oak stationery to oak iMac stands. 10. David Bellamy’s Arctic light Cool down with this love letter to the ArcticComing off the back of several expeditions, this book by David Bellamy is a love letter to his 'beloved Arctic.' The artist writes beautifully about his travels in the region, sharing the challenges of painting outdoors in one of the toughest environments on Earth. It's illustrated with Bellamy's atmospheric watercolour sketches and paintings, each one showing his love for the people, places, and wildlife of the Arctic Circle. Related articles: Review: Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable brushes 5 things you need for oil painting ImagineFX 150th anniversary issue: Look inside! View the full article

Avaya released a patch last week for a remote code execution vulnerability in its Avaya Aura Application Enablement Services software. View the full article

Web design is a skill that just about anyone can have use for, whether it's to build your business or just to build a web presence for your hobby. Master the skill and the apps that experts trust with the Web Design CPD Certification Bundle, on sale now for 97% off! Web design all starts off with the languages of HTML5 and CSS3. You can add the foundational languages to your repertoire, then learn how to make the most of them with the Web Design CPD Certification Bundle. Once you master the coding languages, you can learn how to use them with Adobe's powerful tools – Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver – to take your design to the next level. You can get the Web Design CPD Certification Bundle, which usually retails for $1,596 for all four parts of the bundle, on sale now for 97% off the retail price. That's a saving you won't find elsewhere for a bundle this useful, so grab this deal today! View the full article

So, you've decided to start your own blog? It might be to share your expert drawing tips or just to drum up a bit of interest in your design portfolio, but before you rush into anything, consider this: the web (and in particular the blogosphere) is a crowded place. With so many blogs out there, it's important to make sure you know how to start a blog that stands out from the crowd. Your blog needs to be attractive, creative and clever. But more than that, your blog design needs to speak to your readers. It needs to tell them why you're different, what you're offering, and why they should take the time to read on. So, do you need to know how to start a blog that will attract and enthral? Here are 10 tips that will get you started and help you take your offering from interesting to inspirational... 01. Choose a blogging platform You're spoiled for choice when it comes to platforms, and most are freeThere are several blogging platforms out there, from Blogger and WordPress to Tumblr, Squarespace and Ghost. Or if you're feeling bold and know your code, you can create your blog from scratch. Which platform you choose will very much depend on what you're most comfortable using, how involved you want to be with the creation process, and what you plan to put on it. The good news is that most of these are either free blog platforms or offer a trial session so you can give it a whirl and see if it suits you. 02. Decide on the blog's content Sort out your content plan or you'll be heading for yet another abandoned blog of shameYou want to learn how to start a blog, but do you know what you want a blog for in the first place? Blogging for the sake of blogging is pointless – you'll soon get bored and your carefully crafted site will soon be home to nothing but tumbleweed. Sometimes it is a good idea to grab a notepad and pen before you even start. Jot down the types of blog posts you'd like to publish so you always have a reference point you can come back to if the ideas seem to have dried up. Only then should you move on – you know how to start a blog, now it's time to design and populate it... 03. Keep your blog design simple Free Wordpress themes such as InterStellar offer simple design When creating a design blog, it can be tempting to go crazy. After all, you want your blog to stand out and for people to remember you. How harmful can a rainbow of colours and a plethora of fonts be? The answer is: Very. Keep your blog design simple. Stick to no more than three colours, and three fonts. With fonts; you need a heading, subheading and body copy font. Your main text font can then be enhanced by different weights or attributes, but keep these to a minimum. 04. Use contrasting colours The design of The Fox is Black is based on a simple black and fluoro yellow colour scheme Don't go crazy, and keep to a simple colour scheme. Contrasting colours can work well in the right design. It's a good rule of thumb that your blog features a main primary colour, a shade of grey, and a colour for your call-to-action. 05. Embrace white space The Entyce site isn't afraid to make use of white space When finding inspiration before you create a design blog, don't be afraid of white space – it can really enhance your design and keep it looking professional. Don't be afraid to leave some parts of the design empty where it warrants it. You should also use white space as borders to help highlight key parts of the blog. Remember, sometimes less really is more. 06. Keep your design goal-driven Web design resource Treehouse uses its blog to promote its courses If the purpose of your blog is to get conversions – whether that's sales, signups, or enquires – then everything else comes second. This means you should create a design blog that is designed with three things in mind: Topic: What is your blog about? Value proposition: What makes it unique? Audience: Who is your main target audience? To get conversions, your design blog needs a strong call-to-action in its design, be that headlines, prominent buttons, or even arrows. A goal-driven design will help your blog convert, and keep visitors coming back time and time again. 07. Follow conventions Superdream makes its posts easy to navigate It can be easy to forget about the important features of a blog when getting creative with the design. Whatever your blog ends up looking like, make sure you keep the main conventions of a blog in place. These include: Sidebars Headers Subscription options Author attribution Search bars These all make your design blog easy to navigate, which is a highly important feature. Keeping these elements in place will make your content easy to find, and keep your visitors on the blog for longer. Together, all this adds up to a goal-driven design. 08. Experiment For Print Only uses bold graphics and grids Although for the most part it's important to follow conventions, that doesn't mean you shouldn't break the rules from time to time! Try a few new elements, and experiment with colours, fonts, and placement. By mixing things up, you create a visually exciting experience for your audience. Just make sure that your readers can always find your posts, and exactly what they're looking for. 09. Make it responsive Test your design with a tool like Google's Resizer Nowadays, responsive web design is a prerequisite for any respectable design blog. Work closely with a designer and developer to help produce a design that is both eye-catching and functional. 10. Promote it! WIth a tool such as Hootsuite you can easily do most of your social shizzle in one go There is no point in knowing how to start a blog without learning how to promote it too... This is where social media comes into its own. Create Facebook and Twitter pages for your blog, or use existing accounts to shout about it. If you are involving a lot of images in your blog, why not set up Pinterest and Instagram accounts, too? Most modern blogging platforms such as Squarespace provide integration for everything from Twitter and Instagram to Tumblr and Dribbble, so you can spread the message quickly and effectively. Related articles: The 14 best free blogging platforms 12 must-have code testing tools The 34 best free WordPress themes View the full article

Great collaboration means pulling together everybody's different areas of expertise to develop great ideas, and sharing workloads to get much more done in less time. Here we talk to Alison Coward – founder of creative teamwork facilitator Bracket and author of Effective Workshops – about how to improve teamwork. What can people do to improve communication and teamwork? AC: Firstly, you can make a big impact by having better meetings. All teams have to meet, but often there are too many meetings, and most of them are unproductive. Each time you call a meeting, ask the question: what is the purpose? Then choose the most appropriate format for it – a quick check-in, feedback meeting, ideation session or something else – so that you can make the best use of everyone’s time. Secondly, make time to have conversations about how your team works together. This includes the types of meetings you have, but also how people will stay up-to-date throughout a project. What tools will you use? How will you share new ideas? What do you expect from each other? Understand how and when everyone does their best work, then use this to design processes that will make for productive working. Finally, encourage everyone to be as transparent as possible in their work so that, at any one time, everyone can see tasks and timelines and what the project status is. That way the team can identify bottlenecks and feel a shared sense of responsibility. Coward says that meetings need focus to be effectiveAnd what are the biggest obstacles to better teamwork? AC: Avoiding conflict is a big one. When teams feel that they have to agree on everything to keep the peace, it leads to groupthink, which then leads to mediocre ideas. The fact is, the best teams are diverse in their ways of thinking, skills and expertise. This will naturally lead to tension, but this conflict is necessary to challenge and improve ideas. It can be uncomfortable, but if managed in the right way (like Pixar’s Braintrust), it can create a great environment for outstanding work. I also see teams struggle to make the switch between ideation (divergent thinking) and decision-making (convergent thinking). Ideas need enough space to breathe, incubate and develop. But then to make progress you need to select ideas and critically evaluate them. Teams get stuck when there isn’t clarity between the two. My tip is to clearly separate divergent and convergent thinking, especially in workshops. How can workshops (rather than meetings) transform projects? AC: People love the energy of a great workshop, and providing there is good follow-up, it creates momentum that continues after the event itself. It can give people the confidence in their creativity, and show the benefits of effective collaboration. Workshops are dynamic, with people standing up, moving around, using the walls to display and work through ideas. A typical meeting format is more static and, without facilitation, a few voices will dominate. Workshops are better for problem solving because more than one person can get involved at the same time. How do you help creative teams work better and more effectively? AC: The majority, although not all, of my work takes place through workshops – either facilitated, training or a combination of both. Sometimes I’ll work with a team on something specific – to kick off a project, brainstorm ideas or develop a strategy. This involves figuring out what they need to achieve, designing and running a workshop that achieves that, and then doing what I can to help them put it into practice. It could even be as specific as helping a client to design a workshop for a session they want to run themselves. But essentially I’m designing a process for a productive discussion, and to be an objective outsider. Or it may be that I’ll work with a team to help them improve the way that they work. This involves a bit of training on the principles of great teams, bringing in examples and research. Then I’ll work with them to identify an aspect of their work that they’d like to improve and design a new method or habit that they can try. I love these sessions because it’s a great opportunity for a team to turn their creativity and design skills on themselves. Different companies are developing 'team habits' to promote teamworkLooking at companies that get teamwork right, what do they do well? AC: I really love finding innovative examples of teamwork, and it’s great because more teams are sharing aspects of how they are trying to work better together. I like to call these 'team habits'. For example, Asana set up No Meeting Wednesdays across the whole company, so that everyone has a day where they can get their heads down and focus. It’s not mandatory, but workers are encouraged not to have any internal meetings on that day. I liked the way that the Nordnet Design Studio decided the best format for each of their meetings, and then set up a weekly, monthly and quarterly rhythm for when each meeting would run. Buffer recently shared the ten agreements they’ve created for using Slack, which can easily become overwhelming. By creating these simple rules, they’ve helped their colleagues to be as productive as possible. The thing about all these examples is that they’re ever-evolving. These teams will keep experimenting, reviewing and updating processes as they need to. It’s like they’ve developed a skill for it, and see it as a problem-solving and creative exercise. Can you talk us through a recent project you worked on and how you’ve helped the client? AC: I ran a series of workshops with the senior management team at a fast-growing creative company. They were starting a big recruitment drive and wanted to package up their values and systems so that they could create a good onboarding experience. When we ran the first workshop, the first thing we realised was that they were all so busy they hadn’t had the time to properly explore their strategy. They all had different ideas of the company’s potential! So we looked at aspects of branding, culture, competitive advantage and their business model. They told me that the workshops were a pivotal moment for them, as they led to a series of breakthroughs that really helped them to boost their growth. Coward will share her tips for finding a good balance between creativity and productivity at Generate London What can people expect to take away from your talk at Generate London?AC: My talk is about designing teamwork, so I’ll look at the ways teams can take a proactive approach to better collaboration. People will get practical tips about making small changes that will have a big impact, whatever their role in a team. I’ll reveal how to run great workshops, creating a good balance between creativity and productivity and building good team habits that stick. Generate London, taking place on 21 and 22 September in the Royal Institution, will feature 15 other great presentations for web and UX designers and is preceded by a full day of workshops on 20 September. Don't miss the opportunity to learn from the likes of Steve Fisher, Leonie Watson, Anton & Irene, Zell Liew, Aaron Gustafson and many more. Reserve your spot today! Related articles: Learn to run design and content sprints Why you should embrace design thinking How to be truly customer-centric View the full article

Whatever design discipline you work in, a decent knowledge and understanding of typography is one of the most important things you need to develop. Luckily, the web is packed with free, quality resources for learning about typography – if you know where to look. Whether you’re a newbie starting from scratch, or want to build on your existing typography skills, you’re sure to find plenty to sink your teeth into with the following offerings. 01. Typography rules and terms every designer must know Learn the basic terms and rules with this comprehensive introduction to typographyTypography is, quite simply, the art and technique of arranging type. It's central to the skills of a designer and is about much more than making the words legible. This comprehensive glossary sets out the fundamental concepts and terminology of typography in words you can understand. 02. Butterick’s Practical Typography This free online book by Matthew Butterick, author of Typography for Lawyers, is a great introduction to everything you need to know about typography. The book begins with the five key rules of typography (which should only take 10 minutes to read and digest), followed by chapters on why typography matters, type composition, text formatting, font recommendations, page layout, and sample documents. With a comprehensive appendix, there’s everything here to help raise your typography knowledge from newbie to intermediate. 03. Infographic: a designer's guide to typography and fonts The Logo Company's stylish infographic clearly explains the alphabet of typography termsThere's a lot more to typography design than meets the eye. In fact there are a range of rules and technical terms relating to the construction and make up of fonts that most people simply don't know about. To help demystify things, The Logo Company has put together this stylish infographic that clearly explains an alphabet’s worth of typography terms. 04. Typography cheatsheet Typewolf’s cheatsheet will help you use typographic characters properlyTypewolf is an invaluable blog for keeping up with the latest in fonts and typography. And here it's supplied a handy cheatsheet to help you use typographic characters properly, including quotes and apostrophes, dashes and hyphens, and correct grammatical usage. 05. Master the finer points of typography Typography is an essential part of the communication process, whether it’s used in print, on screen or in any other media. It’s used to attract attention, engage the reader and convey meaning, and this article explores the aesthetic dimension of type to see how it serves and enhances design. 06. How to choose the right typeface When it comes to picking a typeface, you can't rely on gut alone. Making the right choice depends on function, context and a whole host of other factors. These quick tips will help ensure you go about it the right way. 07. Guide to font pairing This article explains the basics of choosing great font combinationsPicking great fonts can seem like an impossible dark art for most people. This article explains the basics of choosing great font combinations and then offers the author’s favourite combinations to try out in your own designs. 08. Four techniques for combining fonts Building a palette is an intuitive process, and expanding a typographic duet to three, four, or even five voices can be daunting. Here, Hoefler & Co explains its approach for mixing font families, by keeping one quality consistent, and letting the others vary. 09. Expert tips to improve your kerning Kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between letters to achieve a visually pleasing result. Some designers find it easy, others a tricky process where success is achieved more by luck than real judgement. This article brings together 10 tips to put you on the right track. 10. Guide to typography on your homepage These top tips will help you nail the typography on your homepageTypography can often make the difference between a good and a great website. This article brings together five tips to nail the typography of your homepage. Next page: 10 more great resources for learning typography 11. Understanding typographic hierarchy Typographic hierarchy is a system for organising type that establishes an order of importance within the data, allowing the reader to easily find what they are looking for and to navigate the content. This article offers a simple example and explains how you can achieve typographic hierarchy in your own designs. 12. How to achieve better typographic hierarchy in web design If you can’t put your finger on why a web design isn’t working, the odds are good that it’s an issue with your visual or typographic hierarchy. This article offers six tips for designing online content that people will actually want to read. 13. The rules of responsive web typography This article takes the mystery out of responsive web typographyResponsive web typography is tough – you need to have both design chops and technical know-how. This article explains all the principles and systems you need to know to take the mystery out of responsive web typography. 14. Control web typography with CSS font The way a browser loads your fonts has a big impact on the performance of your website. This article explains the different ways to tell the browser do it, and which to use when. 15. Master accessible web typography Readability of content is probably the main goal for almost every website. To this end, Fontsmith has worked with Mencap to research, test and design accessible typefaces for those with disabilities. In this article, we present some of their findings. 16. How accessible is your typeface? This infographic explains how to gauge the accessibility of your typefacesAccessible typography gets your message across smoothly, and makes it more legible for people with learning difficulties. This infographic from Fontsmith explains how designers can gauge the accessibility of their typefaces. 17. How to create your own font Where exactly do you begin if you want to make your own font? If you're a designer or illustrator new to this discipline, this article explains the first practical steps, the common software you can use and the early considerations to get you going. 18. The 10 commandments of typography Learning typography is as much about what you shouldn’t do as what you should. This article looks at common type mistakes, how you can avoid them and some suggestions for further reading along the way. 19. Typography tricks every designer should know Pro designers share their top typography tipsWant to push your typography skills further? This article shares 10 typography tips and tricks from professional designers that you can use to boost your design skills and impress friends and colleagues. 20. Top-quality typography tutorials This post brings together the web's best typography tutorials, all in one place. You'll find typography tutorials on adding colour to your type, designing text effects, making a typography poster, illustrative typography, and more. View the full article

Router manufacturer TP-Link recently fixed a vulnerability in a discontinued line of routers that if exploited could have been used to execute code on the device. View the full article

Researchers find flaws in an internet-connected drill, but say minimal, hard-to-find bugs indicate there is hope for IoT security. View the full article

Whenever you create vector art in Illustrator, simple tasks can become a hindrance to your workflow. So instead of becoming frustrated, take a look at our list of Illustrator shortcuts right here. They're guaranteed to speed up your workflow once you get the hang of them. Whether you want to change the size of your text, deselect a layer or merge a series of layers, we've got it covered! There are also some handy hints for brushes, saving and closing, and viewing options. Introduce the shortcuts slowly into your practice so you're not overwhelmed by the sheer amount to remember. Handy Photoshop shortcuts to speed up your workflow 01. Select all items on layer Mac: Option+Click layer Windows: Alt+Click layer Quickly select all the items on one particular layer – including those that are locked and not visible (to select only the visible, unlocked objects, click the select circle in the layers palette). 02. Hand Tool Mac: Spacebar Windows: Spacebar Move around your artboard without disturbing the content. This shortcut can't be used while editing typography. 03. Hand Tool (Editing type) Mac: Cmd+Spacebar Windows: Ctrl+Spacebar Move around your artboard without disturbing the content. This can be used while editing type, but you have to start moving the cursor around very quickly after releasing the Cmd/Ctrl key, otherwise Illustrator will start adding spaces to your text. 04. Activate Zoom In tool Mac: Cmd+Spacebar Windows: Ctrl+Spacebar Zoom closer into the artboard. 05. Activate Zoom Out tool Mac: Cmd+Option+Spacebar Windows: Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar Zoom out of the artboard. 06. Access Selection or Direction Selection tool Mac: Cmd Windows: Ctrl Switch between the Selection or Direction Selection tool – a big time saver. 07. Move Selection 10 pts Mac: Shift+arrow direction Windows: Shift+arrow direction Shift your imagery and/or typography accurately and quickly. 08. Add to a selection Mac: Shift-click Windows: Shift-click Create multiple selections, with the ability to add more if needed. 09. Lock selected artwork Mac: Cmd+2 Windows: Ctrl+2 This is a handy way to lock down those layers that keep getting in the way. 10. Unlock all artwork Mac: Cmd+Option+2 Windows: Ctrl+Alt+2 Unlock previously locked layers all at once. 11. Duplicate Mac: Option+drag Windows: Alt+drag Just drag your selection while holding Option to duplicate the file. 12. Scale proportionally with Selection tool Mac: Shift+drag bounding box Windows: Shift+drag bounding box Never distort your images again: scale them proportionally with this method. 13. Sample colour Mac: I Windows: I Sample colour from a vector, gradient or image with the eyedropper tool. 14. Show/hide artboards Mac: Cmd+Shift+H Windows: Ctrl+Shift+H Each artboard is bound by solid lines that represent the maximum printable area, with a canvas area beyond these boundaries. This shortcut shows/hides the artboard boundaries. 15. Show/hide artboard rulers Mac: Cmd+R Windows: Ctrl+R Make sure everything lines up by toggling rulers on. 16. View all artboards in window Mac: Cmd+Option+O Windows: Ctrl+Alt+O Shows you multiple artboards at once. 17. Decrease/increase type size Mac: Cmd+Shift+< or > Windows: Ctrl+Shift+< or > An effective way of changing your font size directly in front of your eyes. 18. Decrease/Increase leading Mac: Option+up/down Windows: Alt+up/down Quickly adjust the kerning without having to keep clicking in the character tab. 19. Decrease/Increase kerning or tracking Mac: Option+arrow L/R Windows: Alt+arrow L/R Adjust the space between your text in Illustrator with this handy command. 20. Align text left/centre/right Mac: Cmd-Shift-L/C/R Windows: Ctrl+Shift+L/C/R A great way to experiment with the alignment of your text, this shortcut will enable you to do it quickly. 21. Save for Web and Devices Mac: Cmd+Shift+Opt+S Windows: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S If you prefer not to drag your mouse around a number of options, use this shortcut. Related articles: Review: Adobe Illustrator CC 2017 Make a logo in Illustrator 100 amazing Adobe Illustrator tutorials View the full article

Last month saw the release of the poster for Spider-Man: Homecoming. The design was – well – pretty crowded to say the least. Featuring Peter Parker, Tony Stark as himself, Tony Stark as Iron Man, new baddie Adrian Toomes and the Vulture twice, plus both fireworks and lasers, and the Manhattan skyline and the Washington Monument squished in for good measure. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long for the internet to react, with fans and critics offering a unanimously negative response. Some even took the time to mock up their own versions, arguing that there was no way to make the poster worse than it already was. And while some called it a bad Photoshop job and others branded it plain amateurish, the collage-style it evokes is nothing new. Click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image The likes of Drew Struzan and John Alvin became iconic for their illustrated, collage-style, ‘floating-head’ poster designs, so why is it that posters of a similar style now seem lazy and inauthentic? Is it all down to lazy Photoshop work? Or is it simply that mainstream movie posters are mimicking the apathetic movie industry – producing sequel after sequel, remake after remake – that despite what the poster looks like, the movie will sell well anyway. Illustrator Sam Gilbey, who has produced pop culture artwork for properties including Marvel's Avengers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Karate Kid and Flash Gordon, argues that the introduction of Photoshop may have harmed the industry by making it easier for inexperienced designers to put together collage-style posters without the design skills to back them up. “Obviously you think of the masters like Richard Amsel, working pre-Photoshop, and you can see how marketing departments have often thought they can now produce something similar internally,” he explains. “If you’re simply moving photos around though, you’re not going to get that cohesiveness that an illustration can bring you. A skilled artist can take all those disparate elements and weave them together into a beautiful composition, whilst capturing the aspirational ‘feel’ of a movie at the same time. Of course now the fantastic thing is that as an artist you can use Photoshop to aid the process. The ‘problem’ is that you don’t need to be an artist to give it a try, or to understand how good compositions and colour palettes really work.” Out of context It seems that colour palette and composition is where this Spider-Man poster begins to go wrong, as illustrator Graham Humphreys explains. “My first impression is an issue with colour balance and the obvious cut-outs – the images don't appear to exist in the same context,” he says. “Even though we are used to seeing unrealistic scale and smaller elements alongside larger ones, effects of colour and light should allow the suspension of physics and scale. In this poster, it would appear that no such consideration has been applied. It looks more like a page in a scrapbook – a concept in itself perhaps, but not one clearly intended (or relevant) here.” This recent Transformers poster is another casualty of the scrapbook-style approach The participants gaze in all directions without having any idea there might be someone else in the same poster Graham Humphreys He adds that when the poster composition needs to be of the floaty-head variety, there still needs to be a form of narrative. This is usually achieved through eyelines, emotional expressions and reactions, which can add a layer of interest and insight into the film’s storyline and characters. “Here, the participants gaze in all directions without having any idea there might be someone else in the same poster! In addition, they are all closed-mouthed, neutral gazes – with the bizarre exception of a curiously happy young lady in the bottom right,” he continues. “The angle from which the heads are viewed are also numerous and without order. There is no narrative of threat, romance, fear, good, evil... in fact none of the theatrical tropes that are recognisable human traits and cinematic emblems. Unless boredom is the intended threat.” Marketing casualty Sadly, BLT – the agency that produced this poster – was unable to discuss any specifics of the poster due to the client relationship. However, this particular design is jarringly different to the posters the agency initially released, which saw Spider-Man hanging out in various NYC spots. Initial designs feature Spider-Man hanging out in NYCBLT is also responsible for some of the best poster designs and campaigns in recent months – its fantastic Baby Driver campaign and the brilliant rom-com Deadpool ad for example. So why such a break from form? “One thing that I can recognise is client intervention,” explains Humphreys. "Endless changes that will please executives, accountants and marketing needs, but changes made in ignorance of the visual cohesion that might have made a good poster. Most designers and illustrators will attest to this endless mortal combat." Perhaps the cult of celebrity and the selfie have crushed the soul out of mainstream cinema posters Graham Humphreys “Mainstream posters, by and large, are marketing tools intended to appeal to a wide base that it is assumed has no interest in lasting design or creative integrity. A quick look at the work of Saul Bass will tell us that this wasn't always so. His amazing work on mainstream releases shows us that a cloud of disengaged headshots isn't the only way a poster can communicate the core of a film. "With access to so much imagery and visual stimuli now (more than ever), how have we become so visually illiterate that only a roughly assembled photograph of the cast reassures us we are going to be entertained? Perhaps the cult of celebrity and the selfie have crushed the soul out of mainstream cinema posters. I hope not.” Alternative routes Gibley argues that it’s not all bad though. With an increase in alternative movie poster design (see the likes of Olly Moss and Mondo), studios have clocked on to the fact that this type of aesthetic can give their movie an edge (and allow them to sell a bunch of prints). Moonlight, The Lobster and Green Room are all examples of studios producing interesting, timeless pieces, giving hope that there are still decent mainstream movie posters out there. "It feels like overall, decent movie posters are actually becoming more common, even if they’re being done in parallel to the main campaigns,” Gibley says. Alternative approaches stand out even more in the current marketHe points out that, although it's a shame not many actual campaign posters are being assigned to individual artists and designers, it's exciting to see alternative interpretations being shared on social media or given away at IMAX screenings. On top of that, many older movies are getting new artwork when they are re-released on Blu-ray. "Whilst that Spider-man one stands out for being particularly terrible, hopefully the negative reaction will actually keep moving us onwards,” he adds. Related articles: 5 outrageous product placements in movies Are these vintage concept movie posters better than the originals? The top 25 movie posters of all time View the full article

This month Brad Frost unveils his guide to making a successful style guide, presentation tool LiveSlides is getting a lot of attention, and Google releases Material Components, which make it easier to implement Material Design. 01. Style Guide Guide Brad Frost’s advice on building great style guidesThere are lots of reasons why creating a style guide will make your site easier to maintain, but lots of organisations get it wrong and the style guide turns out to be more of a hindrance than a help. Style Guide Guide is a boilerplate by Brad Frost combined with some great advice that will help you build a guide that will aid designers without restricting their creativity. 02. LiveSlides If you make presentations, definitely give LiveSlides a lookJazz up your presentations with LiveSlides, which enables you to embed websites in PowerPoint and Keynote slides so you can include things like YouTube videos and live Twitter feeds, as well as your own sites. 03. Mini.css An ultra-lightweight yet capable frameworkAs the name suggests, file size is one of the main selling points of this framework, which weighs in at under 7MB gzipped. It’s just one CSS file, and packs more functionality into that space than you might expect, with modules that will support a fairly complex site design. The documentation is detailed, and it is designed to work well on both mobile and desktop platforms. 04. Mirr.io Get your Sketch prototypes up and running with easeThis handy Mac app enables you to make working prototypes out of your Sketch designs without needing to leave the program or fiddle around with exporting things to external tools. It’s a smooth process that’s quick to learn, so you can get your prototype online and ready to share without any fuss. 05. Gradient Buttons Satisfying gradient hover effectsHere’s a large free collection of gradient buttons that have cool hover effects. You can try them out on the site and copy the CSS code to use on your own site. 06. Learn CSS Grid Get working with CSS Grid the easy wayIt’s well worth your time and effort to get to grips with Grid as it’s a much more efficient way to do layouts. This resource lays out the principles simply and clearly so you can jam them into your brain swiftly and with minimal resistance. 07. Fontjoy Interesting font pairings for your inspirationThis tool uses machine learning to generate font pairings that adhere to various criteria that ought to make them look good. It’s a great way to brainstorm if you’re stuck as it’s sure to throw some interesting ideas your way. 08. Material Components Pixel-perfect, modular components maintained by GoogleMaterial Components is a set of customisable UI components for Android, iOS and the web that makes it easy for you to implement Material Design on any platform. They’re maintained by Google engineers and designed to play well with the big frameworks such as React and Angular. 09. Fuse A UX design toolkit that improves workflow and collaborationFuse is a UX toolkit designed to make it much quicker and easier for you to build iOS and Android interfaces, especially for more complex applications, and to do so in a way that enables you to collaborate more efficiently with the dev team. Your Android and iOS interfaces appear side-by-side so you can adjust them together, and they’re generated from a shared codebase. 10. Ambiance colour palettes Randomly generated colour palettesAmbiance presents a curated collection of colour palettes for you to browse through when you’re stuck for ideas or inspiration, with fun names such as Token Movie Vixen and Nice Ice. You can save palettes to your Ambience Box for later, and copy colours' HEX, RGB and HSL information. Liked this? Then read these: 23 top Sketch plugins 7 tips to manage colour better on the web 12 must-have code testing tools View the full article

The SMBv1 file-sharing protocol abused by the NSA’s EternalBlue exploit to spread WannaCry ransomware is being disabled in the upcoming Windows Fall Creators Update, or Redstone 3. View the full article

Building apps can be difficult, especially if you're not familiar with the coding languages that make those apps tick. Learn how to build great apps, even if you haven't mastered the technical side, with the Code-Free App Building Suite. It's on sale now for 95% off the retail price. With the Code-Free App Bundle, you can learn how to bring your apps to life quickly and easily. This three-course bundle is aimed at those who don't know how to code but still love the idea of building services for mobile. You'll learn how to craft: marketplaces to sell products; referral systems to get more visitors and users; and payment systems so you can monetise it all. Start building the apps you've always dreamed of with the Code-Free App Building Suite. You can get it right now for 95% off the retail price. That's a massive saving for a bundle that will get your apps to the top of the App Store, so grab this deal today! View the full article

The fun thing about drawing ghosts is getting to play with supernatural light sources and ambiance in your scene. This is particularly true of any painting set in a tomb, cave or other dark environment. When considering how to draw a ghost rising from a tomb, you want to try to light the tomb or effigy as if it's the ghost itself that's illuminating the stone. Follow these simple steps to draw a convincing ghost. 01. Sketch your composition Posture can help express your character's personalityFirst I sketch out my composition. The posture of your figure helps to express their personality or intentions. One trick to creating undead characters is to make them lumbering or hunched, but here I decided to show my ghost pulling a ghostly sword from its effigy. Storytelling can be key to selling a character. 02. Use a limited palette A dark tomb with a cool colour palette will give a ghostly vibe Try to light the tomb or effigy as if it's the ghost itself that's illuminating the stone. With this in mind, choose a cool colour such as green or aqua for your source light. The dark tomb will accentuate the spectral glow of your ghost. When blocking in your painting, use a limited palette, focusing on saturation and value to define your shapes. This will help tie your picture together and make it look like your character is the solitary glowing light source in the scene. 03. Use brushes to create atmosphere The next stage is to add tendrils of colour trailing from your ghostly figure to the stone effigy on top of the tomb, paying careful attention to the way that you place your brushstrokes. Try to always use your brush in the same direction that your ghost or object is moving, because this will make the motion in your image much more convincing. I'd advise selecting a Soft brush or the Smudge tool to gently soften the edges of your ghostly figure to make them appear incorporeal. Careful use of the Motion Blur filter can also enhance this supernatural effect. 04. Direct your viewer's eye Control your brushstrokes to direct the viewer's eye Use contrast and control the direction of your brushstrokes to direct your viewer's eye. This will aid storytelling and create a focal point. I push the hues of the image further towards blue to identify 
the sword as the key point in the story. As a final touch you can use a large cloud brush to add an ambient fog to your scene. If you set your layer mode to Color Dodge it'll immediately become more ethereal. I recommend playing with the Layer Opacity to find the best blend. Like this? Read these! How to get started with ink drawing Get the best free vector art for your projects Want print perfection? Get these InDesign tutorials View the full article

Anton & Irene will be at Generate London on 20-22 September, where they will share their experience on how to successfully have a good work/life balance while producing creative work for both. Anton Repponen and Irene Pereyra first met while working as agency directors at Fantasy. Soon, it became clear they weren’t doing as much design work as they’d like, so in 2014 they took the plunge and founded Anton & Irene. The studio immediately started making waves in the industry, snagging Karim Rashid as its first client and picking up net’s New Agency of the Year award (watch their awesome acceptance video). We chatted to the duo about their extraordinary pitching success rate, and why there’s really no need for user research. Anton & Irene say working together is almost like a marriageYou went from being agency directors to designers. Why the move? AR: We became directors quite quickly at the very beginning of our careers, and it was definitely not something we had planned on. After a couple of years ‘on the job’ we realised the things we enjoyed doing most were the things that had nothing to do with being directors. There are a lot of things that start to eat up your time, like the performance reviews of your designers, and discussions about finances and business strategies, and you end up doing less and less actual design work. IP: We definitely learned a lot from all of these extra-curricular director activities, but we wanted to make sure we kept designing and didn’t become the kind of directors that just point at other people to do stuff. That works really well for some people, of course, but for us it was like dying a slow death. We like making things. We like working on stuff ourselves, and the only way to keep doing that was to start our own studio. At larger agencies you get promoted away from the things you are best at, but as an independent design studio, we could ensure we would always be the primary designers. Anton & Irene will present a talk and also run a full-day workshop at Generate London in September What was your experience like when you launched Anton & Irene? AR: We were very lucky that it was quite easy. By the time we started our studio we were already known as designers and were associated with some pretty successful projects. We’ve worked with a ton of people over the past seven years at companies like Google and Microsoft, and a lot of designers who worked for us in the past are now at places like Apple, Spotify and Facebook. Our network is quite large – it wasn’t like we just came out of nowhere. If we had started our own agency earlier, we would have had a very different experience I think. It was good timing. What advice would you give to others setting up an agency? IP: You have to be very sure about who you go into business with, because at the end of the day, a business is basically the same as a marriage. It’s very important to be aligned on very many different levels because there is a high chance for irritations to build up if you aren’t. Anton and I both have a similar outlook about to what extent we will let money make decisions for us (as little as possible), how many hours we want to work (from 9am to 6pm every day, and never on the weekends), and what kinds of work we want to take on (interesting work that will challenge our skillsets). You might think that these things go without saying, but you’d be surprised by how often that can go wrong. Anton & Irene's first ever client project was to redesign the website for iconic product designer Karim RashidCan you tell us about your process working with Karim Rashid? IP: Believe it or not, the Karim Rashid project was quite possibly the easiest one in our careers. Initially we were actually quite apprehensive about taking on the project, since we thought it would be impossible to design for a designer. Especially for one as prolific and influential as Karim Rashid. We were worried that he would end up ‘directing’ the project, which would have been a total nightmare. The only reason we decided to move forward with the project was because we had worked with Alexander Wang on the redesign of Balenciaga.com the year before, and he respected our expertise as digital designers and never crossed into our domain. As soon as we met with Karim and his team we knew it was going to be a good working relationship. We liked them right away. Anton and Irene's incredibly beautiful, sunny loft studio space in BrooklynYou’ve said that you ‘don’t do user research’. Is this still the case? IP: Yes, that’s true. It’s just not part of our process. Although we sometimes get vilified by other UX designers for not doing it, we refuse to do research just because other people feel that it’s something you have to do. Everyone has their own way of coming to a solution, and user research is just one way. Does this ever cause difficulties with your clients? IP: It’s actually never affected any of our pitches or work with clients, and very rarely have clients insisted on user research. In those cases we asked them to hire an outside company to conduct the user research, and then together with the client we’d decide on what we wanted to action from it. Though in reality nothing surprising ever came out of it. It’s funny how dogmatic the UX field has become, with so many rules on process and things. I really dislike that. How important is UX to you? What makes a good user experience? IP: Wow, this is a massive topic we could discuss for hours. A good user experience is everything, of course. Everything. You want things to make sense and to be designed around the person who will be using it. However, I do find it interesting how so many things have become boring and visually uninteresting under the flag of ‘good user experience’. Maybe it’s OK for some products to be hard to use, or difficult to figure out. Maybe your mom shouldn’t always be able to use it. Think of Snapchat. Good UX still means many different things to many different people, and even people within the UX community are still arguing about UX versus UI and what it all means. I find these discussions kind of uninteresting to be very honest. Stuff is either good or it’s not. You can call it whatever you want and get there with whichever means you need to. Anton & Irene did this portrait for the book celebrating the 15th anniversary of the OFF festival. It's also on their site's 404 page Can you tell us about some work which initially didn’t go down well with the client, and how you bounced back? IP: When we were working on the redesign of USAToday.com back in 2012, we almost got fired when the client didn’t like the creative work that came out of the three-month discovery phase. They basically threatened to fire us if we didn’t come up with something better by Monday. It was Thursday. We had three days to come up with a totally new and different framework, and through some sort of miracle we managed to get something that was really, really good. By the time they saw it on Monday we had won back all the respect needed to keep the job, and to maintain a good relationship with the client. We realised our mistake was that we did not include them enough in our working process, and that they would have been able to pull the handbrake much earlier on if we had shown them stuff sooner. Ever since then, we’ve stopped doing ‘grand reveal’ presentations and show our work-in-progress almost on a daily basis. Better safe than sorry! You state you’ve won 84 per cent of your pitches – what’s your secret? AR: We learned by making mistakes. Every time we lost a pitch, we would request a call with the client to ask where we went wrong and why they didn’t choose us. It’s amazing what you can learn from that. It’s important to be 100 per cent dedicated to the pitch for the entirety of the time that you are working on it. It’s also important to show the client at least two different concepts, and you should always present in person. Most importantly, you have to sell yourself and your process. They basically have to look at your presentation and if your concept doesn’t match their needs, they should think to themselves ‘but we can work with these guys if we let them know what we’re thinking’. It’s all about building that trust and understanding right from the beginning. Every item in Anton & Irene's studio was hand-picked and has some kind of story behind itHow do you stay excited about design, and beat creative block? IP: To be very honest, I am really unaware of trends and what is happening in our field currently, and I kind of like it that way. I think I am afraid that if I get too wrapped up in what is happening out there I will inadvertently start copying stuff. The things that inspire me are kind of random. I like good stories. I like weird facts. I like stats. I like history. I like finding things that other people walk past. I like unusual people and unusual situations. I like making things make sense. I like taking a massive amount of stuff or information and sifting through it to see categories and similarities. I like fixing things that are broken. I like putting things in order. I like things to be neat and organised... AR: I somehow stopped looking at other things that happen in digital a long time ago. Most of the books I read aren’t industry books, I read both fiction and non-fiction – that inspires me much more. If I read blogs or any other online publications they tend to be about photography, video, industrial design, art, fashion or architecture. I am trying to get inspired by other industries and borrow something from there to bring into my work. Creative block is a myth. Anton & Irene will also run their popular Concept, Create, and Sell! workshop at Generate London, in which you'll learn how to quickly come up with a concept and solution to a client brief and create a convincing presentation that sells your idea either to your internal team or the client within just a couple of hours. Reserve your spot today and save £95 with a combined conference and workshop pass. Generate London will feature 15 other presentation from the likes of Steve Fisher, Zell Liew, Leonie Watson, Jaime Levy and many others. Topics covered include UX strategy, performance, web animations, conversational UIs, responsive CSS components and much, much more. Don't miss it! The article originally appeared in issue 274 of net magazine. Related articles: 10 great examples of web design portfolios for 2017 13 great tools for pitching to clients 20 ways to overcome creative block View the full article

"For a character design position, I look at their drawing, painting, and design skills, and for a variety of styles," says Aaron BlaiseIt doesn't matter how talented an animator you are. If you don't have a killer portfolio to showcase your skills, that job you've dreamed of is unlikely to materialise. So what's the secret to success? We asked leading animators to share their pro tips on portfolio strategy. Whether you want your digital portfolio to work harder or to make your showreel sing, there are some best practice tips that can be applied, whatever field you're targeting. 01. Target your audience Golden rule one: know your audience. Who is your portfolio or showreel aimed at, and what do prospective employers, viewers or visitors want to see? "Whether you're applying to a games studio, effects studio or a character animation studio, you have to tailor your portfolio to the studio you're applying to and the type of work you aspire to do," says Andrew Gordon, a directing animator at Pixar, who's worked on everything from A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 3 to Pixar's Academy Award-nominated short film Presto. Oscar-nominated animator Aaron Blaise agrees: "Know who you're interviewing with," he advises. "If I were looking to get hired at Disney, I wouldn't show them a reel of Simpsons animation, and vice versa. And if you don't have the type of work you think a studio is looking for, then it would be in your best interest to do a shot or two in that studio's particular style." 02. Hook your viewer Park City (Wasatch) is one of a number of images in Ty Carter's portfolio that shows his understanding of design and colour"Keep in mind that we have seconds to evaluate your work," explains Disney in its exceptionally helpful portfolio and showreel application guidelines. That means putting your best work first and closing strong, as Pixar's Gordon explains: "Realise that people will fast-forward through your work. If they don't see something really quickly, they'll turn off." It also means being original. How? By injecting personality into your portfolio. "Good character animation is the art of bringing characters to life – not moving them around," points out Blaise. He's currently working on an original 2D animated short film, Snow Bear, with business partner Nick Burch, and urges animators not to sacrifice personality by focusing solely on movement and mechanics. "Often a shot requires little to no movement to get an emotion across," he says. "It can be just a look, an eye movement, a blink. I also advise animators to include performances where there's a change of emotion or idea: angry to happy or fearful to brave. That's when it becomes real and the viewer is pulled in." 03. Show your skillset "Game animation is competitive," says Jonathan Cooper, who worked on Uncharted 4. "Even veterans need to keep pushing the quality bar to get that ideal job."When it comes to specific skill sets, different disciplines require different portfolios. For Gordon, who specialises in character animation, this means showing an understanding of the 12 principles of animation – squash, stretch and so on. For Naughty Dog video games animator Jonathan Cooper, however, this means showing actions and a relevant style. Cooper is the brains behind video animation website Game Anim. He's currently working on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and says that for the games he makes, he wants to see navigation around a complex environment, including jumping, climbing and vaulting, one-on-one-combat, walk and run cycles, and so on. "Dialogue and acting scenes are a huge bonus as we're always blurring the lines between gameplay and cinematic storytelling, and game animators are typically expected to at least have a hand in both aspects on the job," he says, adding that camera work also helps you stand out. 04. Present a fresh demo reel As Cooper explains, it's essential to have an up-to-date demo reel to keep up with the fast-paced games industry. "A personal website is the easiest to share with the studio involved in hiring, but a link to your latest reel in your resume is enough," he says. "I prefer Vimeo to YouTube, because of the final render quality and overall cleanliness of the site," he continues. "And ArtStation is fast becoming the standard for pre-made portfolios. But I recommend adding your reel everywhere – even LinkedIn. As for a physical portfolio, I don't think I've seen one in years." Lisa Allen, an animator at Blue Sky Studios and recent portfolio reviewer at November's CTN animation expo, echoes the sentiment: "Your showreel is really the only part of your portfolio that matters for getting a job as an animator. "Ideally, the pieces in your showreel demonstrate your eye for acting, posing, design and composition. If you've done work in any other categories like life drawing, or illustration, that's great – but keep them in a separate part of your portfolio website instead. Also, less is more. For me, the perfect reel is between three and five clips and around a minute long." 05. Create one major focus "At Blue Sky we look for animation with entertainment through character and personality," says Lisa Allen, who worked on The Peanuts MovieAnother golden rule for a successful portfolio is to create a clear focus. If you're showcasing a number of core abilities, make sure the direction in which you want to take your career is clearly presented. "Successful portfolios are specific, organised and contain original ideas," says Blue Sky Studios visual development artist Ty Carter. His film credits include Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, Epic, and The Peanuts Movie, and he shares all kinds of useful tutorials and teachings on his Patreon page. "It's good to see one major focus like character design, set design or colour. If you do each of these at a high level it doesn't hurt to show them all, but be careful not to include too much. What's most important is showing you're a creative problem solver. Ask yourself, what do you bring to the table that nobody else can do? Is your own life experience reflected in your art? If not, how can you do that?" 06. Entertain your audience Most importantly, it's about storytelling. "Don't fall into the trap of being a shot animator," warns Gordon. "People don't just want to see great animation: they want to see if you can tell a story. You have to put together the pieces so that you're showing you understand cutting, continuity and staging. You don't need complex rigs to get noticed. Just great ideas." "At Disney we would talk about portfolios that stuck out," agrees Blaise, "and they stuck out because the work was consistently entertaining throughout. We are in the business of entertainment," he smiles. "I want your portfolio to entertain me." This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 145; buy it here! Related articles: 8 big portfolio trends for 2017 Create a killer online portfolio in 10 steps 6 free resources to improve your portfolio View the full article

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Edvard Munch was a Norwegian expressionist painter, best known for his masterpiece The Scream. Now digital creatives can get a taste of his genius with seven specially created Photoshop brushes based on Munch’s own paintbrushes. The free Photoshop brushes are based on those used centuries ago by Munch himselfThe project, part of the Hidden Treasures of Creativity initiative, saw Adobe collaborating with The Munch Museum in Oslo and award-winning Photoshop brush maker Kyle T Webster to bring Munch’s original, century-old brushes to a completely new generation of creatives. Creative Cloud users can download them for free here. To give you a taste of what you can create, Adobe has also put together a series of video masterclasses to help you hone your expert brush skills. Take a look at the first one below. Watch the rest on the Adobe Creative Cloud YouTube channel or join in with Adobe’s livestreaming event – part of its Adobelive series – to paint along with Photoshop professionals. There will be sessions taking place daily on 20, 21 and 22 June at 3pm (BST), and you can sign up here. View the full article

Sometimes you just need to know how to sell people on an idea. Marketing skills are applicable to just about any industry, and you can learn how to apply them to the online world with the Digital Marketing Guru Bundle, on sale now for 98% off the retail price. Being successful requires some luck, but even more know-how. In order to optimise everything about your website and grow your online presence bigger than you could have ever imagined, you need the Digital Marketing Guru Bundle. This four-course collection will show you how the technical side of web design – from programming to analytics – can help you monetise your site, land more customers, and make more money. You can improve your website and brand with the Digital Marketing Guru Bundle right now for 98% off the retail price. That's a huge saving for a bundle that will help make you money, so grab this deal today! View the full article