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UX strategy is a process that should be started before the design or development of a digital product commences. It is a practice that when done empirically is a better guarantee of a successful digital product than just crossing your fingers, designing some wireframes, and then writing a bunch of code. It's the method by which you validate that your solution actually solves a problem for real customers in a dynamic marketplace.
Jaime Levy, author of the top-selling O'Reilly Media book UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want, will host a workshop at Generate London on 20 September that will dive deep into UX strategy with both lectures and hands-on exercises.
You will learn...
- Why an empirical practice of user experience strategy is crucial for devising successful online products
- How to identify and validate your target users through provisional personas and customer discovery techniques
- How to conduct competitive research and analysis to explore a crowded marketplace or an opportunity to create unique value
- How to use storyboarding for creating a narrative that focuses on a product's value innovation and business model
The workshop is suited to UX/UI practitioners of any level, product teams and managers, business executives, and startup founders who want to learn how to be more strategically sound in their process.
Workshop participants using the Business Model Canvas
Other Generate London workshops feature Steve Fisher on running design and content sprints, Anton & Irene on idea generation and the selling of the idea, and Zell Liew on building scalable responsive components. The events will also cover adaptive interfaces, web animations, performance, accessibility, chatbots, better teamwork, and much more.
Don't miss it! If you buy a combined workshop and conference pass for Generate London, you will save £95!
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You're reading Web Design Usability Tips For Billing Forms, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+!
Each ecommerce site has its own checkout flow moving the user from a shopping cart to the final purchase. This differs based on what the user is buying and their intentions, but finalizing payment is always the toughest part. Your billing fields need to really keep visitors engaged and encourage them to complete the checkout process. I’d […]
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Anything you can possibly imagine can be realised in a video game, thanks to advances in technology. So why dedicate all your time to simply replicating the designs and patterns that we're used to in reality?
Instead, the designers who get it right play to the strengths of the medium, by creating games that are visually striking and artistically inspiring. Here, we pick our 20 favourite designs in games history and grab some leading games designer views on these stunning elements – from chilling character costumes to outrageous environments.
01. The hood – Assassin's Creed
Assassins Creed Hood
The stories of the Assassin's Creed heroes are separated by hundreds of years, but there's one stylish visual hallmark that ties them together: the hood.
Fashion may change over the centuries, but hoods will always be around in some form, which makes Ubisoft's decision to incorporate it into their costume designs a stroke of genius. It never looks out of place or anachronistic, whether you're in the 12th Century Middle East, or the modern day United States.
It also makes sense in the context of the game, as the secretive Assassins use it to conceal their identity. Each character has their own distinct costume – from Altar's simple white robes, to Ezio's elaborate renaissance garb – but the hood is always at the centre of the design, linking them in a subtle, stylish, and visual way. Not only does it look cool, but it makes sense for the characters, and the eras they live in.
Assassin's Creed designer view
David 'Vyle' Levy, concept artist on Assassin's Creed, says: "This was probably one of the most challenging projects I've ever worked on, especially regarding the balance between fantasy and hyperrealism. The difficult balance the team was trying to reach was one of a very 'edgy' mix of an ancient culture, depicted with a very modern, graphic, visual language."
02. Master Chief's armour – Halo
Master Chief's Armour: Halo
Hardcore Halo fans know it as the MJOLNIR Powered Assault Suit. For the rest of us it's that awesome green armour that Master Chief wears – the faceless hero of the Halo series.
Halo's world can best be described as 'hard sci-fi'. It's a rugged, believable universe, with two unique sets of designs: the cold, functional vehicles and armour of the humans, and the bright, colourful, otherworldly ships and weapons of the Covenant – which went on to inspire the outlandish weapons in Neill Blomkamp's modern sci-fi classic, District 9.
The armour's eye-catching green colouring has become synonymous with the series. Its functional design fits in with the hard-edged military aesthetic of the game world, and it hides Master Chief's face. Developers Bungie did this on purpose, because they wanted him to be an anonymous cipher for the player: he isn't a character, he's YOU.
Halo designer view
Joe Staten, cinematics director at Bungie, says: "Early on, the team weren't necessarily considering using visual design to make people want to play in the world they were creating. But Master Chief is really what kicked off the creativity. People reacted really well to him."
03. Hengsha – Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Human Revolution has a bold, distinctive art style
Human Revolution has a bold, distinctive art style. Its 'near future' setting is incredibly evocative, riffing on films like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner, but at the same time carving its own identity. It's one of a few modern, big budget games that you can recognise instantly from just glancing at a screenshot.
The Chinese island of Hengsha is the best example of its dramatic vision of the future. It's an enormous two-level city that separates the poor in the lower levels, and the wealthy in the gleaming towers on top. It sounds absurd, but it's based it on a real proposed design.
It feels futuristic, but is still grounded in reality. The concept artists, and lead designer Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, weren't just inspired by other games; it was modern industrial design, fashion, and architecture they looked at first. Over 1,400 individual objects were designed to 'clutter' the levels and make them seem lived in, as well as hundreds of brand logos to give the world depth and credibility. Few games are as immersive, and that's why it works.
Deus Ex designer view
Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, art director at Eidos Montral, says: "Our goal with Human Revolution was to give it its own distinctive aesthetic flair. Not only did I want the game to look different and singular from other futuristic games, but I planned to steer away from the '80s concept of science fiction that we've been circularly perpetuating in our industry. I find it fascinating that a lot of the futuristic designs in games are aesthetically outdated. We tried to apply modern design theories to the game's visual design."
04. The Colossi – Shadow of the Colossus
The Colossi's eyes look into your soul
Team Ico, the Japanese studio behind Shadow of the Colossus, is famed for its understated and minimalist design style. Its world is sparse, beautiful, and atmospheric, and laced with mystery, as are the beasts that inhabit it.
They look like they've been ripped from the earth; part organic, part man-made. They have fur and leathery skin, but ancient, crumbling ruins jut from their bodies. It's a bizarre, surreal aesthetic, but perhaps the most inspired aspect of their design are the eyes.
There's a grey morality to the game. You have to kill these monsters to bring someone you love back from the dead; a selfish pursuit, and the colossi never attack you first. It's almost as if you're the bad guy. There's a weird sense of guilt as you kill them, which is partly due to the sad, innocent eyes that stare at you as you do it. Team Ico managed to make these creatures both intimidating and sympathetic, all through their appearance.
Shadow of the Colossus designer views
3D artist, and co-owner of CG production studio MDI-Digital, AJ Jefferies, says: "Each of the game's 12 colossi has a distinct, individual design. I love that their structure is directly tied to the landscape and architecture in which you find them. The broken stone and shaggy scruffs of fur that cover their bodies let you know that these creatures are ancient. It's as if the sparse landscape you've been travelling through has ripped a chunk from itself and decided to go for a walk. They truly feel part of the world they live in."
Gary J Lucken, pixel artist at Army of Trolls, says: "One of my favourite games of all time. I love the design as a whole, but the creatures are amazingly well crafted. They have a sadness about them. It feels a bit like taking down The Iron Giant."
05. Metal Gear RAY – Metal Gear Solid
Metal gear RAY looks more creature than machine
Illustrator Yoji Shinkawa has been the lead concept artist on the Metal Gear Solid series since the very first game. His designs are created in the form of elegant, expressive pencil sketches, then translated to the game by Hideo Kojima's team of digital artists.
Mechanical design is something he excels at, and Metal Gear RAY – an amphibious bipedal tank – is one of his most memorable creations. While robots in Western media are square and clunky, Japan favours more organic designs; the kind seen in classic anime. RAY is a machine, but looks like a sea creature, reflecting its ability to move around underwater.
Adapting in-game models from Shinkawa's graceful hand-drawn sketches gives the Metal Gear series a classy, stylised edge, like the pages of a manga come to life.
Metal Gear Solid designer view
Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, art director at Eidos Montral, says: "When referencing video game aesthetics, the MGS franchise has been my benchmark since it first came out on the Playstation. In my opinion, it's probably the most visually polished series ever made. The degree to which it makes no compromise to any of its visuals – be it a simple prop or a full fledge main character – is something most video game companies don't even understand.
"I remember when Konami mentioned how much time and energy they spent just to figure out which type of flower they would but in the final battle against The Boss in MGS3. So many people in the industry, developers and journalists alike, just couldn't believe it, just couldn't rationalize or justify putting so much importance on a flower showing up during a final boss fight. But see, that's exactly what it's all about! Visuals in video games aren't just about technical prowess. They are – first and foremost – about communicating ideas, meanings, and emotions. You either understand this or you don't."
06. Aperture Science – Portal
Aperture Science Portal
Nothing else, in any medium, looks like Portal. The Aperture Science Enrichment Centre is the star; an abandoned facility made up of sparse, white testing chambers. You're forced to work your way through them one by one, solving mind-bending, and fiendishly clever, multi-dimensional puzzles.
Instructions are relayed by simple graphics of stick figures, and the objects you use to solve the game's genius conundrums – buttons, switches, cubes – are all boldly designed and instantly recognisable. This visual language becomes intrinsic to the gameplay in a supremely clever marriage of mechanics and design. It's a smart game.
Highlighting the sinister nature of the facility, occasionally the gleaming white walls break away, revealing eerie, unseen areas that are gloomy and rusting, and scrawled with creepy graffiti from previous test subjects. In the second game, set hundreds of years in the future, the place becomes overgrown with thick jungle foliage.
Portal designer view
Kim Swift, level designer on Portal, says: "Originally the environments were complex, but that was the wrong idea for Portal. Because we're introducing a new concept, it was best to keep it bare bones. In one section, all you were supposed to do was put a box on a button and open a door. One player literally spent 30 minutes trying to push a shelf onto the button, meanwhile, the box was sitting right there. That's how the clinical environment design came to be."
07. Rapture – BioShock
Rapture BioShock
Rapture is an underwater city hidden in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. It was built in the '50s as a haven for the world's intellectual elite, but after the discovery of a gene-altering sea slug, things went mental, and the place became infested with crazed 'splicers' and fell into disrepair – which is when you stumble upon it at the beginning of the game.
It's a place frozen in time, and you see the remains of the fallen society all around you. The city tells a story through its superb level design. You see cheery neon signs advertising luxury homes, abandoned shops, and bodies of murdered residents, and learn about the doomed city as you move through its leaky halls. It's a type of interactive visual storytelling unique to games, and BioShock's setting is still unmatched. It feels like a real place.
The optimistic advertising of the '50s has become kitsch, and is routinely abused by ironic greetings cards, but Rapture presents it in a completely new light. There's something fascinatingly macabre about seeing the ruins of a once opulent society, completely destroyed by its own greed and rampant consumerism.
BioShock designer view
Ken Levine, creative director at Irrational Games, says: "I don't think BioShock is competing with films, books, and other media aesthetically. A book is a book, a movie a movie, a game's a game. However, our medium has so much untapped aesthetic capacity. But the 'verbs' of our aesthetics are new and we're just figuring them out."
08. Vault Boy – Fallout
Vault Boy
The designers of Fallout also looked at saccharine '50s adverts to inspire their Vault Boy character. The game imagines a world where the 1950s idea of the future actually happened, and rocket cars, ray guns, and robot butlers were commonplace. But then it all goes wrong, and the world is destroyed by nuclear war, enivitably turning America into a sparce wasteland.
Vault Boy is an advertising mascot for a company called Vault-Tec who, in the game, build atomic shelters. His smiling face jars with the misery of the post-nuclear landscape, and he's also integrated into the game's interface. All of your skills and abilities are represented by a grinning Vault Boy, whether he's firing a bazooka, or chopping someone's head off... naturally.
It's an iconic design, influenced by '50s Americana, and classic icons like the Big Boy Restaurants mascot. It's always aesthetically intriguing to see an idyllic setting gone wrong, and both Fallout and BioShock have made that idea their own.
Fallout designer view
Leonard Boyarsky, art director on Fallout, says: "When I told people about my ideas for the look of the game, they looked at me like I was crazy. Why would we make a post-apocalyptic game look like a cheesy B-movie? Much to Interplay's credit however, even though they thought I was insane, no one said we couldn't do it. So we did. I started pitching the '50s vibe so early that there were really never any other competing art styles considered."
09. The Normandy – Mass Effect
The Normandy
The Mass Effect series is heavily inspired by the classic science fiction films of the 1970s. It's a space opera on par with Star Wars, but its visual design is edgy, hard, and realistic. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, or Alien.
The best example of this is the lead character's flagship, the Normandy. The temptation for a lot of sci-fi designers is to make ships look curvy and overtly futuristic, but the Normandy is functional and low key; just as a military ship would be.
According to the game's mythology, the ship was co-built by humans, and an alien race known as the turians. This is reflected in the design, which has elements of both present day military hardware, and something distinctly not of this world. The interiors were similarly well-designed, and exploring between missions, talking to your crew and learning about the history of the game's rich universe, made the place feel like home.
Mass Effect designer view
Gary J Lucken, pixel artist at Army of Trolls, says: "It's so lovely and slick, and embedded into my memory. It was sad to walk around an empty Normandy in the third game. It was almost like those bits at the end of Big Brother where they play sound clips over an empty house. I could almost hear Mordin's singing, or a fight kicking off after a loyalty mission. It's laid out so well; it's logical, and you remember where things are. The decal design is top notch, and I'm sure it influenced the design of the ship in Prometheus somehow."
10. Squall's gunblade – Final Fantasy VIII
Squall's gunblade
It's a gun, and a blade. It's a gunblade! Square Enix are famed for their ridiculously impractical weapon designs, like Cloud's iconic buster sword, which is twice his size. But it's the gunblade that wins out for us, an engraved sword with a revolver barrel at one end. As hero Squall struck an enemy, it would simultaneously fire a bullet. Obviously.
Square's design ethic, especially in the Final Fantasy series, is being as cool as possible, which results in ludicrous designs like this. That's what defines the series. It's in no way tethered to reality, but still manages to create a compelling universe that you really care about and believe in.
Japanese games are still unmatched when it comes to exaggerated, dramatic visual design, and long-time Square Enix artist Tetsuya Nomura is responsible for the majority of the series' most enduring designs, including this unlikely weapon. Like Metal Gear's Yoji Shinkawa, Nomura's designs are realised as intricate drawings before making it into the game.
Final Fantasy VIII designer view
Yoshinori Kitase, director of Final Fantasy VIII, says: "What I wanted to put in the game was a little reality, and combine it with unreality. By showing it through the eyes of normal people, it makes the game more real. We left Nomura totally in charge of character design. The first illustration for the game was of Squall and his gunblade. We thought about what kind of world this character would exist in, and worked the story out from there."
Next page: 10 more iconic video game designs
11. Project-K – Rez
Project-K: Rez
Rez is set inside a computer being invaded by a virus. This digital world is presented as a series of abstract environments that represent the 'data' of the computer you're in. The minimalist, almost psychedelic, visuals are designed to work in conjuction with the soundtrack, which player's create themselves by interacting with the game.
As the music plays, the world pulses in time with the beat. The enemies you battle make different musical sounds when destroyed, and are visual representations of each instrument. It's a visual type of music creation, and lead designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi wanted players to experience a kind of synesthesia as they played.
Rez designer view
Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Rez creator, says: "I think the goal of the Rez experience is that everything is moving and activating with music, like a MIDI controller. It's like a synthesizer. Not only sounds, but in the visuals it crafts, and the vibrations."
12. The classes – Team Fortress 2
The classes
The first Team Fortress game had no real visual style, but Valve had the inspired idea to make its sequel look visually distinct from other shooters. The result is a cast of characters who look like they've been taken straight out of a Pixar movie.
But it's not just their appearance that makes them superb examples of design: it's their shape. The game is incredibly fast-paced, and the battlefield is often a blur. Because each class serves a specific function – be it healing, repairing, or providing support – and teamplay is important, you have to be able to recognise the players around you.
So by giving each class a unique shape and outline, Valve were able to give players visual cues to make them aware of their surroundings; even in the thick of a frenzied battle. Normally proportioned soldiers wouldn't work, so the exaggerated cartoon art style is a perfect blend of form and function – and looks really cool to boot.
Team Fortress 2 designer view
Charlie Brown, software developer at Valve, says: "It was the gameplay that dictated the style. Team Fortress has a variety of weapons that aren't even realistic, the physics forces are really high, so that humor content gets ratcheted up, and so we decided instead of fighting that with something realistic to do something a lot more stylised and fun and inviting."
13. The dolls – Stacking
The dolls
Double Fine artist Lee Petty dreamed up the bizarre world of Stacking. Its imagery is based on silent films of the '20s as well as the Victorian and depression eras of history, but the world is inhabited, strangely, by living Russian dolls. You have to solve puzzles in the game by 'stacking' different dolls on top of one another.
The dolls were chosen because people would see them and instantly understand how the game works. This would give the game appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike, something Double Fine excel at. It was also convenient from a gameplay perspetive, as the dolls could serve multiple functions, as both characters, and the player's inventory.
Petty came upon the idea when he saw his daughter playing with a set of Matryoshka dolls. The game was released via digital distribution; a platform that's less risky for publishers, meaning they're able to let developers make more conceptually and artistically interesting games. Stacking would never have been the same or even made if it were a boxed off-the-shelf title.
Stacking designer view
Lee Petty, project lead on Stacking, says: "When I set out to design Stacking, I knew that I wanted to make a contemporary version of the classic adventure game. I was looking for a way to distill the adventure game experience down to a more approachable, compact experience without losing the charm and character driven story telling of the classic adventure games.
"At the same time, I saw my daughter playing with a set of matryoshkas, and I realized that they would be a perfect way to create a new game mechanic, condense the experience, and add a unique personality to the game. The matryoshaka dolls became the verbs, the inventory, and the characters that the player interacts with to solve puzzles."
14. The Land of the Dead – Grim Fandango
The land of the dead
The design team behind LucasArts' legendary adventure, Grim Fandango, brought together two art styles – film noir, and Aztec culture – and fused them together. This might sound like it would be jarring, but it worked superbly well.
Based on the imagery of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday where people pay tribute to deceased friends and relatives, the game is set in the afterlife. Here, people are either fast-tracked to heaven, or have to spend years in the Land of the Dead (a kind of purgatory), working to pay their way to eternal happiness.
So while it's a fantastical world, it's also grounded in reality, full of depressed office workers going about their daily routine, trying to pay off their life debt. The story is a classic noir mystery, with seedy detectives, sleazy jazz music, and dames in distress, but the Latin American influence gives it an idiosyncratic feel.
Grim Fandango designer view
3D artist and co-owner of CG production studio MDI-Digital, AJ Jefferies, says: "This world shouldn't work. Somehow the designers have managed to take the disparate aesthetics of ancient Aztec architecture and 1920s art deco and blend them into a cohesive, functioning universe. Why it works so well, and why I adore the game, is that it's a fusion of the surreal and the mundane. While there are elements of the fantastic, they are handled in such a way that it never pulls you too far out of the universe."
15. Nippon – Okami
Nippon: Okami
Inspired by traditional Japanese watercolour and wood carving art, Nippon is one of the most beautiful video game worlds we've ever inhabited. This 'sumi-e' style made the game look like an ink wash painting come to life, and painting is actually incorporated into the gameplay: you damage enemies by 'drawing' the attacks with a magic brush, which is a nice touch.
The idea of the game was to restore nature to the world. When you first visit an environment, the world is covered in a dark soup of ink. But as the hero, Amaterasu, runs through the world, colour is restored. It's as if she's painting the environment; again, tying the visuals into the gameplay. The result is an imaginative, visually striking game.
Sadly, despite rave reviews, Okami's visuals were too alienating for the mainstream gaming audience, and its sales failure resulted in the developers, Clover, being shut down. This is an all too common occurence in the games industry, which makes developers less inclined to give their projects unusual visual styles. We see more and more dull, brown military shooters, while games like Okami become an endangered species.
Okami designer view
Atsushi Inaba, producer on Okami, says: "Once we fixed ourselves on a graphical style and got down to the brushwork, we thought 'Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get the player involved and participate in this artwork instead of just watching it?' That's how the idea of the Celestial Brush was born."
16. The Combine – Half-Life 2
The Combine themselves all look different
The Combine is a ruthless alien race that has come to Earth to bleed it of its natural resources. In Half-Life 2's levels, you see their machines literally 'eating' the unnamed Eastern European city it's set in. Black, angular, metallic structures stick out of buildings, grinding and whirring as they devour the environment around them.
This clash of spartan, functional Eastern Bloc architecture and abstract alien machinery makes the dystopian setting feel oppressive and uneasy. The Combine themselves all look different, as, according to the story, they're enslaved members of a variety of different alien species. Their designs are just as menacing as their monstrous technology.
Alien invaders are almost always based on Hollywood films, which makes them feel familiar, and not very interesting. Half-Life 2 art director Viktor Antonov instead dreamed up something totally unique, and it makes them feel genuinely intimidating.
Half-Life 2 designer view
Viktor Antonov, art director on Half-Life 2, says: "I started as a conceptual designer and just doing drawings, but the designs I received were not quite what I wanted. So I went to the team and literally sat behind the model makers and engineers and explained to them what I wanted from the art and design, and my ideas were finally realised in the final product. City 17 has many symbolic elements. The feeling is of an occupied city – in this case, The Combine. It also has allusions to communism, globalisation, and a hint of fascism."
17. Link's shield – The Legend of Zelda
The green tunic, cap and shield have become modern pop culture icons
In each Zelda game, the Link you play as is a different character. But like in the Assassin's Creed series, it's the costume that connects them. The green tunic, cap, and shield have become not just video game icons, but modern pop culture ones too.
The design is always slightly different, but there are a few constants: the bold blue colouring, the triangular yellow 'Triforce', a story element that is threaded through each game, and the stylised silhouette of a bird is also apparant.
Link's outfit is arguably as recognisable as Sonic the Hedgehog, or Super Mario, and just as culturally significant in the world of video games. Even though the character has developed, and the textures have become more realistic, the shield is always recognisable, and has been largely the same since the first game was released in the late 1980s, much to gamers' delight.
The Legend of Zelda designer view
Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of The Legend of Zelda, says: "Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro impressed me with what they did with the style. That's something I like to look at, to see something within an existing media that is creative and different. That's what we try to do with the design of our games, to take something people have seen and try to do something new with it. It's when you're really able to do something revolutionary within a media that's existed for some time that I think you're able to startle people."
18. The ships – WipEout
The ships of WipEout
Developed by Psygnosis, in collaboration with The Designers Republic, WipEout was aimed at the trendy, club-going youth of the mid '90s. It had a cutting edge art style, that still stands up today, and a 'banging' soundtrack by acts including The Chemical Brothers. The visuals perfectly captured the cultural zeitgeist of that era.
Inspired by Nintendo racers like F-Zero and Mario Kart, the team wanted to make a fast-paced racing game with a distinct visual style. The result were the anti-grav ships that are still featured in the series today. As a testament to the quality of their design, they've barely changed since 1995, and still look notably futuristic.
After the success of WipEout, The Designers Republic enjoyed over 10 years of success, working with respected electronica record label Warp, and various other companies. They sadly closed their doors in 2009. More developers are hiring external artists to design certain elements of their games, be it visuals, or music. It's a smart way of bringing an original feel to a project that isn't used nearly enough.
WipEout designer view
Ian Anderson, founder of The Designers Republic, says: "With WipEout we were already given a target market, so we were playing the consumerist game. But the fun part was that we had a choice of deliberately going for them, or deliberately trying to alienate them."
19. The city – Mirror's Edge
The city of Mirror's Edge
Dystopian cities are usually bleak, rain-soaked places, but Mirror's Edge is the exact opposite. The city, which is never named, is a gleaming urban paradise. Clean, bright, and safe. Or at least, that's what its brainwashed citizens think.
The game sees you playing as Faith, a courier and free-runner who's rebelling against the city's tyrannical rulers. The stark primary colours and hard lines of the city actually figure into the gameplay. As you dash across the rooftops, certain parts of the scenery are coloured and stand out from the cold whiteness of the city, letting you know you're able to use them to climb on. It's all about finding the perfect 'line' through the city's architecture.
While the textures are detailed and the city looks realistic, the vivid contrast of colours makes it feel more like a comic book. The designers at DICE took a common setting – a modern cityscape – and made it feel completely original through strong visual design.
Mirror's Edge designer view
Manuel Llines, producer on Mirror's Edge, says: "The art and gameplay came together a lot. We needed an environment that was easy to read, we needed a story that was believable. I think believability is the key word with this game. The city is contemporary: we had inspirations like Dubai and New York and Tokyo – all sorts of places. And yes it's a futuristic society but it's not Orwell, it's not 1984. It's a city where people are happy."
20. Sackboy – LittleBigPlanet
Sackboy is a canvas for the player's imagination.
LBP is a game built around creativity. Using an imaginative and complex toolkit, you can make anything from games and movies, to interactive art exhibits. To reflect this idea of freedom and creation, developers Media Molecule created a mascot that was, essentially, a blank slate. Sackboy is a canvas for the player's imagination.
When you start the game he's completely featureless; a smiling ball of burlap material with a chunky zipper running down his middle. But then you can go in stick things on him, dress him up, change his material, and generally make your mark. It's a good example of character design directly complementing gameplay.
LittleBigPlanet designer view
Kareem Ettouney, designer at Media Molecule, says: "We came up with a crazy concept. Maybe the place where you go to create stuff in the game is actually in yourself. Let's put this zip on Sackboy, and when he opens the zip, folds in on himself and goes and creates inside himself. Because creativity and ideas are all inside you!"
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We've all been faced with egregious examples of UI design at times. They're infuriating if you actually have to deal with them. But if they're not actively preventing you from doing something they can be entertaining, and can even provide useful tips on how not to do things.
So, what happens when coders and designers deliberately set out to create staggeringly bad UI? Well, that's exactly what's been happening recently over on Reddit.
It started with an innocent enough post in r/ProgrammerHumor, asking, "Who can make the best volume slider?" and accompanied by this fantastic GIF:
Oh. Oh my word. Who could possibly top this?
This being the internet, things got swiftly out of hand, as this cavalcade of crimes against usability will attest.
'Hold my beer'
Actual genius
Actually, yeah, why not?
There's probably a 'dicey' pun in this one
Fun for all the family
Literally pumping up the volume
10/10, would definitely use
It's the bad colour choice that really make this one pop
But what if you want a volume of more than 90?
Not content with merely creating images and animated GIFs, someone's even gone to the trouble of making a (sort of) working version of one of our favourites – click and hold the speaker icon to play.
Brilliant. If you're after some excellent tips on how not to do UI, or just want to see more usability hilarity, head over to r/Programmers, where the dreadful sliders are still coming in thick and fast.
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Kaspersky Lab said it has seen some of the first exploits targeting a patched Samba vulnerability, and those are being used to mine Monero cryptocurrency.
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When taking Terragen 4 for a spin, the first thing you notice is its speed. If you load some old, dense scenes created in v2 or v3 of the environment rendering software, you'll be happy to see how much faster it's become, even on a single-core system running a humble GTX 970.
This is thanks to the new render engine enhancements, and Planetside isn't lying when it says Terragen 4 can render poly-heavy scenes up to 500 per cent faster. Run it on something like a W9100 with two 2.3GHz Xeons and 64GB RAM on board, and you get almost instant renders, even at high resolutions.
That speed also translates into one of Terragen 4's new features: the new raytraced preview option, which enables you to finally see your scene and its set up properly – atmospherics, volumetrics and shaders included.
Terragen's best feature has always been its incredibly realistic natural render output. This is even better in version 4, which now sports Ozone settings. The absorption of light is one of the hardest things to get right in any renderer, especially when adding clouds, but in Terragen 4 this works really well. It will probably save a lot of us forays into Photoshop to tweak the colours that tone mapping didn't quite get.
This goes for camera settings, as well: you can now get bloom and starburst at rendertime, (almost) no postwork needed.
Terragen 4 has improved shader presets
It also seems the Terragen team made an effort to give new users a gentler entry curve by improving their mostly procedural shader presets. These range from new shaders for such features as the new, impressive multi-scattering function in clouds, to improvements to the existing terrain shaders.
However, Terragen's powerful node network and new functionality are still not as accessible as the offerings of its rival Vue, which also provides an easier pipeline integration and a more accessible shader and tweakable ecosystem library out of the box. That's not a major issue for experienced landscapers, but definitely one for newcomers.
The new Ozone function helps you add even more realism to your scenes
So how does Terragen 4 compare to its main competitor? As far as speed goes, it leaves Vue's offerings in the dust. An xStream import running Corona 1.5 on a set of Xeons ate into some of it, but Terragen 4 stayed solidly in the speed lead. Vue 2016 probably beats Terragen 4 in the accessibility department, though.
This aside, Terragen 4 is worth every cheaper-than-Vue penny – no other renderer out there can give you the same landscape or nature realism that Terragen provides at the price.
This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 217; buy it here!
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Anyone who works with images will find photography is a constant need. Rather than hiring a pro, paying for stock or wasting time on Google, why not set up a small photo studio of your own at the office?
Setting up a small in-house photo studio isn't all that hard, needn't be expensive, and can quickly deliver on your needs.
01. Pick a photographer
Appoint one photographer – yourself or a colleague
Pick a person to be your photographer. Photography has become so popular, there's bound to be someone in every office who knows a good bit about it. You want just one person, rather than all chipping in, so that they can keep track of everything and be responsible for looking after the equipment.
02. Choose your studio
This strobe light's back panel has a great range of controls
Now you need to choose a space. Whether your office is a huge, trendy loft with room to spare, or a small space, you can usually find enough room to make most photography work. Ask yourself, what is it that you wish to photograph? Are you likely to be shooting groups of people? Client products? Maybe a range of editorial-style images?
A complex professional still life set up can easily use hundreds of square feet. But still lifes could also be shot in an area no larger than a walk-in closet or office cubicle. Shooting people needs more room. People look better when photographed from at least five feet away, and you don't want the studio lights right on top of their face. About 15 by 25 feet is a comfortable space, though a head and shoulders portrait probably only needs 10 x 15 feet.
Whatever space you choose, if it can be a dedicated space, clean from other activities, that would be great. This will of course depend on how much you shoot.
03. Equip the studio
Kit doesn't need to cost as much as you'd think
In your studio, you are likely to need:
- Between one and three light sources
- Light stands for each
- Light modifiers (an umbrella, softbox, barndoors, snoot, etc)
- Backdrop support stand
- A camera
Studio lighting
There are two kinds of lighting – flash heads (also called strobe) and continuous light. Strobes are generally used for still photography. Continuous lighting can be used for either stills or videos.
A strobe light gives a quick burst of bright light, freezing the action for a sharper image. It's also brighter, so you can use smaller apertures for greater depth of field. Strobes come as battery-powered lights (from around $300/£240), or as self-contained monolights, which tend to be more affordable (from around $85/£150).
When choosing a strobe, the watt/seconds tells you how bright it gets, and its recycle time tells you how long it takes to recharge to fire again. Recycle is important when shooting portraits, less so when shooting a still life. Units that have at least 150 watt/seconds with about one-second recycle times are ideal.
Continuous lights cost less, make it a bit easier to see what you are getting than the modelling lights on strobes, and if you are also going to be shooting video, you get double-duty lighting. Continuous lights come in affordable entry kits, with fluorescent (from around $85/£85), LED (from around $100/£60) or tungsten (from around $110/£90) light options.
Remote strobe triggers may include transmitter and slave units
Backdrop
The easiest thing to do, and what many do when they start, is hook your backdrop material to the rear wall of your studio. In fact, sometimes people just use the back wall by itself! For a more professional solution, hang paper backdrops by buying a 'seamless backdrop' stand (essentially, some poles that hold a roll of paper) – kits come in various sizes with different coloured backdrops, from as little as $105/£55.
The camera
You can go for a top pro camera, but that probably isn't needed. A mid-range camera is more than fine.
The main benefits of using a DSLR, rather than a point and shoot camera, is being able to change lenses, which will also be of better quality than those on lower-end cameras. DSLRs also integrate with studio lights via a wired connection (around $10/£5), or a wireless trigger and receiver kit (from around $40/£60).
Accessories
Once all of the major purchases are out of the way, we can look at the smaller items without which, things might not work. You might need:
- A modestly priced tripod (around $50/£40) – especially for shooting products or shooting with continuous lighting
- A table studio/light tent (around $50/£35) – for shooting small products
- An SD memory card with Wi-Fi (from around $30/£30) – to send your files to your computer/phone/tablet wirelessly, while you're shooting
04. Set up the studio, shooting and post production
A flashpoint strobe on a light stand with a reflective umbrella
Even if you know what you're doing, unpacking it all and setting up a studio takes some time. So does learning how to use the strobes and camera. Try to do this days or even weeks before you agree to any photo deadlines.
Once you have an understanding of how the equipment works, and you are able to see reasonably exposed images, you are on your way. But now the real work starts. Start playing with the lights and experiment! Practice on objects, practice on co-workers. Read about photo techniques, and start critiquing the photos you see to understand what you like about them.
Do all of this, and you will be amazed at how good you will become in a very short time!
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Language is a wonderful thing. Thanks to the written and spoken word, we can communicate everything from the most abstract academic theories to the dankest memes that social media has to offer. One of the most interesting parts of any language, though, is seeing how people interpret it and make it evolve in different ways.
Take, for example, the humble @ symbol. This character is used all the time in email addresses and Twitter handles because it's a concise and easy way to put across the idea that a message is directed to a person. However, this doesn't mean people are as straightforward when referring to the symbol.
In English, this character is simply referred to as the 'at sign'. However, different countries all over the world have come up with some creative alternatives and colloquialisms. The team at Viking have teamed up with illustrator Andres Lozano to bring some of these quirky names to life. Scroll through the gallery below to explore what people are calling the @ character.
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It’s frustrating. You’ve spent hours, days, weeks on your logo design, and yet still it isn’t working. But you’re so close to the project personally that you can’t see the wood for the trees, and you can’t work out where you’re going awry.
If you want to avoid this scenario, then read and digest our 10 commandments of logo design. Follow them to the letter and you shouldn’t stray too far from the path of logo righteousness...
01. Thou shalt research the brand
Like all commercial design, a logo doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and is not just about creating something that will look pretty on your portfolio. Brands pay for a logo to be created to fulfil a business need, and you will have to understand that need fully for your design to succeed.
Sometimes, you’ll get an articulate client who can explain where the business is coming from and what the logo needs to achieve quickly and simply. But at other times, the client won’t really understand the business themselves, and you’ll have to do a lot of that work yourself.
Either way, it’s up to you to fully research the company, understand what it’s trying to achieve, who its competitors are, and why the previous logo (if there is one) is being replaced.
Some of that research may take place on the internet, or reading corporate documents, but much of it will depend on meeting the client and asking the right questions. To get you started, here are 5 questions to ask about the brand.
02. Thou shalt respect brand heritage
When a new logo strays too far from its brand roots it can be disastrous, as with this abandoned 2012 logo for the University of California (right)
When it comes to creating a new design for an existing brand, you want it to look updated, modern and forward-looking. But there’s a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Logo design history is littered with examples of companies that released new logos that were totally disconnected from their brand heritage, only to watch them crash and burn.
Read about some of the most notorious examples, in our post 7 classic logos that should never have been changed – and make sure you learn from their mistakes.
03. Thou shalt choose the right kind of logo
Some logos are made entirely of type, while others exist entirely as a symbol, and yet others combine text and graphics in the same design. So before you start designing, it’s important to decide what kind of logo you're setting out to create.
This key step will help focus your mind and get you moving in the right direction, before you waste your time going down a series of blind alleys.
If you’re unsure about what the main types of logo are, then check out our 5 basic types of logo post. In it we explain what wordmarks, lettermarks, brandmarks, combination marks and emblems are and how to use them.
04. Thou shalt keep your design simple
TGI Friday’s 2013 logo (right) cleaned up the old, more ornate design markedly
A logo needs to be scalable to small sizes (printed on a pen or appearing on a mobile device) and huge ones (for instance, a billboard or an IMAX cinema screen). It needs to be instantly recognisable by consumers, as well as powerfully memorable. It needs to work in any colour. And it needs to be versatile enough to be consistently reproduced in a range of print and digital media.
For these reasons and more, your logo needs to be as simple as possible. Try shrinking it to a tiny size on your screen: does it still work? If not, it probably needs simplifying further. So keep editing, removing and simplifying. Purge your design of unnecessary graphical elements. Simplify shapes. Remove unnecessary shadows, gradients, textures and backgrounds. Reduce the number of fonts to the bare minimum.
This process can be psychologically difficult: we all hate to discard details we’ve worked hard to create. But at the end of the process, you’ll usually end up with a logo that’s simpler and much more successful as a design.
That doesn’t, however, mean every logo you create has to be ultra-minimalist to the nth degree. Consider the Firefox logo as a good example of how a logo can be simple, versatile and scalable while still evoking a unique visual personality.
05. Thou shalt make your design readable
It should go without saying, but so many logo designs fall down on a fundamental basis: their readability. Conversely, many brands work hard over time to make subtle updates to their logo to make it easier to read. Some of these can be extremely subtle, as when Google moved its ‘g’ one pixel to the right and its ‘l’ one pixel down in 2014. But the fact that brands indulge in that level of tinkering just goes to show how important legibility is, and how it should be at the heart of any logo design or redesign.
06. Thou shalt be original
The Tokyo 2020 logo had to be abandoned after complaints about its similarity to Belgian designer Olivier Debie's design for Théâtre de Liège
One side effect of the need to simplify is that it’s very easy to end up creating something that resembles an existing logo. There are countless examples of big brands getting caught in this trap, from the debacle of NBC’s 1976 logo (detailed in 5 expensive logos and what they teach us) to the short-lived Tokyo 2020 Olympics logo. This post suggests 5 ways you can avoid falling foul of plagiarism in your logo design.
07. Thou shalt not slavishly follow trends
We all love watching trends, and logos are no different. In fact, we’ve already written a post about 2017’s biggest logo trends ourselves. But in no way does that mean you should slavishly follow them.
A successful logo can potentially stay in place for decades, so if you try to be too hip and modern, your design will only date super-fast. Focus on the classic principles of logo design and think about long-term durability rather than short-term trends.
08. Thou shalt use vector software
Use a vector editor like Illustrator, not a raster editor like Photoshop, to design your logos
It is possible to design a logo in Photoshop, but it’s not a good idea. This will mean creating your logo as a raster object, which can’t be resized without loss of quality.
Instead, you should use a vector graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer. This way, your logo will be a vector object that can be scaled up or down without any pixelation.
For more on the difference between vector and raster images, read Key terms every designer needs to know while you’ll find more vector editing tools here.
09. Thou shalt be appropriate
What works as a logo for one brand may not work for another. A logo for a web startup may be fun, cartoony and tongue in cheek, but that’s unlikely to work for a traditional high street bank, which needs to project an image of authority and reliability.
Like it or not, the style of your logo will instantly convey what a company stands for, so make sure it’s appropriate and that it’s aligned with the overall brand identity. Again, this goes back to understanding the goals and values of the business that’s employed you as a designer.
10. Thou shalt consider thy typography carefully
For its new 2017 logo, Mozilla collaborated with Dutch type foundry Typotheque to create a custom slab serif font, Zilla
Using original typography is often key to creating a logo that stands out as original and distinctive. So try to avoid commonly used fonts, and play around with different styles of type – serifs and sans-serifs, italics and bold, as well as custom-made fonts – in order to find that unique look that helps your logo become memorable. Just don’t sacrifice scalability or legibility in the process.
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With designers fighting it out for every job that comes along, it's important that you stand out from the crowd. Whether you're just starting out or an old hand applying for a better position, your CV needs to be first rate for you to stand a chance of getting an interview.
Getting it right is about how it's designed as well as about what you write. Here we'll cover you both, as we walk you through the process of creating a designer resumé. You'll be landing that dream design job in no time!
01. Don’t use a word processor
Word doesn't offer the creative possibilities you need for a design resumé
Microsoft Word might be OK if you’re applying for a secretarial position, but if you’re after a design job or something creative, its limited and idiosyncratic layout options won't cut it. Art directors will be paying close attention to the layout of your resumé as much as the content, so use InDesign or even Illustrator to design something special.
Whatever program you use to design your resumé in, PDF is the best format to supply it in. This enables you to create good-looking documents that are completely cross-platform.
02. Choose your resumé fonts wisely
The aim of any designer resumé should be legibility
You’re a designer, so your resumé should follow the latest trends in typography, right? Wrong! The aim of any resumé should be legibility, so it’s generally a wise idea to stick to simple, readable fonts. You don't need to shell out lots of cash to find something suitable either – take a look at our list of the 50 best free fonts for designers.
03. Consider using colour
For most non-design-related jobs, a resumé designed or printed in colour is probably a waste of time. However, for design positions, touches of colour are an acceptable way to add a discreet personal touch. Use colour carefully, however, as green type on a yellow page may not go down too well.
04. Be brief
Don't write pages and pages of detail
Art directors do not have the time or the inclination to read your entire life story. Your resumé should ideally fit onto one side of A4, and if it's any longer than two pages, you’re waffling and including too much stuff.
Don’t be tempted to mask a lack of experience with verbosity. Clean, well-laid-out resumés will always win over flabby ones – remember, the aim is to intrigue. Point the recipient in the direction of an online portfolio to see more.
05. Include the right information
As a minimum, your resumé should include your name and contact details, including your email address, phone number and online portfolio URL.
This should be followed by a breakdown of your work experience, then your education. In both cases, this should be most recent first. Work experience should include dates, job title and a brief synopsis of your role. References are generally optional.
06. Don't lie on your resumé
We once received a resumé from an unnamed individual who claimed to have created quite a stunning website. We would have been extremely impressed were it not for the fact that we had actually designed the site.
Needless to say, that resumé went straight in the bin and the sender was rewarded with a strongly worded email. Honesty is always the best policy, as you stand a good chance of being found out if you start 'elaborating' in your resumé.
07. Include samples of work
By not including any samples of your work with your resumé, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that the recipient will not consider you for the post. If you work with motion, stills are perfect, unless you’ve been specifically asked to include a showreel. On the other hand, don't go overboard with images – that's a job for your online portfolio, which you can provide a link to.
08. Keep it simple
Unless you’re really confident and sure about what you’re doing, keep the typographic flourishes and fanciful designs at bay, ensure the layout is simple and clear and the information is cleanly presented. After all, the last thing you want is the recipient squinting because you thought dark grey text on a black background was a great idea.
09. Show your personality
This bright CV by Paolo Pettigiani makes a statement [click to download the template]
Simple does not have to mean dull. A resumé is a reflection of your disposition and persona, and the recipient will be scanning it, consciously or not, for elements that distinguish your resumé from the other hundreds they have to wade through. Make your resumé stand out with an idiosyncratic design and personal touches... just don't overdo it.
10. Beware the novelty approach to resumés
We’ve had resumés written on scrunched up paper; arriving in the form of a jigsaw; and playing cards. We’ve had giant resumé posters, inflatable resumés and resumés crafted using delicate and complex paper engineering.
Off-the-wall resumés stick in the mind (you can see some of the best examples in our roundup of 30 brilliantly creative resumés) but they're a risky proposition. On the one hand you might appear like a creative thinker, on the other it might seem pretentious and excessive. It depends on the recipient.
11. Don't plagiarise
We've all seen this clever resumé concept... so don't try to pass it off as your idea
A surprising number of graduates see an inspiring resumé design concept and copy it. What can they be thinking? We all have access to the same internet, and if a particularly inventive resumé design has caught your eye, there's a strong chance it's been shared virally within the industry and will have caught the eye of your potential employer, too. Your resumé should showcase your creativity, not someone else's.
12. Don’t send photocopies
Don't photocopy; send a fresh resumé every time
Photocopies are cheap, but sadly they also look cheap, especially second and third generation copies. Type starts to break up, images are contrasty and full of noise, fingerprints and other blemishes begin to show up, and the results can look slightly askew. Fresh laser prints or sharp inkjet prints on the best quality paper available are the minimum standard. For more info, check out our designer's guide to printing.
13. Demonstrate consistency
Real-world design projects are usually centred around a single, consistent theme or concept that runs throughout the logo, branding, literature and so on. Your résumé, portfolio and covering letter need to demonstrate the same consistency. For example, are bulleted lists presented in the same style across each of your pages? Is the colour scheme consistent?
14. Spend time on the covering letter
Most of the time, when you apply for a job, your resumé will need to be accompanied by a covering letter. This should look formal and business-like: this isn't the place to showcase your creativity and imagination. The text should complement the CV and it's best to keep it short and to the point (three paragraphs is a good rule of thumb).
Make it obvious you haven't just copied and pasted the same letter you've used to apply for a hundred other jobs. Write it in a way that's personal to the particular job and company you're applying for.
15. Create multiple resumés
If you're applying for multiple jobs, you should create multiple resumés, each targeting a specific role and the kind of experience and skills the prospective employers are looking for. To take an obvious example, if the job specifically mentions InDesign as a requirement then you should make this first on your list of skills, and possibly expand the description of how and where you've used it.
16. Check your spelling!
If you're applying for a job as a designer, does it matter how well you write? The simple answer is yes. Spelling and grammar mistakes will make you appear uneducated, ignorant and/or lazy – and none of these represent the image you're trying to convey. So, always double-check your grammar and spelling, and get others to check it too (it's easy to miss your own mistakes).
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Designing spaceships for games is a fun experience. If you're interested in 3D art, science, exploration and the cold, haunting darkness of space then you should definitely give it a try.
Designing a spaceship for a game is a different challenge compared to illustrating a scene. You have to consider all distances and directions of view, as well as ensuring that your design fits into the game's world.
In many science fiction games the spaceship is a character in itself, and this is a good way to approach the topic. Is your ship brand spanking new, or a beaten-up bucket of bolts? Are the owners rich or poor? How about adding unique elements that suggest it's a semi-sentient craft, or a plant-based bioship? Perhaps the ship's been created from a hollowed-out asteroid to look inconspicuous?
Thinking of your spaceship design in the same way as your characters will help you to create an interesting ship that people can relate to and want to fly in the game.
You can watch the full workshop in the video below.
01. Answering the brief's requirements
Defining your universe's technology will shape your design
I'm going to design a fast scout ship that's able to defend itself and rescue colonists under threat. Defining your universe's technology will shape your design. As an example, what's the propulsion technology? A fast, fuel-intensive method would mean less space for supplies. Perhaps it's achieved with a specific drive that takes up more room than conventional engines?
02. Thumbnailing designs
Each ship needs to have a distinctive silhouette
In a game that features a range of ships, it's crucial that they have distinctive silhouettes. Think about basic design language: for example, rounded edges can be seen as safe shapes, so use them for passenger crafts.
My thumbnails fit the brief because their flat undersides would be able to handle planetary re-entry. The wings convey manoeuvrability and speed.
03. Mood check
Drop your favourite thumbnails into more appropriate surroundings
Once I've completed the thumbnails I take my favourite ones further. I drop them quickly into more appropriate surroundings, such as this simple space dock.
This helps give me a better sense of what my ships will look like in-game. If I already have some other ships created for this game then I sit them alongside each other for comparison.
Make your spaceship look more natural by adding in tones taken from the surrounding environment
A handy trick often used in car design that will help you make your work look more plausible is to add some of the ground's colour into the underside of your spaceship and some of the sky's colour to the top.
Typically, this would be brown and blue, respectively. But you can use whatever you think fits your spaceship and its surroundings.
04. Refining thumbnails
At this point, keep the number of tones in use to a minumum
At this stage I can usually tell what areas I want to focus on. I work up my favoured thumbnails, taking them in slightly different directions and seeing if I like the results.
I still try and keep the amount of tones I use to a minimum. The spaceship is going to be under a lot of lighting conditions in-game, so I want it to work in all of them, and making sure it reads like this helps.
05. Developing clean line work
Sketch out the linework on a perspective grid
I chose this thumbnail because it fits the brief. I imagine that the flat underside is able to enter the atmosphere safely, the wings indicate that this is a highly manoeuvrable craft, while its chunky body alludes to a cargo-based role. I feel the ship is at once small enough to lead on to some bigger ships later in the game, while big enough to feature offensive weaponry.
I take the design into a new document and start sketching out the linework. Doing this on a perspective grid avoids problems later on. I throw in a figure to give the 3D modellers an idea of scale.
06. Tone block-in
Block out the basic tones of the ship
Next I block out the basic tones of the ship. For gaming purposes you have to think about what areas of the bodywork might be customisable. This could be either as simple as adding a decal, or something more complex such as applying a new colour scheme as chosen by the player.
07. Colouring the craft
Use colour to break up the different panels
My view of colour is that it's an important tool for breaking up the panels and giving more life to my design. If your game has faction colours then now's a good time to add them in – it'll help establish its place in your gaming universe.
08. Refining your design
Don't be afraid to question your design
Don't be afraid to question your design. Here I've experimented with the wing shapes, and left myself little visual prompts. Your design will keep throwing up new challenges to resolve, so keep looking at real-life reference.
09. Using the Path tools
A top tip is to draw your perspective line with the Path tools, so you don't have to worry about going off canvas. First select the Path tool. Then select the Line tool and set the Pixel Width to 1. Create a new path and draw your horizontal line with vanishing points at either end.
You can also create a new layer and use the Stroke Path tool to bring these perspective lines to the canvas. Don't forget that you can choose the colour of your stroke paths – it will simulate whichever brush and colour you've picked.
10. Landing gear
Don't forget practical elements like doors
The ship is going to need to land, and the crew will probably want the ability to get out! I add doors and landing gear to my ship design; I don't want to have to squeeze these elements in after someone has started to turn my drawing into a 3D model.
11. Weathering design elements
Add some realistic wear and tear
I add weathering to my designs. This helps sell what the ship's life is like, enriches the game world and gives everything a sense of depth. Think about how a ship could experience wear and tear.
An asteroid miner might be covered in dust and small dents. A long-distance goods freighter could feature mismatched body panels, with worn paint work around cargo doors.
12. A modular approach
Ensure your spaceship design will fit with current game mechanics
I ensure that the craft I've designed will fit in with the current game mechanics by dropping in some weaponry that I've quickly concepted. Modular parts such as better engines or a long-distance scanner gives the players something to aim for, in terms of in-game achievements.
13. Clear labelling
Label your design others understand your intentions
In the games industry a group of artists further down the production pipeline will be turning your concept into a three-dimensional model.
For the best translation of your idea – and to avoid lots of emails going back and forth – you should explain your art as much as possible, as simply and clearly as possible. Here I label where I think moving and modular parts should go.
14. Produce an orthographic sketch
Make sure you include an orthographic sketch
Once I'm happy with the beauty render, I'll send this to the 3D modellers along with an orthographic sketch of the basic forms from a variety of angles. However good your concept might seem from one angle, someone else’s view of it might be completely different. Your sleek spaceship might come back looking like a duck. We’ve all been there!
This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 115.
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Illustrator Owen Davey has created a new book full of every big cat you care to name, and it is gorgeous. For Crazy About Cats, Davey turned his hand-drawn illustrations into modern, colour blocked graphics in a distinctive style that includes a restricted colour palette.
"I sketched out all of the final images, scanned them, and then used a mouse and trackpad with shape and pen tools to create the finals all in Photoshop," says Davey of his creative process. "I know I should use Illustrator really, but I've been using Photoshop for over 15 years, so it's just second nature to me now."
Davey did a lot of research for the book – we love this scale chart
Crazy About Cats is Davey's seventh book. It's a mixture of infographics, text and illustrations – we particularly like the scale chart showing big cats side by side, and the page of weird and wonderful cats with some that we'd never heard of.
“I always start these non fiction books with the research. I spent a ridiculous amount of time rifling through books, watching documentaries, finding scientific charts, exploring the internet, and going to zoos in order to gain the knowledge to write the book," says Davey.
"Once I'd found out the stuff that I found most interesting, I started working out section headers and how the book could be broken down into its 40 pages. This was then edited by the wonderful people over at Flying Eye Books, and I began to put pencil to paper, working out compositions for pages and what might go where."
If cats aren't your thing (because you're weird) then you might prefer Davey's Mad About Moneys or Smart About Sharks, or any of the other illustrations on his website. We wonder what's next... fingers crossed for Dotty About Dinos or Pretty Excited About Pandas!
Scroll through the gallery below to see the big cat illustrations.
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In the past, every album you bought came with 12 square inches of artwork. Artwork that seemed every bit as important as the music contained inside.
Here, we celebrate a decade of amazing album covers from the split-personality 1970s. It was a decade that began without direction, the ash of the '60s waiting to fall off the spliff. Then, somewhere in the middle, it sobered up. Adrenalised and angry, the end of the '70s was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it any more. We chart the ch-ch-changes through the decade’s best album covers.
01. McCartney: McCartney (1970)
What do the glacé cherries on McCartney's cover mean?
A few months after The Beatles split, Paul McCartney’s solo debut is a document of the bass player’s post-band breakdown. Flip it around and the back cover has Macca grinning, title set jauntily in Cooper Bold, but the front features an image that’s more difficult to decode. Then you realise you’re looking at cherries scattered around an empty bowl. Typical McCartney, mixing the sour with the sweet.
02. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)
This parody of 1950s illustrations is pretty gruesome
The edgy album cover of Weasels Ripped My Flesh was commissioned by Frank Zappa himself. He handed illustrator Neon Park a copy of 1950s proto-lad mag Man’s Life with the words, “What can you do that’s worse than this?”. The resulting parody prefigured punk’s anti-materialism by half a decade.
03. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade: Permissive Polyphonics (1970)
Permissive Polyphonics had a modernist look
Big band leader and unlikely innovator Enoch Light pioneered the gatefold sleeve in the 1950s, a full decade before Sgt Pepper. Known for brassy versions of modern standards, this album cover reflected a progressive sensibility. This late career example updates Blue Note-style typography with a splash of modernist colour.
04. Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers (1971)
The iconic Sticky Fingers album cover was designed by Warhol
In a letter to Sticky Fingers' sleeve designer Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger wrote: “The more complicated the format of the album... the more agonising the delays”. Thankfully, Warhol ignored the advice and created a design with a real zip attached, revealing a tasteful glimpse of white cotton briefs when opened. A true icon by a true icon.
05. David Bowie: Hunky Dory (1971)
Bowie's Hunky Dory cover had a retro film look
After years of desperate conformity, Bowie found success by embracing his weirdness. Like previous album The Man Who Sold the World, the album cover for Hunky Dory sees the future Thin White Duke stroking his long blonde locks and wearing a dress. Like a silent movie heroine in tinted daguerreotype, the typeface is the only real clue what decade we’re in.
06. Sly and the Family Stone: There’s a Riot Goin’ On (1971)
Redesigning the US flag could have led to real riots for Sly Stone
Sly Stone had the Stars and Stripes redesigned for the album cover of his apocalyptic funk classic. “I wanted the colour black because it is the absence of colour,” he told Miles Marshall Lewis in 2006. “I wanted the colour white because it is the combination of all colours. And I wanted the colour red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood.”
07. The Imperials: Time to Get it Together (1971)
A surprisingly radical cover for the unsurprising group
Flicking through their output, the album cover for Time to Get it Together seems like an anomaly for The Imperials, with design and typography that’s much more radical than the music inside. (If you’re unfamiliar with them, they sound a bit like a Christian version of the Bee Gees.)
08. Yes: Tales from Topographic Oceans (1972)
Roger Dean's album covers for Yes transformed the band's look
No marriage of music and image says more about the early '70s than Roger Dean’s Yes covers. Before their collaboration began, Yes were a post-Zeppelin bunch of noodlers looking for an image. Dean drew them a logo and they were transformed into fantastic synth wizards; prog pioneers floating through mushroom-peppered landscapes. An acquired taste, but undeniably influential.
09. Faust: IV (1973)
This album cover for Faust features blank sheet music
In a decade readily identified with flamboyance, the minimalist album cover for krautrock group Faust's fourth offering prepares you for the difficult, contrarian music inside. Several versions exist, but the key image is always the same; two columns of blank musical staves. A bold mission statement and a striking cover.
10. Ramones: Ramones (1976)
The boldness of the font reflected the band's boldness
Proto-punk rockers Ramones didn’t need the frills of fancy illustration or arch design to sell their three-minute anthems: they just needed to be their snotty selves. It’s telling that this is the only album cover in the line-up with a shot of the band on the front. The clean, bold type completes the declaration of aggressive intent.
Next page: 10 more iconic 70s album covers
11. ELO: Out of the Blue (1977)
Shusei Nagaoka created this album cover for Electric Light Orchestra
The Electric Light Orchestra are a group that grew into their skin, producing six albums before striking platinum with Out of the Blue. This is a sleeve that could only have been created in 1977, for ELO. Illustrated by Japanese album cover specialist Shusei Nagaoka, the airbrushed finish, sci-fi theme and glowing neon perfectly reflect ELO’s multi-layered, high sheen and sugary production.
12. Pink Floyd: Animals (1977)
Hipgnosis created some incredible covers for Pink Floyd
British art design group Hipgnosis enjoyed a run of superlative covers for Pink Floyd, designing the prismatic Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here’s flaming handshake. Enjoying a symbiotic relationship with a band at its peak, the cover for Animals is one from a series of amazing designs from the days when pigs really could fly.
13. Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel 1 (1977)
Another Hipgnosis work, this cover used spot colour before Photoshop
Peter Gabriel produced four funky, angular albums between 1977 and 1982 sharing the same bare typography, the same eponymous title and similar, striking portraiture. Another Hipgnosis creation, the spot colour on Peter Gabriel 1 was achieved by layered exposure of monochrome and colour negatives. Photoshopping before Photoshop, in other words.
14. Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)
Bold and brash, just like the Sex Pistols themselves
With Vivienne Westwood’s styling, Malcolm McLaren’s marketing and Jamie Reid’s graphic design, we often forget that The Pistols were essentially a 12-bar rock band with sweary lyrics. Their one and only studio album benefits from an album cover that captures the combination of brash, trash, outlaw chic that made them famous for 15 minutes and influential for much, much longer.
15. Kraftwerk: The Man Machine (1978)
Futuristic art inspired by Russian designer El Lissitzky
Inspired by and adapted from the work of Russian designer El Lissitzky, The Man Machine sealed Kraftwerk’s image as android music makers. Melding the striking red and black of constructivist poster design with geometric typography, this was the first Kraftwerk cover to be as futuristic as the band themselves.
16. XTC: Go 2 (1978)
A design to sell an album that ranted about designing to sell an album
It’s a paradox that in filling the cover of Go 2 with a Courier-set rant about record marketing, XTC produced the first truly original album cover of the post-punk era. A striking, typography-led design, it comes as no surprise that it was a double-bluff. The cover was crafted by Hipgnosis, making the transition from old school to new wave.
17. PiL: First Issue (1978)
The magazine-style cover for Public Image Ltd's first album
Public Image Ltd’s first album came just over a year after the Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. Intended by designers Zebulon to mimic the look of glossy music magazines, the random use of song titles in place of headlines gives a fractured finish to the album cover that fits PiL’s discordant musical style perfectly.
18. The Clash: London Calling (1979)
London Calling drew on Elvis for rock 'n' roll inspiration
Famously aping Elvis Presley’s debut, London Calling’s second-hand typography and guitar smashing action reinvented rock and roll for the end of the '70s. Pennie Smith takes credit for the photography, but designer Ray Lowry created a work that was unlike anything in his canon. The combination captured The Clash as they briefly were and would never be again.
19. Wire: 154 (1979)
A modernist cover that speaks volumes about the music inside
Art rock never went away. The experimental core of Kraftwerk, Can and Floyd was smelted by punk, and Wire came out the other side. 154 is a jarring, at times ethereal entry in their early catalogue, with a sleeve that recalls Joan Miro and other modernist painters. Again, this is an album cover without type that says everything you need to know about its content.
20. Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (1979)
Peter Saville’s cover just features one striking image
Almost 40 years after its debut, Peter Saville’s cover for Unknown Pleasures remains a T-shirt favourite for floppy-fringed hipster kids and their dads. The original album cover gave nothing away. There’s no band name or track listing, just this image, borrowed and inverted; the radio wave representation of a distant, pulsating star. Perfection.
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Looking to start your next digital project? Be it a website, app or other screen-based venture, there’s an abundance of high-quality and (best of all) free web fonts out there. Let’s take a look at some of the best options. You’ll find them all, and many more, at fonts.google.com.
01. Rubik
Rubik features subtle, rounded corners
A sans-serif family with five weights – Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black, all with italics – Rubik has subtle, rounded corners and is ideal for both body copy and headlines. It was designed by Philipp Hubert and Sebastian Fischer at Hubert and Fischer.
02. Monoton
Monoton is a contemporary take on metalpress fonts
A display font (recommended to be used above 30pt) much in the style of Alex Trochut, Monoton is a contemporary take on metalpress fonts, and was designed by Vernon Adams. It's perfect for a quirky headline on your site – as the estimated 2,000,000 websites it has been used on proves. Pair it with a modern serif for a contemporary yet classic feel.
03. Karla
Karla comes in Regular and Bold, along with italics
Karla is a grotesque sans-serif typeface in Regular and Bold (along with italics) with some rather nice quirks – check out the subtle, curved descenders on the ‘q’ and ‘y’, for instance. Designed by Jonny Pinhorn, it's equally appealing at over 40pt right down to body copy sizes.
04. Baloo
You can use Baloo in nine Indian scripts, if you so wish
According to Google, Baloo is "a perfect blend of pointy paws in a coat of fur". OK. We think it's an intriguing rounded display face, that’s also available in nine Indian scripts along with a Latin counterpart. Versatile and, well, rather beautiful.
05. Neuton
Neuton is a versatile, Dutch-style face
Neuton is a little like Times in structure, with its large height, short extenders, and a compact width. It’s perfect for body copy and comes in Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Regular Italic, Bold and Extra Bold. A hugely versatile Dutch-inspired face by designer Brian Zick.
06. Alegreya SC
This all-caps face creates impact for headlines
If you’re looking for an all-caps typeface for a bit of impact in your headlines or supporting text, Alegreya SC may be just the ticket. Pair it with the rest of the Alegreya family for an elegant consistency across your screen projects.
07. Lilita One
Use Lilita One at 40pt or over for maximum impact
A little bit condensed, a little bit rounded, and a little bit quirky in its rounded terminals and soft appearance, Lilita One is a fun display font for headlines and shorter text (perhaps navigational elements). Best used at 40pt and above, we reckon.
08. EB Garamond
Worth checking out, even though it's currently only available in Regular
EB Garamond is an open source revival of Claud Garamond’s classic typeface from the mid-16th century, and we can’t really explain it in any more detail. A sublime and elegant body font, even if it is only available in Regular at this point. It’s worth checking out Cormorant Garamond, as well.
09. Lora
Lora is ideal for large chunks of body text
Available in Regular, Regular Italic, Bold and Bold Italic, Lora is a serif font particularly suited to reams of body text. Google says "the overall typographic voice of Lora perfectly conveys the mood of a modern-day story, or an art essay". We particularly like the way the stem flows into the tittle on the lowercase ‘i’ in Regular Italic.
10. Space Mono
This sci-fi-style face comes in Regular and Bold versions
Geometric fuses with grotesque in this sci-fi-esque design. A fixed-width family in Regular and Bold (with italics – Regular Italic being our favourite, thanks to its wonderful descenders and serifs), Space Mono is one cool display face. As well as in headlines, use the Regular weight sparingly for short passages of text.
Next page: 10 more great Google web fonts
11. Kaushan Script
This calligraphic font purposefully avoids typographic perfection
The calligraphic, energetic Kaushan is a script font that deliberately avoids typographic perfection, with slight variation in angles between verticals in characters and uneven positioning along the baseline. For a script font it’s very readable, even at small sizes – but of course we’d only recommend it for headlines, used in moderation.
12. Julius Sans One
Try Julius Sans One for subtle headlines that still make an impact
More than a hint of Roman here, with a modern twist to some of the legs, Julius Sans One is a thin display font perfect for subtle, yet still impactful, headlines. Pair it with the likes of Lato Light, maybe, for a refined, low-key style.
13. Courgette
Use this medium-contrast italic-only font larger than 40pt
A brush script with flourishing impact, Courgette is a medium-contrast italic-only font. Yes, you’ll want to use it larger than 40pt, but Google tells us that the low stroke contrast can even work in body text (although we’d suggest you are cautious if you take that advice).
14. Wire One
This condensed sans is sharp and stylish
Wire One is so thin you’re not going to want to use it at anything below 12pt – and even that may be pushing legibility. It’s a lovely condensed sans, nonetheless, and its minuscule dot terminals are quite beautiful. Sharp and stylish.
15. Cormorant
Cormorant was inspired by Claude Garamond
This is one behemoth of a free typeface. It comprises Roman, Italic, Infant, Infant Italic, Garamond, Garamond Italic, Upright Cursive, Small Caps, and Unicase; and five weights – Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, and Bold. From display to body, you could easily build a whole style around this Claude Garamond-inspired number.
16. Righteous
Righteous' lowercase 'e' will divide opinion
There’s a touch of Avant Garde in this display font, inspired by the capital letterforms from the deco posters of Hungarian artist Robert Berény for Modiano. While the lowercase ‘e’ may be a little sharp for some, it’s without doubt an arresting font when used at large point sizes.
17. Bungee Shade
Bungee celebrates urban signage
If you want ultimate impact with your headlines – and even a start for your graphic projects – Bungee Shade is a great shout. According to Google, Bungee celebrates urban signage, with Shade being just one variant. Check out the regular Bungee for a less extravagant, yet still impactful display font (and Bungee Inline for a lovely reversal of Shade).
18. Amatic SC
Open source face Amatic SC has a hand-drawn aesthetic
‘Hand-drawn’ and ‘web fonts’ don’t often go together in the same sentence, but Amatic SC (small caps) is undoubtedly one of the better open source offerings out there. Use it sparingly in both headlines and shorter measures of text for a crafty feel.
19. Roboto
Roboto is used on over 11 million sites worldwide
Roboto is one of the most common open source web fonts out there (used on over 11,000,000 sites worldwide), and for good reason. It's a surprisingly rhythmic sans that can be used alongside Roboto Condensed and Roboto Slab for a consistent, contemporary style.
20. Arvo
Geometric slab Arvo works as well in print as it does on screen
A geometric slab, Arvo is equally at home in print as it is on screen – as long as you’re using it for headlines, that is. Arvo is hugely legible at any size over 30pt, and – particularly in the Bold weight – a font that will stop your viewers in their tracks and take notice.
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How EternalBlue was ported to Windows 10, a Facebook phishing study, QakBot, and this week's Apple security announcements are all discussed.
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Your website can't simply host your content – it also needs to be easy to navigate and to use if you want your visitors to stick around. Learn how to build a better, more responsive website with the UI/UX Professional Designer Bundle of courses, on sale now for just $39 (approx £30)!
The eight incredible courses that are packed into the UI and UX Designer Bundle will teach you the fundamentals of design, with the goal of improving the overall experience on your websites and apps. Learn how to make the most of HTML and CSS and tweak your site to be more responsive and easier to interact with. You'll pick up the concepts of user interface and modern design principles in a snap with this bundle.
You can get the UI and UX Designer Bundle on sale right now for just $39 (approx £31). That's a 94% saving off the retail price for this can't-miss bundle of courses, so grab this deal today!
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Moto G4 and Moto G5 model Motorola phones are vulnerable to kernel command line injection vulnerabilities.
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VMware fixed two critical vulnerabilities in its vSphere Data Protection solution this week that could have allowed an attacker to execute commands on the appliance, among other outcomes.
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Cisco patched two critical flaws in its Prime Data Center Network Manager, including one that could be exploited remotely and allow an attacker root access.
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WiMAX routers manufactured by several companies, including Huawei and ZyXEL, are vulnerable to an authentication bypass and potential backdoors.
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Now that researchers have built a port of EternalBlue to Windows 10, they've probably only now caught up to what the NSA has had for a long while.
Why illustrators should care about copyright
in Ειδήσεις από τον χώρο του Design και Hosting
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Copyright and licensing are hardly words to lift the spirits and inspire creative energy, yet they are essential.
There's an ever-growing consumer demand for great illustration. I may be biased, but I would say that illustration is the strongest visual communication tool in our increasingly image-based world. Its versatility and accessibility are integral to everything from books and websites, to packaging and advertising. Illustration is in our supermarkets, on our mobiles, in our libraries and on our clothes. A world without illustration is unthinkable, and it's copyright that supports it all.
The UK has brilliant copyright law, closely aligned to the also excellent European law. These laws look even better compared to the US where, although copyright exists, you have to pay to register it to get the full protection. In the UK, that protection is a given: all of your illustration work automatically has full copyright.
But there is significant growth in copyright infringement cases. The notable industry case studies – often involving high-street brands – can be read as shorthand for myriad cases that fail to attract coverage. Why is this happening? In part, it is because illustrators are increasingly confident in understanding and knowing their rights, and speaking out when they are abused.
The Association of Illustrators (AOI) – the UK body supporting illustrators and the illustration industry – regularly advises on concerns around copyright infringements, and has excellent fact sheets for understanding these seemingly complex areas.
Without copyright there'd be no licensing, says Ren RenwickWhy copyright matters
Without copyright you cannot licence. Without licensing we wouldn't have an industry where illustration can be a viable career, and without career illustrators, commissioners wouldn't be able to get the great work that they need.
While some would argue that globalisation and the internet make copyright redundant, the truth is it's never been so vital. Not only is it perfectly able to adapt to all that the current and future commissioning landscapes require, it works brilliantly as an economic model. Licensing allows for commissioners to pay for the specific uses they need at the time, and then come back later if they require more. It's a lean and efficient purchasing model.
The knack is for illustrators and commissioners to work together to understand how this works, and to be open with each other to ensure we keep our thriving and enviable illustration industry going. Commissioners rely on there being great illustrators of all kinds – emerging, established, experimental, esoteric – just as illustrators rely on a broad breadth of commissions.
The AOI, and I, look forward to working respectfully, energetically and positively together with commissioners and illustrators – as an industry – to ensure the future for ourselves and our wonderful, inspirational world of illustration.
This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 265; buy it here!
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