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A recent Frubes animated commercial shows two characters, animated yogurts, fishing on a frozen ocean. One tries to freeze the other by sawing a hole in the ice, only to end up falling in the water and freezing himself. The 25 greatest animated music videosAardman Animations created the Try Me Frozen campaign to promote freezing the children’s yogurt to make ice lollies. It’s a self-contained story, complete with a twist, a joke and a punchline, told front to back in under 20 seconds. It’s charming. It’s funny. It’s silly. It’s everything Aardman does best. The Try Me Frozen commercial shows animated yogurts fishing on a frozen ocean and is full of Aardman’s trademark humour “The big thing Aardman is based on is really strong characters and storytelling,” says Jess McKillop, an executive producer and head of production resources. “And that can go into any kind of production that a client would be looking for. We try and bring warmth and humour to any idea that our partners may have. “The truth is: you can have a line drawing, stick figures. If the story’s right, then it doesn’t really matter what the method is.” From Morph to Chicken Run Morph first appeared on television in 1977. A new series of the Morph TV show is planned for 2018 Peter Lord and David Sproxton founded Aardman Animations in 1972. Four years later, after moving to Bristol, UK, the pair created their first professional production. Its central character – a stop-motion, shape-shifting, gibberish-speaking plasticine man called Morph – would become an icon of children’s television for generations to come. Nick Park joined in 1985. The writer, director and animator created Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep. Over the next two decades he earned six Oscar nominations, taking home four golden statuettes. In 1993, Park and his team completed The Wrong Trousers, Aardman’s first 30-minute story, one of the most successful animated films ever. It heralded a golden period for the studio: A Close Shave (Oscar winner), Wat’s Pig (another Oscar winner), Morph’s Files (a full TV series), Stage Fright (picked up a BAFTA), Rex The Runt (the studio’s first animated series for adults), Angry Kid (its first series released exclusively on the internet), and Flushed Away (the studio’s first CG film). They used live action, animation, paper craft, puppeteering; 2D and 3D and CGI and virtual reality. They saw hit after hit, innovation after innovation. But it was Chicken Run that really took things up a level. Directed by Lord and Park, and funded by DreamWorks, the studio’s first proper feature film came out in summer 2000. Reviews glowed. The box office banked over $220m. Chicken Run became the highest-grossing stop-motion film of all time – all of the studio’s stop-motion films are among the highest-grossing stop-motion films of all time. In total, Aardman films have earned almost a $1 billion worldwide. But films are just a small part of what the studio does. As well as films, TV shows and advertising campaigns, Aardman works on apps, games and websites. You can see Aardman characters in museums and exhibitions, in live shows and in theme parks around the world. Fitting all the cogs together Aardman created the Vimtoad for Vimto soft drinks, an action-packed commercial that sees the character battle with a rival toad McKillop works on projects from ideas stage to completion, overseeing all the various departments involved. “Your job,” she says, “is to make sure that every single cog in the wheels fits seamlessly together.” A big part of McKillop's role as producer is bridging the gap between what the client wants and what the director wants: “You’ve only got a set budget. But you might have a situation where the director wants three different things, and you can only afford two of them. “The director is more the creative and the producer the organiser. It’s not the producer’s job to tell the director what to do. It’s working as a partnership. And sometimes you have to say, ‘We haven’t got time for the monkey, the giraffe and the elephant.‘” McKillop works on as many as 10 projects at a time. No two jobs are completely alike. But usually the studio receives a script from a client or an agency representing the client. A director joins. The director and client work out a vision between them. McKillop helps put together a schedule, a plan and a team – often freelancers support the in-house team. They record sound first, because the team animates to dialogue. They create an animatic, a timed storyboard. Designers get to work on the characters, then rig them with a skeleton: physically in the case of puppets, digitally for everything else. Lighting and polishes in sound and overall appearance bring the project to a close. It can take between a few weeks to several months – or years in the case of feature films. The best video editing softwareFixing broken things Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is the second-highest grossing stop motion animated film ever, behind Chicken Run, another Nick Park creation Ben Toogood first worked for Aardman on Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. He joined the company full-time a few years later and is now head of 3D. A large part of his job is “fixing things that’ve broken... the bits no-one else wants to do, the leftovers.” Toogood supervised the Frubes project. His team was small, six people, but it took them just four weeks to complete the commercial. Yet in contrast to commercials, Toogood says, films offer a lot more time to “get down to the nitty gritty” and make it “exactly how you and the director wants it to be.” Commercials are more about the big picture – making sure the bones are solid – and can’t always be as slick as feature films. “You can forgive a few bits and bobs here there,” he says. Project Everyone, from 2015, is a great example of how Aardman Animation manages to tie together its work in so many different fields. In The Headquarters of the United Nations, each country’s representative is a furry animal. When the speaker of the house, a llama in spectacles, announces a new initiative to end extreme poverty and to tackle climate change, a huge party ensures. It’s charming and full of warmth. We immediately care about the characters and therefore we immediately care about what they have to say. Mat Rees works as supervising senior animator. He says it’s a 50/50 split between the more recognisable Aardman productions – the stop-frame, plasticine stuff – and the CG work, such as the UN project. But even in commercial work, where clients increasingly want more for their money, with budgets smaller and deadlines tighter, Rees still manages to have fun. Moving characters about When not working on Aardman products like Wallace & Gromit, staff are encouraged to use the studio to work on personal projects “In the short films, you have a reasonably small team. So you keep everyone tight. You just have the director to deal with. When you’re making commercials you’ve got the director, and the agency above them, and above them you got the clients. So there are more levels of approval. “But even if a character’s not my thing, I still enjoy moving it around, getting something out of it that way.” Rees says the studio is also happy to try new technologies. He worked on Google’s Spotlight Stories – a series of 360-degree immersive videos for mobile and virtual reality. Aardman’s contribution, Special Delivery, is about a lonely janitor on Christmas Eve. The challenge was telling the story in a non-linear manner. Special Delivery offers a number of small stories within the larger narrative, depending on where the viewer chooses to look. “It’s only when you look at stuff in the headset,” he says, “that you realise you can do so much stuff with it... But there’s no grand plan. When something like that comes in, we just get stuck in.” Next month, Nick Park releases his next film, a “prehistoric adventure” called Early Man. There’s also a Shaun the Sheep sequel in the pipeline. But for Rees, the best thing about working at Aardman isn’t the big feature films. It’s something far simpler, something that encapsulates the studio’s whole ethos: Aardman allows staff to work on their own projects. More than that, they can use the studio to do it and other staff members are encouraged to help out. “That’s one thing people are always surprised about,” Rees says. “But it’s good for your own development, and it adds to the company, too.” This article was originally published in issue 154 of ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists – packed with workshops and interviews with fantasy and sci-fi artists, plus must-have kit reviews. Buy issue 154 here or subscribe to ImagineFX here. Related articles: 8 of the best animated shorts 5 top tips for young animators 20 top character design tips View the full article

The GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP) is, as the name suggests, aptly suited to animation on the web. But it can actually do far more than that; GSAP can vary any numeric value over time. Morphing SVGs, animating CSS variables, tweening elements across the screen, changing text and PNG sprite animations are all possible. Team it up with some form of controller (such as the brilliant ScrollMagic) and you really do have a powerful base from which to create highly interactive and immersive experiences. In this tutorial, I'll run though the basics of the program, and show you how to get started creating your own timeline-based animations in JavaScript. Then we'll discuss the relative benefits of CSS keyframe animations and GSAP animations. The basics of GSAP GSAP comprises two main elements: TweenMax, which enables you to animate the properties of any object (for example the transform of a DOM element); and TimelineMax, which enables you to create sequences of tweens. Both come in Lite varieties, which contain just the bare essentials, and fewer options and plugins than what are bundled with the Max varieties. To get started we’ll need a copy of TweenMax, but by far the simplest way is to head over to CodePen where you can ‘Quick Add’ TweenMax and start creating right away. TweenMax contains TimelineMax and most of the plugins we’ll need, other than CustomBounce (used in the last step), which is a paid-for plugin. Before we delve too deep into GSAP, I thought it would be fun for us to get something moving, so we are going to create a simple bouncing-balls animation. We’ll focus on just the JavaScript/GSAP code here, so head over to the tutorial CodePen for the full code. Get something moving We have a scene consisting of the sky, the ground and three balls, so let’s get the balls falling to the ground. We achieve this using GSAP’s .to() method, which takes three arguments: the object (our ball DOM selector), the duration (two seconds) and a vars object. The balls will fall, bounce, squish and raise back up, all in a few lines of code The vars can be any property we want to alter. In our case, we wish to move each ball by 150px so that they hit the floor. Changing the y property will achieve this for us. Let’s make things a bit more realistic. When a ball hits the ground, it should bounce. TweenMax has a whole host of easing functions built in to it, most of which are customisable. We’ll select the conveniently named ‘Bounce’ ease to get the effect we want. This goes in as one of the properties of the vars object. Now that we’ve got things looking a bit more realistic, we can take advantage of TweenMax’s staggerTo() method. This takes all the same arguments as the .to() method used before, along with an additional stagger value. This creates the effect of the balls falling one after another. We have also added an infinite repeat (-1) and repeat delay so that we can watch our beautiful creation forever more. Our animation is nearly complete, but notice how at the end of each loop the balls return to the start instantly, as if by magic – that’s not what we want. GSAP allows us to add the yoyo:true property, which will make the animation reverse back to the start. However, with our bounce ease, this looks unnatural because the balls bounce back up from the ground to the start. Since v1.20.0 we now have access to the yoyoEase property, which tells our animation how it should reverse. This means that we can bounce on the way down, but have a more natural ease on the way up. In this next step, we'll be using a paid plugin (more on those in a second). CustomBounce allows us to define a bounce and squash value, giving the balls a realistic feel. First we must create the CustomBounce and specify the strength and squash values. Then we create a TimelineMax and move our repeat and delay parameters to it. We then add two separate staggerTo tweens to this timeline. The first specifies the bounce behaviour. The second specifies how it should squash, but we set it to start at the same time as the first by adding 0 (the start) as the final parameter. Using a timeline, we lose access to the handy yoyoEase we used earlier to great effect, so we add this final step of code to our timeline: GSAP plugins GSAP comes with the Tween and Timeline methods to animate and sequence animations, but there is a raft of other plugins available to extend the functionality. This list is not exhaustive, but covers the most useful (see full list). Let's start with those include in the free download: Draggable Make any DOM element draggable and spinnable ScrollTo Smooth scroll to any position on the page attr Animate any attr value on a DOM element CSS Tween any CSS value Bezier Animate any property (including position) along a curved path colorProps Tween any colour property, including hex, rgba and string Not everything in GSAP is free. Some plugins are reserved for paid members, including the CustomBounce plugin we used in the last stage of our tutorial. These are some of the best paid-for GSAP plugins: SpiltText Split text strings into words or characters – for animated titles ScrambleText Randomise strings of text – for animating between words CustomWriggle Provide ‘wriggles’ to create anticipation and playfulness CustomBounce Create natural-looking bounces – including a ‘squish’ value MorphSVG Tween any SVG object from one shape to another DrawSVG Progressively hide or reveal sections of SVG elements CSS versus GSAP You may be thinking you’ve got everything you need with CSS keyframe animations and transitions, so why would you need GSAP? Don’t get me wrong, CSS transitions still have their place, and for anything extremely simple – such as button-hover effects – they are still the option I’d choose. But as soon as you need to do any form of sequencing, CSS quickly starts to struggle. Being able to offset one part of an animation based on the end of another part of the animation, without having to calculate keyframe percentages, is enough to jump into GSAP alone. The two compared You’ll often hear people saying that CSS animations are more performant than JavaScript animations, which is actually a fallacy – this isn’t always the case, and it certainly isn’t when you get to more complex situations. It depends on the browser and machine, and what you’re trying to animate. One thing that causes confusion here is that when people say ‘JavaScript animations’, they are often referring to their experience with jQuery effects, which more often than not are pretty abysmal. In this situation GSAP (on the left) greatly outperforms CSS (on the right) transitions In fact, if we take a particle-type animation as an example and animate them to create the hyperspace type effect shown above, you would see that with CSS we get a lot of mistimed animations and banding starting to occur. With jQuery we’re getting a lot of slow down and banding, and it is clearly not up to the task. But GSAP performs admirably, even on a poorly specced machine. Sprite animation with GSAP Create sprite animations like this cheeky monkey one on Inside Asia Tours (click to see) One thing that I have often used GSAP for is to create a sprite animation. A sprite animation involves making a series of images appear and hide quickly. This is achieved by transforming a sprite image past a ‘whole’ (<div> with overflow:hidden) with a stepped ease, making the image rest, then disappear instantly at the correct frame rate. This can be done in one line of JavaScript with a few calculations. The effect can also be achieved in CSS, but is far less performant. For a comparison between the two, and the code to do this, head here. This article originally appeared in issue 299 of net, the magazine for professional web designers and developers – offering the latest new web trends, technologies and techniques. Buy issue 299 here or subscribe to net here. Read more: Supercharge SVG animations with GSAP Export After Effects animations to HTML5 How to create animations that scale for all devices View the full article

Whether you’re designing a newspaper, newsletter, magazine or digital publication, the principles of good editorial design and layout are universal. But whether it's print design or online, each project comes with unique challenges – and it can be useful to see how other designers have tackled these in their own work. So here we bring you six stunning examples of editorial design from leading creatives, find out how they created them, and share some lessons that can be applied to all your editorial projects, large and small. 01. Otl Aicher's Isny by dn&co Otl Aicher's Isny: a limited edition book to accompany a major exhibition Over 10 years, the iconic German designer Otl Aicher created a poster series based on the small town of Isny im Allgäu. It was groundbreaking in eschewing the typical “colourful postcard” style in favour of a stark, reductive and monochrome approach. In a limited edition book, released this September to accompany a London exhibition of the work, dn&co delves into this groundbreaking project across 116 pages. "When it came to the layout of the book, the team felt a real sense of responsibility,” says creative director Patrick Eley. “We kept asking ourselves ‘What would Otl do?’ – shorthand for how we could bring rationale and order to the project. "It was a matter of ensuring the design was consistent with Aicher’s recognisable aesthetic, without being a copycat of it.” The layout needed to be consistent with the subject’s aesthetic The dn&co team opted for Univers, a typeface that was used as part of Isny’s branding, as well as for the Munich Olympics, the project Aicher is best known for. “It’s a simple but effective structure – the editorial frames the work, which is printed on an uncoated paper to reflect the material that the Isny posters were originally printed on,” says Eley. “The surrounding narrative is reproduced on a coated stock so the photos of the town pop out.” The pictograms only exist as physical prints, not vector artwork, so they had to photograph everything in high resolution to enable us to reproduce it as accurately as possible. And that led to some interesting dilemmas. “We wanted to reflect Aicher’s strongly gridded approach to his work for Isny,” says Eley, “but the closer we worked with it, the more we noticed the inconsistencies. For example, nothing is actually square as it originally appears and that caused a few headaches with our own grid.” Aicher’s pictograms had to be digitised in high resolution Eley’s main tip for anyone embarking on a similar project? “Good filing is vital,” he says. “Knowing where everything is, who took what photo and whether you’ve got something at a high enough resolution to print it is absolutely key.” Ultimately, he adds, you have to become really familiar with the book’s content. “Get close to the narrative, and remember that design and typography is a fundamental part of delivering any story. “In this case, we were very conscious that we didn’t want to ‘out art the art’. The design of this book needed to be recessive to the content, which was the real hero. So it had to be quiet and unopinionated, while acting to frame another designer’s work and give it context. Ultimately it was a question of respect.” 02. This Is Me, Full Stop by Here Design This Is Me, Full Stop explores punctuation marks in a fun way This Is Me, Full Stop: The Art, Pleasures, and Playfulness of Punctuation is a book created by London design agency Here Design that harnesses beautiful design to explore “the secret life of punctuation marks”. It’s a fun, tongue-in-cheek way to explore a niche topic, and makes great use of simplicity and whitespace to tie everything together; a trick that might look easy but is much harder to achieve in practice. “When it came to layout,” says Here Design’s Caz Hildebrand, “our biggest decision was to make the text the formal consistent element throughout and allow the illustration and design to spread out and play as much as it wanted to, so that it could support and enhance the text’s meaning. It is always a joy to work with whitespace, though of course it is a challenge to have so much freedom.” Text provided consistency, allowing illustration and design free reign “The book’s text font was chosen to be reasonably friendly and approachable with the authority and strength of character to appeal to a broad audience range,” he continues. “It’s also worth noting that we created all the illustrations and designs using real-life typefaces – over 50 of them from Apple Chancery to Wedding Text; there’s a full list at the back. Championing typefaces both known and unsung was always part of the ambition.” High production values were also central. “To find the simplest way of expressing our book’s main idea, we used white foil lettering on black substrate, creating a striking contrast between matte and gloss that helps the book stand out,” he says. “For solidity, we had the book trimmed flush (we love seeing it in bookshops; it stacks up really nicely). And inside we used black end papers and chapter dividers to bring the reader back to the centrality of the cover.” All the illustrations and designs were created using real-life typefaces Hildebrand offers the following advice for a designer coming fresh to editorial design: “Think about the experience of the reader." He continues: “Not all consciously designed things are necessarily friendly to read. So be the designer, but also be the reader – what would you expect to see? What would surprise you in a delightful way? In other words, it’s not just how it looks, it’s how it reads. “Help the text, don’t hide it. Typography can really endorse the words you are saying. And always remember that books evolve over many pages, so they need to retain an inherent formal structure while being able to break free.” Buy This Is Me, Full Stop03. Circular 19 by Pentagram Each issue of the one-and-a-half-yearly magazine has a unique design Circular 19, the 12th edition of The Typographic Circle’s magazine, was designed by Pentagram and marks the 40th anniversary of the volunteer-run and not-for-profit organisation, which aims to bring designers with an interest in type and typography together. “Circular, which comes out every 18 months, is an unusual publication as it does not carry any advertising and therefore is far more independent and we can do as we wish,” says designer Domenic Lippa. “It’s also important it appeals to its core audience of type enthusiasts.” The design of the publication is most noticeable for its use of big type. “We use this to create impact and to challenge preconceptions around what type is used for,” says Lippa. “For us, it's as important as imagery and is not used purely for information.” Big and bold typography is used to create impact and challenge perceptions When it comes to the design in general, each issue is a standalone piece, he adds. “We often decide upon an approach before we start designing and this includes the typefaces, the general look and feel and the colour palette. The colours help create a thread for the whole magazine.” Even within each issue, they aim for variety, he adds. “We want to keep challenging ourselves and stretch ourselves and not get bored, so each spread has a sense of individuality about it – we're not design fascists!” The designers use various layout approach even within each issue “For me, relationships of scale between various pieces of text is the most important element of editorial design; you should not be afraid to use type confidently,” he says. “I do believe that as designers we need to keep questioning the status quo; why are we doing it this way? Never stop learning and never stop trying things, otherwise you just dry up as a designer and as a thinker.” 04. Charm, Belligerence & Perversity by GBH Crazy cover, crazy guys Charm, Belligerence & Perversity: The Incomplete Works of GBH is a monograph written by Jason Gregory, Mark Bonner and Peter Hale, founders of GBH London. And the first thing you notice about it is its striking cover. “We wanted to make something that supported the idea that we’d only just begun and that we weren’t finished yet,” explains Mark Bonner. “We’re fascinated by our evolution and we loved the twist on the old idea that 100 monkeys in a room, given time, could create the complete works of GBH. We only have 25 at GBH, but give us a chance.” The book aims at a wider dialogue with the design community The team wanted the book to do two things, he says. “We needed to explain what went into the design of each project, and we wanted to have a wider dialogue with our readers about the insecurities and bravery that entwine in us all while we are making them. “We felt no-one had ever spoken about these uncomfortable truths. So many books on design are self-aggrandising, but we wanted to be honest and share the fact that we go through a lot of emotions in making new things.” Immersing yourself in the text is key to good editorial design, says Bonner In any editorial design project, Bonner believes it’s important to “read the text, feel it, know it intimately before you even think about trying to lay it all out.” And with this book especially, the typography needed to be accessible, and feel easy to read, he adds. “So we worked hard to find a typographic system that allowed the 'show and tell’ of the project stories and the psuedo-sycology to co-exist.” Buy Charm, Belligerence & Perversity: The Incomplete Works of GBH05. Mr B & Friends ‘Comfriendium’ 10 Year book A statement piece that Mr B & Friends sent to its clients To celebrate 10 years of creative collaborations, Bristol design studio Mr B & Friends produced Comfriendium, a statement piece to send to their clients. It’s an impressive publication with punchy colours and a high quality finish, including a gloss black and white foiling on the cover that adds subtlety and impact. Each page aims for maximum visual impact “Editorial permeates everything we do,” says executive creative director Steve Richardson. “From digital magazines and websites to annual reports and books, the content drives the message. "Gone are the days when an idea could be rolled out to a template; now the reader can click-off, turn the page and move to the next thing, so our goal is to guide the eye with storytelling merging words, graphics and imagery.” Playful use of imagery and strong colours keep things interesting He offers the following tips for anyone working in editorial design: “Invest in the best copywriting you can afford. If the words are brilliant, the design falls out onto the printed or digital page. Work closely with the author to get into their head so you understand the nuances. “Use wit,” he adds. Be playful with your use of highlights, illustrations, icons and imagery. Choose typefaces that work well online and in print. Good pairings that give light and shade to all communications, so you can tailor the editorial message to the medium.” And final tip is to add pace. “Each page and screen view should take the eye on a journey, sometimes punchy and energised, and sometimes subtle and soothing. Choose illustration and imagery to help reflect this.” 06. Photo District News website by James Johnson The multi-device world makes editorial design on the web a challenge All the examples we’ve included so far are print products, but as Steve Richardson mentions above, editorial design is just as important online; in many ways more so. A good example of editorial design on the web is Photo District News, a photography magazine that was redesigned in 2018 under the art direction of Brooklyn-based designer James Johnson. There’s an awful lot of information to be uncovered here, but the flexible, responsive layout of the site is designed with generous use of whitespace and elegant proportions that avoid ever feeling cluttered, whichever device you use it on. “Unlike print, on the web an article is usually designed as a whole, with all of its body copy on one page, and often the designer will not have control over how it's presented,” says Johnson. “It could be a phone, it could be printed out, or something else altogether. So it's important to make the articles flexible and resilient to changing conditions. “Keep layouts simple and embrace responsive design techniques,” he continues. “Try to get the main ideas across in each format and don't sweat the small differences between them. This is in contrast to the two-page spread of the magazine, where a designer decides exactly how the content will appear and when. Generous use of whitespace and elegant proportions make the site an easy read on all devices “Aside from that, keeping a page clean, with lots of whitespace and clear, readable typography, is even more important on the web than in print. Reading is hard on a screen so it's best not to distract the readers with a cluttered page.” The biggest mistakes Johnson sees online often stem from poor typography. “Line widths that are too wide is probably the biggest issue there,” he says. “I also see a lot of sites that try to use a print typeface for body copy.” Getting it right is partly about effective collaboration, he adds. “The designer's role is to provide a tangible form for the underlying concepts provided by the editor. This can't happen without a good relationship between the designer and editor. "So I can't stress this enough; work with your editors and really get to know their content and editorial philosophy before attempting to design anything. This will go a long way in ensuring that people want to read the article.” All the articles are easy to read and navigate on a smartphone screen In terms of design, you have to catch the reader’s attention right away and get them interested in the article, he adds. “The title and deck are key to this. Readers should be able to glance at the page and instantly know what the article is about. Write a great title and design it to really stand out. Adding a great photo or illustration that works with the title, conceptually and visually, will really bring it home. “Once you have their attention, great content backed by solid design will keep it. Pick a good web typeface and set the body copy large enough to be read easily. Break the article into sections and write headlines for each and use strategically placed images, pull quotes and other design elements to encourage readers to scroll.” You might also like: How to use images more effectively in annual reports 10 skills graphic designers need to get ahead in 2018 5 photography trends influencing designers in 2018 View the full article

Designers and creatives are increasingly using the ephemeral Instagram Stories – which disappear after 24 hours – to promote their brand, show off another side of their design portfolio, expand their reach and sell their products. There are now 300 million daily Story users, suggesting that around 60 per cent of Instagram's total users are using Stories, and people are spending more time than ever on the platform. As one in five organic Stories from businesses lead to a direct message, it's no wonder that brands are starting to focus more time and money on this area of Instagram. But using Stories well isn't just a case of taking the odd selfie, and the interface can be tricky to get to grips with at first. How do make the most of Stories' rich features and ensure you're adding value to your feed and your brand without annoying your followers? Read on to find out... 01. Consider sponsored vs free Stefan Kunz has attracted thousands of clicks from paid-for Instagram Stories, but you could always start with free Stories to hone your skills first Companies such as Samsung, Lego and D. Franklin all report success from sponsored Stories. And creatives like Stefan Kunz – a lettering artist with over 217,000 followers – are using paid campaigns to promote themselves and others. Kunz found that one campaign resulted in 1,000 clicks to his website, while promoting a fellow Instagrammer won his friend an additional 2,000 followers. But you don't necessarily need to create a paid campaign to reap the benefits of Stories. Marylou Faure – a French freelance illustrator based in London, who has over 37,000 followers – may be new to using Stories, but she's already noticed their impact. "Usually my Stories do better than my normal posts when it comes to products I'm trying to sell," she says. "It might be that my followers are a bit more open to seeing my self-promotion in my Stories than in my posts." 02. Experiment with videos and photos Instagram frequently adds new features to Stories, making exploration key. By using a mixture of the following features, you can add personality to your Stories and increase engagement. To create a new Story from your main newsfeed, swipe right or tap the camera icon in the top left corner. You can also click on your profile picture. Use saved photos by clicking on them, or scroll to choose from the following options: Live: Create a live video broadcast for up to 60 minutes Normal: Tap to take a photo, hold the button to make a video Boomerang: Take a burst of photos that create a looping video Superzoom: Make a video that zooms in on one object with a dramatic sound (tap to select an area to zoom in on, then hold to record) Rewind: Create a video that plays in reverse (hold to take a video, tap once to record hands-free) Hands-Free: Take a video by tapping just once Stop-motion: Make a video from a series of photos (tap to take individual photos) With all of these options, you can use the flip icon to switch to the front or rear camera, and the face icon to add fun face filters. Swipe left to choose a filter. Use the Stop Motion option to link together a series of stills Most creatives quickly find some features suit them and their work more than others: "Stop-motion is my latest favourite feature," says Kunz. "It's perfect for an unpacking or for a short story. It will look great because it has that flip-book effect but is not so smooth." Mat Roff, an illustrator with 2,000 followers, has recently been experimenting with Instagram Live. "I love doing a weekly Live Stream from Instagram, where I ink a sci-fi character live in my sketchbook and talk to my followers," he explains. Roff also found Stories a "helpful test run" for his eventual move to Twitch. 03. Use Stickers to add interest Once you've taken your video or photo, add to it using the icons on the top right. The first is Stickers – here you can include hashtags and your location to increase the likelihood of others finding your Story, or choose from a range of other Stickers, such as emojis, a selfie or days of the week. When you've chosen your Sticker, drag it to adjust its position and use two fingers to rotate and resize. Tap and hold your Sticker and then tap Pin to stick it to a fixed place in a video. The UK's Met Office uses Stories for urgent news, such as weather warnings The Met Office has found that the poll Sticker is popular with its 24,000 followers: "We get great interaction with polls," says Ross Middleham, content lead of the Met Office's in-house design team. "We often tie them in with similar polls on Facebook or Twitter. Who doesn't love a quick poll?" Middleham also loves the ability to add a link to your Story by swiping up – a feature available on verified accounts only. "Swipe up is a great way to drive people to other content. It's often absolutely crucial if we want people to stay up-to-date with weather warnings, for example. It's a direct call-to-action," he says. Faure agrees. "I like the swipe-up option as it's a quick and easy way to share a link I want my followers to visit," she explains. 04. Annotate your Story To draw on your Story, click the pen and then experiment with pen sizes, effects and colours. By holding down a colour, you get access to the entire colour wheel; tap the Dropper icon or hover over your image to use a colour from within your Story. To fill the screen with one colour, click on a colour and then tap and hold on your Story. Use the eraser to reveal the layer below your fill colour. Press the 'Aa' icon to write on your Story. You can add tappable hashtags as well as links to other accounts using the @ symbol, such as @computerartsmag. Move the slider on the left to adjust text size; select text colour and move your text as you did for Stickers. Write or draw on top of your story to add information As well as experimenting with different tools, Verònica Fuerte, founder of Barcelona-Based design studio Hey, says that you need to consider the style of your work when choosing Story features. "We use Instagram features that reflect the style of our work," she explains. "We love standard pictures and videos. Boomerangs are a fantastic way to do both at the same time: you get the simplicity of an image with the impact that movement adds." Mistakes are the best ways to achieve something interesting that reflects who you are Verònica Fuerte, Hey Fuerte also mentions another of her current favourites – the rainbow feature. This is where you make your text appear in rainbow colours by selecting it, choosing a colour and then swiping left with one finger on the text and one on the colour spectrum. "Everyone loves rainbows!" she enthuses. "My advice would be to just be yourself!" Fuerte sums up. "Experiment, have fun and don't be afraid to make mistakes because those are the best ways to achieve something interesting that reflects who you are." However, if you do make a mistake you'd rather forget, use the Undo button, or delete an element from your Story by dragging it down the screen and dropping it into the trash can. When you're satisfied, click Your Story, or Send to – where you have the option of sharing with everyone or with individuals or groups of followers. To add more than one image or video to your Story, simply post each one to Your Story, then go back into Stories to add more. 05. Don't treat Stories like your feed Stories may be part of Instagram, but they are a different beast to the main feed, and therefore require a different approach. Middleham believes that you should consider Stories and your feed as separate, but also think about how they link together. "It's a big challenge to tie up the content on your feed with Stories," he says. "We try to be quite defined with the sort of thing you'll find on each. Beautiful, amazing, unusual photos on the main feed, and supporting explainers, did-you-knows, general interest stuff on Stories." Roff also thinks that Stories have a unique role: "I use Stories to clearly separate my everyday updates from my more important work updates. Fans can get more behind-the-scenes footage if they wish, as well as general updates on my day-to-day life as an illustrator," he says. Hey studio uses Stories to give followers a look behind the scenes You can use that separation between feed and Stories to your advantage, says Kunz. "Your feed is kind of your portfolio. Everything is more meticulously planned and created," he explains. But in Stories, you can share behind the scenes or mention a new post. There's a lot you can do." Fuerte agrees. "For me Stories is more about your everyday life, it's not your shop window where you display what you have done," she says. "Instead it is more like stepping inside the studio itself and getting to know us more as people. You can show more of your personality." Fuerte uses Stories to create a connection with the studio's 201,000 followers. "When people get to know you better and understand you more, then there is more of a connection and that is always positive," she explains. "Nowadays your brand isn't just your graphics, it's you as well." 06. Consider the length of your Instagram Stories To find out how your followers are engaging with your Stories, switch to a business account, where you can see your posts' reach, number of views, taps and crucially, swipes away. Many find that the length of their posts has an impact on these figures. "I'm really happy with 15 seconds," says Kunz. "I feel people should learn to be more concise and say more with less." He also admits that he tends to swipe away from long Stories, or those he feels don't bring him any value. "It's important to respect people's time," he insists. However, he still thinks it's worth playing around with the length of your Stories. "Try new things, see if they work," he advises. "If people respond... that's how you learn." The ideal Story length depends on what you are trying to achieve Middleham is also put off by long Stories, and agrees that considered experimentation is key. "Thinking about your story before creating it is really important," he explains. "A bit of storyboarding, especially if you mix types of content into one story, goes a long way." One way to ensure your Stories reach your followers is by continually adding to them. "We are starting to add to stories so that they become 'rolling'," says Middleham. "By adding stuff throughout the day, it brings the story back to the front in people's feeds." Roff, meanwhile, is a fan of longer content, but stresses you need to use the time wisely. "I tend to use the full 16 seconds," he says. "I'll even do a few posts if I'm talking about a subject directly to camera, or showing a technique. I think when you do this you just need to keep it to no more than two or three videos – because people will start to trail off. Nothing turns me off more than seeing loads of little bars of content at the top." Faure agrees that the ideal Story length depends on what you are trying to achieve. "If it's just to show a visual or a new illustration, just two to three seconds is enough. However if you're at an event or an exhibition or are showing some work in progress, it can be a bit longer," she explains. Fuerte agrees: "I think it shouldn't be about length but about content and how you are using it to explain something. Obviously, you are competing for attention with a lot of other things, so a shorter story is better, but if it isn't saying what you want to say, then it doesn't really matter how long or short it is." 07. Vary your Stories The fleeting nature of Stories and the frequent addition of new features means they are perfect for trying out new things. "Mix it up bit," advises Roff. "Don't just do photos, videos, or selfies – do a bit of everything. Use Stories to promote yourself, but also other people as well. You can build a good community that way too." Kunz also thinks Stories provide opportunities for experimentation: "Make it something that people will look forward to seeing every day. It could be a promotional code that you have to find, clues you are sharing for a game, or like another great Instagrammer @jessedriftwood, a daily vlog. Stories are amazing, there are so many possibilities!" Stefan Kunz used Stories to help organise a promotional tour But with all these possibilities, achieving the right balance can be tricky, as Middleham attests: "In our eyes, stories need to have the right balance between polished and rough around the edges, and we're constantly trying new things to achieve this," he says. Some things should remain off-limits, however: "Nasty colours, too much tilt on your text and/or busy Stories are Story killers," explains Middleham. "You can very easily make a Story look bad if you don't give it a bit of hierarchy and visual consistency." 08. Use Story Highlights Choose your best Stories as highlights At the end of 2017, Instagram announced a new feature that enables users to automatically save their Stories to a private Stories Archive and immortalise their favourites on their profile as Stories Highlights. Named collections of Highlights appear in a horizontal bar at the top of the user's profile. As they are a relatively new feature, creatives are still discovering the best way to use them. Kunz, for one, is just starting to "figure out" the feature, and says it will be perfect for things that last for more than a few hours. "I am planning a trip to the US, and looking for opportunities to speak and/or do workshops. If I have a tab for Travelling, than people can easily reach out. Or one tab for my iPad brushes, or shop items, where by swiping up you'd get a direct link. I can also see myself doing a welcome video, like many do on a YouTube landing page." Faure also sees the benefit in longevity: "Highlights are useful if there's something happening with my work for a long period of time, because then I can just have a main Story that covers the topic and I don't need to push it as much with a new Story every day," she says. Others see an opportunity to promote content without a sell-by date. "We're beginning to use them as holding spots for timeless or evergreen content," says Middleham. "We are also planning on repurposing content from our Learn About Weather YouTube channel to make it work for Stories." Some, like Fuerte, haven't started using Story Highlights yet, but plan to do so in the future: "In the end, Stories are only 24 hours and there are always special things that you want to keep for longer for different reasons," she reasons. "I haven't thought too much how it will be used but I guess, like everything else on Instagram, how it is used will just evolve naturally over time." Read more: 7 ways to craft a killer self-promo campaign 10 social media tricks you didn't know about 5 golden rules for social media strategy View the full article

Creativity is an obvious quality to showcase in your portfolio, resume and applications and interviews for dream jobs; the cornerstone of every good graphic designer. But how do you showcase it when you’re just starting out your career journey? And with a lack of experience under your designer tool belt, what other skills or attributes can you highlight and – more importantly – what other qualities are companies looking for when they hire? Here we've got the inside scoop on what modern companies wants to see when they send out that elusive call for candidates. 01. Do some quality training You may begin thinking about a career in graphic design before you’ve even chosen a course of further study. Or for some people, it's an industry they move into from another field, having found a love for creativity and design in another role. So do you need a degree in the subject, or another qualification altogether? Or can you be self-taught? You may be glad to hear that there is no set path that will guarantee entry and each company will be looking for a particular set of skills and qualities in a candidate. It depends on the individual, but as a general rule, an educational setting can add a lot of benefits. Experiences such as taking constructive criticism on board, working in a team environment, or mentoring for example. Once you have gained some level of training or experience then, the key is to keep your skills and knowledge up-to-date. Everyone is different, because their areas of expertise differ but generally, magazines like Computer Arts are good at covering a lot of areas, and there are plenty of free online graphic design courses to get you started. Across the board, inspiration websites such as Pinterest, The Dieline (for packaging) and Behance (for design portfolios) are popular. Blogs like howdesign.com are also a great source of inspiration and industry news and analysis. When it comes to books, we would recommend Branding in 5 and a Half Steps by Michael Johnson, Know Your Onions by Drew de Soto and Why Fonts Matter by Sarah Hyndman. Check our list of 26 books every graphic designer should read for more ideas. 4 first-class ways to make your design education count02. Craft a standout portfolio Be productive. A library of work is one of the key indicators of a natural designer; someone with genuine flair and passion for what they do, regardless of whether there’s a pay packet or deadline attached to it. That’s why so many young graphic designers are running their own portfolios online like industry blogs. The sooner you get your name out there, the better. Growing a personal brand publicly in this way will also give you a deeper understanding of the challenges and current social climate experienced by the clients and companies you eventually aspire to with for. Read our articles on How to craft a standout portfolio and How to craft the perfect portfolio in a day for tips. If you don’t feel confident building your own digital shopfront just yet, you can begin by contributing to a friend’s or seeking out industry blogs and asking to contribute a piece. How will you know when to charge for your services? Use your intuition. You’ll get a feel for when people are taking advantage, and you need to make sure it doesn’t steal your focus from your training course or study. Don’t discard the journey for the finished product on any of these initial projects. Showing your workings, whether it be in concepts of sketches, gives a great insight into how you think and therefore how you might work together with an existing design team. This is something a company will be taking into consideration alongside your existing talent or potential for growth. 03. Show your skills in your CV/resume When it comes to CVs/resumés in the graphic design world, the tendency can be to assume that ‘bigger is better.’ However, this assumption is too simplistic. Do some research into the employer. Perhaps they strike you as looking for something off the wall that will stand out, but generally you will want to keep it simple and factual, showing some artistic flair. Use of typography in this way is important. Industry employers aren’t recruiting based on buzz words – the skills are too obvious to rely on convoluted sales pitches in a cover letter or email. But there are some key elements that graphic design teams across the board will be looking out for, and therefore you will want to find a way to showcase these in your application. Enthusiasm is key, as is innate creativity, but a creativity that is matched with a decent level of technical ability. Relevant experience is obviously something you should highlight if you possess it, as is flexibility. Too often, flexibility is viewed in literal terms, such as flexibility of working hours. But if you can, show a flexible attitude to your work, such as a willingness to evolve and grow into a role or new areas, or to be prepared to try new things. These would all be positive selling points in your application. Read our examples of 30 brilliantly creative resumés, our article on How to create the perfect design resumé and check out these 15 free resume templates to get started. 04. Dazzle with networking skills Developing your soft skills and gaining confidence is essential in any job. And graphic design is no different to many modern industries in its reliance on good personal relationship and communication skills, regardless of the latest technological advancements. Without an existing role, or as a student or graduate on the periphery of the industry world, it can seem daunting to know how to begin with networking, but – as our article How to network successfully: 19 pro tips says – social media groups and pages are a good place to dip your toe in, comfortably from your chair, to start to get a feel for your local industry. There are some great events too, such as Offset, which takes place in Dublin every year. The workshops there are a great place to meet other creatives and start to build your own networks. Entering contests such as D&AD's New Blood Awards can also be a great way to meet other new designers and to get noticed. 05. Stand out from the crowd in your application With all that said, graphic design remains a competitive industry, brimming with eager, creative young talent. So it’s safe to assume that your application for your first graphic design gig will be one among many. That’s why it's so important in the modern working world to find those points of difference, to find what sets you apart and give yourself that slight advantage that could be enough to get you hired. If you’re still studying or about to embark on a course, do seek out opportunities to do an internship – it is important to get as much studio and wider industry experience as possible. Some agencies will also take on interns over the holidays, so approach them all to ask about their policies on that. Read our article How to transform a design internship into a job for top tips to make the most of the time. Treat every application individually – keeping your resume up to date is obviously important but similarly, take the time to tailor it where you can for each role you apply for, checking that you’re addressing everything they’ve asked for. They have taken time to make that list, so take the time to cover it. Start building your brand early – it’s about more than a published portfolio. Your online footprint, your networking, your professional standing in the industry is a journey and it's one you should start as soon as possible, not waiting until you graduate. Sign up to LinkedIn first and get your name out there. Begin the habit of perpetual learning – it's one you will take with you into your career, and it will impress potential employers. Keep up to date with what’s happening in your local industry but also, more regionally and then globally. Look at trends, laws, opinion pieces and awards. Online tutorials are a great place to brush up on your technical skills regularly. They are just as important as creative flair. Related articles: 20 tips for design interview success 5 tips to give you the edge when job hunting 5 golden rules for getting your first design job View the full article

Photoshop is the not-so-secret tool for photographers looking to make their photos truly shine. This powerful app is the ideal program to enhance your photos to make them social media ready – and the StudioMagic Photoshop Plug-In Bundle can add even more tricks to your toolbox. Get this must-have bundle on sale now for 88% off the retail price. For the photographer in need of an upgrade to their current workflow, the StudioMagic Photoshop Plug-In Bundle has everything they could need. These plugins make tweaking and improving photos a breeze. You'll be able to adjust backgrounds and shadows, cut out subjects quickly, use composite presets to give your photos a new look, and complete composites in a single click with StudioMagic's powerful tools. Add reflections, change seasons, add birds, snow, lightning, clouds, create stunning sunsets, light rays and dozens of other effects. The StudioMagic Photoshop Plug-In Bundle is valued at over $446, but you can save 88% off that price. That means you pay just $49.99 (approx. £37) for a package of tools that will make your photos sparkle. Don’t pass this up, grab the StudioMagic Photoshop Plug-In Bundle today. About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: The 5 best laptops for photo editing 95 top Photoshop tutorials 15 ways to improve your photography skills View the full article

Today sees the launch of The Guardian's redesign across print and digital formats. The newspaper's new look sees both The Guardian and The Observer switching from a Berliner to a tabloid size in print, complete with a redesigned typographic masthead that will also appear on the titles' updated digital platforms. 100 brilliant print advertsCreated by a team led by The Guardian's creative director Alex Breuer and senior editors and designers, the paper hopes that the redesigned look will appeal to its global readership online and generate millions in savings by switching to tabloid printing. The Guardian's editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said that the guiding principles behind the redesign have been the "hopeful themes of clarity and imagination". These principles are summed up in the newspaper's new typographic masthead, which introduces the new font called Guardian Headline. Guardian Headline was created in collaboration with Commercial Type, the design experts behind the paper's former blue and white masthead and the accompanying font, Guardian Egyptian. The new font is designed to be easier to read, while also appearing confident and impactful. The new monochrome wordmark doesn't mean that the newspaper is waving goodbye to its vibrant character, though. "We’re using a range of energetic colours, and the much-loved Guardian visual wit and style remain at the heart of the look," explains Viner. Speaking on The Guardian's site, Alex Breuer adds that: “With a more flexible page layout in print and online and enhanced use of photographic journalism and graphics, our new design is simple, confident and stylish – providing readers with the best possible experience across all our platforms.” The Guardian's new website as it looks today With The Guardian's focus on arts and culture, it's no surprise that it's a favourite with creatives. Earlier this year the paper even featured in the works of Turner Prize 2017 winner Lubaina Himid. So how has the redesign been received by designers? Jack Davey, creative director at Studio Bolt, thinks that the change of paper format is a reflection of the times we live in. "It entirely makes sense to ditch the more expensive (though admittedly a bit special) format, when the majority of its readership accesses the paper online," he says. "I’ll be fascinated to see how the new look, particularly the new typeface (and an apparent restrictive use of colour) roll out across the Guardian’s other publications and formats," Davey adds. "The old look and feel – built around the Guardian Egyptian typeface, really sings with the bold punchy colours used across the Guardian’s supplements, and colour really helps drive navigation on the site – so I can’t imagine it will be going too monotone." It entirely makes sense to ditch the more expensive format, when the majority of its readership accesses the paper online Jack Davey, Studio Bolt Responding to the redesign's teaser video (above), Davey was amused to spot its similarity to Droga5's ad for the Pixel phone from a couple of years ago. However he's not concerned that this is a sign of a decline in originality. "I, like a lot of the Guardian's readership, usually access the paper’s content through the app or a browser, so the change in physical printed format ultimately shouldn’t directly impact me, unless the paper’s journalism evolves to match its new tabloid format – which thankfully seems unlikely! "Like a lot of people in the creative industries, I have a soft spot for the Guardian and its understanding and embracing of design culture, so I'm excited to see where this new direction takes the paper." The new tabloid format and digital platforms are available to read and explore now. Related articles: How to prepare a file for print How Erik Spiekermann is reinventing printing How to colour-match your print projects View the full article

Whether you’re designing a newspaper, newsletter, magazine or digital publication, the principles of good editorial design and layout are universal. But whether print design or online, each project comes with unique challenges, and it’s useful to see what how designers have met them in practice. So here we bring you six stunning examples of editorial design from leading creatives, find out how they created them, and share some lessons that can be applied to all your editorial projects, large and small. 01. Otl Aicher's Isny by dn&co Otl Aicher's Isny: a limited edition book to accompany a major exhibition Over 10 years, the iconic German designer Otl Aicher created a poster series based on the small town of Isny im Allgäu. It was groundbreaking in eschewing the typical “colourful postcard” style in favour of a stark, reductive and monochrome approach. In a limited edition book, released this September to accompany a London exhibition of the work, dn&co delves into this groundbreaking project across 116 pages. "When it came to the layout of the book, the team felt a real sense of responsibility,” says creative director Patrick Eley. “We kept asking ourselves ‘What would Otl do?’ – shorthand for how we could bring rationale and order to the project. "It was a matter of ensuring the design was consistent with Aicher’s recognisable aesthetic, without being a copycat of it.” The layout needed to be consistent with the subject’s aesthetic The dn&co team opted for Univers, a typeface that was used as part of Isny’s branding, as well as for the Munich Olympics, the project Aicher is best known for. “It’s a simple but effective structure – the editorial frames the work, which is printed on an uncoated paper to reflect the material that the Isny posters were originally printed on,” says Eley. “The surrounding narrative is reproduced on a coated stock so the photos of the town pop out.” The pictograms only exist as physical prints, not vector artwork, so they had to photograph everything in high resolution to enable us to reproduce it as accurately as possible. And that led to some interesting dilemmas. “We wanted to reflect Aicher’s strongly gridded approach to his work for Isny,” says Eley, “but the closer we worked with it, the more we noticed the inconsistencies. For example, nothing is actually square as it originally appears and that caused a few headaches with our own grid.” Aicher’s pictograms had to be digitised in high resolution Eley’s main tip for anyone embarking on a similar project? “Good filing is vital,” he says. “Knowing where everything is, who took what photo and whether you’ve got something at a high enough resolution to print it is absolutely key.” Ultimately, he adds, you have to become really familiar with the book’s content. “Get close to the narrative, and remember that design and typography is a fundamental part of delivering any story. “In this case, we were very conscious that we didn’t want to ‘out art the art’. The design of this book needed to be recessive to the content, which was the real hero. So it had to be quiet and unopinionated, while acting to frame another designer’s work and give it context. Ultimately it was a question of respect.” 02. This Is Me, Full Stop by Here Design This Is Me, Full Stop explores punctuation marks in a fun way This Is Me, Full Stop: The Art, Pleasures, and Playfulness of Punctuation is a book created by London design agency Here Design that harnesses beautiful design to explore “the secret life of punctuation marks”. It’s a fun, tongue-in-cheek way to explore a niche topic, and makes great use of simplicity and whitespace to tie everything together; a trick that might look easy but is much harder to achieve in practice. “When it came to layout,” says Here Design’s Philip Cowell, “our biggest decision was to make the text the formal consistent element throughout and allow the illustration and design to spread out and play as much as it wanted to, so that it could support and enhance the text’s meaning. It is always a joy to work with whitespace, though of course it is a challenge to have so much freedom.” Text provided consistency, allowing illustration and design free reign “The book’s text font was chosen to be reasonably friendly and approachable with the authority and strength of character to appeal to a broad audience range,” he continues. “It’s also worth noting that we created all the illustrations and designs using real-life typefaces – over 50 of them from Apple Chancery to Wedding Text; there’s a full list at the back. Championing typefaces both known and unsung was always part of the ambition.” High production values were also central. “To find the simplest way of expressing our book’s main idea, we used white foil lettering on black substrate, creating a striking contrast between matte and gloss that helps the book stand out,” he says. “For solidity, we had the book trimmed flush (we love seeing it in bookshops; it stacks up really nicely). And inside we used black end papers and chapter dividers to bring the reader back to the centrality of the cover.” All the illustrations and designs were created using real-life typefaces Cowell offers the following advice for a designer coming fresh to editorial design: “Think about the experience of the reader." He continues: “Not all consciously designed things are necessarily friendly to read. So be the designer, but also be the reader – what would you expect to see? What would surprise you in a delightful way? In other words, it’s not just how it looks, it’s how it reads. “Help the text, don’t hide it. Typography can really endorse the words you are saying. And always remember that books evolve over many pages, so they need to retain an inherent formal structure while being able to break free.” Buy This Is Me, Full Stop03. Circular 19 by Pentagram Each issue of the one-and-a-half-yearly magazine has a unique design Circular 19, the 12th edition of The Typographic Circle’s magazine, was designed by Pentagram and marks the 40th anniversary of the volunteer-run and not-for-profit organisation, which aims to bring designers with an interest in type and typography together. “Circular, which comes out every 18 months, is an unusual publication as it does not carry any advertising and therefore is far more independent and we can do as we wish,” says designer Domenic Lippa. “It’s also important it appeals to its core audience of type enthusiasts.” The design of the publication is most noticeable for its use of big type. “We use this to create impact and to challenge preconceptions around what type is used for,” says Lippa. “For us, it's as important as imagery and is not used purely for information.” Big and bold typography is used to create impact and challenge perceptions When it comes to the design in general, each issue is a standalone piece, he adds. “We often decide upon an approach before we start designing and this includes the typefaces, the general look and feel and the colour palette. The colours help create a thread for the whole magazine.” Even within each issue, they aim for variety, he adds. “We want to keep challenging ourselves and stretch ourselves and not get bored, so each spread has a sense of individuality about it – we're not design fascists!” The designers use various layout approach even within each issue “For me, relationships of scale between various pieces of text is the most important element of editorial design; you should not be afraid to use type confidently,” he says. “I do believe that as designers we need to keep questioning the status quo; why are we doing it this way? Never stop learning and never stop trying things, otherwise you just dry up as a designer and as a thinker.” 04. Charm, Belligerence & Perversity by GBH Crazy cover, crazy guys Charm, Belligerence & Perversity: The Incomplete Works of GBH is a monograph written by Jason Gregory, Mark Bonner and Peter Hale, founders of GBH London. And the first thing you notice about it is its striking cover. “We wanted to make something that supported the idea that we’d only just begun and that we weren’t finished yet,” explains Mark Bonner. “We’re fascinated by our evolution and we loved the twist on the old idea that 100 monkeys in a room, given time, could create the complete works of GBH. We only have 25 at GBH, but give us a chance.” The book aims at a wider dialogue with the design community The team wanted the book to do two things, he says. “We needed to explain what went into the design of each project, and we wanted to have a wider dialogue with our readers about the insecurities and bravery that entwine in us all while we are making them. “We felt no-one had ever spoken about these uncomfortable truths. So many books on design are self-aggrandising, but we wanted to be honest and share the fact that we go through a lot of emotions in making new things.” Immersing yourself in the text is key to good editorial design, says Bonner In any editorial design project, Bonner believes it’s important to “read the text, feel it, know it intimately before you even think about trying to lay it all out.” And with this book especially, the typography needed to be accessible, and feel easy to read, he adds. “So we worked hard to find a typographic system that allowed the 'show and tell’ of the project stories and the psuedo-sycology to co-exist.” Buy Charm, Belligerence & Perversity: The Incomplete Works of GBH05. Mr B & Friends ‘Comfriendium’ 10 Year book A statement piece that Mr B & Friends sent to its clients To celebrate 10 years of creative collaborations, Bristol design studio Mr B & Friends produced Comfriendium, a statement piece to send to their clients. It’s an impressive publication with punchy colours and a high quality finish, including a gloss black and white foiling on the cover that adds subtlety and impact. Each page aims for maximum visual impact “Editorial permeates everything we do,” says executive creative director Steve Richardson. “From digital magazines and websites to annual reports and books, the content drives the message. "Gone are the days when an idea could be rolled out to a template; now the reader can click-off, turn the page and move to the next thing, so our goal is to guide the eye with storytelling merging words, graphics and imagery.” Playful use of imagery and strong colours keep things interesting He offers the following tips for anyone working in editorial design: “Invest in the best copywriting you can afford. If the words are brilliant, the design falls out onto the printed or digital page. Work closely with the author to get into their head so you understand the nuances. “Use wit,” he adds. Be playful with your use of highlights, illustrations, icons and imagery. Choose typefaces that work well online and in print. Good pairings that give light and shade to all communications, so you can tailor the editorial message to the medium.” And final tip is to add pace. “Each page and screen view should take the eye on a journey, sometimes punchy and energised, and sometimes subtle and soothing. Choose illustration and imagery to help reflect this.” 06. Photo District News website by James Johnson The multi-device world makes editorial design on the web a challenge All the examples we’ve included so far are print products, but as Steve Richardson mentions above, editorial design is just as important online; in many ways more so. A good example of editorial design on the web is Photo District News, a photography magazine that was redesigned in 2018 under the art direction of Brooklyn-based designer James Johnson. There’s an awful lot of information to be uncovered here, but the flexible, responsive layout of the site is designed with generous use of whitespace and elegant proportions that avoid ever feeling cluttered, whichever device you use it on. “Unlike print, on the web an article is usually designed as a whole, with all of its body copy on one page, and often the designer will not have control over how it's presented,” says Johnson. “It could be a phone, it could be printed out, or something else altogether. So it's important to make the articles flexible and resilient to changing conditions. “Keep layouts simple and embrace responsive design techniques,” he continues. “Try to get the main ideas across in each format and don't sweat the small differences between them. This is in contrast to the two-page spread of the magazine, where a designer decides exactly how the content will appear and when. Generous use of whitespace and elegant proportions make the site an easy read on all devices “Aside from that, keeping a page clean, with lots of whitespace and clear, readable typography, is even more important on the web than in print. Reading is hard on a screen so it's best not to distract the readers with a cluttered page.” The biggest mistakes Johnson sees online often stem from poor typography. “Line widths that are too wide is probably the biggest issue there,” he says. “I also see a lot of sites that try to use a print typeface for body copy.” Getting it right is partly about effective collaboration, he adds. “The designer's role is to provide a tangible form for the underlying concepts provided by the editor. This can't happen without a good relationship between the designer and editor. "So I can't stress this enough; work with your editors and really get to know their content and editorial philosophy before attempting to design anything. This will go a long way in ensuring that people want to read the article.” All the articles are easy to read and navigate on a smartphone screen In terms of design, you have to catch the reader’s attention right away and get them interested in the article, he adds. “The title and deck are key to this. Readers should be able to glance at the page and instantly know what the article is about. Write a great title and design it to really stand out. Adding a great photo or illustration that works with the title, conceptually and visually, will really bring it home. “Once you have their attention, great content backed by solid design will keep it. Pick a good web typeface and set the body copy large enough to be read easily. Break the article into sections and write headlines for each and use strategically placed images, pull quotes and other design elements to encourage readers to scroll.” You might also like: How to use images more effectively in annual reports 10 skills graphic designers need to get ahead in 2018 5 photography trends influencing designers in 2018 View the full article

You're reading Postcards: The Second Sneak-Peek, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! After announcing the first Sneak-Peek of Postcards we received useful feedback and very positive reactions. Postcards is close to being released, but we want to share new images of this tool with you now. (We’re still open for feedback though!) View the full article

The best rigs are the ones that are intuitive and simple to use. When building them you must remember that it’s possible it will be used by a whole team of animators, all of which will have their preferred approach to bringing things to life. Overload a rig with too many controls and you’re not only making it more complicated to use, but you’re adding to the amount of time it takes an animator to create the simplest of sequences. How could it be fixed? One element of rigging that can help is to build in the ability to pick-walk through the hierarchy. This allows the animator to quickly navigate the rig by using the arrow keys, rather than selecting controls or digging through the Outliner. As an example, if you have the hand control selected you can quickly move up the chain to the elbow control, and then the shoulder control and so on. Whereas on a normal rig, pressing an arrow key likely selects a constraint node or some other area of the rig that shouldn’t be touched. The problem is there hasn’t been a good solution to this inside Maya, not without the help of external scripts or tools. Personally, when building rigs for clients I don’t like to add external plugins. It can cause problems down the line when a whole studio then needs to make sure they have the same plugins installed, updated and working just so they can animate. Luckily this all changed with Maya 2017 (and Maya 2018). How do we create custom rig controls in Maya? With last year’s release came new controller options giving you the ability to indicate which elements in the scene are controls. With them tagged you can then dictate the pick-walk parent or child regardless of where they lie in the hierarchy. That’s not all these controller tags do. Once specified that they are part of a rig, Maya will take advantage of any extra CPU or GPU power you have through parallel evaluation, dramatically improving the performance of the scene as it plays back or is interacted with, something you can test for yourself with the Profiler tool. What’s more, the controller tags are very simple to set up. Define your controllers To get started all you need to do is tag your icons as actual Controllers, so Maya knows what they are. To do this simply go to the Control menu under the Rigging menu set. Here you will find two options at the top, Tag As Controller and Parent Controller. Start by selecting all your controls and clicking Tag As Controller. The controller node What this will do is add a new 'tag' node to the controller. This is where all the information is stored and it offers a few extra options for you when it comes to dictating how your pick-walking works. You will also notice that there currently isn’t a parent defined for each node, so nothing will happen yet. Dictate the hierarchy With the controllers defined you can now dictate the hierarchy so Maya knows where to go when you use the arrow keys. If we use an arm as an example, first select the hand control and then the elbow and click Parent Controller. Now select the elbow control and then the shoulder and click it again. You can now use the up and down arrow keys to quickly navigate the arm controls. Automatically adjust visibility If you’re lucky enough to have Maya 2018 you will also have the ability to change a control's visibility based on the location of the mouse pointer. This can seem strange to begin with as when loaded, the character will appear to have no controls. To activate this feature simply go to the tag node and select Show On Mouse Proximity from the Visibility drop-down box. More from Ant Ward at Vertex Ant Ward will be at Vertex answering your questions, as part of our 'Ask an Artist' section. These sessions are a fantastic opportunity to get one to one with a veteran artist, who can help you overcome a roadblock in your work, or to talk through a problem area. Ant is an artist with huge experience in many areas of CG. He has been a regular on the pages of 3D World for many years and has written numerous tutorials, as well as being a part of our expert Q and A team. To book a ticket for Vertex 2018 head over to the Vertex site, where you will find information on all the day's activities, from keynote talks to the panel discussion and recruitment fair. Related articles: Scott Ross to talk at Vertex The ethics of digital humans 12 mighty Maya tutorials to try today View the full article

Sometimes an illustration or piece of artwork just demands to be rendered and turned into 3D art, and that was the spark that ignited Media Molecule's Emilie Stabell to spend a year adding an extra dimension to a beloved 2D image. Stabell is fan of illustrator Sam Bosma, and in particular his concept Stability. "When I showed his illustration to a friend, I joked: "Imagine if I made this in 3D. It would be absolutely insane." Not long after that, I began modelling the first asset," says Stabell. "The sheer scale of the project was quite overwhelming, though, so on the first day I started by creating a cube in Maya, and that was it: a small beginning." Stabell says her 3D workflow was very simple: Maya was used for modelling, Photoshop for texturing and ZBrush was used to project from the concept. Once her 3D model was complete she rendered using Maya Hardware 2.0, and also used After Effects and Photoshop to add the finishing touches to the animated scene. 01. Start simple, using silhouettes "I make sure that my model doesn't cover up the outline on the concept," explains Stabell. "I'm going to need that little bit of extra space for when I add my own 'toon' outlines later" Stabell began by blocking out the assets in Maya, using an image plane of the concept and setting her camera to front view. Using simple primitives, she was particularly careful to make sure the silhouettes matched the illustration. "Since the geometry is flat-shaded and wouldn't be deforming, it gave me a lot of freedom in how many pieces each asset can consist of," says Stabell. "As long as I was satisfied with the look of my silhouette from all angles, I knew I was on the right track. "In a sense, this project was devoid of many of the usual technical, and tedious, aspects that go into creating successful 3D, which is most likely the reason why it kept being fun to work on the entire way through." How the lighting hit the geometry also became irrelevant. "As long as the silhouette looks good, you're on the right track," says Stabell, explaining how focusing on the front view to match her geometry with the illustration is very forgiving for objects on the Z-axis: "As long as they're overlapping in the right order… It's really a rather flexible, different and fun way to do 3D." 02. Bring parts together Stabell loved seeing all of the disparate parts come together to bring the image to life. "I have never created anything of this scale, and proving to myself that I had the persistence and motivation to do so was a wonderful experience," says Stabell. "From a technical point of view, painting the textures gave me a lot of joy. Each asset was treated as a separate miniature project, so I never really managed to get tired of a specific part of the pipeline, and painting remained fresh and fun." A selection of the main assets that Stabell created throughout her lengthy process – over 200 in total That painting process began in earnest once the silhouettes were finished, Stabell then created the UVs and exported the mesh as an .obj into ZBrush. "I projected the texture from the concept to use as a guide for the hand-painted textures I made in Photoshop. I imported the .obj file, divided the geometry a few times to get a good amount of resolution for the Polypaint and then positioned and scaled the model so it was ready for projection." 03. Project the concept onto the mesh The next step involved using Spotlight to import and project the concept onto the mesh. Stabell checked her projection worked and then exported by going to Zplugin>Multi Map Exporter, and choosing Texture From Polypaint. With her texture exported from ZBrush and opened in Photoshop, Stabell moved into Maya and took a UV snapshot of the assets' UVs to set as a layer on top of the ZBrush texture. She then created a mask for all of her UV shells and grouped them into appropriate subgroups, in this case: bird, wing, thighs and legs. "This approach allowed me to create clipping masks for each group so I needn't worry about 'colouring within the lines'," explains Stabell. "Another important thing to note is to always make sure your masks are a couple of pixels wider than the actual UV shell, otherwise you might run into issues with Maya displaying black edges around the seams." 04. Paint roughly at first The steps to add the 'toon' outline in Maya When it came to the painting, Stabell began by applying a flat base colour to everything using the Paint Bucket Tool and her own brushes: "Then I quickly painted some rough gradients and colour vibration using my Awesome Paint 1 brush. At this stage, I didn't worry about precision at all, as it was simply about applying some nice gradients and bold colours." Once she had something decent to work with, it was time to switch to the Smudge Tool using her Smudge Blender brush: "This brush is optimised for the tool, so I didn't get any of the lag you'd normally experience when using Smudge. Furthermore, it left behind a bit of texture, creating that nice, painterly effect. From here on, it was a process of going back and forth between painting and smudging until I was satisfied. Lastly, I drew the inner line art, as I planned to apply an outline as my final step." 05. Keep going This is how the scene looks through the main camera in Maya As you can see from her workflow, Stabell's task to texture and paint every asset by hand was a mammoth effort that involved creating over 200 assets. "The hardest part was keeping at it and not giving up on it halfway through," she says, adding: "When I had done roughly a third of the work, I had a short period of time where I really had to push myself to keep going. The sheer amount I knew I had left to do made it seem like I would never finish." This is when the plan to treat each asset as a separate project came into its own: "Without this type of workflow, I am almost certain that I would have canned the project long ago. Hence, I want to stress the importance of planning, folder structure and consistency. They are your best friends when doing something of a larger scale." 06. Set up the scene The view from above of the final scene in Maya But the end was in sight, the assets had been modelled, textured and positioned, and Stabell just had to build her surrounding scene as depicted in the concept. "I started by setting up a camera with a simple 180 rotation around the model and built the environment from there. This is also the point in time where I started to think about how the environment is supporting the narrative and is helping enhance the original concept," she says. As the story concerns a group of explorers hunting for pirate treasure in a vast dried-up ocean, some of the scene's elements – such as a pirate flag, a sunken ship and a chunky, rusty metal piece emerging from the sand – were designed and modelled to support the narrative. "I wanted to hint at the story. This may not be noticed by the audience, but it helps me as a creator to inject a sense of meaning and history into the scene in the hopes that it will resonate." 07. Render and apply effects The final 3D concept from different angles Rendering, says Stabell, was "a simple task" because all the information was stored in the textures. Stabell explains: "All of my materials were surface shaders and there were no lights in the scene whatsoever. I split the scene into the appropriate render layers and rendered everything using Maya Hardware 2.0. Furthermore, I had a limited amount of render layers and only a few elements to tweak in compositing, so I quickly assembled everything in After Effects." Once in After Effects, Stabell applied the scene's more subtle effects, including the flags blowing in the wind and the dust in front of the turtle. She then rendered out to Premiere and for the still images, she used Photoshop to put the finishing touches to the final images. In the end, all of Stabell's hard work meant that she had much more than a single product to showcase: "The amount of work I put into each and every one of the assets, means that I am left with a substantial library of cool 3D characters and props. Furthermore, I decided to create the back of the piece as well, which means that the whole thing can now be used both for still images, turntables, videos and even in real time." This article originally appeared in issue 215 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists – packed with expert tutorials, inspiration and reviews. Subscribe to 3D World here Related articles: Mighty Maya tutorials to try today 30 free 3D models How to colour your manga art like a pro View the full article

You may have captured the most beautiful, unique or thought-provoking footage of a lifetime, but taking it home or to your studio with inadequate hardware can lead to enormous frustration. So choosing one of our picks of the best computers for video editing will ensure that you have the ideal tool to make your footage sing. Assuming you've got a permanent base for your editing, going for a desktop computer instead of one of our best laptops for video editing means that you get the benefit of better specifications for less money. And being able to work on a broader display allows you to pick out minute detail better and see what your film will look like on a bigger screen. As well as our overall top choices of the very best Windows PC and Mac hardware on the shelves, we've also got you sorted if you're on a budget. And if you aren't sure which program to use once the computer's sorted, then you can check out our favourite video editing software, too. Sometimes, if you want the best results, you just have to save up your pennies and go for the best tools. We know it's expensive (really, really expensive), but Apple's brand new iMac Pro is the new daddy of computers for designers. So what do you get for the eye-watering price tag? For a start there's the included 27-inch 5K resolution, which is 43 per cent brighter than standard Apple Retina monitors and delivers up to an astonishing one billion colours. There aren't too many screens around that will flatter your footage more. Starting with an 8-core Intel Xeon processor, the least expensive option is already immensely powerful, with an outrageous 18-core option for those who can afford it. From 1TB to 4TB of SSD internal storage means that you'll be able to store tonnes of 4K footage before you need to think about additional external drives. And it's not short on ports, either, with four Thunderbolt 3.0 ports and a 10GB ethernet port. Plus, of course you get the benefit of the platform's formidable Final Cut Pro X editing software as well. Read more about the new iMac Pro Don't let the name fool you, the HP Z2 Mini G3 may look diminutive on the outside, but this Windows PC's specifications make it an absolute behemoth on the inside. Thanks to its available Quadro GPU and Xeon CPU, the G3 can power up to four 4K monitors via its DisplayPorts. This enables you to drive 8K worth of pixels – head to our pick of the best 4K monitors to pick one/some out. And it still manages to squeeze in 1TB of onboard storage. Remarkable, considering the machine's dimensions. Because the Mini G3 is such a pint-sized PC, it will fit seemlessly into your home office or studio. Whether stood up or lying flat, it offers a compact alternative to those traditionally massive workstations. Read our sister site TechRadar's hands on HP Z2 Mini G3 review We know that this is another PC that will stretch the budget, but hear us out. This astonishing all-in-one from Dell comes with a mighty 27-inch 4K Ultra HD touchscreen display and an ear-busting set of six speakers. That makes for the ideal platform from which to view – and hear – what you've shot and get the best from it in post-production. The Dell XPS 27 performs admirably against industry-standard graphics-based benchmarks, no doubt thanks to the pacey 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-6700 processor under the casing. And this premium machine also gets premium peripheries in the form of a sleek and stylish wireless mouse and keyboard. Read TechRadar's full XPS 27 review Once you go Mac, it's hard to go back. If you're used to cutting and chopping on an Apple machine and want an all-in-one setup for your desktop then the iMac with 4K Retina display is an absolute beaut – and it's a fraction of the price of the iMac Pro. In fact, the price is pretty spectacular when you consider that a stunning 21.5-inch 4K retina screen is included. It features a wider range of colours than some competitors' monitors thanks to its DCI P3 colour space. Put simply, images can appear more life-like with accurate colours and a greater vibrancy. The kind of little touch that can really add value to your project. Read TechRadar's full Apple iMac with 4K Retina display review Complete with monitor, mouse and keyboard, it's not easy to find exceptional quality computing for under a grand. But this Lenovo PC is an adequate option if you're on a tight budget. It comes with a 23-inch Full HD monitor and packs in up to a 2TB hard drive and 7th-generation Intel processor. If you're somebody requiring a heavyweight machine for professional video editing all day everyday, this machine probably isn't going to quite cut the mustard. But for keen amateurs and dabblers, the sub £1,000/$1,000 spend on this Lenovo all-in-one should be just fine. It's worth noting that you can buy an even cheaper AMD-based version, but it will be less powerful and you get a smaller monitor. Related articles: The best 4K monitors available right now Our favourite laptops for video editing Best video editing software in 2018 View the full article

There's been a lot of talk about filter bubbles and echo chambers lately, but these don't just apply to politics and online: anybody can become stuck in an echo chamber – and that includes artists. If you were surprised by Brexit, or the US presidential elections, then you'll know first-hand the limiting effects of being surrounded by those who share the same views as you. "It's a problem that impacts artists with different severity," says concept artist and illustrator Carmen Sinek. "Some people know what they like and are happy doing just that. Others lock themselves into a certain style early, for the sake of pursuing a career with a certain company or genre." The more personalised our online experiences become, the more segregated and siloed our views It usually happens, Sinek says, when artists start focusing on the product instead of the process. "They set out with a goal in mind – working for this company, or emulating that artist – and slowly begin to build their art education around it. "If an artist wants to work for Magic: The Gathering, they might follow Magic artists online. The tutorials they see and resources they pick up, such as digital brushes, will likely be used by those who work within Magic's semi-realistic style range. They build a social media echo chamber around a very small part of the art community, and it becomes more difficult to move outside of it." The risks of living in a bubble Monarch, by Carmen Sinek. "Experiment" is her advice for steering clear of art bubbles. At an industry level, one of the most immediate consequences of this is artistic homogenisation. For a while, many big video games and films had very similar aesthetics, points out Sinek. "Year after year, waves of students came out of the top art schools with extremely similar styles and design tastes," she says. At an artist level, the consequences can be more harmful. Restricting your creative range can lead to dissatisfaction and depression – and limiting your views can be even more destructive. "I've seen too many artists clinging to harmful views on sexism and diversity," says art director Paul Canavan, "ignoring valid criticism from the affected parties and making the industry less appealing for many people. "On a strictly artistic level, there are also a number of artists, mostly students or those relatively new to the industry, who decry the use of photos, 3D or any other 'non-traditional' techniques in illustration or concept art work, and take it upon themselves to spread this weird message around social media forums. I think subscribing to that elitist mentality is pretty harmful, and it's a place that I will try to engage in discussion." Breaking the bubble Paul Canavan designed this game artwork, Moving Hazard, to encourage "mini narratives": smaller areas that work as standalone images. So why are filter bubbles so tough to pop? The reasons are three-fold: first, you might not realise you've fallen into a bubble. Second, social media is built upon the idea of 'following' people whose work or perspective you like. And third, when you're doing a lot online, algorithmic filtering serves to reinforce your preferences on the basis of past choices of online content. The more personalised our online experiences become, the more segregated and siloed our views. "The result is an automated population of news feeds, search results and so on, with content automatically selected if deemed as in keeping with those previously recorded choices," explains media and communications expert Dr Dan Mercea, who's a senior lecturer in sociology at City University London. However, as Mercea points out, it's not all bad: the more diverse those choices, the greater the variety of filtered content. "The algorithm will adjust itself as it tracks our surfing histories, so the filtering becomes more intricate as we make more information available about our preferences. So if we expose ourselves to diversity, the algorithm will reflect this choice – at least temporarily." And it's the same in real life. Beating a bubble can be as simple as watching a video or reading a blog from someone with a different opinion, says illustrator Jason Rainville. "There's a difference between living in a bubble and being confident of your point of view, though. And you don't want to be so open-minded that your brain falls out," Rainville says. Do something different This Star Trek character collage was created by Jason Rainville for Disruptor Beam's mobile game Star Trek: Timelines. Sinek agrees that doing something outside your comfort zone is a good way to pop a creative bubble. "Dig out your art history book and start going through it, or enroll in an art history class somewhere. Find a place to learn where you will be exposed to a wide variety of artistic movements and styles, not just the ones you pick to research on your own." "Be open to different opinions and encourage dialogue," adds Canavan. "There are a ton of controversial, oft-debated topics around the art community. Getting involved, sharing your opinion and trying to take something away from every encounter is super healthy." And that's the point: there's a difference between being part of a community and being stuck in a bubble. Debate, discussion and the exchange of ideas can propel your practice to new levels. "There's something to be said for surrounding yourself with like-minded people who can push the sort of content you enjoy into your eyeballs every day and a sense of community into your life," reasons Canavan. "In an industry where many of us work remotely, that can really help." This article was originally published in issue 154 of ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists – packed with workshops and interviews with fantasy and sci-fi artists, plus must-have kit reviews. Buy issue 154 here or subscribe to ImagineFX here. Related articles: How to encourage diversity in the design industry 20 digital artists to follow on Behance How fan art can get you paid View the full article

Is it really 2018 already? It seems like only yesterday we were looking forwards to all of the opportunities and design trends that 2017 had to offer. In a year that will be remembered in terms of design for its retro fonts and advances in VR, there were also plenty of rebrands and new logos to enjoy. One person who knows all about branding is Armin Vit, the design doyen over at Brand New. Popular for his coverage of all the latest brand identity work, Vit recently compiled a retrospective of the best and worst branding efforts of 2017. We've rounded up five of the best and five of the worst entries from his review below, but for the full list be sure to head over to his site. Because we're kind folk here, we'll kick off with a look at the best pieces of branding from 2017 (if you're not as saintly, you can skip to the worst here). The best brand identities of 2017 01. SŽDC This clever rebrand ties together the company name and its service Chances are you haven't heard of the Czech administration SŽDC, and even less likely are the odds that you'll be able to pronounce its name – Správa železniční dopravní cesty – correctly. In English it translates as Railway Structure Administration, and simplifying the name and message of the organisation was the aim of this rebrand. Amazingly, this clear logo accomplishes both of these aims with ease. Designed by Prague-based studio Marvil, the orange logo plays on the similarity between the letter Ž and three parallel railway tracks linked by a railroad switch. Meanwhile, the letter Ž acts as a tidy abbreviation for Železnice, which means Railway in Czech. "Using the diacritic over the “Z” in the company’s name to create an overhead view of a railway switch is very clever. And that livery… swoon," writes Vit. The monogram is both distinctive and authoritative, plus it looks set to work across posters, uniforms, documents and online platforms with ease. What more could you want from a rebrand? 02. Misfit Misfit's new identity celebrates oddballs Did you know that over 20 billion lbs of fruits and vegetables go unharvested or unsold every year in the US? Neither did we. But one company that did is Misfit. Established in 2014, Misfit used fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste to create its range of cold-pressed juices. For its rebrand, Misfit turned to NY-based studio Gander. Whereas Misfit's old logo was a fairly straight laced affair of uninspiring, blocky typography, the new version has a goofy sense of humour without becoming overbearing, which echoes the misshapen ingredients. "Ugly never looked so good," writes Vit. "We created an identity that challenges beauty standards and glorifies the oddballs," Gander told Brand New. "Through illustration, photography and web design, we were able to tell Misfit’s story and educate consumers in a way that was fun and approachable." 03. Mozilla Mozilla shared every step of its rebrand online Global nonprofit organisation Mozilla has been dedicated to making the web better since 1998 thanks to its open source products and open standards. So when it came to a rebrand, it made sense that Mozilla would team up with the equally altruistic Johnson Banks. Not only were Mozilla and Johnson Banks a good match in terms of ethics, they're both a little madcap. To tie into Mozilla's open source services, Johnson Banks followed suit and decided to do its rebranding work in public by sharing every step of the process. It's just as well that the design was strong enough to hold up to the scrutiny. Complete with typography that nods to URL language and a diverse range of colourful alternatives to help it stand out, Mozilla's makeover has truly earned its place as one of 2017's best logos and brand identities. 04. Ugly Drinks Ugly Drinks provide a healthy alternative to sugary fizzy drinks "Healthy doesn't have to be boring," that's how independent design agency Jones Knowles Ritchie approached this rebrand for Ugly Drinks. Set up in 2016, Ugly Drinks aims to provide a healthy alternative to the familiar sugary soft drinks that currently dominate UK shops. Whereas the company's previous look focussed on the ugly angle – complete with a deliberately clunky typeface – this new design packs more of an attitude. With the letter "U" shaped like a slurping tongue, Ugly Drinks now has a stylish wordmark to help it stand out from the crowd. "The overall design of this is fantastic and, what’s better, it’s fueled by a great sense of humour," says Vit. The flexible piece of type design looks great either on its own or paired with a range of fruit icons to create cheeky characters. Ugly Drinks co-founder Hugh Thomas hopes that this identity will help define the brand and turn it into something people will be happy to be seen with. 05. Chobani Chobani's new logo evokes a luxurious taste sensation Greek yoghurt company Chobani has come a long way since it was launched in 2007. In 2012 it was the official sponsor of the US Olympic Team, and in 2017, Chobani decided a brand refresh was in order. Designed in-house and led by chief creative officer Leland Maschmeyer, the new typographic logo does a much better job than the previous design when it comes to communicating a rich, sensuous sensation, which makes the rebrand a much better fit for the product. Vit himself is a huge fan of the design. "I think it is literally and absolutely perfect not just in execution but in representing the product," he explains. "The green colour is unexpected but it looks stunning on the typography and more so in the packaging." Now that we've covered the best brands of 2017, it's time for the dishonourable mentions as we look at the worst identities the year had to offer. The worst brand identities of 2017 01. General Mills General Mills' heart logo isn't getting a lot of love This update to the branding of global food company General Mills is all about "telling the General Mills story thoughtfully, proactively and consistently," according to a blog post in the wake of its new logo launch. It went on to add: "With our newest logo, the familiar “Big G” continues to exemplify strength, longevity and trust – and now love." Pass us the sick bag... It's this schmaltzy lovey-dovey message from a corporate super-entity that left Vit cold when it came to this rebrand. And even though he admits that graphically it's not the worst design in the world, the heart just comes across as insincere and lazy. We're definitely getting shades of 'Big Brother loves you' here. Very dystopian. 02. Skype Designers got pretty hung up on Skype's new logo You know what Skype is. Established in 2003, the instant messaging app became the go-to way for millions of people to communicate online thanks to its text message and video chat services. Its new logo, though, was less well received. So where did the Skype rebrand go wrong? For starters, the previous wordmarks-in-bubbles logo at least had originality and was recognisable. This new version looks dangerously generic. Vit puts this at the feet of a merger with Microsoft that was completed in 2011. This might help the tech giant to tie in Skype's look with the rest of its software, but it's a move that does nothing to improve or build on Skype's image. As Vit writes, "it's aligned with the Microsoft brand architecture, which no logo asked for ever." 03. City of Vancouver Is there enough going on here to qualify this as a logo? This logo for the City of Vancouver Government Administration is very much a case of "you get what you pay for". The mystery firm behind this brand design was chosen for its low low prices... and it shows. When it came to judging this rebrand, Vit is at least firm but fair when he points out that this design isn't meant to be an all-singing, all-dancing piece of typography to attract tourists. This is a governmental logo. But does that mean it can get away with being this boring? Vit admits that at least the typographer seems to know what they're doing, as all the alignment sits correctly. However there's no getting away from just how inconsequential this rebrand looks, or as Vit puts it, "this is insanely bland. It makes Scranton, PA, sound exciting." Quite. 04. AXIS Dance Company Is this logo too heavy handed? We find ourselves disagreeing with Vit when it comes to this logo for integrated contemporary dance company, AXIS. Or, if not disagreeing, not finding ourselves as offended by this rebrand. Created to celebrate the company's 30-year anniversary, AXIS' colourful new wordmark is inspired by fluid dance moves. It's a sound enough concept, so where does it go wrong? "The new logo is a conceptual and formal abomination," says Vit. He goes on to lay into the wordmark's lack of motion, elegance and energy. As far as he's concerned, the gradients only serve to add insult to injury and highlight how cheap and vacuous the logo is. Ok, Vit, tell us what you really think... In his defence though, Vit only has an issue with the logo, not the company itself. "The main reason I’m coming down so hard on this is because this organisation and its dancers deserve something so much better that properly reflects what they do, the challenges they are able to overcome, and the beauty of movement they are able to create," he explains. 05. Redbox Bad kerning, distressing colours... yuck! In an age of Netflix binge watching, it's good to see Redbox is still flying the flag for good old DVD and video game rentals. What's less good to see is its new logo. On the surface you might be put off by the purple period, but look close and this logo gets even worse. First of all there are clumsy slabs, then there's the wonky 'e', and finally the kerning is so tight that the pairing of "d" and "b" look a little too phallic for their own good. As Vit says, it's "painfully amateurish and unappealing". Vit notes that many of his Twitter followers read it as 'Redbax' due to the too-tight spacing. "I saw this as a sign that they don’t treat their brand seriously enough," he says of Redbox. Topping off the rebrand is the smug tagline "so smarter". Smarter than what, exactly? Streaming films and games online? We're not convinced. Related articles: When to use humour in branding The problem with period product branding The top 10 big-brand logos View the full article

With plenty of new web design tools coming onto the market each day, it's difficult to know what's worth your time. As a result, it's tempting for studios and freelancers to just keep using the same tools and processes, rather than exploring something new. However, pick the right tool and it could totally revolutionise your workflow. In this post, seven top web professionals share the tools that changed their working lives in 2017. Why not give them a go this year? 01. React Native It's not just a web view wrapper React Native is a framework for building native apps using React. It's in active development, with Facebook pushing a new release each month. Its use of modern tooling (such as the latest version of JavaScript), as well as features such as hot reloading, made it a standout tool for Shane Osbourne, lead frontend developer at JH. "90 per cent of the code is shared across the iOS and Android platform – there are just a handful of situations in which platform-specific components are needed," he explains. "And it’s not just a web view wrapper: React Native gives higher performance and tighter integration with the host platform than other tools." 02. Toggl Time-tracking apps can have all kinds of hidden benefits While time-tracking apps, such as Toggl, are handy for monitoring time worked in order to figure out client fees, they really come into their own when you use them to monitor your own working patterns. "I’ve used time-tracking tools inconsistently in the past, [but] never as a tool to monitor my own time, which looking back now seems like a rookie mistake," explains BudAffect co-founder Jamie Murphy. "Using Toggl properly in 2017 has been by far the biggest benefit for me. Thanks to tracking everything I do, I’m much more aware of how long admin tasks such as accounts, invoices and so on take and am able to better plan around them." This approach also has the benefit of helping you see the balance of profits made versus time taken, so you can identify the most time-consuming, unprofitable forms of income, and re-evaluate their role in your business. 03. Toby Tidy browser; tidy mind Are you looking at hundreds of tiny distracting tabs at the top of your browser? Then this is a useful tool for you. "As a habitual over-user of tabs, this year I discovered the Chrome extension Toby, which is a way to create collections of links, as an alternative to individual bookmarks," says digital transformation consultant Sally Lait. "I’m not entirely cured of ‘tab-itis’, but it’s definitely helping." 04. Wacom Cintiq 22HD interactive monitor Shortcut keys on the Wacom Cintiq 22HD save a lot of time, says Flow creative director Karl Doran Let's not forget about hardware. Last year saw some great new creative gadgetry entering the market (take a look at our roundup of the top new tech for designers to see for yourself). The right kit can transform your workflow, as the Flow team found when it got its hands on the Wacom Cintiq 22HD interactive monitor. "The interactive screen allows you to draw straight onto the screen, making it feel much more intuitive than regular graphics tablets, the programmable shortcut keys are great and the zoom pad is dead easy to use," says creative director Karl Doran. The team now uses it in all of its products for tasks ranging from hand-drawn animation to rotoscoping, masking and motion tracking in After Effects, or even just creating artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator. See The best drawing tablet: our pick of the best graphics tablets and check out The best Wacom tablet deals to bag yourself a new Wacom tablet at the best price. 05. Tachyons Tachyons is an open source functional CSS toolkit, and it had a massive impact on the web design process at Fore Design this year. "It's built on a scale that allows us to design in the browser in a way that feels fast and fluid," says co-founder Dan Perrera. "It’s made it possible to move our process completely into code so, instead of creating comps, we’re able to spend that time refining our work. We’re able to take Tachyons from project to project and the time we’ve invested in it has really paid off." 06. Sketch There's a reason everyone's still talking about Sketch Sketch has been gradually cementing its position as a top design tool over the past few years, and is still steadily poaching seasoned Adobe users, including web designer and developer Andrew Couldwell. "I’ve used Adobe Photoshop exclusively for over 10 years – I even designed an Adobe product using Photoshop! But this past year I’ve transitioned to Sketch, and I’m amazed how transformative it has been. The power of symbols and nested symbols are a game-changer for system and product design. Read How to get started with Sketch for app design, as well as Sketch vs Photoshop: which design tool should you use? plus 10 Sketch plugins you need to know about to get even more from the tool this year. 07. Paper Sometimes the best tools are the simplest ones While there are plenty of snazzy new tools vying for our attention, there's still space for traditional methods. BuzzFeed product designer Lindsey Maratta is careful not to be seduced by every latest thing: "I try not to feel confined to digital tools for other parts of the design process." Maratta says her most successful prototype and UX spec of 2017 was made using paper and dot stickers, explained via a narrated video. "Between that and its role in several collaborative sprint-style ideation sessions we’ve held lately, good old paper remains one of the most useful tools for my team this year," she adds. "My work this year has largely been about empowering teams of designers at a large company to work consistently and efficiently, with the aid of design systems," she continues. "Sketch has been a powerful aid to this. I must admit that I do miss paint brushes and image editing in Photoshop though, for the more creative web design projects." This article appeared in issue 302 of net, the magazine for professional web designers and developers – offering the latest new web trends, technologies and techniques. Pick up a copy today or subscribe to net here. Read more: The 5 biggest UX design trends for 2018 How to manage CSS classes with JavaScript Should you be worried about Meltdown and Spectre? View the full article

Freelancers don't just have to be good at the services they offer, they also need to know how to market themselves. Being your own boss can be a rewarding experience, and now the Professional Freelancing Mastery Bundle can give you the tools you need to make your dream a reality. Get it on sale now for 98% off the retail price. There is a whole ecosystem of freelancers online who offer up their skills and services to those in need. Finding an audience can be tricky, as can building a reputation in an already crowded field. No matter what you're selling, the Professional Freelancing Mastery Bundle can help you find your audience. This bundle is packed with courses that will teach you how to make the most of platforms like Fiverr, UpWork, and more. Plus, it will teach you how to hone your skills to build your own website and find your dream clients. You can get the Professional Freelancing Mastery Bundle on sale now for 98% off the retail price. That's a huge saving off an essential collection of courses that can help you to go freelance and become your own boss, so grab this deal today. About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: 8 ways to make more money in 2018 4 ways to cash in as a freelancer 9 things nobody tells you about going freelance View the full article

Designing an annual report is part of the bread-and-butter work for many designers. Some may see it as relatively dry, but – as the examples here show – annual reports can provide an opportunity to turn staple work into an imaginative, enticing and attractive design to enhance your design portfolio. Imagery is a useful tool in this endeavour. There’s no reason why an annual report has to look dry or text-heavy, and the right approach to photography, graphics and/or illustration can really help your design to sing. Here’s how to do it... 01. Choose gorgeous photography or illustration Photography can help promote a personal connection between client and audience First you need to decide whether to focus your approach on photography, illustration or vector graphics. This choice will depend largely on the brief, the intended audience and the kind of report you wish to produce. Take for example the Donor Report for the University of Cambridge, shown above and below. Designed by The District, this annual publication is sent to people who donate large amounts of money to the institution. The focus on people meant photography was the obvious choice “While many of the projects that benefit are capital projects and investments in technology, our research made it clear that ultimately donors are investing in people,” explains creative director Alun Shooter. “So we felt photographing the benefactors of the new buildings, equipment and facilities was the best way to go. Simply using typography and colour may have looked great graphically, but would have missed an opportunity and arguably felt sterile.” Of course, photography isn’t relevant to every annual report. If your report’s focus lies less in personal stories and more in statistical analysis, for example, it may be better to use graphics to bring facts and figures to life in a fun and attractive way. Alternatively, if your visual goal is to highlight more abstract concepts in the report, such as financial stability or business dynamism, illustration may be the best way forward. 02. Art direct your photography Avoiding clinical, posed shots can bring a sense of humanity to an annual report Assuming you decide to use photography, the next step is to plan the visual style you’re going for. Again, this will stem from your overriding aims and objectives. For the Donor Report, the concept of being human-centric was the prime factor in deciding how to art-direct the photography by Owen Richards, says creative director Matt Bagnall. “While these were posed portraits, there needed to be a humanity to them,” Bagnall explains. “So the subjects were, for example, shot in their offices surrounded by personal ephemera, rather than in a clinical setting.” It also tied in to how the images were reproduced in print. “We selected uncoated paper stock to give a warmth to the piece,” he explains. “This supported the people-led imagery and was deliberately less slick than if we’d used a coated paper. It made everything feel coherent and accessible rather than elitist.” 03. Select your illustration style Mr B & Friends focused on a ‘25 years young’ theme for Greenergy’s annual report If you opt to use illustration in your annual report, it’s a similar story. Only once you have clear aims and objectives can you make an informed decision about the visual style to pursue. For example, when Bristol-based creative agency Mr B & Friends designed the annual report for energy company Greenergy (above), it honed in on the fact that it was the company’s 25th anniversary year. “This was a big deal for Greenergy,” says design director Sheena Mistry. “For a modest-sized company to remain fiercely independent and achieve 25 years of success and growth is nothing to be sneezed at. "So we worked alongside Spanish artist Mauco Sosa to develop a distinct illustration style for the report, capturing all elements of the business model in an upbeat, forward-looking and interesting way.” The main illustration for the Greenway report Importantly, while the illustrations in the report are attractive in their simplicity, that doesn’t mean they’re abstract; each has a specific and significant meaning. For example, the main illustration shown above is inspired by Greenway business model, which the company describes as “efficient and streamlined with a clear point of direction”. 04. Combine photography and illustration In this annual report 'Fighting child poverty' for the Mayor's Fund for London, hand-drawn lines and doodles work with photos to create a child-like feel Photography and illustrations aren’t mutually exclusive in annual report design, of course; there’s no reason you can’t use both. Just make sure there’s a clear reason for doing so, or it may look like you’re just throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. One of the central features of the brief for this report was a 'journey map' that shows the ideal path followed by the children helped by the charity A good example can be seen in the annual report for the Mayor's Fund for London by Consider Creative. This organisation aims to give disadvantaged young Londoners the skills and opportunities they need to climb the career ladder and escape the threat of child poverty. The pencil symbolises the charity itself – it's a grass-roots tool fundamental to personal development “We were looking for a thread to take us through the successes and highlights of their year; to bring alive a report that could otherwise feel quite static,” says creative director Ian Boardman. “That thread became quite literal when we struck upon the idea of a pencil line as the continuous visual device, from start to finish. “Photography and photoshoot was led by showing who the Mayor's fund for London benefits – the disadvantaged children of London. We ended up commissioning a branded pencil that became a key reminder of the annual report and a great leave behind.” 05. Auto-generate your imagery Gyroscope is leading the way for personalised annual reports Now here’s a future trend that throws the traditional approach to choosing imagery on its head. Personalised annual reports involve the creation of a bespoke report for each customer, stakeholder or shareholder. That might sound like a mammoth task, but clever software makes it relatively easy to automate the creation of an annual report tailored to each individual’s involvement in a company – and that includes the imagery. For example, the health app Gyroscope designed and printed customised books for all of its customers. “These annual reports were all auto-generated based upon an individual's content,” explains freelance creative director Shane Mielke, who helped with the layout and design. “So any photos come from their Instagram; infographics, maps and charts were created based upon actual data the app has gathered from your day-to-day activities.” Both text and imagery in the Gyroscope reports is drawn from the user’s own digital content With digital services capturing more and more of our personal data, we’d expect this innovative way to approach annual reports to become a big trend in future. You can read a detailed explanation of how Gyroscope did it on its blog. 06. Seek out inspiration There are so many ways to approach the visual design of an annual report that it’s easy to end up feeling a little overwhelmed. A good way to get ideas flowing for your own design can be to check out how others have approached the discipline. Here are a few good places to start. The Wildlife Conservation Society is famed for its stunning photography-based reports The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has a strong reputation for beautifully designed, photo-led annual reports that are similar in style to a high-end magazine or travel brochure. You can download PDFs of the last few years’ reports from its website. The Zumtobel Group has commissioned some of the industry’s best illustrators for its annual reports The Zumtobel Group is an Austria-based lighting manufacturer that has made a name for itself within the design community for its beautifully illustrated annual reports. Each issue has been designed and implemented by internationally renowned artists and designers; you can see an overview on its website. Craig Minchington's 3D type stylings gave a unique look to Harnham's Annual Salary Guide Harnham's Annual Salary Guide for 2016 features trends in the UK for analytics and data professionals and was designed by Brand Nu using some beautiful 3D illustrations by Craig Minchington, which you can see in detail on Behance. Flow Creative designed a distinctive vector graphic style for the IPPR Flow Creative, an award-winning creative studio based in Manchester, was asked to create a report for The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)’s Northern Energy Taskforce. It developed a distinctive vector graphic style for the document based on road signage; you can see more of the designs and read about how it created them on Flow's website. For more inspiring design, see these 16 imaginative annual report designs. Liked this? Read these: 10 designers' New Year's resolutions for 2018 8 ways to make more money in 2018 5 photography trends influencing designers in 2018 View the full article

Maxon's Cinema 4D is one of the CG industry's most popular 3D modelling, animation and rendering applications. Boasting a designer-friendly interface and powerful toolset, Cinema 4D has become a favourite among digital artists wanting to create show-stopping 3D art. Want to create some 3D artwork of your own? These Cinema 4D tutorials will help you to master the basics if you're a beginner and hone your skills for the more advanced users. Let's get started... Nail the basics 01. Learning Cinema 4D R19 Explore all the tools and techniques you need to get started with the latest version of Cinema 4D If you're just starting out with Cinema 4D then you'll need to learn your way around. In this brilliant Cinema 4D tutorial, hosted on Lynda, explore the core techniques and tools you need to get started with the latest version of the software. 02. Introduction to Cinema 4D Discover the power of Cinema 4D and its tools with this brilliant tutorial from the Greyscalegorilla team If you don't have the most recent version of Cinema 4D, never fear. The brilliant team at Greyscalegorilla have created over 200 tutorials to help digital artists, including some brilliant free Cinema 4D tutorials such as this one, in which you'll learn how to build this mine cart tunnel animation. Create the scene from scratch by learning how to to light, model, animate, add dynamics and render the final sequence. 03. Introduction to modelling in Cinema 4D This Cinema 4D tutorial from Pluralsight covers the basics of modeling, looking at commonly used tools and time-saving tips and techniques In this video tutorial from Pluralsight, you will learn the tools and techniques that will allow you to begin modelling in Cinema 4D. A subscription is required to watch the full training, but register for a free demo account to access the first five Cinema 4D tutorials for free. 04. Rig a simple cartoon character Discover the world of rigging with this easy-to-follow Cinema 4D tutorial from EJ Hassenfratz. This gentle introduction explains the the two types of rigs, FK (Forward Kinematics) and IK (Inverse Kinematics), when to use them and how to set them up. 05. Animate a simple cartoon character Learn how to animate a simple character in this fun tutorial Following on from the above, EJ Hassenfratz has also created a brilliant two-part Cinema 4D tutorial in which you can learn how to animate a simple character and some handy tips and tricks for creating animated GIF characters. 06. Intro to Cinema 4D Lite & Cineware Another from the Greyscalegorilla team, this tutorial dives into how to use 3D animation tools in After Effects Cinema 4D Lite and Cineware. This video provides a rough idea of how Cinema 4D Lite can be added to your animation workflow. Going further 07. Character animation walk cycle In this almost hour-long beginner's tutorial from the c4dUK YouTube channel, discover a character rig and the tools that make it move, including all the controllers and buttons, sliders and movers that will help bring your character to life. 08. Create a geometric 3D Photoshop brush with Cinema 4D Create a bespoke Photoshop brush in Cinema 4D with this in-depth tutorial Discover how to create an abstract shape and use it as a Photoshop Brush in this step-by-step Cinema 4D tutorial from Dmitry Taranets. 09. Model a low poly wolf Learn how to create a low poly wolf in this two-part tutorial Follow this step-by-step Cinema 4D tutorial to create a low poly wolf model that can be used in all manner of creative projects. Here you'll learn how to create a basic 3D model, import reference images, adding lighting to the scene and basic rendering techniques. 10. Intro to the Cinema 4D Time Effector Cinema 4D's Time Effector is a powerful tool for automating animation. In this tutorial from Eyedesyn you'll learn some Time Effector basics, how to combine it with other Effectors to vary your animations, how to use the Random Effector for more interesting and organic animations, and much more besides. 11. X-Particles Tornado in Cinema 4D Use X-Particles to create a lively tornadoIn this Cinema 4D tutorial from mirrormaze you'll learn how to model, rig and animate a tornado. You'll use X-Particles with XP Trail, Follow Spline and Hair to give it life, and rig the helix spline using basic Xpresso so you have full control over the path and movement of the tornado. 12. Cinema 4D's Character Builder Rigging might strike fear into the hearts of rookie 3D artists, but get to grips with character creation in this guide to both the standard and advanced Biped setup using Cinema 4D's Character Builder. 13. How to make your 3D objects dance This Cinema 4D tutorial explains how to bring a shape (or object) to life and make it 'dance' to music. Learn how to create an animation involving complex expressions and dynamics. 14. How to give your logo work a 3D edge Bolster your Photoshop skills by bringing Cinema 4D into play 2D just doesn't cut it any more. It's time to bolster your Photoshop skills by bringing Cinema 4D into play. Nervous? Don't be. Barton Damer will show you the way in this in-depth Cinema 4D tutorial. 15. How to make an animated freezing ice effect Stay frosty with the guys at Greyscalegorilla In this tutorial, the Greyscalegorilla team show you how to make an animated frosty/frozen ice text effect in Cinema 4D using Hair, Sweep Nurbs, Motext, and Texture Kit Pro. Related articles: How to land your dream job in 3D 14 essential Cinema 4D plugins Review: Cinema 4D R18 View the full article

You're reading Understanding Learnability for Web Design: Tips and Best Practices, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Building a learnable website is much tougher than it sounds. The goal should be a clear user experience that visitors can quickly pick up and understand. Mobile app designers can solve this through onboarding which helps users learn the interface. But websites can’t always offer lengthy tutorials. Let’s take a look at learnability and see how you can apply […] View the full article

Anyone who has tried to create some kind of scroll locking, snapping or manipulating will know how tricky it can be. Until recently, JavaScript was the only option, but always seemed to produce a mixture of success and choppy or questionable performance from device to device. However, using this new property, carousels or sliders and other scroll-manipulation techniques can be easily created and controlled using CSS. When the user scrolling has stopped, the browser will automatically scroll to the nearest snap point The main scroll snap properties Due to varying implementations of the specification, multiple properties are required to experiment with this new CSS. The main new properties required to experiment with this new feature are: scroll-snap-type: mandatory; scroll-snap-destination: 100% 0%; scroll-snap-points-y: repeat(100%); The scroll-snap-type property currently accepts three values: none (the default value); mandatory, and proximity. The mandatory value will force the scroll inside the snap container to the nearest snap point, proximity will snap but in a much more relaxed manner. Both the scroll-snap-destination and scroll-snap-points-y are applying the same value: both apply the scroll snap points to 100% of the height of the elements inside the scroll snap container (defined by the scroll-snap-type) property, along the Y (vertical) axis. Combined with the ‘vh’ and ‘vw’ properties, full-screen elements can easily be created. .carousel { width: 100vw; height: 100vh; overfl ow-x: hidden; scroll-snap-type: mandatory; scroll-snap-destination: 100% 0%; scroll-snap-points-y: repeat(100%); } .carousel__item { width: 100%; height: 100% Learn more about CSS Learn how to use CSS Grids in the real world with Brenda Storer at Generate New York Brenda Stover is a Silicon Valley native who has been making websites since the early days of Geocities. She has been using CSS Grid in production for websites since its initial release to browsers in March 2017, and is a big fan. Let her tell you more about CSS Grid in her talk at Generate New York from 25-27 April 2018. Brenda will show step by step how you can progressively enhance your site with CSS Grid and write a bulletproof fallback for older browsers. Want to see Brenda talk? Then get your ticket now Related articles: CSS Grid Layout secrets revealed How to create amazing effects with CSS Shapes Quiz: What CSS framework should you use? View the full article

January can be a tough time; all that festive partying, darkened afternoons and chilly weather means that inspiration and motivation can often be more difficult to keep hold of than usual. This tends to lead to stress – and a lot of it – which, in turn, renders you unable to focus. The best new tech for designers in 2018But fear not creative folk – here we’ve pulled together some of the finest gadgets that aim to help you get back to your best self. From nature-inspired structures to electronic wizardry, explore the technology that could bring the calm back into your creative process. 01. Fidget Cube Playing around with puzzles can often lead to a more efficient work ethic$9.99/£7.61 from antsy labs Funded through Kickstarter in 2016, this clever desk toy from designers Matthew and Mark McLachlan will remind you that playing around with puzzles can often lead to a more efficient work ethic. Featuring six sides, each features something to fidget with, whether you like to click, flip, glide or roll. There’s even a side inspired by those age-old worry stones that aim to get you breathing and reduce anxiety. 02. BiOrbAIR terrarium A little greenery can go a long way in establishing a calm and relaxing work environmentWe all know that a little greenery can go a long way in establishing a calm and relaxing work environment. If you’re unable to stroll around the park on your lunch break or escape to the countryside at the weekend, a terrarium is pretty much the next best thing. This one from biOrb is tech-heavy (and has a fairly hefty price tag) but that means it can take care of your plants so you don’t have to. Creating the perfect micro-climate for growing tropical plants, you can sit back and enjoy your personal slice of paradise. 03. Sona Sona keeps tabs on your heart rate and physical activity to measure your overall stress levels Wearable technology offers new possibilities when it comes to wellbeing, both mental and physical. The Sona bracelet wants to “train your resilience to stress” and comes with five Resonance breathing meditation sessions for focus and calm. It's perfect if you need a quick fix during small, intense bouts of stress-related anxiety. It also keeps tabs on your heart rate and physical activity to measure your overall stress levels. 04. The Pip Who knew that your fingertips could lead to a happier and healthier mind?Who knew that a stress-free life was at your fingertips? It turns out that the pores on your fingertips are extremely sensitive to stress. The Pip is an innovative gadget that reads these signals and turns them into a visualisation that enables you to keep track of your stress levels. With a scientific board at the heart of the design, The Pip allows you to be self-aware and, in turn, establish some self-care. 05. Thync Thync uses electronic pulses to stimulate the brainClaiming to be the first wearable technology that “actively elevates your mood and lowers stress,” Thync uses electronic pulses to stimulate the brain. If that sounds worrying, it does come with some solid credentials: this stress relief gadget was developed by a team of neuroscientists from MIT, Harvard and Stanford and has been clinically tested over 5000 times. Plus, with such a sleek design, you’ll be combating stress in serious style. 06. Wellbe Discover exactly what triggers your stress with WellbeInitially funded through IndieGoGo, the WellBe wearable provides insights into what exactly triggers your stress levels to rise. The bracelet monitors your heart rate and uses a sophisticated algorithm to determine your stress and calmness levels based on time, location and people you meet throughout your day. Cut back on the negativity in your life. 07. Face Of The Moon stress ball The ‘Faces of the Moon’ stress ball expressions change as you squeezeStress balls are a go-to toy for desk spaces, and while most of them do the job, this stress relief product from The Museum of Modern Art is truly one-of-a-kind. Created by Japanese designer Makiko Yoshida, the ‘Faces of the Moon’ expressions change as you squeeze. Produced using a unique texture, its addictive tendencies will help relieve your anxiety. Who couldn’t love a face like that? 08. Spire Spire measures your breathing, notifying you when your it reflects tensionWhen it comes to managing your stress levels, focusing on your breath is one of the most important exercises around. Spire helps to manage this by measuring your breathing, notifying you when it reflects your tension. Through its use, you can discover what makes you calm and focused or stressed and agitated, allowing you to be more productive than ever. Designed to clip onto your belt, you can also program your Spire to let you know when you’ve been inactive and it’s time to get walking. 09. Prana Prana tells you when you need to improve your postureBad posture is one of the most common problems for creatives who work at a desk. Thankfully, the team at Prana has created a stress relief wearable that not only tracks your breath but also tells you when you need to improve your posture. Designed to rapidly activate your body’s relaxation response through proper diaphragmatic breathing and good posture, Prana could enable you to have a calm working day in no time. 10. Muse Designed like a headband, Muse uses brain-sensing technology to measure whether your mind is calm or active You may already be well on your way to stress management through meditation and while this is proven to keep your mind healthy, you may have trouble sticking to a meditative routine or find yourself distracted during the process. Designed like a headband, Muse uses brain-sensing technology to measure whether your mind is calm or active, and translates those signals into guiding sounds, so you can stay focused. Related articles: How to avoid creative burnout 10 designers' New Year resolutions for 2018 21 ways to unlock your creative genius View the full article

Whether your interest is professional or you simply like taking pictures for fun, solid photography skills can be extremely useful for designers and illustrators (as is a decent camera and knowledge of the latest photography trends.) At the very least, you'll be able to take better portfolio pictures of your work – and you might well find your client work being enhanced, too. Edit your photographs with Adobe Creative CloudBut where do you start? What are the basics? This essential photography crash course will give you everything you need to take your photography skills to the next level. From focusing and composition to white balance and lighting, this guide will cement your basic photography skills, rid you of bad habits and leave you to concentrate on getting better images. We'll walk you through how to make the most of the controls on your DSLR to take better pictures (note that we'll explain procedures for Canon and Nikon cameras, but these techniques will work on cameras made by other manufacturers, too). (You'll also find plenty of tips on these photography websites, and for DSLR photography beginners – or those who just need a reminder – this DSLR cheatsheet is a handy resource, too.) Read on for our essential crash course in photography... 01. Take control of focus Use individual AF points to focus on off-centre subjectsLeave your camera to its own devices and it will focus using the central focus point. While this will produce sharp images in many situations, for more creative photography it's better to take some control over the focus point. Your chosen subject won't always be in the centre of the frame, after all. So the first skill you need to master is how to get your camera to focus on exactly the point you want to be sharp. Your camera has a number of focus points spread across the frame – you can see them through the viewfinder – and these offer an excellent solution for focusing on off-centre subjects. You'll need to set your camera to its single-point autofocus mode, rather than the multiple or automatic selection. The exact procedure for selecting individual focus points (and the number available) varies according to your camera, but generally on Canon models you have to press the AF point selection button, then rotate the input dial or use the selector on the rear of the camera. Look through the viewfinder as you do so, and you'll see the active AF point (in red) move around the frame. Here we selected the focus point on the lower left to focus on the most dominant leafOn most Nikon DSLRs, once you've selected single-point autofocus you simply use the four-way controller on the back of the camera to highlight a different AF point. The main downside to using the outer focus points on many cameras is that they aren't as sensitive as those in the centre of the frame. This means that they can struggle to focus in low light, if the subject is low contrast or you are using a lens with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or narrower. You may also find that there isn't a focus point exactly where you want the camera to focus. In both cases you can manually focus the lens, or use a technique known as focus lock, where you highlight the subject with the active AF point and then half-press the shutter release to lock the focus distance before reframing the shot. 02. Focus on moving subjects Learn which focus mode you need to use – continuous autofocus is good for tracking moving subjectsFocusing on a static subject is all well and good, but not everything will wait patiently for you while you compose and capture your shot. For this reason, you need to master the art of focusing on moving subjects. To do this, change the autofocus mode from Single Shot (Nikon) or One Shot (Canon), to Continuous or AI Servo mode. Now, once you've locked focus on your subject by half-pressing the shutter-release button, the camera will continue to refocus as the subject moves, until Below Use Continuous autofocus to track moving subjects you fully press the button to capture your shot. You can choose from all of the focus points for off-centre subjects, but when shooting in low light, shooting low-contrast subjects or if using lenses with a maximum aperture narrower than f/5.6, you will find these outer points will struggle to focus. 03. Understand what makes a shot blurry When it comes to mastering focus, you also need to know why your shots aren't sharp. This can be down to focusing, but it may also be due to camera shake or the subject moving. You'll need to spot the cause, fix the problem, then try again. Incorrect focusing: If the softness is due to incorrect focusing, you may find that areas in front or behind the subject are sharp. if you can't see any sharp areas, incorrect focusing will give a uniform blur all around each area of the image. Movement: You can easily spot blur caused by camera shake by the characteristic 'streaking' of highlight areas. These indicate that the camera (or possibly the subject) has moved at some point during the exposure. 04. Get white balance right Selecting the daylight white balance preset gives a good balance of warm foliage and cool blue skies here You might forget all about setting the right white balance – especially if you shoot in raw, as then you can change it when you process your images later. However, you'll need to get the right white balance in-camera to be able to assess the exposure and colours of your shots and achieve the best results. Your camera's Automatic White Balance setting generally does a pretty good job of capturing colours correctly in most lighting conditions, but it's not infallible. The main situation in which you'll get better results by using one of the manual preset values is when your subject is dominated by a single colour or tone, such as a blue sky, orange sunset or even a large expanse of green grass. The Automatic setting removes some of the warmth, while the Cloudy preset emphasises itIn these situations Automatic White Balance can set a value to counteract this strong colour, so you will get better results by selecting a white balance setting that suits the lighting conditions, such as Sunlight or Shade. The actual white balance of the light at sunrise or sunset is close to the Tungsten or Artificial Light setting (3,200K). But if you set this preset you will lose much of the warmth that you want to capture in your shot. Instead, try setting the white balance to Daylight, or even Cloudy, to capture the orange glow in all its beauty. Check out our sister site Digital Camera World's Cheat sheet to White balance presets and article on How to creatively tone your images with white balance settings. 05. Set a custom white balance Take a shot of a white or grey subject that fills the entire frame (a piece of card is ideal) and is in the same position as the subject you want to shoot. Now select your camera’s Custom or Preset Manual white balance setting. Next page: Exposure compensation and high-contrast lighting tips 06. Master exposure compensation The dark background has caused the camera to over-expose the shotDeciding whether to increase or decrease the exposure of your shot can be puzzling, as the adjustment you need to make is often the opposite of what you might at first expect. Here's how to use your camera's Exposure Compensation function to lighten or darken your image. If the subject contains mostly light tones you may find that your camera will under-expose your image. In this situation, you need to press and hold the Exposure Compensation button, increase the exposure by turning the dial right to enter a value of +1, then take the shot again. If shooting a mainly dark subject, your camera is likely to over-expose the scene, so you may need to reduce the exposure. Press and hold the Exposure Compensation button as before, but this time turn the dial left to enter a value of -1. Read Digital Camera World's articles How to always get exposure right – exposure settings explained and What are the differences between the PASM exposure modes on your camera? for more tips. 07. Decipher the Histogram The over-exposed image is on the left, while the image on the right is under-exposedThe easiest way to check the exposure of your shots is to use the Histogram display on your camera's rear screen when reviewing your images. This shows the distribution of exposure as you shoot. To get the most from this handy tool you need to recognise the characteristics of under- and over-exposed shots. If there’s a gap to the left of the Histogram, and the graph goes off the right-hand side, the image is over-exposed. The opposite will be true for under-exposed images – there will be a gap to the right of the Histogram. 08. Deal with high-contrast lighting Learn to deal with high-contrast lighting and capture the maximum range of tonesUsing your DSLR's Exposure Compensation to adjust the overall exposure is fine for many subjects, but there are also times when the brightness range of the subject is too large for your camera to capture detail in both the shadows and highlights. This range is known as the camera's dynamic range, and while it does vary between different models, it's pretty common to find scenes where the contrast is greater than even the best cameras can cope with. With practice, you'll often be able to recognise these conditions before you start shooting, but the easiest way to spot the situation is by reviewing your shot and checking the histogram and highlight warnings. We shot one image at -1 exposure compensation, and another at +1. Combining the under- and over-exposed shots gives an image with detail in both highlights and shadowsStart by taking a shot and checking that the shadows reach the left of the graph. You can now activate the highlight warning display. If the display blinks to indicate that there are highlights without any detail, then your camera can't record the whole brightness range. When you are faced with this situation, there are a number of ways to deal with the problem. If you are shooting in JPEG mode, many cameras offer built-in systems to capture more highlight and/or shadow detail than normal images. The Nikon system is called Active D-lighting, while the Canon version is Auto Lighting Optimiser. 09. Try an ND grad lens filter ND grads help tame bright skies The traditional solution for dealing with high-contrast lighting is to use an ND grad lens filter. These filters are half dark and half clear, so you position the dark area of the filter to reduce the brightness of the lightest area of the scene. This is fine where a large area of the scene is brighter than the rest, such as the sky in an open landscape. However they are less useful for subjects containing smaller bright areas, such as windows or sunlight through trees, because the filter will darken the areas around these highlights too. 10. Create HDR images High Dynamic Range (HDR) has become a popular technique for capturing images that would otherwise have burnt-out highlights, no shadow detail, or both. To achieve true HDR images you need to take at least three shots, one under-exposed, one correctly exposed and one over-exposed. Then combine these images using either the Merge to HDR tool in Photoshop, Lightroom's HDR Merge tool or software such as HDR Efex Pro 2 or Photomatix. 11. Recover detail Set the exposure so you capture as much highlight detail as possibleShooting in raw will allow you to capture more highlight and shadow detail than in JPEG mode. But even in raw it’s easier to recover more detail from the shadows than the highlights. For this reason, when shooting high-contrast subjects set the exposure so that you capture as much highlight detail as possible. Next page: Pro composition, sharpening and saturation advice 12. Position your subject Positioning the main subject centrally in your shots can give a very static and boring compositionBesides choosing what to shoot and the best settings to use, learning the basics of composition is one of the fundamental ways to improve your photography skills. There are plenty of rules and theories about what makes the perfect composition, but the key thing that you should think about when taking your shots is where to position the main subject in your image. Moving your main subject to one side creates a far more balanced imageIt's tempting to put the subject in the centre of the frame, but this can produce static-looking compositions. It's often much better to put the subject just off centre. The classic approach is to use the rule of thirds, which is defined by imaginary 'lines' that divide each side of the image into three equal-sized areas. You then position the main subject on one of these lines, or where they intersect. 13. Make good use of space Giving the subject room to move into in the frame is good when shooting movement, animals or portraitsThe space around your subject is nearly as important to the success of your composition as the subject itself. First of all, you need to think about how much of the subject's surroundings you want to include in your shot. This isn't an exact science, but as a general rule you should include the surroundings if they add to the photo, such as showing the environment around the subject in a portrait or wildlife image. Alternatively, a tighter composition that excludes the surroundings can help to make the main subject dominate the image. A picture can appear cramped if there’s little space for the subject to ‘look’ or move intoOne key aspect of using space in your shots is particularly applicable to action shots and portraits. When looking at images of moving subjects, you naturally look ahead into the area that it's travelling towards. For this reason, it's a good idea to leave more space ahead of the subject for it to move into than there is behind it, otherwise your shot can end up looking rather unbalanced. Portraits can also benefit from a similar composition technique. Leaving some space on the side that your subject is looking into instantly creates a considerably more balanced composition. 14. Sharpen your shots When sharpening a shot, always use the smallest amount that just makes the detail in your shot crisp and sharpGetting the most from your imaging software is a skill that takes time to master. It's tempting to think that the more sharpening you apply to your images, the sharper they'll appear. But you need to exercise some restraint; otherwise you'll end-up with increased noise and ugly 'haloes'. One of the most common causes of over-sharpening is applying it at the wrong stage in your processing, or even applying it to images that have already been sharpened. If you shoot JPEG images, these may have been sharpened already in-camera, so you need to take great care when applying extra sharpening. Raw files won't have had any sharpening applied in-camera, but it can be applied when processing your images. You just need to decide whether it's best to apply it to your raw conversions, or later on. Zoom in to 100% to spot any over sharpeningThe best way to avoid over-sharpening is to make it one of the last adjustments that you make to your pictures, so if you are going to be editing your shots in Photoshop Elements or CS, then it's best to turn off any in-camera or raw conversion sharpening. The most obvious side-effect of applying too much sharpening is a halo around details in your shots, the result of using a high Radius setting. To spot this, zoom in to 100% on an area of the image containing dark lines or fine details against a lighter background. Here's a super tip: if applying sharpening to your images using photoshop's unsharp Mask filter, the key is to be subtle. As a starting point, try to use an amount of between 50 and 80%, a Radius of 1 and a Threshold of between 2 and 5. 15. Use saturation Using the drop-down menu in the Hue/Saturation window allows you to decrease the saturation of individual colours, without losing detailSimilar to sharpening, saturation needs to be used with care if you want to avoid your images looking garish and over-cooked. In many scenes you'll find that some colours are much more saturated than others, especially reds and greens, so rather than simply adjusting the saturation of the whole image, you can also target individual colours using the Hue/Saturation control. Related articles: The 33 best photo apps How to enhance photography on your website 15 essential photo editor apps View the full article

2017 was a big year for the tech industry, with voice-first gadgets and virtual reality (VR) among some of the major highlights. This year will be all about usability: taking these technologies and making them accessible and enjoyable for the everyday user. This puts great responsibility in the hands of UX designers, and agility and collaboration will be more important than ever. What does 2018 hold for UX, and what does this mean for designers? Here are our top five UX trends to look out for this year. 01. The rise of voice-first In 2018 we need to up our game when it comes to voice UX Voice well and truly made its mark in 2017, with an estimated 30 million households now owning a voice-first device. Alas, many of these gadgets remain underutilised. The technology is there and we’re willing to buy it, but it doesn’t yet blend into daily life as easily as it should. In 2018, understanding and designing for voice will be absolutely crucial. By 2022, 55 per cent of all US households will own voice-enabled speakers, so making these as user-friendly as possible will be a priority. The rise of voice also signals a shift towards 'screenless' design; essentially reducing the number of physical touchpoints between the user and their device. This will give UX designers plenty of room to innovate and experiment, but it’s not without its challenges. The big question in 2018 will be how to make voice-first and screenless design as comfortable for the mainstream as possible. Read our 8 tips for designing voice interfaces article for help. 02. Virtual reality for the masses VR will creep more and more into our everyday lives Another phenomenon on the cusp of mass adoption is virtual reality. The VR web cogs have long been turning, but VR is still more of a novelty than the norm. However, this could all be about to change. The global virtual reality market is expected to be worth 26.89 billion USD by 2022, compared to 2.02 billion in 2016. More and more, VR will slip into our everyday lives. From entertainment to retail to the medical sector, immersive technology will transform the user experience in a big way. VR will no longer be a futuristic wonder; rather, the user will come to expect it. But there’s a catch. Virtual reality can only work its way into the mainstream with the help of great UX. This places huge responsibility in the hands of UX designers – not to mention a steep learning curve. In 2018, designers will need to master the art of creating more convincing user experiences than ever before. From building realistic VR environments to making user-friendly headsets, VR will transform almost every part of the design process. This year, UXers must prepare to develop innovative approaches, learn new patterns, frameworks and techniques and, above all, to adapt quickly. Read our guide to the VR web to start you off, plus check out the best VR podcasts and 5 ways to create more immersive VR experiences for more inspiration. 03. Collaboration is king New focuses mean working with other specialists is essential For many design teams, voice-first and VR is uncharted territory. Not only do UX designers need to adopt new approaches; they also need to effectively communicate these to developers. When it comes to navigating this fast-evolving landscape, teamwork is more important than ever. In particular, designers and developers will need to pull together to make sure this new wave of technologies is ready for mass adoption. For UXers, this means making sure your skill set is up to the challenge. Communication and agility will be absolutely key... but this has long been true of UX. 2018 will bring with it a greater need to understand the developer’s work. Designers who are comfortable with code will be the driving force behind innovations in UX, and learning frontend development skills may be the key to smoother collaboration. Read How to ensure a successful collaboration and How to bridge the gap between design and development for useful tips. 04. UX reaches the boardroom UX is finally getting proper recognition The good news for UX designers is that user experience is finally getting the recognition it deserves. An all-too-common UX problem is a lack of internal understanding. Designers want to create the best possible user experience, but aren’t always able to convince management teams of how important this is. In reality, of course, UX is pivotal: over the last 10 years alone, design-driven businesses have outperformed the stock market by 228 per cent. At last, more and more brands are catching on. Here at CareerFoundry, we have been approached by several CEOs of multinational brands to train their entire management team on UX. This demonstrates a notable shift in attitude that will only continue throughout 2018. UX will no longer be a topic reserved for web designers; it will be acknowledged as one of the most crucial branding elements, and thus made a priority for the business as a whole. 05. Tools for all Tools to help improve workflow will be game-changers in 2018 As UX increasingly becomes a team effort, one of the biggest challenges for businesses in 2018 will be maintaining efficient workflows. Project management tools and internal communication platforms will play an even bigger role this year. Likewise, we can expect to see much more focus on collaborative, cloud-based tools. Closer collaboration between designers and developers may also give rise to a new generation of tools. We will start to see more and more programs that are not solely for designers or developers, but rather have been created to help the two converge. Read more: 30 web design tools to speed up your workflow in 2018 The theory of UX 7 UX tools to try this year View the full article

Web developers have a very important job. They keep the gears turning behind the scenes on all of your favourite applications and sites. It's a career that rewards structure as much as it does creativity, and you can join their ranks by working your way through the Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle. It's on sale now for just $39 (approx. £29). The Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle is the perfect place for any aspiring developer to get their start. This collection of eight professionally-taught courses can help anyone – even a total amateur – learn how to code using the most important languages in web development, from JavaScript to HTML5 and CSS3. As you work your way through this bundle of courses, you'll start to bring your dream designs to life and just may launch a new career. You can get the Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle on sale for just $39 (approx. £29), which is 96% off the full retail price. That’s a massive saving on a bundle that could help you get a start in a growing industry, so grab this deal today. The eight courses in this bundle are: Complete Guide to Front-End Web Development & Design Learn to Code JavaScript For Web Designers & Developers The Complete HTML & CSS Course: From Novice To Professional The Complete jQuery Course: From Beginner To Advanced JavaScript & jQuery Basics for Beginners Advanced JavaScript JavaScript: Gentle Introduction for Beginners Website Wireframing with HTML5 & CSS3 About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: 20 useful tools for web developers Best web designs of 2017 revealed 12 huge web design trends for 2018 View the full article

Here I'll be talking about the process of creating ReY, a character that I made for the Beyond Human challenge (real-time) on ArtStation. I decided to develop my own character design, and here I will take us from concept art to final render. Eventually I even did a few animations for ReY; she's a character for a game, after all, so she has to be 'alive'. I really like characters designed by Anna Cattish and Jamie Hewlett, so I took these as a kind of base for my own design. I was also focused on the Overwatch style in my workflow, and I strongly recommend you guys take a look at it. I used mostly ZBrush, aside from some hard-surface parts. Here I switched to 3ds Max instead, because it's more comfortable for me. I also did retopology and the character's pose sketch in 3ds Max, and GoZ was a great help here. Download the files for this tutorial. 30 inspiring examples of 3D art01. Block in proportions Start with spheres and cylinders then build from there Usually, in the very beginning, I use spheres and cylinders. Then with the Transpose tool and Move brush I build primary masses and proportions of the character. It's beneficial here to think about famous Disney movies, and you can also find tons of references on the ArtStation website. 02. Sculpt the head and body Anatomy matters, even when you're making a stylised character You should always remember anatomy. Keep in mind where bones and muscles should be, and how it all works. This is important even when you are creating a cartoonish stylised character. All main shapes and proportions are based on real anatomy, and when you do it right, you can then move on and play with proportions. For example, you can increase the character's head and eye size, or make their legs longer. 03. Add uncomplicated clothes Don't waste time labouring over more detail than you need Here I keep using primitives to create stuff like clothes, accessories, hair and so on. At this point, it would be a good idea to decide how many details you'd like to use in your design – as a stylised character it doesn't have to be 'noisy' or too complex. 04. Use polygroups and DynaMesh Polygroups will make your life a lot easier You can create a hand as a single object and add fingers to it using CurveTube or cylinders. Then you can use DynaMesh to combine all of that with Polygroups (just activate Groups in the DynaMesh settings). Different Polygroups will be helpful later on when creating a pose for your character. 05. Call on useful brushes A good collection of standard brushes is essential for pain-free modelling I often use standard brushes like ClayBuildup, Move, Dam_Standard and hPolish. Very rarely I use Standard, Clay, TrimDynamic, Inflate, Move Topological, Pinch, Layer or CurveTube. Also, I would recommend you to download Orb brushes. For polypaint I use Pen A or create my own brushes – it depends on the purpose. 06. Create the hair Make some hair using whatever package works best for you There are several methods when it comes to making the hair. You can create hair using generators in Maya and 3ds Max or use FiberMesh in ZBrush. Also, you can bake or just draw hair on a plain surface with an alpha channel. Personally, I prefer to create hair using CurveTube, and when the first shape is finished, I use hPolish to give it some smoothness and to adjust the shape. How to perfect hair in your 3D portraits07. Adjust clothes Make edges lie correctly on the form with ZRemesher Here I use Mask Lasso and Extract. You can adjust shapes using the Move brush. At this point, I use ZRemesher to make edges lie correctly on the form. Sometimes I begin with creating some folds or use guides to make a mesh. 08. Create folds Some folds in clothing look good, but you won't need too many You can use Marvelous Designer as a starting point, but I prefer to use Orb_Cracks, to make the folds exactly how I want them. Remember, our character is stylised, so don't make it too realistic by adding too many folds. 09. Make hard surfaces Similarly, don't go too mad with flaws in your hard surfaces I did base meshes in 3ds Max and finalised them in ZBrush. Bumps, cracks, scratches – but you have to know when to stop. I also used ZModeler to crease edges. 10. Add textures Substance Painter's a straightforward way to start adding textures When retopology and UVs are done, we can finally take care of textures. I love Substance Painter for its simplicity and massive number of instruments. I prefer a Spec/Gloss workflow because it gives more options for working with materials. Where to find free textures for 3D projects 13 best SketchUp textures 11. Time to bake Use these settings to ensure a great bake For baking, I usually use the following settings. Antialiasing 8x8 only for Normal, W_normal, Curvature and Position maps. Antialiasing for AO and Thickness – none, because calculating will take too much time. For the AO settings, I increase the number of Rays to 256. I prefer Uniform Distribution with a Max Occluded Distance value from 0.5 to 0.8. Firstly I bake each piece of geometry separately and then bake them all together to create an additional AO map. As a result of this, I have local AO and global AO so that I can combine them in Photoshop. 12. Design colour schemes A strong palette will make all the difference to your character At the very beginning I just fill everything with a flat colour, and then I try to find more interesting colours for my character. There is tons of information about palettes and colour theory on the internet. You can find a picture that looks good and simply pick some colours directly from it. Keep in mind that Substance Painter works in sRGB colour space, and that the colour you have chosen may be not as bright. After that I adjust Specular and Glossiness for each piece. I try to keep my materials list organised and straightforward. 13. Throw in a little noise The barest layer of noise will break up your colours nicely You can add a little noise to solid colours by using Procedural maps. Set the Overlay or Multiply blending mode with 3-10% opacity. It will give a nice effect of non-uniform colour. You can also use this method for Glossiness. 14. Use a Gradient Mask for secondary colours Use gradients to easily bring in some secondary colours Gradients help with adding some secondary colours to your main ones. Create a solid layer with a secondary colour through a gradient mask which you can draw by hand or use projection. 15. Include scratches, edges and dirt Substance Designer's mask generators are ideal for giving clothes a worn look Here I add a worn effect to the clothes. By using the Curvature map, I create shabby borders and add some dirt to the seams. There are a lot of cool Mask Generators in Substance Painter. For example, you can add some warp distortion to make the seams look more exciting and then drop a Grunge mask with multiple on top of it. 16. Paint the skin There are more colours to human skin than you think; use them! There are tons of colours on the human body and skin. Orange tan, pink hands, darker elbows, yellowish bones that you can sometimes see through the skin, bluish areas under the eyes, rosy cheeks, and red lips and nose. So, you have to keep all that in mind. Tip: I use a red Emissive map with a very low opacity to fake some kind of SSS effect. 17. Bake some lighting Bake some lighting into your model I like the Baked Lighting filter. By using it, you can adjust basic lights and shadows just like in hand-painted textures! You can play with the filter settings, such as the colours of the light sources and blend mode variations. 18. Add final details Finish things off with a few ropey tats To finalise my character, I added some tattoos on her skin. It's a mixture of sci-fi and stick n' poke. At some point, I was going to add more dirt, so I even created a custom brush alpha. But in the end, it all turned out too noisy, and I used it only with a low opacity level. 19. Give them cool hair Give the hair a good glossy Overwatch look I like how hair looks in Overwatch, so I tried to create something similar. Anisotropy works well for the highlights on hair. To use it you need to create a Position map, and also a good Glossiness map to make highlights less solid. 20. Perfect the metal Use Anisotropy on your metal and fiddle with the settings until it looks good For metallic parts I also use Anisotropy. But here it's much easier: just activate Anisotropy in material in Marmoset Toolbag and play with the settings. 21. Rig and skin Use a Biped rig in 3ds Max (unless you're using Maya) I rigged in 3ds Max using Biped and I created some additional bones for the hair and clothes. The weapons also had their own bones. I don't want to offend anyone who uses 3ds Max, but this was my last rig and last animation made in this program. I have now switched over to Maya. 22. Animate your character Once your model's rigged you can have fun animating it Usually I will fix the final character's pose in ZBrush, but this wasn't the case with ReY because I was planning to create a few short animations in order to make my character more alive. I eventually created a set of standard animations such as Idle, Attack and Run. 23. Adjust materials in Marmoset Toolbag When you're done, adjust the materials and light in Marmoset Toolbag Well, we're almost at the end! Now you can open your model in Marmoset Toolbag and adjust materials and light. There's nothing tricky, but you have to remember that Marmoset Viewer does have some limitations. This article was originally published in issue 229 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists – packed with expert tutorials, inspiration and reviews. Buy issue 229 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: 10 best video game character designs How to improve your character art 4 free games engines to download today View the full article