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Typography can make or break a poster. No matter how perfect the imagery, if the right information isn't conveyed in the right way, the design has failed – which is why the typography in poster design is so important. Whether you're designing gig or movie poster, a product advert or digital campaign, these examples of typography in posters are sure to inspire you. 01. Solo: A Star Wars Story As snazzy as they are, these posters were called out for plagiarism Before they caused controversy, these posters for the forthcoming standalone Han Solo movie caught the world's attention with their inventive yet nostalgic typography design. Placing the character illustrations within the typography itself is a great way to grab the eye, while also making the type more than just a way to convey the title. Keeping the Solo stamp at the top of each poster is a clever way to keep the branding present, too. 02. NRMAL Keeping the brand type consistent throughout these posters is what makes them pop NRMAL is an annual music festival taking place in Mexico City. Keeping the brand typography running throughout the poster designs strengthens the identity, and these examples show how you can do that while also being playful and creative. The zine-like, cut-and-paste placement of the type, along with the festival name in the right-hand corner, makes these typography posters a great example of clean, consistent design, while still staying true to the youthful and edgy style of the festival. 03. OKJA Okja’s characters are described with choice cut typography More and more movies are going direct to Netflix these days, so it’s important to get the advertising on point to attract new viewers. Last year’s Okja tells the tale of a young woman and her quest to prevent her giant pig from heading to the slaughter house. These clever typographic poster designs describe the film’s three main characters using cuts of meat – just like a butcher would. The chalk-like effect on the type also harks back to butcher boards. 04. Alzheimers A prominent, powerful message is echoed through this typography A poster campaign for a charity needs to be eye-catching, but it also needs to send a strong message of the charity’s aims. These powerful typography-led posters for the Dutch Alzheimer Foundation were created by Studio Dumbar and provide a striking, heartbreaking visual of what Alzheimer's disease can do to the brain. The disease often causes small brain lesions and this is transported to the typography design, with spots causing the type to become less clear. It’s a powerful choice. 05. Mogwai This eye-catching typography poster was designed by Afonso de Lima Mogwai is a relatively well-known band that made it onto our best album artwork list. They're known for their artistic output, so it’s not surprising to find them here. Designed by Afonso de Lima, the water-inspired typography is an innovative, playful way to promote the gig, making for a unique yet attractive typography poster. 06. Get Out This typography poster makes clever use of colour Get Out was undoubtedly one of the biggest films of 2017, going on to win a number of awards, and the praise of fans and critics alike. As a movie focusing on race relations, the typography design on this particular poster offers a clever indicator of its themes and tongue-in-cheek yet serious approach to the subject. 07. Axfood A tasty typography poster from Swedish agency Snask This Snask project for Axfood caught our eye because the typography is created entirely out of food. The colour-coded style on each letter makes the whole word stand out, while the type design at the top keeps a clean-cut feel. Another stellar project from some of the most playful designers around. 08. Sydlexia Typography takes centre stage in these posters from communications specialists BBDO Dubai Much like the Alzheimer Foundation posters created by Studio Dumbar, these typographic posters aim to highlight the difficulties that come with living with dyslexia. Created by BBDO Dubai, type and origami is used to present the problems people with dyslexia face, with words broken and rearranged. By unfolding the original word, type then appears scrambled, making for a powerful message that's translated through innovative type design and layout. The logo placed at the bottom, with its optimistic outlook, ensures the posters also provide a positive solution. 09. Isle of Dogs Using both the Japanese and English titles makes this typography stand out When it comes to Wes Anderson, you can always rely on a quirky, innovative product. For his latest movie, Isle of Dogs, the posters compliment the film’s setting in a futuristic Japan. It could be difficult to make the typography stand out with all the main characters staring directly at the viewer, but thanks to a bold colour choice and using not one but two languages, the title of the film is as prominent as can be. Anderson is a keen user of yellow and red in all his movies, so it’s not surprising to find the Japanese and English versions of the title presented in these shades. 10. American Express Pentagram provides a refresh for an American giant Designed by Pentagram’s Abbott Miller, the new visual identity for American Express brings in some bold new type. It marks the first update to the company’s design in 37 years – and the poster brings the font to the forefront. Keeping to the brand's iconic blue and white colour schemes, the poster design pushes the brand name to new heights. Related articles: 50 top typography tutorials 5 typography trends for 2018 Are movie posters in a design crisis? View the full article

Icons play a major role in design. As well as telling users what to do, they can create a memorable image that people will associate with your product. Make sure you always have the perfect icon for any occasion with Iconscout. You can get a one-year subscription now for just $29.99 (approximately £22). Iconscout is home to a nearly endless supply of professionally designed icons across dozens of categories, all ready to be used in your next project. These come in a variety of formats, filetypes and sizes so you can download them and put them to use any way you’d like. Sift through more than 840,000 icons – with more being added all the time – and find the exact style you require, no matter what you're working on. You can get a discounted one-year subscription to Iconscout for just $29.99 (approximately £22). That saves you 74 per cent off the retail price. For any designer working on any platform, it’s an offer too good to pass up. Related articles: 5 huge trends in app icon design 5 killer icon design tips Create product icons in Illustrator View the full article

Version control was originally aimed at developers working with code, as a way for multiple developers to work on the same codebase at the same time with the ability to roll back to earlier versions if needed. It means that multiple versions of the codebase (earlier and current) aren’t scattered around the computer systems of various developers with no accountability and no clarity as to who is working on what. And now, Abstract has brought this functionality to designers using Sketch. But, if version control has been common practice for years, why are designers only getting access to it now? Designers have shied away from version control for a number of reasons. Firstly, version control usually requires you to learn how to use Git and operate it using command line (Windows) or Terminal (macOS), and since designers tend to favour the use of GUIs (graphical user interfaces), version control has remained favourable with mostly developers. Abstract solves these issues for designers. So say goodbye to design.sketch, design2.sketch, .designfinal.sketch and designfinalfinal.sketch, and say hello to Abstract instead. 01. Create an organisation The first thing you’ll want to do is create an organisation, which establishes a clear divide between the work that you do in the different teams that you’re in. Click on your username in the top-middle region of the desktop app window, then choose the ‘+ Create new Organization’ option. Click Create Team when you’re done and then switch back to the desktop app so we can invite our team. 02. Invite members Build your design team online by adding members to your group Revert back to the username dropdown and switch to the organisation that we created (shortcut: Cmd+2). Then, from the sidebar on the left-hand side, click the Invite button. First, decide what sort of permissions the invited users will have. Viewers will be able to review designs, leave comments and export files untracked, whereas Contributors can also create branches, commit changes and edit files. Only admins of the organisation (that’s you) can invite Contributors. 03. Create a project Projects are the different things that your organisation is working on, such as a client’s website or another client’s iOS app. Click the New Project button in the top-right corner. Give it a name, a description, a colour to identify it by (which could be the primary hex code from the design itself). 04. Import a Sketch file Projects are started when you click on the card and select either Import a Sketch file or Create Sketch File. Sketch files created in Abstract can be exported out of Abstract later. In order to track and version your .sketch files, you must first open the file via Abstract. To avoid any confusion when you are working with imported Sketch files, we recommend that you move the original to somewhere where you won’t accidentally open it and begin editing without thinking. Sketch files created in Abstract are automatically versioned. 05. Create a branch Create a branch to represent the version you're working on Before we can begin designing, we must create a branch first. A branch extends from the master and represents your version that you’ll be working on. Click the New Branch button in the top-right corner or, alternatively, click Edit in Sketch, where you’ll be asked to create a new branch anyway (you should never commit unreviewed changes to the master). First thing’s first, write the name and description for the branch. Branches are opened for experimentation, so you’d create a new branch each time you work on something new and they’d be named something like ‘login-redesign’ or ‘social-links’. This lets others know what’s being worked on and reduces the risks of having two conflicted versions of the design later on. Once you’ve added a branch name and description, the file will open in Sketch, where we can be working on it. 06. Commit your changes When you’re ready to say “I’m done for now”, hit the Preview & Commit button that appears in the Abstract toolbar in Sketch, where you’ll be switched back to Abstract automatically. Give the project a title and description explaining what you’ve done in this branch, then click the Commit Changes button. 07. Comment and review phase Next click the No Status drop-down box in the upper-left corner and change the selection to Open for Feedback if you need some direction or Ready for Review if you think this branch is ready to be merged into the master (ie you think what you intended to do in this branch has been honoured). Contributors and viewers can then see in Abstract’s main dashboard that this branch needs reviewing and can quickly add their own comments. 08. Share feedback Add comments by clicking through to the branch from the dashboard, selecting the relevant page (as defined in Sketch) and writing a comment in the Comment sidebar on the right-hand side. To make comments on a specific aspect of the design, click the annotate icon (shortcut: A) at the bottom of the Comment sidebar and drag-select a region on the design. After that, type your comment and hit return. If you’re speaking to somebody directly, make sure to @mention them and they’ll receive a notification about it. Also, make sure to check out the history sidebar on the left-hand side, to see (visually) what exactly has changed. 09. Merge into master When the time comes, merge worked-on branches with the master Click Merge Branch in the top-right corner of the interface. We’ve now deployed these changes to the master. Other designers, should they create a new branch from the master called, say, ‘navigation-redesign’, they will now have access to the changes you made and be able to build upon it. The master should only ever contain changes that you’d be happy to let other designers use and build upon. Our old branch no longer exists. 10. Don't sweat mistakes Should you need to roll back to an earlier version, navigate to the master – or even an earlier commit of a branch, if you haven’t merged it yet – click on the Commits tab, traverse through the history and then hit the Restore Commit icon. You can revert back to older versions of the master and also older versions of branches as long as they haven’t been merged. This article was originally published in issue 298 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 298 or subscribe to net. Want to learn more about managing your informational architecture? Abby Covert is giving her talk How to Make Sense of Any Mess at Generate New York from 25-27 April 2018 Businesses are spending more time and money on digital than ever before, and seemingly less time developing clear communications in the language they use and structures they create. Designers encounter challenges with merging these languages and structures, often from more than one organisation and across multiple channels. In her talk at Generate New York from 25-27 April 2018, Abby Covert, information architect at Etsy, will show you several ways to approach these challenges, and introduce you to tools and concepts that will strengthen your information architecture. Generate New York takes place from 25-27 April 2018. Get your ticket now. Related articles: Get started with Git version control Streamline your Git workflow with Tower Master version control with Git View the full article

Established in 1860, Battersea is a much-loved British charity that cares for cats and dogs across the UK. Originally known as the Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs, the charity's identity has been tweaked over the years, with the organisation most recently titled: Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. Today, Battersea unveiled a new identity, created by Pentagram partners Marina Willer and Naresh Ramchandani, which drops the 'Dogs & Cat's Home', instead opting for a new brand line: Here for every dog and cat. Battersea's new (left) and previous (right) logo design The refresh also includes a new logo design, made up of a family of hand-drawn, abstract watercolour images by Japanese illustrator Hiromi Suzuki, designed to emphasise the charity's commitment to every animal in its care. 5 brands so strong they don't need a logo Retaining Battersea’s signature blue, the illustrations – made up of five dogs and five cats – are used in varying combinations, making the brand more accessible to different platforms. The illustrations are complimented with a sharp Franklin Gothic wordmark. Battersea's new identity gives the flexibility to tell a rich and diverse story across all of its platforms The Pentagram press release states: "Pentagram’s approach was to strike out against some of the negative connotations associated with the language and tactics of the charity sector, which often leans into a world of shock tactics, euphemistic language, well-worn tropes and overly-sentimental language." "Instead, the new Battersea brand deploys honest and straightforward language, expressed by a tone of voice that speaks with joy, principles, expertise and endeavour'." Related articles: 4 design trends we're all tired of hearing about 8 brilliant portfolios from young designers Eye on Design: review View the full article

You might have a strong skill set and a reputation for delivering outstanding creative, but if you’re looking to win more work, grow your client list or move into new markets, you need to master the fine art of self-promotion. Whether you’re a freelance designer or illustrator, or the head of a creative studio, getting your work in front of the right people is a skill in itself. So how can you elevate your design status and catch the attention of the people who count? Here, we share our top tips for savvy self-promotion. Read on to find out how to project your work onto the global design stage… 01. Pimp your online portfolio Velvet Spectrum, aka Luke Choice, has a montage of colourful thumbnails on his homepage, which lead into stunning, bigger examples of his work (like Terraforms, pictured above) Sure, you’ve got a portfolio website. But have you optimised it to promote your skills and win new work? You have around seven seconds to catch a visitor's attention before they leave your website, so it’s important to give people what they want, fast. Make sure your portfolio is easy to navigate, with clear categories so that prospective clients or employers can quickly find what they’re looking for. You’ll also need a snappy About page that explains who you are, what you do, and how to get in touch. Most importantly, only show your best work. And remember that clients commission what they see, so if you’re looking to win more branding, web design or illustrative work, for example, make sure you showcase work in that field. (Don’t have any yet? Self-initiated work is fine – just make sure it’s clearly labelled.) Of course, there’s no point having a stunning portfolio if the work never changes. Give visitors a reason to come back by making time to add new projects regularly. 02. Shout about it Illustrator Tim Easley features his website URL prominently on his business cards, which were printed by moo.com So you’ve put some serious effort into your portfolio: you make time every month to update it and you’re pleased with the work inside. Then you need to make sure potential clients, employers and collaborators see it. Include your website URL on your business cards, printed promotional materials, email signature and social media accounts. Do you host your work on any other portfolio or creative showcase sites, such as Behance or Dribbble? If so, add a clear portfolio link. Make sure your entire online presence and any promotional print material point people back to your website. 03. Make savvy use of social media Sawdust studio doesn’t just share its own work on Twitter – it also shares work from other creatives that it finds interesting With over two billion active users worldwide, social media should be a crucial part of your content strategy: after all, there’s no point publishing projects on your portfolio site if you don’t tell people they’re there. It’s impossible to invest time in every platform, though, so work out where your audience is, choose two or three primary channels and become an expert in each. The best way to build your social profile is to post frequently. Update your status, ask and answer questions, request permission to join like-minded groups such as the brilliant Designers League on Facebook, and generally get stuck in. What’s the best way to share your work without annoying people? One best-practice technique comes from content marketing platform Rallyverse, which analysed customer data in a wide range of industries to find an optimal ratio: 30 per cent your own original content (so your work and ideas), 60 per cent other people’s content (links to relevant opinion or resources that your audience will find valuable), and 10 per cent purely promotional (featuring a call-to-action). But think outside the box, too. You can also share Dropbox files on Twitter, for example, so why not upload a PDF portfolio? 04. Create stunning project images Striking, high-quality images are extremely shareable When it comes to self-promotion, one of the best things you can do is create striking, high-quality imagery to showcase your projects in the best possible light. Not only will this keep your portfolio website looking sharp, it makes your work more shareable – and we’re not just talking about on social media. The design press is always looking for exciting new projects to showcase. Make their job easier by creating high-res images and well-lit photography that’s screaming out to be published in a creative magazine or on a leading design website. 05. Get featured by the design press Making it onto the homepage of a global website like Creative Bloq will give you an instant worldwide audience Of course, it’s one thing to be discovered by the design press – but what can you do to increase your chances of being featured by a global design blog or publication? Journalists receive dozens of emails every day. If you want to get your work in the design press – and onto the radar of creative directors, commissioning editors and studio heads around the world – you need to cut through the noise. Here's how: Do your research Journalists can tell if you’ve never been on their site in the first sentence. Never start your email with ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ – seek out an appropriate contributor instead. Know your angle Find out what stories a blog or publication covers, and angle your email appropriately. There’s no point sending straight news to a tips-based website, or a motion project to a typography showcase site. Find the right blog and the right angle. Keep your email short and concise Get to the point. You know who you’re talking to, so explain why they'll find your work interesting, who you are, and where to find more information. Don't clog the recipient's email with huge images Attach two or three low-res project JPEGs, and include a download link for high-res images and a URL taking people to the work to see more. Never harass people Don’t bombard blogs with every single project you do, and if you don’t get an answer, don’t aggressively pester publications – you’ll be blacklisted quickly. Do follow up pleasantly Don't be disheartened if you don’t get an answer first time, though. Journalists are busy and don’t always see the first email. A polite follow-up might just get you noticed. 06. Enter relevant award schemes Wolff Olins won a Wood Pencil at the 2017 D&AD Awards for a series of animated GIFFs for Telia Company When it comes to effective self-promotion, winning an award can put you on the creative map, generating precious column inches in print and online, and making Twitter explode overnight. But it’s important to only apply for awards that matter the most to you, your practice and your client base – and to read the entry criteria thoroughly before starting. When's the deadline? How should the work be submitted? Is there an entry fee? If you win, consider the promotional potential of your award. Blog about it, tweet it and include it in your newsletter – and don’t forget to add ‘award-winning’ to the About section on your website. There’s another advantage to awards, too. If you consider every project an opportunity to win one – no matter how small the client or brief – and go the extra mile, your portfolio (not to mention client) will quickly thank you. Remember: great work is always noticed, eventually. If you’re looking to project your work onto the global design stage and get it in front of the right people, everything starts with first-rate creative that goes beyond the brief. Step up your self-promotion by heading over to digital print and design company moo.com. You’ll find a wealth of fun, affordable, easy-to-use tools for creating premium business cards and stunning self-promotional material that will project you onto the global design stage, and get your work in front of the people who count. Related articles: 10 steps to go freelance this year The pro's guide to creating memorable business cards Create better business cards in less than five minutes View the full article

Effective social media campaigns need to catch people's attention quickly, and get a message across in a simple, but on-brand way. Finding the perfect images for social is a big part of that, as is crafting the right message to cut through the noise, in as few words as possible. But you also need to employ your typography skills to make sure that message punches through and has the desired effect. So read on for our pro advice for picking the right font for your next social campaign... 01. Keep text to a minimum Short, punchy statements that complement the image are very effective, such as this witty example by mattress brand Casper First things first: social media graphics aren't geared up for large amounts of text. That's partly due to the invariably small canvases you have to work with, and partly because people won't stick around long enough to read it. Striking visuals can grab attention more quickly, so when it comes to the message itself you'll need to cut to the chase and pare back all the clutter. Remember, you have the accompanying post to communicate more information – so typesetting on the image itself should in most cases be restricted to short, punchy statements and calls to action. 02. Go big and bold Vice Scandinavia went big and bold on the type for its LikeWhatYouHate campaign, making use of negative space A strong hierarchy helps your social media graphics grab attention, especially if people are skimming their feed quickly and don't have time to second-guess you. If all else is equal, people will always process information from top to bottom, and most cultures will read from left to right. But variations in font weight, size, style or colour can disrupt this natural processing and draw the eye. Research shows that US consumers spend an average of five hours a day on their mobiles, with roughly half of that time using social media apps. It's not just the canvas for the image that's small: often the size of the screen will squash it down even further, so keep the font as large and bold as you can. Novecento is an extensive all caps font family that's perfect for grabbing attention, and works equally well shouting your message in bold, chunky letters as it does in a more subtle, light, wide-tracked application. 03. Consider readability and legibility Sometimes simple is best. This campaign for The Honest Company by Serina Morris uses clean, legible type on white Bear the above points in mind when it comes to choosing a font for your social graphics. Clean, legible sans serifs abound in this type of work, often set in all caps to ensure maximum standout – especially when set over the top of an image. For this kind of use, impact and clarity is more important than aesthetic appeal. Fonts such as Helvetica or Open Sans are safe choices if you want neutrality, but if you'd prefer to choose something with more personality to suit your brand, consider a more friendly, geometric alternative like GT Walsheim. To improve readability, place type in an area of negative space where possible to give it more room to breathe. Let the design help frame it, so it doesn't fight with other elements in the small space – there's no point obstructing a carefully chosen image, or making a beautifully written line of copy unreadable. As a rule, display and headline varieties of fonts can be effective as they're designed specifically for standout and impact for a line or two of large text. Body fonts may make larger chunks of copy easier to parse, but they run the risk of receding in a more promotional context. 04. Convey the right emotions Nike has a distinctive all caps brand font that's bold and punchy with plenty of attitude With so few design elements to play with in such a small space, your choice of font can play a very important role in setting the tone of a campaign, as well as communicating brand voice. If the brand in question has an existing association with a particular typeface – or even its own bespoke typeface – that decision is made for you, of course. A more humorous brand campaign could benefit from a font that has a bit more character and charm to it, so long as it's not at the expense of readability, legibility or impact. If there's a more serious undercurrent, such as an awareness-raising campaign for a cancer charity, then it's wiser to stick to something more neutral. A useful exercise is to create the same design with three different fonts, and compare them in context. The actual emotional impact of each one may vary significantly once you see them in situ. 05. Be consistent across all graphics Merriam-Webster uses social graphics for its 'word of the day' campaign, tying a diverse range of images together with a clear structure and a consistent typeface If your social campaign runs as a series, consistency and clarity throughout is key. Don't assume that people will engage with the campaign in a linear way: they might miss half the posts, or join the campaign halfway through. Each message should make sense as a self-contained graphic, and not rely on earlier posts to make sense. To test this out, try showing a graphic from mid-campaign to someone not involved with the project, to get a fresh pair of eyes. A coherent style of art direction, consistent design structure and unified colour palette will help tie multi-part campaigns together, but committing to a particular typeface across the series will also aid brand recognition. Related articles: 10 huge graphic design trends to know for 2018 20 best free fonts of 2017 How to use imagery more effectively in app design View the full article

Blackmagic Design has launched DaVinci Resolve 15, the latest incarnation of its industry-standard grading and editing software. Aimed at editors, colorists, VFX artists and sound designers, the update has been released as a free public beta. The biggest news is the inclusion of motion graphics and compositing software Fusion. Fusion is a node-based software with tools for working with footage, generating particles and effects, and a suite of painting tools, as well as a set of keyframe tools alongside a curve editor. 6 best laptops for video editing 2018 The move to bring it into Resolve is a huge deal, enabling artists to stay in a simple interface with the same UI styling, without having to roundtrip to add titles and effects. For compositors and mograph artists, there is now the ability to edit and grade footage using the software, as well as audio tools to take advantage of. New Fusion tab adds over 250 tools The new Fusion tab in DaVinci Resolve 15 brings with it over 250 tools from Fusion 9. While there are too many new features to cover here (we will look at these in more detail in the near future in 3D World magazine), it's worth pointing out that this update will please many users of both applications. Managing files and projects has become instantly easier, system overheads are lower, and for indie film makers or animators, workflow is more streamlined – meaning there’s more time to focus on creating, instead of admin. For Fusion users, there’s nothing to be concerned about. The tools still live together in the Fusion tab and work in the same way, with the same node graph, settings panel and shortcuts that you know and love. It’s just that now they sit alongside a suite of other, powerful tools. You can download DaVinci Resolve 15 for free. There's also a studio version of the public beta available for $299/£229, which adds collaborative tools and spatial noise reduction. Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k Blackmagic’s Pocket Cinema Camera is back, with new 4k video powers Shipping with DaVinci Resolve 15 is the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k – one of a number of new hardware items also announced by the company. The new camera takes the original model and updates it beyond recognition. Paired with Resolve Studio, it could be the core of an indie VFX studio, letting you shoot, edit, grade, and add effects and titles, all for one price with the pro level of interoperability you would expect from a single developer. The camera, which won't be available until September, will land with a 4k Micro Four Thirds chip. Housed in a compact body, it'll include a mini XLR jack with phantom power for pro audio capture. The Pocket Cinema Camera 4k also promises an excellent ISO range of up to 25,600 for low-light shooting and frame rates up to120fps, 13 stops of dynamic range and RAW options. The body will ship with an MFT mount, but adapters will be available for other systems. Should you wish to use the glass from your favourite Canon or similar, you'll be able to. On top of this, the camera has a USB-C port so you can record directly to your editing drive, or use the SD and CFast 2.0 slots built in. There's a five-inch touch display too, which, although fixed, should be good for many situations and grants access to the familiar menu system from the Ursa. The body also has Bluetooth wireless control, HDMI for connecting field monitors and, best of all, will ship with Resolve 15 at a cost of just $1,295. More information Look out for more on DaVinci Resolve 15 – plus a review of the Pocket Cinema Camera 4k when it ships – in up-coming issues of 3D World. For more information, or to download DaVinci Resolve 15, visit the Blackmagic Design website. Related articles: The best 3D modelling software 2018 6 best laptops for video editing 2018 The best video editing software 2018 View the full article

Designing for the web is a constantly evolving art, which means that superb developments are always around the corner. And with innovations catered towards accessibility, sensational designs can be more than just visually pleasing. To give you a taste of some of the latest web design inspiration to come our way, we take a look at six stunning sites that have pushed the boundaries. Read on to discover why they work. 01. Smashing Magazine Smashing Magazine's new redesign relies on the colour of authority After 18 months of redesigning, Smashing Magazine launched its website in a big way. By not shying away from red, a colour associated with authority and strength, it chose to stand out against typical editorial websites that predominantly utilise white as a backdrop. People often associate user experience with design but it's equally relative to the platform's architecture as well. Visitors make instant subconscious decisions that drive their opinion on the value and trust of a website, with a fundamental influence being loading speed. Because of this Smashing Magazine chose to move away from using a combination of WordPress, Kirby, Rails and Shopify. By moving to JAMstack: a methodology for front-end web development driven by JavaScript, reusable APIs, and streamlined markup, it was able to improve issues with usability, scaling and caching. The company collects anonymous user behaviour data using Hotjar to assess pain points that expand beyond technical frameworks. Over time it hopes to remove all advertising from the site and focus on the readers. 02. Slack Slack lures users in with its refreshingly simple style Slack, the fastest growing business application in history, updated its website in 2017 to better reflect its core values and company culture. Although the website is simplistic in structure, one of the first elements you notice are the vibrant, stylised illustrations from designer Alice Lee. "Trying to capture the playful and collaborative aspect of the culture and given how warm and friendly the tone of these are, I wanted to push it beyond your standard 'people working at a desk' imagery," she explains. It's an interesting direction, as it conflicts a bit with the actual application's design, but better embodies the personality of the company. It raises the question: does the marketing site and application truly need to share fonts and design elements or can they both represent the same idea differently? The Slack team tackled vital improvements like accessibility and decoupling asset dependencies between the web-based Slack client and the marketing site with a behind-the-scenes code overhaul. To accomplish this a new UI framework (spacesuit) was created. Slack's spacesuit framework is class-based and utilises reusable components and utility classes, reducing CSS load by 70%. It is inspired by the BEM naming convention where classes are in one of three groups – Block, Element and Modifier – and uses single letter namespaces. 03. Ubersignlanguage.com Uber incorporates accessible technology to give deaf users opportunities A strikingly simplistic approach to driving home Uber's integration of accessibility into the company culture; this website is a stellar example of design with restraint. A common approach to design is to explain value, but it's another to rely on interaction to educate. Uber has given the deaf opportunities to become drivers since 2015 by incorporating accessible technology directly into its app, such as flashing trip requests notifications instead of an audio prompt, text-only communication options, advance notifications to inform the rider that their driver is deaf or hard of hearing, and an additional request for the rider to enter their destination in advance. It has now brought that another step forward with ubersignlanguage.com. You are prompted to enter your name and are greeted with common phrases like 'yes', 'no', 'turn left', and even your name. What makes this experience stand out is the visual feedback, or short form videos, which instruct you on how to sign each phrase. It shows you don't need long form clever copy in order to convey a strong message for your organisation. You just need to understand the goal of the end user and deftly provide solutions. 04. The Savvy Backpacker The Savvy Backpacker's intuitive design helps it stand out in a competitive landscape The Savvy Backpacker, a budget focused travel blog, follows husband and wife team, James and Susan, as they backpack to Europe. They package online city guides as their key point of value and do a great job pulling that user pathway out of the main navigation and placing it next to their logo as a primary touch point. Each guide acts as an archive of past visits where they break down topics in great detail, like the best hotels, travel costs, and how to pack your luggage. Ben Bush, co-founder of FHOKE, elaborates: "It really was that, a focus on the City Guides making them front and foremost on the home page, a dedicated landing page for them, and clear and separate navigation links that were quick to browse, too". Travel blogging is a competitive space. To further establish themselves as a legitimate resource, they needed to do more than simply take nice photos and generate an incredible amount of content. They needed to guide visitors to the proper content intuitively. Ben adds: "The key is not being too alternative and placing these in areas users are familiar with. If they have to search around for something, you've lost them already." 05. POM Wonderful POM Wonderful takes visitors on a museum-like tour It would have been easy for POM to rely on its polarising bottle design or existing marketing campaigns to drive the digital experience and play it safe with the website. In an inspiring move, once you venture beyond the home page, it chose to create a museum-like experience, focusing on the history and art of the pomegranate. In the History section you will find fully voiced stories for 68 unique entries. Andrès Conde, group director of Digital POM Wonderful, states on his website: "Understanding our target and their particular interests, drove a lot of the UX, especially as the site is also the first time the brand will sell the product online. We had to be able to weave the content-centric brand site with a functional shopping experience." The website is bold, colourful, and always seems to be in motion. The site was built as a single-page app that loads assets in the background to achieve smooth transitions between sections of the site. 06. Packwire Packwire's bold colours help give the impression of childlike exploration Packwire's marketing site, packwire.com, shows little restraint in its attempt to make a strong first impression. With its use of vibrant colour and scroll-powered movements, users are left with a sense of childlike exploration. Rounded buttons and playful hover interactions bolster this as you dig deeper. The real gem of this website is the service itself: the set up of your own custom made-to-order box. Who would have thought customising a box would be so intuitive? But what exactly makes this intuitive? The separation of manufacturing information and design, for starters. On the left you have fulfilment details such as box type, size, quantity and price. The right side focuses solely on the creative implementation of your custom creation. This mirrors the hemispheres of our brains as well: left brain for logic and right for creativity. Beyond that, the company also makes an attempt to understand the end user and their needs by offering two fully functioning non-checkout options: Get Link and Save. Get Link enables you to generate a bit.ly URL to share your custom work in progress, generate a .jpg or share on social media. Save enables you to save your work to resume later. How does this help? It means creatives can generate mock-ups that can easily be shared with the client or stakeholder for approval, which then increases the likelihood of a purchase through the service. It's really well thought out as a service for the user. Pay a visit to a sample net magazine box we had fun creating here. This article was originally published in issue 303 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 303 or subscribe to net. Related articles: 10 inspiring ecommerce website designs 10 innovative agency websites to inspire you 15 great parallax scrolling websites View the full article

There's an age-old question when it comes to analysing a piece of art: where does the artist end and their art begin? Separating the creator from their work is usually a matter for scholars, but on social media artists and their masterpieces have been brought together with the hashtag #artvsartist. Having erupted on Twitter and Instagram over the last week, #artvsartist sees creators posting images of their work along with a photograph of themselves. Typically these posts follow a template that sees a group of eight images framing a selfie of the artist in the centre. Despite taking off recently, the hashtag can be traced back all the way to 2016. On 8 May 2016, Twitter user @LaLadybugTV posted examples of her manga art along with a selfie and the caption "#artvsartist This day is just full of the trend on Insta!". From here the hashtag was picked up by Tumblr users and YouTube animators, before seeing a large-scale revival earlier in April this year. @LaLadybugTV's original #artvsartist message It's perhaps no surprise that this hashtag been picked up so enthusiastically. There are already plenty of popular hashtags for artists to get involved with, but typically these involve creating new images of robots, mermaids, or anything illustrated with ink. With #artvsartist, however, there's comparatively little work. Artists can simply upload images of existing work, chuck in a selfie, and they're ready to go. Considering that artists can spend a lot of their time working in isolation, #artvsartist is a great opportunity for creatives to put themselves out there online. It also gives viewers scrolling through the hashtag a good chance to put a face to a name and connect with a bunch of artists you might not have discovered otherwise. Here are a selection of the many, many artists who caught our eye with #artvsartist. Why not give it a try yourself and see who finds you? Related articles: The illustrator hotlist 2018 7 biggest illustration trends of 2018 5 dos and don'ts for new illustrators View the full article

Eschewing the current trend for oversized, format-busting grandeur, the debut issue of Eye on Design magazine arrives in a beautifully compact, sub-A4 format. From the (literally) eye-popping beauty of the inspired, die-cut cover, across the 160 pages of crystal clear layouts, to the brilliantly executed themes, this debut exudes quiet confidence and an air of self-assuredness. Eye On Design is published by AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The institute is the largest of its kind in America, and its website has become home to some of the very best industry insight and analysis since it launched in 2014. With the pedigree behind it, it’s no surprise that rather than being another glossy showboat of tastefully curated design porn, Eye On Design is a crisply designed think tank of articles and essays; more literary journal than design showcase. Gender politics and technology live alongside grid theory and designer existentialism, with a gently liberal and enquiring take on the international design community. Without wielding an ideological axe, Eye on Design presents a varied collection of writers who question what designers think as much as what they do. Latent Tensions is a collection of fascinating photomontages by Nate Lewis questioning racial visibility Issue one is themed around ideas of invisibility, promising to reveal “the code, data, and grids lurking behind our designed interfaces... intangible subjects like identity and mental health.” Hidden agendas, concealed data and transparency in the information age couldn’t be more timely issues, but the editorial steers clear of manifestos. In Greetings From The Invisible Borderlands, Madeleine Morley investigates antiquated surveillance techniques, and their potential resurgence in a digital era. In Bauhaus Meets Binary, Liz Stinson re-visits the 1980s to show how an MIT research group turned code into design. And in Portfolio, Margaret Rhodes discusses the (invisible) presence of the computer and software as collaborator, with three artists demonstrating how process informs their work. Delayed Gratification, meanwhile, is a welcome tribute to five women in the design industry who, as the ‘other half’ of famous design partnerships, have until now been overlooked in favour of their male collaborators. And a fun article, Resurrect The Rejects, invites designers to reveal work that wasn’t accepted, and asks them to explain why. Crisp layouts The articles are delivered in mainly monochromatic, less-is-more fashion, with welcome disruptions of ‘did-they-mean-to-do-that?’ Wrong Theory shrewdly paced by art editor Maziyar Pahlevan. Formal minimalism is frequently attacked by a layer of designer-graffiti punk The crisp layouts are occasionally flung upside down and back-to-front, as if the magazine has been vigorously shaken then laid flat and allowed to settle. Weird anomalies enliven the minimal aesthetic, engage the eye and, crucially, suggest it was as fun to make as it is to read. Weird anomalies enliven the minimal aesthetic, engage the eye and, crucially, suggest the magazine was as fun to make as it is to read. Type is mainly set at an unusually large point size, and whilst this friendly legibility is initially refreshing, the supersize body copy can hinder at times. Getting Rid of the Grid – a celebration of Josef Müller-Brockmann’s legendary Grid Systems in Graphic Design – can’t do his profoundly influential book justice with such a low word count spread over a mere five pages. And closing the short feature with a criminally indulgent blank page – save a page number – rubs salt in the wound. When the editorial standard is this high, a few longer articles (i.e. regular sized body type) would be welcome. Relentless precision However, complaints are as minor as they are subjective. More often than not, the layouts of Eye On Design deliver with relentless precision, and occasionally ambitious treatments hint at a more playful, off-grid direction for subsequent issues. How Not To Be Seen (introduced as: “A fucking didactic educational .PDF file“) riffs off the work of satirical video artist and critic Hito Steerl, exploring ways to disappear in the age of surveillance with that Kim Kardashian cover variously pixellated, warped and redacted to play on Steerl’s original tips for invisibility in the modern age (“Be female and over 50”). Visual metaphor, minimalism and playfulness blend seamlessly on this Kim Kardashian-themed satire on social visibility It’s fun, smart and a perfect example of editorial and design in perfect harmony. It’s also the sort of design that works better in print that on screen, and like the dreamily tactile cover, is a love letter to print design in its own right. Mostly, the art department step back and let editorial rule. Mixed-media artist Nate Lewis’s ominous, self-vandalised photos are simply printed and unadorned, the better to consider their content. Elsewhere, a stand-out article by Meg Miller about the power (and loss) of sight, lets the words and a few carefully chosen photographs tell the fascinating story of iconic graphic designer Alvin Lustig and his wife, artist and designer Elaine Lustig Cohen. Did we mention how beautiful Maziyar Pahlevan’s cover is? Our Cover of The Year (so far...) With previous editorial experience at the likes of Interview, Art Forum, V Magazine and The Paris Review, founder editor Perrin Drumm is well qualified to tackle the near-impossible task of creating a literary design journal that reads brilliantly, without being earnest or dull, and looks fantastic without being too showy. (Are there any design critics more vicious than designers themselves?) Her debut issue effortlessly plugs into the zeitgeist to deliver an ultra-cool reading of the hearts and minds of the design community. A subscription is obligatory for anyone interested in the deeper currents of contemporary design. Issue one of Eye On Design is available from the Eye on Design website for $19, or you can save 20 per cent with an annual subscription. Also read: Review: Typenotes magazine View the full article

People of all skill levels love WordPress because the web platform is malleable and easy to customise. All you just need to have the right tools to make your site look and feel good. Give your site the professional style it needs with a lifetime subscription to Theme Junkie. You can get unlimited access on sale for just $24.99 (approx £18). When you're building your website, you won't find a better option than WordPress. No matter what you want to do with your site, you can make it happen with the help of the expertly-designs themes from Theme Junkie. Grab a lifetime subscription and You'll find more than 50 beautifully crafted and responsive WordPress themes. New ones are being added all the time, so you can always get a new highly optimised theme that can be customised to your heart's content. You can get a lifetime subscription to Theme Junkie’s WordPress themes on sale now for only $24.99 (approx £18). That's a savings of 74 per cent off for a lifetime of access to themes that will make your website stand out, so grab this deal today. Related articles: 40 brilliant WordPress tutorials Power a blog using the WordPress API 32 best free WordPress themes View the full article

For most freelancers who have been at it for a while, there is a sense of comfort in being small. It's easy to control your own projects, and work with the same types of clients you're used to. But wearing all the hats can weigh you down, and limit your potential for growth. It doesn't have to be this way. You've probably had daydreams about starting your own creative agency. If you have a large workload, and you've seen even one season of Mad Men, the prospect is alluring. In many ways, it's the obvious next step in the evolution of a freelancer. If your current project scope is limited to what you, yourself can dream up and execute, it might be time to think a little bigger than just yourself. In this article we'll look at some reasons why it might be time to start your own agency, then we'll move on to how to get started (hop straight to page 2 for this). While not for the faint of heart, starting a creative business can be wildly fulfilling. An agency model offers many advantages over life as a freelance creative. Here are just a few of them. 01. You can focus on your strengths The life of a creative freelancer is built upon the concept of 'DIY'. As a one-person operation working from home, you have no choice but to do it all yourself, sometimes to the detriment of your business. You are responsible for design, development, client wrangling, and all the admin that goes with in. As part of a bigger team, you can concentrate on what you love to do – and what you do well. Love to design homepages, but hate the tedium of designing every internal page? Hire (or contract) another designer to do it. Are you terrible at selling? Enlist a dedicated salesperson. No matter where your strength lies, you can focus on that, and fill in the gaps around you. 02. You can think longer-term As a studio, the potential for growth is much stronger. Operating on design island, you are likely too bogged down with the day-to-day requirement of your current workload to even think about branching out – or plan too far in advance. But hiring other people will free up some hands and minds to come up with a growth strategy. 03. Billable hours will increase As a freelancer, you are limited to how many hours you can personally bill per week. When you start hiring other designers, developers, and administrative assistants, you can bill for all the hours they work as well. The resulting increase in productivity allows room for more projects, which leads to even more billable time. 04. You can learn new skills Even if you choose to focus purely on what you are already good at, being in close proximity to other professionals contributing with their skillsets will open your eyes to all elements of a project. Over time, you will probably start to pick up some of these skills yourself. 05. You can take on broader projects By recruiting specialists in different fields, production on a larger scale becomes possible. Got a coder, a graphic designer and an animation specialist? You can hit many more points of a project than you'd be able to tackle on your own. And that means you can work with bigger brands, because your offering will be broader. Next page: How to get started launching your own agency So you've decided it's time to build your own team. How do you get started? There are number of questions to answer and elements to organise before you can launch your first agency. Let's take a look at a few of them. Find your niche In the overcrowded current creative world, it is generally advised for you to find your niche rather than generalising. Maybe you already have one as a freelancer, maybe not. If so, it usually makes the most sense to continue it into your agency. After all, you already have the work samples to prove your expertise. A niche can be industry-specific (i.e. specialising in food service businesses) or discipline-based (i.e. specialising in only web design, or even more specifically, landing page design). If you don't have a niche already, that's OK. You don't even have to narrow your focus yet. But, ideally, you will want to work your way toward a niche over time. This can either be an active process (you can do some research and decide what you want to focus on) or it can happen naturally, as you see what kinds of work you naturally gravitate towards. You need to decide how niche you want your work to be No matter what your niche is or how you arrive at it, you'll want to start to market to that niche sooner rather than later. Even if you don't have a plethora of work samples to show, you can still pursue it with detailed case studies of the few examples you do have, and a solid marketing plan. The more great work you do in a certain area, the more of that kind of work you will attract. Establish your brand When starting your own agency, the first thing you want to consider is the branding. One of the first things to do is to brainstorm a name. You can certainly go with your own name if you like, many firms do – or you can think of something more creative that fits the voice of your agency. But beyond that there is plenty to think about. What is the overall personality and voice of the new business? Since it's coming from you, these elements should be congruent with who you are and your key values. Here are a few things to consider to help you find your brand voice: Think of three adjectives to represent your brand: Ideally, these should accurately represent you as well, since you are the face of your agency. Any incongruences might read as inauthentic to your clients. Keep it timeless: The last thing you want is to have to rebrand a few years into your agency because you went with something too trendy or unambitious. Nod to your niche, but don't overdo it: Let's say you plan on going after the pet industry as a niche. You might call your agency Red Dog Creative. This works, because it plays to the niche, but it would also work if you ever decided to pivot to a new niche for any reason. Just be careful your name or branding isn't locking you into anything that may not work out. Then you need to start work on your own logo design, website and company collateral. For any designer this is the fun part, but it can also be draining. Designing for ourselves can spiral out of control based on the sheer number of options. I recommend putting a deadline on each phase, and treating it like a project for any client. Remember, 'perfect' is often the enemy of 'great'. Assemble a creative team Recruiting new studio members is the part that most creatives stress over, but if you're going to grow, you need a killer team on your side. Choose your collaborators carefully, as they can propel your agency to the top, or sink it like a stone. The success of your venture rests on picking the right people You have a choice here. You can either hire employees outright, or start by simply hiring contractors as needed, per project. For those just starting out, with no real capital, I recommend going the contractor route to start with. This allows you to grow slowly, and try different people out until you have assembled your dream team. There are many types of contractors you may want to bring on, from other designers to web specialists, project managers, marketing people, accountants and copywriters. You may choose to work with people in your local area, but these days it's really not a requirement, because, you know, the internet. Figure out a workflow Once you start putting your team together, you need to get a process in place for managing everybody and their workflow. You may not have a brick and mortar workplace where everybody can collaborate under one roof (or even one time zone), but you can simulate the experience using the right software. There are many online apps that will allow you to delegate work to your team, make lists, share files and keep track of what remains to be done. Most are not free, but when you consider they are freeing you from the overheads associated with a permanent workplace, the cost is negligible, and well worth it. Take a look at our list of the best tools to help you work remotely. Adjust your pricing Once you have made up your mind to ditch the freelancer title in favour of 'owner', you'll want to alert your current clients of the switch, as well as any pricing changes that have taken effect. Most agencies do charge more per hour than freelancers, so you are well within your rights to do so. You will probably need the extra money to pay your contractors (or employees), since multiple team members will now be working on a single project. You may lose some of your current business due to the price hike, but now you can start going after bigger clients with bigger projects, and the budgets to match. Liked this? Read these... 6 best collaboration tools for design studios How to build a thriving studio UK top 50 studios 2017 View the full article

Design trends are like viruses. They can spread globally almost overnight thanks to the proliferation of design blogs and social sharing platforms. Trends can be inspiring and influential, but in the wrong hands run the risk of homogenising design and diluting fresh, exciting ideas. Meaningful, lasting design movements are built on substance. The forward-thinking designers driving them do so because it makes sense to their creative process and is appropriate for a particular client's needs – not because it's on-trend. Which makes it all the more maddening for everyone involved when buzzwords and bandwagons take over. Read on for the four biggest offenders of the last decade... 01. Authenticity Design Bridge's rebrand of Guinness is a stand-out example of heritage and authenticity done right 'Artisan', 'heritage' and 'retro' can join 'authentic' on the list of most over-used buzzwords in design and branding. It's exhausting, particularly if the brand in question doesn't actually have much history to speak of. Sometimes, such as with Design Bridge's beautiful rebrand of Guinness, there's heritage in abundance, brought to the surface with craft and authenticity. But 'authenticity' has become an insufferable catch-all not just for how something was made, but also purely what it looks like. A distressed texture doesn't make something more 'real', and adding the date a brand was established doesn't automatically give it more gravitas. You can whittle a piece of packaging out of a hunk of foraged driftwood with your bare hands if you want, and it might be authentic in its own way, but you have to ask yourself: why? Do your research. Be rigorous. Dig up meaningful stories about the brands you're working for – where they're from, who their founders are, how they've evolved and developed, what genuinely makes them special. There's your 'authentic' starting point. Find that gem, and build from there. Hint: it doesn't have to be about the past. 02. Play Jessica Walsh embraces play as a powerful creative tool, and you can too if you approach it in the right way We get it. Designers and creative people of all kinds love the opportunities that play affords, and sometimes it leads to beautiful, serendipitous creativity that takes your work in fresh, unexpected directions. Jessica Walsh has long been an advocate of this, making it the subject of many of her design conference talks. And Jim Sutherland's multi-award-winning, much-revered work bears testament to the value that everyday joy and curiosity can have. This is all enlightening and exciting. But 'play' has become a buzzword, and we'll be brutal: if you want to make it integral to your process, focus your energy. Don't just make it an excuse to feel like you're 'being creative', and avoid the necessary rigour involved to solve a brief. Designers like Walsh and Sutherland turn messing around with paint or playing with cardboard boxes into world-class work, because it fuels how they think. Make sure you learn from your play if you want it to be a useful exercise. 03. Storytelling Done right, storytelling can be powerful. It encompasses the voice a brand uses to communicate; the values it wants to portray – and how; and the emotional response it evokes in doing so. It doesn't have to be a literal narrative, although it might be. TSB's charmingly animated campaign after the bank split from Lloyds (above) is one such example. It told the story of how the Reverend Henry Duncan pioneered the savings bank movement, and emphasised that, at a time when trust in the banking system had been badly shaken post-crash, this "new" bank is actually 200 years old. But the story must be meaningful, skilfully told, and relevant. Bear that in mind before throwing yourself, and your client, onto a potentially rickety bandwagon. As with authenticity, do your due diligence and find a story that resonates. Forcing the wrong story onto a brand because 'telling stories is cool' is like handing a terrible script to a great actor, or casting a third-rate actor in a movie with great potential. It wastes everyone's time. In short, make sure it's a story that's actually worth telling – and indeed, that storytelling is even the right approach to take in the first place. 04. Failure ustwo coined the term 'succailure' to describe the positive outcome of failure. But the right attitude is essential The idea that failure is a positive thing has really gained traction in recent years across the design spectrum. It made the cover of WIRED UK in 2011, which helped catapult the concept into mainstream consciousness. ustwo has coined its own portmanteau term – 'succailure' – to describe what the agency believes is the ultimate success to be found from trial, error and constructive failure. Many start-ups are successful because they fail fast, and keep innovating. 'Failure', like 'play', has become a buzzword that describes an on-trend creative process, rather than the eventual outcome necessarily, although glitch art and other 'deliberate mistakes' abound in some sectors. Once again, though, to turn failure into success you need the right attitude. Innovation is often about trial and error, and learning from mistakes quickly. It's not cool to fail on purpose, or because you didn't have a strong enough motivation, and shout about it because you're on-trend. It's cool to innovate, and treat failure as a necessary byproduct of that. Related articles: 15 influential art and design movements you should know 6 biggest design movements of the millennium so far 7 innovative ways to photograph your portfolio View the full article

Microsoft patched a bug that allowed attackers to steal a target’s Windows account password via previewed Outlook message. View the full article

Knowing how to build for mobile is an invaluable skill with nearly endless opportunities. You can get your start in the mobile development field with the eduCBA Mobile App Development Lifetime Subscription Bundle. It's on sale now for 96 per cent off the retail price. You'll learn the basics of the languages that make up the fundamentals of mobile. Whether you want to build for iOS or Android, you'll find a course in this bundle to get you on track. There are over 100 courses and 250 hours of content that will teach you how to design the user experience people want, build the apps and games people will love, and get your app to the top of the charts. The eduCBA Mobile App Development Lifetime Subscription Bundle is valued at over $797, but you can save 96 per cent off the retail price. That means you’ll pay just $29 (approx. £20) for a bundle that could put you on the road to your next career. Related articles: How to make an app Build apps that work offline The 34 best photo apps View the full article

You might be an amazing designer, but if you want the money to roll in, unless you're extremely fortunate, talent alone isn't going to cut it. Face it, you're going to have to deal with clients, which can be a daunting prospect for many creatives who'd rather keep their heads down and get on with the work. The secrets of great client relationships For Natasha Field, account manager at Fiasco, getting on with clients is her daily business. In this short video, she explains why a small, friendly studio suits her more than a large agency – and how Fiasco's 'family' vibe translates to its client relationships. And here, Field reveals her five tips for building and maintaining great relationships with clients... 01. Build trust Fiasco's website for Pelican Books delivers "an innovative online reading experience", and won several awards – including a D&AD Pencil "I treat every client relationship like I would a friendship in terms of good communication and trust," says Natasha Field, account manager at Fiasco. "When clients trust us and we trust them, it helps move the project along." Plus if something does go wrong, it'll be easier to resolve. 02. Act human In the past, Field sometimes felt she wasn't being herself when talking to clients. "The way I spoke to them wasn't very human and seemed robotic, and I wasn't building relationships because that's not how you build relationships." She advises remembering that everyone has good days and bad days: "If they're having a bad day, you can just be there to talk." 03. Don't burn bridges For its brand overhaul of Bristol cultural hub The Tobacco Factory, Fiasco was inspired by the building's original industrial roots Fiasco was recently re-hired for a client they'd worked for five years previously, suggesting that sometimes you might have to wait to bear the fruits of your good relationships. "You don't know when a project comes in whether or not that's going to lead to more work," she says. The lesson? Every client is worth investing in. 04. Be flexible "Each client is different in the way they work, so some need a bit more explanation, whereas some just let us run with it and won't need so many face-to-face meetings," says Field. "You have to flexible in how that client wants or needs to work." 05. Immerse yourself October 2017 saw Fiasco's sister company, thread, put on Bristol's first major design festival, Something Good A good account manager should be an extension of the client, and be able to pre-empt their feedback, adds Field. "The only way to do this is immerse yourself so that you understand them – who they, what they do and their core values." This article was originally published in issue 275 of Computer Arts, the world's best-selling design magazine. Buy issue 275 here or subscribe to Computer Arts here. Related articles: How to manage a huge client 10 ways to be more business-savvy as a designer The differences between designer and client revealed View the full article

Researchers have identified what they are calling an Early Bird code injection technique used by the Iranian group APT33 to burrow the TurnedUp malware inside infected systems while evading anti-malware tools. View the full article

There are lots of ways to create a website mockup. It's true there is no 'best' approach, but depending on certain UI and UX designers' styles and preferences (and the design process), some will work better than others. In this article, we'll look at the pros and cons of four of the most popular options: end-to-end UX tools, mockup tools, graphic design tools, as well as coded designs that start to blur the lines between website mockups and prototypes. Jargonbuster: Mockups, wireframes, prototypes Don't make the mistake of thinking all mockups are the same. Simple decisions about platforms, fidelity, and coding will all produce significantly different results. Know what you want and what your goals are before you even begin the design process – if you want a tool that supports all three phases, it's best to start out using it than to switch over halfway through. Likewise, if you need a stellar, fully realistic mockup, keep in mind that you'll be using a graphic design editor at some point. 01. End-to-end UX tools At the highest tier are end-to-end tools that aim to satisfy the entire workflow: mockups, prototyping, documentation, developer handoffs, and design systems. 2017 was definitely the year of the end-to-end design tool. UXPin has been catering to this need since the early 2010s, but a number of other brands, such as Adobe and InVision, are now also trying to create the ‘one tool to rule them all’. UXPin boasts robust prototyping, mockups, documentation, and developer handoffs So how do these tools stack up just up for mockup creation? They can tackle them without any problem – and then some. With UXPin, for example, you can create mockups with multiple states and interactions. It even mimics some features of Photoshop and Sketch by including a Pen tool. On the other hand, Studio by InVision (its latest tool), allows for some pretty nifty animation editing; while Adobe XD lets you open Photoshop and Sketch files inside your XD designs, and apply colours, symbols, linear gradients and character styles. Studio is the latest tool by InVision that aims to create an end-to-end workflow Most importantly, end-to-end tools are now offering design systems to ensure consistency of mockups across projects. Design systems give everyone a single source of truth for assets and design principles across tools. If you plan on creating a lot of mockups, this feature becomes almost mandatory. When selecting an end-to-end tool for creating your website mockup, it’s worth considering the following aspects: Fidelity: How powerful is the tool for visual and interaction design? Consistency: What features ensure design consistency in your work? Accuracy: Do the elements you’re working with reflect the ‘source of truth’ in your organisation? Collaboration: Can you collaborate with stakeholders or other designers? Developer handoff: How does the tool generate specifications and assets for developers? 02. Dedicated mockup tools Less robust solutions such as Principle, Framer, Moqups or Balsamiq can still provide you with everything you need to build your mockup – you’ll just lose the additional workflow and design consistency features. These tools are designed to make the creation process as easy as possible, so you can focus more on stylistic decisions and less on how to manipulate the program. Dedicated mockup tools have clear advantages: Beginners benefit from their ease of use, while experts appreciate the designs specifically tailored to their advanced needs. On the more advanced end, tools like Framer and Principle specialise in animations and interactions for mockups. Tools like Framer specialise in animation On the lower end, Moqups and Balsamiq provide more functionality than non-design tools that are sometimes used for wireframes and mockups (such as Keynote), but they are limited to only low-fidelity designs. They can, however, be quite useful if the goal is to create low-fidelity wireframes very quickly. When it comes to mockup tools, you need to decide if a simple wireframing solution will just do or if you need more advanced screen design. No matter what mockup tool you choose, just make sure you’re willing to accept the loss in collaborative workflow and less design consistency features offered by end-to-end tools. 03. Graphic design software Some designers swear by software like Photoshop, Sketch or Illustrator, especially those particularly skilled or familiar with tools that offer control down to the pixel. Graphic design platforms work best if you're aiming for the highest level of realism and visual fidelity. And as we explain in our guide to rapid prototyping using Photoshop CC, it may be easier than you think. Photoshop gives fine-grained control, but might be overkill for simple mockups Working in graphic design software gives you access to an almost endless selection of highly defined colours, so if you're working within the restrictions of a rigid and preset colour scheme – for example, under particular branding rules – then these programs may be your best option. More than colour options, these programs offer far more visual tools, allowing you to tackle the minutiae of detail. However, the drawback of using this type of software is that it can be difficult to translate when it's time to start coding the design. What worked in Photoshop may not always work in code (elements like fonts, shadows, gradient effects, and so on), which can translate to time wasted figuring out solutions for the prototyping phase. For style-heavy pages it might help to hammer out the specific visual details during the mockup phase, in which case Photoshop or Sketch will give you the most options. Similarly, if you're dealing with a nit-picky or hard-to-please client, presenting them with a gorgeous and impressive mockup might win them over more easily. Mockups created in Photoshop or Sketch can be dragged and dropped into the free UXPin app It's also worth mentioning that mockups created in Photoshop or Sketch can be dragged and dropped into the prototyping phase with UXPin. This lets you easily animate all layers (no flattening) with a few clicks, and ensures you don't need to start from scratch when it's time to prototype. For more details of how this works, take a look at our tutorial on how to automate your handoffs. If visuals are not your only priority, you might be more efficient using a tool that allows you to do the wireframing, mockups, and prototyping all in one place. Graphic design software can be more trouble than it's worth for mockups unless you're looking for optimum visualisation – you'll definitely need to communicate regularly with your developer, since these tools aren't designed for collaboration. 04. Coded mockups For starters, if you're mainly a designer and not comfortable with coding, then this obviously isn't an option. As discussed in The Guide to Mockups, coded mockups are not the default choice. Most coding can be postponed until the prototyping stage (if you're creating an HTML/JavaScript prototype) or even later (if you use a prototyping tool). But despite the complexity and potential obstacles, there are many respectable designers who advocate introducing code into the mockup phase. Layouts are progressing, but the fact remains that some designs are much easier to design than code While improvements in tools and technology mean that more and more possibilities are opening up in layout design, not everything is easy (or even possible) to recreate in code. Starting in code lets you know right away what you can and cannot do. If you’re comfortable with code, it can also be argued that starting with this is less wasteful – the mockup is going to end up in HTML/CSS anyway. But as we mentioned before, mockups with coding are not a popular strategy, for more reasons than the difficulty of coding. Starting to code too early may limit your creativity and readiness to experiment, as it's easy to worry about the feasibility of your ideas in code rather than how exciting they could look. It's up to you when to introduce coding. Just make sure you know your design aims and keep the developers updated on how you're prioritising features. Read more: 10 top prototyping tools How to avoid prototyping pitfalls Prototype a mobile app with Adobe XD View the full article

Depression and burnout affect as many as one-third of workers, according to a study by charity Depression Alliance. In our culture of information overload, it’s important that you make an active effort to manage your stress levels to help prevent burnout. From eating enough leafy greens to getting more shut-eye, there are plenty of tactics you can use to keep creative burnout at bay. Mindfulness – a proven method of helping to train your mind to more effectively manage anxiety and stress – is one of several strategies you can use to make yourself more resistant to burnout. Studies have shown that as little as 10 minutes of meditation a day can help reduce anxiety and stress, meaning that whether you slot yoga into your lunch break or realign your chakras on your commute home, small bitesize chunks of meditation could help significantly reduce your stress levels. And while your smartphone might be partially to blame for your soaring cortisol to begin with, there are apps available to help you hone your brain waves and keep you cool as a cucumber, no matter what life throws your way. Keep your creative mojo on point by taking steps to manage stress and burnout with these five nifty mindfulness apps. 01. Headspace This design-centric guided meditation app could help you better manage the stresses of daily life Platform: Android/iOS Price: Some features free, subscription £9.99 a month, £74.99 annual or £399.99 lifetime This self-proclaimed ‘gym membership for the mind’ is the go-to mindfulness app for creatives and non-creatives alike. A pocket-sized personal meditation coach, Headspace’s commitment to making meditation simple has won it millions of users worldwide. Created by sports-scientist-turned-monk-turned-entrepreneur, Andy Puddicombe, this iconic app makes meditation a breeze with fun, easy-to-digest videos. Dip your toe in the water with the free version or commit for the long-haul with the subscription version. Featuring short, simple meditations in a cute, whimsical style, this iconic, UX-centric app, is a must-try if you want to integrate mindfulness into your day. 02. Calm Pairing picturesque landscapes with tranquil sounds, Calm creates exactly that Platform: Android/iOS Price: Some features free, £35.99 to unlock all (after seven-day trial) With a focus on the natural world, Calm is a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of working life. Chosen as Apple’s App of the Year in 2017, Calm’s serene soundtracks and beautiful location snapshots will help you conjure up a mental ‘safe space’. Featuring music, meditations, masterclasses and sleep-centric exercises, this app is a more nature-focused alternative to Headspace. According to a study by the Center for Humane Technology, Calm is actually the app that leaves users the happiest when rated against other popular downloads. So, take a deep breath, listen to the pitter-patter of rainfall and picture a beautiful sunset in your mind’s eye with the help of Calm. 03. Personal Zen Want to up your inner zen? There’s an app for that Platform: iOS only Price: Free Simple and quirky, Personal Zen is a gamified version of Attention Bias Modification Training (ABMT), which has been shown to help the brain disengage from negative stimuli. Supported by clinical studies, this nifty app redirects your attention towards the positive. Simply trace the path of the friendly sprite through the grass quickly and smoothly – making sure not to let the grumpy sprite divert your focus. If you’re prone to seeing the glass as half empty, this sweet, if somewhat low-fi, app is a breath of fresh air. And the best news? From a quick scan of the stunning visuals on its website, it looks like a design overhaul is in the pipeline. 04. MindFi Short and sweet, MindFi is meditation for those who struggle to sit still Platform: Android/ iOS Price: Some features free, subscription £5.49 a month, £39.99 annual, £174.99 lifetime MindFi Founder Bjorn Lee is on a mission to make us more productive. A self-confessed struggling meditator, the app is designed with fidgeters in mind. Whether you want to slot meditation in on your break, commute, or at a meal, this app, which is designed specifically for ‘busy humans’, aims to make it easy to find time for meditation in your hectic schedule. These short three to five-minute meditation exercises, covering everything from deadline blues to mindful typing, will help you find a moment to breathe. 05. Buddhify Be mindful on the go with this app, which will help you become an app-free meditator Platform: Android/iOS Price: £4.99 Whether you want to get a taste of mindfulness with Meditation 101 or can’t sleep and are looking for some exercises to help you drift off, Buddhify’s colourful meditation wheel makes it simple to pick and choose exercises to suit the situation. Championing people over profit, this husband and wife business has strong values at its heart. Avoiding the subscription model, Buddhify has a one-off cost, meaning it can work out significantly cheaper than some of its subscription-based competitors. If you think of meditation as a bike, then Buddhify is your stabilisers – and the app’s ultimate aim is to make you an app-free independent meditator. Look, no hands! Related articles: 6 ways to get out of your creative rut How to avoid creative burnout Can pro artists achieve mindfulness through art? View the full article

It's been 20 years since US readers took their first trip to the wizarding world of Harry Potter. To celebrate two decades of the fantasy phenomenon, Scholastic has unveiled a new set of black-and-white Harry Potter book covers illustrated by best-selling author and award-winning artist Brian Selznick. 9 top tips for drawing in black and white Announced on Pottermore, the new covers feature scenes and characters from the book depicted in Selznick's signature monochrome style. Fans of the book will instantly spot details such as Harry's Patronus and the Dementors buried in the intricate artwork. Each book is accompanied by jewel-toned typography, topped off with the familiar jagged lightning bolt Harry Potter logo. What makes these covers extra magical is that they make one long continuous image when placed side-by-side. Watch them in action in the video below. "I'm a huge Harry Potter fan (a proud Hufflepuff!) and to be asked to illustrate the 20th anniversary edition covers was an absolute honour", Selznick told Pottermore. "I knew this project came with so much responsibility to the stories, as well as to the readers. I revisited the books and was especially moved by the relationships between the characters in J.K. Rowling's magical world, so I wanted these covers to reflect that." "One of the most challenging and rewarding aspects of the process was drawing seven independent covers that would stand on their own, while making sure that they also lined up to create one single satisfying image. It took dozens and dozens of sketches to get it right, and I am thrilled to share my great love for the books with these new illustrations." So is it time to retire your dog-eared copies of the Harry Potter books? If yours are falling apart after so much reading, you only have to wait until 26 June to pick up the new paperback editions. Related articles: Artist illustrates bot-written Harry Potter chapter New Harry potter movie logo uses typography as teasers How to paint a Harry Potter book cover View the full article

This is an extract from A Field Guide to Freelancer Finances, a free book of practical finance tips by designers, developers and FreeAgent. Download your copy here. It took me 13 years of running a business before I finally overcame my fear of finances. In fact, that fear almost prevented me from pursuing the career I wanted. For 13 years I ran an agency with two co-founders, but a few years ago I decided I wanted a better balance between work and life. I decided I wanted to strike out on my own, but 'the numbers' held me back. For years my business partner had looked after the finances. Unfortunately the rows and rows of data in his carefully-crafted spreadsheets completely overwhelmed me; the idea of having to manage all this on my own stopped me dead in my tracks. I know that it is understandable to have the fear I had. But avoiding your business finances can have some real consequences: It's harder to turn away work because you don't know if you can afford to You never feel confident that you've saved enough for upcoming tax bills You don't have a good idea of where you'll be in a few month's time In short, you are out of control, and if you are anything like me that is scary. I overcame my fear once I discovered that spreadsheets weren't the only way to manage my business finances. I now use FreeAgent, and have a completely different outlook on 'the numbers'. Every business decision I make, large or small, is now backed by an awareness of how my business is performing. I also know how much I can expect to earn in the coming months. It is such a relief and it has enabled me to live the life I wanted. Download the full book by clicking on the image When I'm looking at my business finances, I have two big priorities: I want to make confident business decisions, and I want to reduce my worry as much as possible. Here is a quick run-down of some of the key numbers I use to feel confident about my businesses direction. I've used the names of things that you should be able to find in most sets of accounts. 01. Retained profit What it is: The retained profit figure tells you how much money your company would have left if you stopped trading today, sold the company's assets, collected outstanding invoices and paid all its outstanding debts. This is also sometimes called 'retained earnings'. How I use it: For me, freelancing is just as much about saying 'no' as it is saying 'yes'. Using the retained profit figure is the key way that I help myself say no to projects that either don't appeal or are just wrong for my business. It's hard as a freelancer to turn down work if you don't know how much you can expect to come in and out over the next few months. That is why I love this figure. I think of retained profit as my "cushion". If it's at a level that I'm comfortable with, I can decline work or take a break with a lot more confidence. As soon as it starts to dip below a certain level, I know it's time to double my efforts in promoting myself and my services. If you are a director of a limited company like me, retained profit is important for another reason: it tells you how much money you can take out of the company! Your company's retained profit represents the most you could withdraw as a pidend. If the number is negative, you can't withdraw a pidend at all. Here are some of the questions that the retained profit figure can help answer: Can I afford to say 'no' to this project? How much can I take out of the company in pidends? Can I afford to buy that shiny new iPad Pro? Will the business survive if I take a few weeks off work? Things to look out for: The retained profit figure doesn't just include your cash balance, but also any assets that you have invested in. That means that if you just bought a new laptop or other large asset, this figure is assuming that you would sell it at its second-hand value. This confused me for a while as I would never consider selling any of my precious gadgets. 02. Aged debtors report What it is: The aged debtors report tells you how much money you have invoiced, but have not yet collected. The aged debtor report usually groups the amounts in 30 days, and shows the invoices that are aged 30 days past the invoice date, 30 to 60 days, 60 to 90 days, and more than 90 days. How I use it: I use this report to get a quick view of how much money I should expect to come in over the next month or so. This helps me to stop worrying about where my next meal is going to come from. Ideally, there shouldn't be any outstanding unpaid invoices that have turned red in FreeAgent. But if any are lurking around, that's an excellent sign that I should be chasing payment. Here are some of the questions that the aged debtor report can help answer: How much is due to be paid soon? Who should I be chasing for payment? Am I relying on somebody to who might not pay me? Things to look out for: If you are VAT registered, the aged debtor report will show the amount of money owed including VAT, which you'll need to pass on to HMRC, so remember you don't get to keep all that money owed. 03. Pipeline and forecast What it is: My sales pipeline is a prediction of how many new projects or clients I am expecting to have over the next few weeks or months. It is a forecast of how much money I expect these projects will be worth. This is a bit of guesswork, but it gives me an idea of what might be coming in over the following months. How I use it: I use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool called Pipedrive to help me manage my potential clients and pipeline. There are loads of different options available to help you build a pipeline and forecast, from a CRM to a basic spreadsheet. The important thing is to find something that you will stick with and use often. That is because building up a forecast of your revenue is invaluable. I look at my pipeline after I look at the aged debtor report. The aged debtor report tells me how much should be coming in over the next few months. Then I switch to the forecast for an idea of how healthy things are looking over the longer term. Being able to see a bit ahead in the business gives me confidence, and also helps me schedule upcoming work and judge what my workload is likely to be. Here are some of the questions that a sales pipeline and forecast can help answer: How many projects do I have confirmed? What are they worth? How many projects am I waiting to hear back about? How likely are they to happen? Should I spend this morning chasing up projects, or focusing on something else? Are there any cash flow problems coming up in the next few weeks or months? 04. Cash flow What it is: A cash flow report shows you the basic incoming and outgoing money from your business, usually broken down by month. How I use it: Once I feel confident about the future, I have a quick look at the past to see how my cash flow performed for the past few months. You can also forecast cash flow using apps like Float. But for my business, I'm more interested in using cash flow as a simple measure of how I did over the past few months. At a basic level, I should be bringing in more than I spend. A cash flow report is also a good way for me to benchmark how much I need to be earning in any given month. I combine this information with the aged debtor and pipeline reports. This gives me a good idea of how I've been doing and whether I need to make any changes to my plans. Here are some of the questions that a cash flow report can help answer: Am I spending nearly as much as I'm earning? How comfortable am I with the amount of incoming versus outgoing cash? Do I need to do anything to generate more income in the short term? I've got a few planned costs coming up - do I have enough cash in the bank? What is my break even point each month? On average how much do I need to earn? Things to look out for: It's easy to confuse a cash flow report with a profit and loss report, as they both report on incomings and outgoings. Here's the difference between the two. A cash flow report reports on only the money that came in and went out of your bank account(s). A profit and loss account reports on: Money that you have been paid Money that you will earn (invoices that have been issued but not yet paid) Costs that you have incurred (whether or not they have been paid yet) Other costs that may not have been paid in cash, like depreciation of an asset If you want to peer deeper into your business's overall profitability, including outstanding costs and invoices, the profit and loss report is the place to look. 05. Projected tax bill What it is: A tax projection is an up-to-date view of how much money you will owe for your next tax bill. This is a projection of Corporation Tax for limited companies, and Self Assessment income tax for sole traders. It also includes VAT for any VAT-registered businesses. How I use it: I used to hate not knowing how much I owed the tax man. I would dread the annual bill. Fortunately this is where using accounting software helps. I can just look at the tax forecast and know how much I need to pay and when it's due. The tax bill updates as my accounts change, giving me an up-to-date view of how much I need to set aside for the next bill. I'm the kind of person who likes to squirrel away extra money "just in case". Having this number gives me a lot of peace of mind about my business. Here are some of the questions that a cash flow report can help answer: How much should I be setting aside for my tax bill? Can I really afford to buy that iPad Pro when I've got my Corporation Tax bill coming up? (Hint: The answer should always be yes) Making informed decisions Before I overcame my fear of finances, striking out on my own as a freelancer felt like damning myself to a future of worry and apprehension. Now I'm able to make confident, informed decisions about running my business. I'm able to do the work I love with the balance that works for me and my life. Like this? Read these: 9 things nobody tells you about going freelance How to manage your freelance cashflow 8 tools to help you work remotely as a freelancer View the full article

Occlusion shadows help to push the three-dimensional feeling of what you're painting. Look for areas enclosed by surfaces and notice how the shadows are always darker there When doing detailed lighting work I've gotten into the habit of simplifying each step of the painting process as much as possible. Focusing my attention on one aspect at a time helps to not become overwhelmed and almost always results in a much more thorough job. One step in that process is concentrating on occlusion shadows, which occur where surfaces come together. A basic rule of thumb is that wherever areas are closed in by surfaces, shadows will occur. The inside of a mouth or an eye socket for instance will almost always be darker than the top of the nose or the forehead. They're a form of shadows best noticeable when there's no directional light present. So you can paint them on a separate layer without having to worry about the direction of the overall lighting, and then set that layer to Multiply to have it distribute the shadows on the objects below. In my example however, I do have a lighting scheme in mind with directional lights and cast shadows, but these build upon the occlusion shadows rather than replacing them. 01. Start simple  Every good painting starts with a good foundation. In this case it's a quick line drawing that looks very simple, but has all the information in it I need to finish the painting. It shows the placing of all the facial features, but also where the cast shadows will fall and how the back lighting will push the silhouette forward. 02. Use occlusion layer Built upon the previous sketch is the occlusion layer. You'll notice that it's a very bright layer with light greyish tones in it, and the reason for that is that we don't want to overdo the shadows in the image. By keeping this layer light the Multiply layer won't 'burn' my friendly-looking orc character below. 03. Build it up With the occlusion layer in Multiply I paint over the line drawing with larger strokes to erase the big lines while keeping the major volumes. The lines aren't really needed since the layout of the elements is present in the occlusion layer, too. The heavy lifting is now mostly done and all that remains is adding colour and effects. Words: Bram Sels This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 128. Like this? Read these! Free Photoshop brushes every creative must have How to create an orc in ZBrush How to create dynamic lighting in Photoshop View the full article

AMD notified users about new available Spectre CPU firmware and Windows 10 patches. View the full article

If you're planning a career working from home as a freelance designer, being well prepared and organised is essential. While you're studying, as well as building up a cracking creative resume, it's important to start integrating yourself into the design industry. There are a number of respected organisations that bring together the leading designers in various fields, as well as offering resources, competitions and networking opportunities to fledgling creatives. Here, we run down seven of the best. 01. AIGA Discounts, resources and plenty of opportunities arise at AIGA As the world's largest professional design association, AIGA has membership options aimed at everyone from students to design leaders. There are AIGA student groups on over 200 college campuses in the USA, each affiliated to a local AIGA chapter, and members get access to loads of resources, opportunities and discounts. 02. D&AD With a free basic membership, D&AD is a good starting point Basic membership of D&AD is free. There's also an education option with pricing aimed at universities. Education benefits include lectures, industry briefings and discounted entry to the New Blood Awards for people aged 18 to 23 – which are open to non-members too. 03. Art Directors Club Students are held up alongside professionals in the ADC awards The organisation behind the annual Young Guns competition has a student membership option for $95, and professionals in the first three years of their career can join for $150. ADC offers loads of networking opportunities both on and offline, and runs annual student awards in the same categories as its professional awards. 04. Association of Illustrators With advice about all aspects of freelancing, the AOI is essential AOI student membership costs £76/year – unless you're studying at an AOI member college, in which case you can get affiliated student membership for £55/year. The AOI provides phone and email advice about all aspects of freelancing, portfolio advice, free accountancy consultations and loads of discounts too. 05. The Type Directors Club Student members of the TDC can get discounted entry to its annual competition The Type Directors Club is dedicated to supporting excellence in typography, both in print and on screen. It runs an annual TDC competition and exhibition, as well as frequent workshops – to which members get discounted entry. The TDC also supports self-managed student groups. There are a number of different membership options (at different prices), but students can pick from a ‘lowercase’ membership for $45/year or an ‘uppercase’ membership for $75/year. 06. Typographic Circle Typographic Circle is great for your networking needs You can become a member of the Typographic Circle if you're studying full-time or graduated in the last year, for an annual fee of just £15. Benefits of joining include networking opportunities, free or reduced-price tickets to members-only events, and discounts from selected sponsors. 07. ISTD You'll need to apply if you want to become a member of the prestigious ISTD The International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) is a not-for-profit professional body run by and for typographers, graphic designers and educators. Graduating students and practicing designers can apply for to become a member by submitting their CV, plus some examples of their typographic work – but those who are accepted will be joining the likes of Wim Crouwel and Erik Spiekermann, so it’s worth the effort. The ISTD also runs an acclaimed assessment scheme in conjunction with universities around the world, with the aim of raising the profile of typography in design education. Related articles: Browse our collection of the best free fonts Get inspired with these portfolio examples The designer's guide to how to start a blog View the full article

The arrival of social media and new digital channels have transformed branding. But when it comes to connecting a brand with customers, there are still fundamental mistakes an art director needs to steer clear of. Here, an expert team of creative directors share their thoughts on what brands should avoid at all costs. 01. Demographics not mindset "You see brands isolating groups of people based on a demographic, whereas actually a huge breadth of people now buy products based on mindset, cutting across all that," says The Future Laboratory's Kirsty Minns. 02. Overuse of 'heritage' Relying on a brand's heritage is lazy, says Minns. "It's better to find something that feels more truthful and appropriate. Being 'authentic' isn't an excuse for not having original ideas." "I wouldn’t call it a mistake exactly, but something that springs to mind is naming our company Purple and spending 25 years explaining why," says Steve Bewick, founding partner and creative director at Purple. "Back in 1993, we were just starting our own branding studio straight out of college. We only had a few clients and lots of time, so spent way too much time thinking about an identity. The idea was that we’d visually bring to life things that aren’t the colour purple – blue rinse hair, pink elephants, greyhounds, red herrings… you get the idea." "I still like the idea, but in retrospect it’s quite complex and wasn’t the most practical. In 2018, we will be embarking on our Purple Creative identity 2.0. Wish us luck!" 03. Global blinkers Studio Sutherland projects include the legendary D&AD Annual "[Despite branding being] so international these days, you always need to be aware of local sensitivities," explains Studio Sutherl&'s Jim Sutherland. "A one-size-fits-all, global look means you're not really understanding the people you're talking to in those countries." Creating a multitude of identities is fraught with its own problems though. "One mistake we made previously was giving the client too many logo options upfront (in the concept phase)," says Rob Berry, creative director at Superrb. "Doing this not only takes more design time, but it can often make things harder if the client wants to take elements from a few ideas and mash them together. Having gone through that experience, we’d now generally recommend selecting the three options you believe to be the best solution. These should vary in style so you can get a clear steer from the client on what they do and don’t like." "We’ve also found it handy to spend time presenting logos across various media, such as business cards, signage, and so on. This really showcases your work and enables clients to visualise your ideas." 04. Bland brands "There's a lot more branding going on than there was perhaps five or ten years ago, but most of it is very bland and uninspiring," says Sutherland. "When I'm judging design competitions, you do wonder why some projects have been entered." "On rare occasions, I haven’t fought hard enough with clients in order to produce brave work," says Troy Wadee, co-founder at Brown & Co. "This has led me to conclude two things. Firstly, consumer research in design is fraught with problems. This is largely because consumers, in my experience, often don’t have the vision to see what you are aiming to achieve with a brand even when you explain it to them; that’s why they’re not designers." "Secondly, to be a leader (which every brand should aim to be) means going where no one has been before and celebrating what makes you unique. Being distinctive in a relevant way is fundamental to long-term brand success and requires an unwavering belief in doing things your way." 05. Cod psychology "One of the problems with people talking about branding is that they talk about the wrong things," says Sutherland. "Like, 'we did it yellow because it reflects positivity.' No, it doesn't. It's yellow." This article was originally published in Computer Arts magazine issue 252. Related articles: 9 embarrassing branding blunders The good, the bad and the WTF of brand apologies 5 tips for achieving brand consistency View the full article