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Apple releases patches addressing the Spectre vulnerability impacting its macOS, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. View the full article

It's easy to tell when you're looking at a well-designed app or website. They simply stand out in a sea of others that just aren't up to snuff. With the Learn to Design Bundle, you won't just be able to spot those great designs – you'll learn how to build them yourself. Grab this deal on sale right now for just $29 (approx. £21)! There is much more happening with web services and apps than meets the eye; while a pretty coat of paint is nice, a true designer also understands what is going on behind the scenes. You can master every aspect of design with the Learn to Design Bundle. It'll provide you with more than 57 hours of lessons across in nine courses that will teach you everything from the fundamentals of UX and UI to the coding languages like HTML5 and CSS3 that make the web and mobile apps look great and function perfectly. The courses of the Learn to Design Bundle usually retail for $1,209. Today only, you can get this deal for just $29 (approx. £21). It’s a great deal that can help you pursue your design career, so grab it today! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. View the full article

Buy Photoshop CC 2018 or sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud nowIt’s 28 years since Photoshop was released into the world. In that time, Adobe has built the software into the ultimate image manipulation tool, used daily by professionals and hobbyist creatives alike – many of whom could count Photoshop keyboard shortcuts as their second language. The latest update, Photoshop CC 2018 (version 19), dropped in October 2017. It brings with it a host of new features, and although these might not be as initially astounding as those from previous versions, they make a huge difference in efficiency, helping creatives adapt to a ‘must have it now’ work environment. So what’s new in Photoshop CC 2018? Let’s take a look at the most interesting new features… Support for OpenType variable fonts Photoshop now supports variable fonts – an OpenType font format supporting custom attributes such as weight, width, slant, optical size and so on. With this feature, you can quickly and easily customise styles by using inbuilt sliders to move between the different weights and thickness of a type family. This allows for a more seamless workflow and adds an extra dimension to Photoshop. It also means that students, or creatives who can’t afford a subscription plan that includes InDesign, can have more flexible type controls at their fingertips As a designer who works a lot with type and layout, it’s uplifting to see Adobe trying to make the workspaces of its applications more type efficient. The software is arguably not known for being synonymous with a typography workflow, and in recent years Photoshop has dropped far behind Illustrator and InDesign in its typesetting capabilities. For me, the best thing about this latest feature is that the typefaces aren’t warped or transformed when utilising Variable Font. As principal manager of Creative Cloud Evangelism, Rufus Deuchler, stated at the latest Adobe Creative Meet up in London, Adobe has worked with type foundries and designers to make sure that all the typefaces maintain their correct structure when utilising the variable font options, so you don’t need to worry about something looking out of place. It’s worth pointing out, however, that the feature currently isn’t the most intuitive to use. To activate the variable option, you need to select some text and type ‘variable’ into the font drop-down menu in the Options bar. You can then adjust the slider controls in your Properties panel. While this won’t hold the more learned Photoshop user back, a beginner might struggle. I would love to see Adobe update the feature to automatically bring up the controls whenever type is inputted – if only to cut out a couple of workflow steps. New Brush control features Much to the delight of illustrators and art workers alike, Adobe has also overhauled its brush-related features and developed a whole host of goodies to get your hands on. The most stand out for me is the new stroke smoothing feature. This performs ‘intelligent smoothing’ on your brush strokes as you draw and work in three modes: 01. Pulled String Mode Paints only when the string is taut. Cursor movements within the smoothing radius leave no mark. 02. Stroke Catch Up Allows the paint to continue catching up with your cursor while you've paused the stroke. Disabling this mode stops paint application as soon as the cursor movement stops. 03. Catch-Up on Stroke End Completes the stroke from the last paint position to the point where you released the mouse/stylus control. These all give you greater control over the marks you make. I’ve found that my use of Undo has greatly depleted since utilising the Pulled String Mode, because I can accurately see the direction my brush is moving in. Better brush organisation Another great enhancement to the latest Photoshop update, although not entirely new, is the further streamlined brush management system they Adobe has implemented. You can now organise brush presets into folders and nested folders, while also managing brush tool presets directly from the Brushes panel. If you’re like me, and have a mountain of custom and purchased brush libraries, then this will save you a lot of time. You can also save any customised Brush tool preset into an actual brush preset, while keeping all of its attributes – such as opacity, blending mode and so on. This might not be as immediately useful to beginners, but any professional creative who uses a multitude of brushes within their work will instantly notice the difference to their workflow. Ability to edit 360-degree content You’re now able to take panoramic photographs, edit them directly within Photoshop using its bespoke 3D workspace, and export them. Not only does this mean you will can manipulate, change, add to or touch up the environments you shoot, it also potentially opens up your workflow to other mediums, such as motion and interactive design. This feature shows that Adobe recognises the systemic shift the world is taking towards immersive technologies – and is definitely a sign of more features to come. Enhanced tool tips This isn’t the most in-depth feature to discuss. But it deserves an honourable mention simply because, for a beginner to the world of Adobe, it makes navigating and learning Photoshop all the easier. Other key features in Photoshop CC 2018 Curvature Pen tool Access to Lightroom photos Customised path options Copy and paste layers Properties panel improvements Select and Mask improvements Learn panel Technology Preview features Support for Microsoft Surface Dial Preserve Details 2.0 Upscale Paint Symmetry Quick selections with Colour and Luminance Range Masking Read more here So how good is Photoshop CC 2018? Like every update in the CC 2017 releases, version 19 is about gradual improvement. Photoshop CC 2018 is a powerful image-manipulation package, and the new features help create a more efficient workspace within the app. Additions like the Type tool updates help expand Photoshop’s user base, allowing existing, single plan customers to experiment further; while the new panoramic feature shows that Adobe isn’t letting its ubiquitous design tool be left behind. That said, the new features as a whole lack a certain wow factor. Adobe risks ignoring consumer needs, too, by removing Lightroom from its price plan. If you don’t operate in a team workflow and only require a standalone photo-editing app, rival software like Affinity Photo could make for a viable and cost-effective option. However, if you’re a creative who regularly works as part of a collaborative workflow – whether in the studio or at home – or if you use a multitude of other Adobe applications and enjoy the streamlined experience of jumping between them, Photoshop remains a worthwhile investment that’s limited only by your imagination and talent. Buy Photoshop CC 2017 or sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud here View the full article

There's a common mathematical ratio found in nature that can be used to create pleasing, natural looking compositions in your design work. We call it the Golden Ratio, although it's also known as the Golden Mean, The Golden Section, or the Greek letter phi. Whether you're an illustrator, art director or graphic designer, it's well worth considering the Golden Ratio on any project. The designer's guide to grid theoryIn this article, we'll explain what it is, how you can use it, and point to some great resources for further inspiration and study... What is the Golden Ratio? Closely related to the Fibonacci Sequence (which you may remember from either your school mathematics lessons or Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code), the Golden Ratio describes the perfectly symmetrical relationship between two proportions. Approximately equal to a 1:1.61 ratio, the Golden Ratio can be illustrated using a Golden Rectangle: a large rectangle consisting of a square (with sides equal in length to the shortest length of the rectangle) and a smaller rectangle. The side lengths of a Golden Rectangle are in the Golden RatioIf you remove this square from the rectangle, you'll be left with another, smaller Golden Rectangle. This could continue infinitely, like Fibonacci numbers – which work in reverse. (Adding a square equal to the length of the longest side of the rectangle gets you increasingly closer to a Golden Rectangle and the Golden Ratio.) In the Fibonacci Sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...) each term is the sum of the previous two, and the ratio becomes increasingly closer to the Golden Ratio Plotting the relationships in scale provides us with a spiral that can be seen in natureGolden Ratio in use It's believed that the Golden Ratio has been in use for at least 4,000 years in human art and design. However, it may be even longer than that – some people argue that the Ancient Egyptians used the principle to build the pyramids. 10 iconic examples of brutalist architectureIn more contemporary times, the Golden Ratio can be observed in music, art, and design all around you. By applying a similar working methodology you can bring the same design sensibilities to your own work. Let's take a look at a couple of examples to inspire you. Greek architecture Ancient Greek architecture uses the Golden Ratio to determine pleasing dimensionsAncient Greek architecture used the Golden Ratio to determine pleasing dimensional relationships between the width of a building and its height, the size of the portico and even the position of the columns supporting the structure. The final result is a building that feels entirely in proportion. The neo-classical architecture movement reused these principles too. The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci made extensive use of the Golden RatioLeonardo da Vinci, like many other artists throughout the ages, made extensive use of the Golden Ratio to create pleasing compositions. In The Last Supper, the figures are arranged in the lower two thirds (the larger of the two parts of the Golden Ratio), and the position of Jesus is perfectly plotted by arranging golden rectangles across the canvas. Nature There are also numerous examples of the Golden Ratio in nature – you can observe it all around you. Flowers, sea shells, pineapples and even honeycombs all exhibit the same principle ratio in their makeup. Next page: how to construct a Golden Ratio rectangle Creating a Golden Rectangle is pretty straightforward, and starts with a basic square. Follow the steps below to create your own Golden Ratio: 01. Draw a square This will form the length of the 'short side' of the rectangle. 02. Divide the square Divide your square in half with a vertical line, leaving you with two rectangles. 03. Draw a diagonal line In one rectangle, draw a line from one corner to the opposite corner. 04. Rotate Rotate this line so that it appears horizontally adjacent to the first rectangle. 05. Create a new rectangle Create a rectangle using the new horizontal line and original rectangle as guides. Next page: How to use the Golden Ratio in your design work Using the Golden Ratio is simpler than you might think. There are a couple of quick tricks you can use to estimate it into your layouts, or you can plan a little more and fully embrace the concept. The quick way If you've ever come across the 'Rule of Thirds' you'll be familiar with the idea that by dividing an area into equal thirds both vertically and horizontally, the intersection of the lines will provide a natural focal point for the shape. Photographers are taught to position their key subject on one of these intersecting lines to achieve a pleasing composition, and the same principle can be used in your page layouts, web mockups, and poster designs. Although the rule of thirds can be applied to any shape, if you apply it to a rectangle with proportions approximately 1:1.6, you get very close to a Golden Rectangle, which makes the composition all the more pleasing to the eye. Full implementation If you want to fully implement the Golden Ratio into your design, you can do so easily by ensuring that the relationship between your content area and sidebar (in a website design, for example) adheres to the 1:1.61 ratio. It's okay to round this up or down by a point or two to make the numbers worth with pixels or points – so if you have a content area of 640px, a sidebar of 400px will match the Golden Ratio well enough to work, even though it's actually a ratio of 1:1.6. Using the Golden Ratio in a webpage layout provides a natural, pleasing resultOf course, you can also sub-divide the content and sidebar areas up using the same ratio, and the relationship between a webpage's header, content area, footer and navigation can also be designed using the same basic Golden Ratio. Next page: Golden Ratio tools and tutorials Here are some tools to help you use the Golden Ratio in your designs to create pieces that work proportionally... 01. goldenRATIO GoldenRATIO's favourites feature stores your settings for repetitive tasksGoldenRATIO is an app that provides an easy way to design websites, interfaces and layouts according to the Golden Ratio. Available in the Mac App Store for $2.99, the app features a built-in calculator with visual feedback. It also has a 'favourites' feature that stores you screen position and settings for repetitive tasks, and a 'Click-thru' mode that means you can use it as an overlay in Photoshop and still work on the canvas. 02. Golden Ratio Typography Calculator This calculator from Pearsonified helps you to create the perfect typography for your website in line with Golden Ratio principles. Just enter a font size, content width, or both into the field on the website, and click the Set my type! button. If you'd like to optimise for characters per line, you can enter an optional CPL value. 03. Phicalculator Phicalculator does one job, and it does it very wellThis simple but useful free app is available for both Mac and PC. Give it any number and it will calculate the corresponding number according to the golden ratio. 04. Atrise Golden Section Atrise's tool lets you design visually according to the Golden RatioThis on-screen ruler and grid software saves you all that messing about with calculations and allows you to design using the golden section proportion visually. You can see and change the harmonious forms and sizes, while being directly in the process of working on your project. A regular license costs $49, but you can download a free trial version that's good for 30 days. Golden Ratio tutorials Finally, here are some handy tutorials to help you use the Golden Ratio in your designs to create pieces that work proportionally... 01. Graphic design, illustration and art In this tutorial for Digital Arts, Roberto Marras shows how to use the golden section in your artwork, to create pieces that work proportionally. 02. Web design This tutorial from Tuts+ explains how to apply the principles of the Golden Ratio to your web design projects. 03. More web design This Smashing Magazine tutorial explains divine proportion and the Rule of Thirds and describes how you can apply both of them effectively to your web layouts. Some good starting points you can build upon or develop further. Read more: Typography: Getting more from the grid Everything you need to know about the golden ratio 23 steps to the perfect website layout View the full article

Few creative tools are as useful to creatives as a trusty notebook. They might appear pretty simple on the surface – just sheets of paper bound together inside a cover – but they've survived through the years for a reason: they just work. Notebooks don't have to be charged (well, most of them don't), they're inexpensive and they're one of the easiest things to use – simply open them and start writing and drawing. Even the most sophisticated digital drawing tablets have to pack a serious technological punch to appear this intuitive. But just because notebooks are straightforward doesn't mean they're all the same. We've rounded up 10 of the best notebooks for designers that show off how the same concept can be pushed in interesting directions. So if you're after a new place to record notes or pencil drawings, maybe one of these notebooks is just what you're looking for. 01. MOO Hardcover Notebook We love the complementary colours found in each MOO Notebook$19.99/£14.99 Famous for its frankly dizzying array of business cards, you might not know that MOO also makes notebooks. Built by the company's in-house designers with the same care and consideration as its business cards, MOO's Notebooks come in hard and soft cover form. The Hardcover Notebooks here are available in a choice of six colour combinations (split into classic or bright) and are filled with crisp, non-glare, ruled paper. There are also 16 pages of shaded paper in the middle that break up the notebook and give you a space to jot down those sporadic, unrelated thoughts that spring up from time to time. Thanks to their binding, the MOO Notebooks can be laid perfectly flat. This is welcome news for left-handed creatives, who need no longer be hindered by spines creating impractical bulges under the pages. Topped off with a quality cloth cover and a slipcase to keep the notebook protected, this is a premium journal with an accessible price. 02. Moleskine Classic Chances are you've heard of this notebook brand beforeWell, it wouldn't be a list of the best notebooks if we didn't mention Moleskine, would it? In the world of stationery, Moleskine is the Apple of notebooks, with its products generating the same kind of enthusiasm and loyalty as the latest iPhone release. It's funny to think that the Italian company has only been running since 1997, but its relatively rapid success is the result of a commitment to creating quality products. With a straightforward and practical design, plus a luxurious finish that makes them a joy to write on, Moleskine notebooks have really earned their place at the top of the notebook food chain. Even the most basic of Moleskine notebooks feel like something special, and with a variety of different styles, including coloured notebooks, memo books, and two-go textile-covered notebooks to name but a few, it doesn't look like they're going to be knocked off the top spot any time soon. 03. Lockbook Remember what I said about notebooks not needing to be charged? Well, here's one exception: meet Lockbook, a nifty little notebook that keeps all your secrets safely locked away, for your eyes only. Sealed with a biometric lock that needs the owner's fingerprint to open, the Lockbook is one of the most practically innovative journals we've come across. However its unique security system doesn't mean you have to use Lockbook to record your darkest thoughts. Once you've opened it up, you'll see that Lockbook's ring binder lets you personalise it in any way you want. With a range of inserts, pockets, sticky notes and more, you can tailor the Lockbook to be as personal as – well – your fingerprints. The Lockbook was funded by Indiegogo, but is now available to purchase from Amazon. 04. Rocketbook Everlast The Rocketbook Everlast can be used again and againAnother notebook that uses technology in creative and useful ways is the Rocketbook Everlast. Bringing the concept of a journal bang up to date, the Everlast lets users take what they've written on the page and upload it to the cloud with the help of the Rocketbook app. Once your writing has been sent to a digital location, you can wipe your words off the page and start all over again. It's Rocketbook's aim to cut down on the amount of ideas get lost between different notebooks, as well as making the world a tidier place for creatives. Just like the Lockbook, the Rocketbook Everlast was originally crowd-funded, this time through Kickstarter. 05. The Bound Book Keep your notes safe from the elements with the Bound BookWriting from the safety of your home or studio is all well and good, but what if you need to work outside, exposed to the wrath of mother nature? Where most notebooks would wilt in the rain, the Bound Book from the rugged Rite in the Rain company is capable of standing up to storms, grime, and even laundry mishaps (they can happen to the best of us). With a glorious yellow cover made out of an imitation leather material called fabrikoid, the tough pocket-sized Bound Book comes with sewn-in pages coated in a unique moisture shield. This allows users to write in pen and pencil, even if the pages have been soaked. 06. Field Notes Is it cheating to count three notebooks as one entry?Field Notes is a collection of smartly-designed, vintage-styled pocket notebooks, created by the Draplin Design Company and Coudal Partners. The small notebooks, which measure 3.5x5.5in, come with 48 pages and a saddle stitch binding, are ideal for sketching or taking notes on the go. Best of all, the Memo Books come in a mixed three-pack, so you're spoilt for choice when it comes to page design. Available with plain, lined or graph paper pages, the Memo Book collection is ready to suit any task. Inspired by the "vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers, and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list", this trio of journals is an essential on-the-go option for designers. 07. UI Stencils Everyday Carry Kit Finally, a notebook that makes UX design easierOne for the web designers amongst you now: Let us introduce you to the Everyday Carry Kit from UI Stencils. Just like the Field Notes Memo Book bundle, this set includes three pocket-sized notebooks with 48 pages each. However unlike Field Notes, these are specifically aimed at digital designers. Each book in this set contains gridded pages ideally suited to creating digital prototypes. What sets this collection apart from other notebooks is the unique Pocket Stencil. Complete with cut-outs of frequently used UX shapes, such as touch and swipe icons, phone symbols and social media logos, this stencil makes it quicker and easier for web designers to jot down layouts for the latest groundbreaking app. 08. Leuchtturm Master Classic Leuchtturm is a landmark name in the world of notebooksSmall notebooks are all well and good, but sometimes you want a big beefy notebook that's going to last you a while. That's what you get with the formidably named Master Classic notebook from Leuchtturm. Larger than A4, the hardcover comes stuffed with 233 numbered pages – choose from either ruled, plain, square or dotted paper, depending on your preference. If you're not after something quite so substantial, Leuchtturm offers lots of other alternatives in different sizes and thicknesses. To give you an idea of the quality on the table, the company has been running since 1917 and its main rival is the new(ish) kid on the block, Moleskine. 09. Baron Fig The yellow bookmark ribbons are a beautiful touchWe've seen lots of different notebooks on our list so far, each satisfying a different niche depending on what you're after. With so many different demands being placed upon notebooks, Baron Fig decided to ask the design community what they want out of a notebook and go from there. The result is the Confidant notebook, which from the ground up has questioned what a notebook is and what it can achieve. Pithy sales soundbites aside, the Baron Fig notebooks are truly gorgeous. Available in a soothing light grey or charcoal, the Confidant notebooks can open flat and contain plain, ruled or dot grid pages. Its quality acid-free fine grain paper makes the Confidant a dream to write in, whether that's with inks or pencils, plus this means the books are safe from degradation. They might be modest to look at, but Baron Fig lets its high-standard products speak for themselves. 10. CIAK Pitti These gorgeous notebooks come with a hefty price tagBit of a wild card to finish on. Take a look at the CIAK Pitti from Fiorentina, a European specialist in leather products and accessories. They're beautiful to look at and are extremely soft to the touch, and are sure to be one of the most luxurious places you can put your pen to paper. With contrasting elastic straps to keep the books secure when they're shut, and a dazzling lining that makes them pleasant to look at as well as use, the CIAK Pitti line really is in a league of its own in terms of style. The only catch? These books are only available to order as a wholesaler, with minimum orders set at $300. However, unless you're desperate enough that you want to order these books in bulk (and we really couldn't blame you), the kind folks at Fiorentina are happy to guide you towards the nearest retailer if you get in contact with them. It sounds like a bit of a hassle, but it sort of makes these elusive notebooks feel even more valuable if you happen to get your hands on one. Related articles: The best free graphic design software The best drawing tablet: our pick of the best graphics tablets How to draw and paint - 100 pro tips and tutorials View the full article

Struggling to make your social media posts stand out from the crowd? Did your Tweets and statuses once funnel big numbers towards your site's landing page but now you find that they're just attracting bots? Chances are you need to tweak how your posting on social media platforms. The trouble is that social media algorithms are changing all the time. However there are some best-practice tricks that social media managers can deploy to attract attention without damaging their reputation, as these social media savants reveal. 01. Tap into current affairs “Facebook wants the best possible experience for its users, so it’s constantly re-evaluating the value it puts on a piece of content, depending on how it thinks people will react to it,” says David Glenwright. “Try where you can to talk about popular or current affairs. By using these keywords in your content, Facebook will identify your post as being timely and relevant, and show it to more people.” 02. Share your portfolio with Dropbox Dropbox is a great way to share PDFs “You can share Dropbox files on Twitter,” advises Ben Mottershead, “which is a great way to put out your latest PDFolio if you’re touting for freelance work, or a new job. This is particularly useful for graduates.” 03. Use the golden ratio What’s the right mix of first-party and third-party content? How often should you post purely promotional messages? One best-practice technique comes from content marketing platform Rallyverse, which analysed customer data in a wide swathe of industries to find an optimal ratio: 30 per cent owned (that is, your own original content), 60 per cent curated from relevant external sources, and 10 per cent purely promotional. 04. Track visitors with Facebook Pixel The Facebook Pixel aims to simplify conversion tracking, optimisation and remarketing “The Facebook ads platform utilises third-party information to supplement what it gathers itself,” explains Glenwright. “When creating ad audiences, you can see where Facebook has acquired its information from. You can also import your own additional data into your targeting audiences. By installing Facebook Pixel into your website you can track visitors to your site and remarket to them, and if you have an email mailing list of customers, you can also import this data and reach out to them through Facebook ads.” 05. Post links with UTM encoding "Sometimes the content and areas of posting that seem to be the quietest in engagement are often the greatest sources of inbound traffic and leads," says David Kutcher. "UTM strings, used in conjunction with Google Analytics, will let you track where your traffic is originating and how it’s converting, and develop strategies to continually improve it." See confluentforms for more. 06. Pair your hashtags “As well as monitoring your direct interests, Instagram will make assumptions based on common pairings and similarities,” points out Glenwright. “For example, Instagram suggests to me that I might like a post about cigars – I don’t smoke, but I am a fan of Scotch whisky, and the two things are commonly linked together. Therefore, use hashtags that don’t directly correspond with your content, but are a logical pairing with it, to further your reach.” 07. Don't go overboard on hashtags Hashtags are great, but don't overdo it “Keep hashtags as precise as possible on Instagram,” adds Mottershead. “If you go above 25, or you use the same hashtags in multiple posts, Instagram often flags it as spam and limits the exposure of said post.” 08. Let people pin it for later Pinterest lets people return to your content “Adding ‘Pin it for later’ links to your social posts – on Facebook, for instance – means people can pin inspiring posts to their boards to read later,” says Ben Mottershead. “This is a great way to create further exposure and click-through.” 09. Quality over quantity “LinkedIn limits the number of invitations you can send and it’s often better to have connections that give you significant advantages within your sector,” points out Mottershead. “Creative director of a local agency – yes. High-school friend you haven’t seen in 10 years? No.” 10. Reply to messages in less than an hour Research by Lithium Technologies shows that consumers expect a lot from brands on Twitter. Some 53 per cent of users who tweet at a brand expect a response within the hour – and that percentage increases to 72 per cent for those with a complaint. If you’re handling social for a client, consider investing in software like Spark Central to stay on top of customer support tweets. This post originally appeared in Computer Arts magazine issue 273. Buy it here or subscribe. Related articles: 5 golden rules for social media strategy How to make social media work for you Create perfect social media images with this handy cheat sheet View the full article

In the Instagram and Snapchat era, audiences are increasingly visually oriented. But sometimes an image alone isn’t enough: you need a clever combination of words and graphics to tell a detailed story in a way that can be grasped quickly and easily. Cue the infographic. But while they may look easy to create, in practice they can be darned difficult to get right. There are, however, some basic principles you can follow to make sure your design is as effective as possible. (And here's a bonus content tip: always run a spellcheck before sending your infographics out into the world.) Here, we share six secrets to creating outstanding infographics... 01. Decide whether you actually need an infographic This infographic unpicks the trend for infographics, and explores the stats surrounding the trend. Click on the image to see the infographic in full The first thing to consider when setting out to design an infographic is whether or not you actually need one. Your client may have heard at a marketing seminar that infographics are “big right now” and “a great way to go viral”. But it’s your job to explain that unless there’s a very clear and indisputable reason to present information in this form – rather than through any other sort of design, or an email, press release or blog post – then going viral is unlikely to happen. There’s no one single rule of thumb, but in general an infographic is a good option when you need to present complex data in a simple visual format that’s easy to share across multiple platforms. If that’s not what you need to do, then you’re probably better off investigating another medium. 02. Clearly define your goal We created this infographic for one, clear purpose: help our audience access useful Illustrator shortcuts quickly and easy. Click on the image to see the infographic in full Once you’ve established that your project requires an infographic, you then need to ruthlessly focus in on your topic, and decide what information needs to be included, who the target audience is (ideally, including detail personas), how they will most likely view the infographic, and why they might want to read it. That last part is crucial, because online it’s certainly not the case that “If you build it, they will come” – quite the reverse. So don’t put the cart before the horse. Only once you’ve answered the above questions will you be in a good position to decide what kind of layout, visual style, colour scheme and so on is going to work best. And when we say ‘define your goal’, we purposely chose the singular version of that noun. The idea of pursuing multiple goals with your infographic is self-defeating, because the whole essence of the discipline is to... 03. Keep it simple Our own infographic on desk exercises for designers keeps words to a minimum and lets the visuals take the strain. Click on the image to see the full infographic At Creative Bloq, we often see infographics that are so complex and confusing that few people will read or share them online. We can't stress this enough, then: your infographic needs to be as simple, focused and visually uncluttered as you can possibly make it. This isn't always easy. Streamlining information is tricky at the best of times – and even more so when you have multiple stakeholders involved in a project. But you must stand firm. This means keeping things to a single specific point or story, rather than trying to cover broad or multiple themes. It means applying a simple visual theme that will prove consistency and flow to your design. And above all, it means keeping text to a minimum: it’s an infographic, after all, so the graphics need to work hard to tell the story. In particular, avoid big chunks of text in favour of small bite-size pieces, such as bullet-pointed lists, which are easier for readers to digest at a glance. And make good use of whitespace to ensure that both text and images are attractive, accessible and legible. Finally, don’t make your infographic too long: you want readers to get to the end without becoming bored. And if you are going to make them scroll, you might include some kind of visual device to let them know how far they’ve got to go (similar to a progress bar on an app). In the infographic above, for instance, the reader knows that there are 10 steps to follow. 04. Choose your colours carefully Designmantic has come up with this go-to graphic to help you get your website interface just so. Another important aspect of keeping your infographic simple is to choose an uncomplicated colour scheme. That doesn’t mean, however, that it needs to be dull. In fact, some of the most effective infographics are based on bright, bold and attention-grabbing colours. As with any design, your choice of colour palette will depend on a variety of factors. What mood do you wish to instil in the reader: excitable, chilled, passionate? Are there specific brand colours you need to follow for your client? What cultural factors do you need to take into account for the intended audience? To help you nail your perfect colour palette, check out our posts on How to choose a colour theme, The designer’s guide to using colour in branding, and Tools for choosing a colour scheme. 05. Use infographic tools to save you time Canva offers a great way to quickly create infographics in the browser, and it’s free! Depending on your needs and how fast you need to get your infographic out of the door, there are a number of tools that can help. Of course, these are going to be limiting, and you’re only going to have creative control by using bespoke software like Photoshop, Illustrator or Affinity Designer. But sometimes limits can be an aid to the imagination, especially when you’re asked to produce something simple at the last minute, for instance for a social media campaign. In such cases, these infographic tools are all high quality and free to boot. 06. Be inspired by the best infographics Check out the Information is Beautiful blog for their latest amazing infographics Infographics offer an almost endless variety of ways to express information in visual form. But in practice, it’s easy to become repetitive and keep falling back on the same kinds of designs. So give your imagination a reboot by checking out some of the best and most original examples of infographics online. There are plenty of infographics galleries, including Cool Infographics, Infographics Bee and our own regularly updated selection of the best infographics. Also look for new infographics on Dribbble and Behance, and check out the blog Information is Beautiful, which showcases its own consistently high standard infographics. Related articles: 8 ways to make more money in 2018 The top 20 US design studios of 2018 10 designers' New Year's resolutions View the full article

There was a time in the past when web standards were a mess, with numerous features either supported by some browsers but not others, or differing greatly in their implementation. Today the picture is a lot better, but you still need to do cross-browser testing. For all the focus on web standards, they can't cover every edge case, and so subtle differences in feature implementation will still persist between browsers, especially if you're using cutting-edge features. 11 huge web design trends for 2018To help you ensure that your sites will work for as many users as possible, here are five great cross-browser testing tools to add to your armoury, which you can try out for free right now. 01. BrowserShots BrowserShots is the perfect way to check the basics It sounds simple, but BrowserShots is an awesome way to check the basics. It's an online service that will quickly take screenshots of your site in a range of browsers and versions of your choosing, to check that things look okay. You can also play around enabling and disabling JavaScript and Flash. Best of all, it's free. This gets you off to a good start, and is fine for simple content pages, but for interactive sites you'll need to go a little further and use another tool to test your functionality. 02. EndTest EndTest offers both a free service and paid options EndTest offers something called 'Codeless Automated Testing', which essentially allows you to automate repetitive tests across browsers without having to write code in the way that you might need to with something like Selenium. EndTest offers a free service, but also a number of paid options if you need more than this offers. If you sign up, you'll also find a number of demo test suites to help you understand how the tool works. Similarly to Sauce Labs or BrowserStack, it enables test execution in the cloud to avoid you needing to install all the software you want to test with. 03. Selenium Selenium is one of the most popular automated testing frameworks If you're thinking you may want to delve into automated testing, Selenium is one of the most popular frameworks out there and allows you to automate browser actions. You have a couple of options: Selenium IDE is a Firefox add-on which will let you record and play back actions, or Selenium WebDriver, which enables you to code tests in almost any major language of your choosing. Getting started with the latter isn't simple, but for larger projects it can pay dividends in the long run. There are a variety of cloud services out there, including Sauce Labs and BrowserStack, which will enable you to execute your Selenium tests across a range of platforms without installing VMs and emulators yourself. 04. IE Tab With IE Test you can simply run an Internet Explorer instance in a Chrome or Firefox tab We've touched on how Internet Explorer can be a little troublesome, particularly older versions that have a tendency to render pages very differently both from their competitors and from current browsers today. So why not tackle this directly with this extension, available for Firefox and Chrome, which allows you to open tabs emulating Internet Explorer. Since IE presents the largest challenge in terms of variance from web standards, trying your site out with it as you work on it can save you a massive headache later on. 05. Browserling Browserling's an easy way to test for any browser you care to name What if you want the cloud testing capabilities of EndTest, Sauce Labs or BrowserStack, but without the complexity of setting up automated testing? Then Browserling is for you. It's an online service that lets you select a browser and version, and render a page that you can interact with to not only check appearance, but also test out functionality. You can use it for free, although it'll queue you with other users who have submitted their site at the same time. This one is great if you just want to quickly double-check your work manually. This article was originally published in issue 267 of Web Designer, the creative web design magazine – offering expert tutorials, cutting-edge trends and free resources. Subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: 10 ways to avoid cross-browser compatibility issues 11 best pieces of user testing software The top 5 usability testing myths View the full article

Carving out a career as a successful creative isn't just about doing great work and building up an impressive design portfolio, you also have to make sure the right people see it. Getting your name and face known is central to building your career. Some people are terrified by the idea of networking and selling themselves, especially out in the 'real world' and away from the relative comfort of social media. But it's really nothing to be scared of. Simply adopt a positive attitude, design a business card to hand over to people you meet, follow these tips and you'll soon be on your way to self-promotion success... 01. Follow the golden rule We've all met people like this at eventsThe golden rule when networking as a creative is to remember that it's not about schlepping around design events and shoving your folio or business card under everyone's noses. That's just rude. Instead, it's about extending your creative network by meeting similar-minded people, so you're in a better position to hear on the grapevine of potential work opportunities, happenings or moves in the industry. Be polite and friendly, not forceful and self-serving. 02. Show genuine interest Creative networking is very organic. If you have a genuine interest in design you'll naturally gravitate towards those who share that interest, and with whom you might want to collaborate in the future. It's a slow burn process: it definitely isn't the creative equivalent of speed dating where you bounce from person to person asking: What's your going rate? Any jobs at your place? Would you like to see my PSDs? No, no, no. Instead, take an interest in the designers, creative directors or technologists you encounter socially. Through your conversations you'll naturally pick up tips and advice about finding work, managing clients or dealing with annoying creative event speed-daters. And it will only help you extend your network that bit further. 03. Spot the differences Seek out people who produce work in a slightly different field to yours. Don't be afraid of this, because there will almost certainly be things you do that they don't. Which means you could both be a great fit for future projects together. 04. Use social networks Gavin Strange, aka jamfactory, is active and super friendly on social networks If you're not comfortable with face-to-face networking there is of course the less-imposing internet, with any number of social networks that will help you get in touch with like-minded designers. Twitter is the obvious choice; it's a great way to find fellow creatives to share banter, work and industry knowledge with, and it's the perfect place to post your latest work (with fingers crossed that it'll pick up loads of retweets). But beyond Twitter there are plenty of places to make friends and get your work seen. Instagram, Dribbble, Behance, Pinterest and DeviantArt are all ideal places to post your latest creations, and if your work moves then don't forget Vimeo and YouTube. Even Snapchat, with its visual focus, has networking potential. But don't overstretch yourself to the extent that you're spending half the day updating your social shizzle; keep things to a small handful of networks that work for you and are popular within your specialism. Check our 6 tips for social networking and How to make social media work for you articles to help you plan your social networking strategy. 05. Go to meetups... Glug runs design events around the world Creative types are a social bunch and there are plenty of local meetup events for you to go along to and throw your creative two cents in. A big one is Glug, which now runs events all over the world, but there are plenty of options to choose from. Unless you're really out in the sticks, chances are you'll be able to find an event to suit you within travel distance. So whether you're after Ladies, Wine and a Bit of Design, or want to mingle with other Designers+Geeks, there's a meetup for you. 06. ...or arrange your own A lot of meetups have different chapters – so if your city is missing the meetup you really want to attend, you could always bite the bullet and arrange one yourself. Although it's a bit of a commitment, it's a great way to meet others in your area who have similar interests. And it adds kudos to your creative resume. 07. Seek out creative clusters Creative people tend to form clusters in certain areasOutside of virtual meetups, there are areas where fellow creative bods naturally gravitate, and social scenes have sprung up. Go to any given point in London around Shoreditch or in Brooklyn's Gowanus you'll find creative clusters around bars or cafes. Meet friends there and do a bit of networking (chatter, banter, who's doing what and with whom). Every area has these clusters, you just need to find one near you. 08. Hit the pub Even if you don't drink yourself, the fact that others are doing so makes for a relaxed atmosphereAt the end of a conference, event or road show, a load of attendees usually swarm out of the auditorium at a rate of knots to race for trains or to beat the rush hour. Critically, this is when most of the bonding and networking happens as there'll always be a few who want to 'go for one' in the local pub. Usually these are genuinely passionate and interesting creative folk (and you might find some speakers/event organisers will tag along as well). Keep your ears primed for chatter about any after-event happenings and pop along because it's a great way of extending your creative network. Of course we advise you to drink responsibly and remind you that waking up in a hedgerow, public park or in a different county is an indicator that your networking has become a little counterproductive. 09. Conquer conference dread Going to an event or conference on your own can be a bit daunting especially, if it's for a few days. The thing to remember is that you won't be the only one who's feeling a bit of a Billy no-mates. Take the initiative and use Twitter or Lanyrd to find out who in a similar field to you is also attending. Then drop them a friendly Tweet and arrange a meetup in the bar or over a coffee. When people are transplanted away from their normal environments they become much more social and willing to make buddies. If work comes from it then great, but even if it doesn't, you'll extend your network a bit and make some new friends in the process. 10. Pick events that encourage networking Our web design conference series, Generate, offers lots of opportunities to mingle Not all design conferences do all they can to encourage networking between attendees. Sometimes, in the breaks between talks and other formal sessions, you'll see a depressing sea of uncommunicative faces buried in laptops – not an environment where it's easy to strike up conversations with stranger. At other times, it'll be the opposite – you won't be able to move for people introducing themselves in an open manner and with a smile on their face. The difference is often down to the fact that the conference organisers haven't just paid lip service to the idea of networking, but actually put things in place to ensure it happens. For example, at our own web design conference series, Generate, we make a conscious effort to get people mingling, whether that be via a pre-event quiz or chilled after party. The same is true of our new event for CG artists, Vertex. Check out our Events channel for news about upcoming events. 11. Find your design heroes Conferences are ideal for cornering any speakers whose work you admireLook for your design heroes on Twitter and strike up a conversation. Follow those who inspire you and periodically ask for opinions or advice on your own work. Pointers and tips from those in the know are invaluable for pushing you in the direction of those who can help make your work reach a wider audience. And if you spot them about at a conference, go over and say hello (just make sure they're not about to go on stage, first). 12. Learn to listen Listening is a skill. It's an absolute art form. Most of us only half listen when we're engaged in social communication because we're already planning in our heads what to say next. Try to turn this off and truly listen to what's being said. You'll retain more and your attentiveness will be picked up by the speaker, which means they're more likely to listen to you in return. 13. Ask open-ended questions If you're feeling a bit awkward or nervous at an event and want to know how to keep conversations bubbling along, then try to remember to ask open-ended questions. Questions that start with such words as 'who', 'what', 'where' and 'when' open up a conversation, whereas questions that only require a closed response such as 'yes' and 'no' tend to shut things down. It's an old trick but a good one. 14. Start your own industry-related blog If you don't want to commit to a blog, you can post your thoughts on Medium Create your own creative beacon by starting a blog about what inspires you. Give people something to know you by besides your own creative work by giving something to the creative community. A blog is not only an outlet for what floats your creative boat but is also a great conversation starter, either virtually or at meetups. You'll find tons of advice about content in our article How to start a blog: 10 pro tips, and check out the 14 best free blogging platforms here. Alternatively, platforms like Medium offer a space for you to share long blog posts without the commitment of setting up a custom space. 15. Keep up with new work If you keep up with who the innovators, creators and movers-and-shakers in the business are, you'll never be stuck for something to say either on Twitter or at meetups. New work should naturally draw you in, and getting out of a siloed way of working by keeping up to date with the industry around you will reap rewards long term. Networking doesn't happen in a vacuum. 16. Seek referrals Look for potentially useful contacts, but keep it subtleAt any networking do or social gathering you'll always find someone who knows someone who needs something that you do. Sometimes this is just hot air, but at others it could be a genuine opportunity. The key thing is to try to nail down the pertinent information – who, what and when? If you don't want to pester them during the evening, make a note of their contact details and email them for more information the next day. 17. Remember it's a two-way street Networking is about listening and helping others. It's a reciprocal type of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours… later'. Just remember you have to scratch first and don't always expect a scratch back. Adopt a philanthropic approach to networking and you won't ever be disappointed by it. 18. Don't be too sensitive Don't get upset if someone doesn't reply to your messageIf you speculatively contact someone by Twitter or email and they don't reply to you, try to take it on the chin. You're not going to set everyone's world on fire and quite frankly, if these people can't be bothered to return an email or a Tweet, would you want to do any business with them anyway? 19. Play nice There's a misguided notion that to give a 'critique' of something means to 'rip it to shreds to show how clever you are'. In fact, the best critiques are those that are balanced and examine what worked and what didn't. This also means they're harder to do. But position yourself as someone who knows how good creative works and is genuinely enthusiastic about what DID work. Being an overly critical smart arse won't win you any recommendations or indeed entice anybody to want to network with you. Contributions: Creative Bloq staff Related articles: 20 innovative business card designs 15 things they didn't teach you at design school 5 quick and easy ways to fix your portfolio View the full article

Mitigating Spectre and Meltdown flaws won't be easy, but experts say exploits targeting Spectre will be hard to patch against. View the full article

Vertex workshop leader Glen Southern shares his top tips to help you improve your VR sculpting. Virtual reality isn’t new. It’s been tried many times before and failed a fair few of those times. Sculpting in VR on the other hand is a different story. With modern hardware and machine specs it’s now a very viable way of concepting, designing and actually building 3D models, including characters and creatures. While ZBrush clearly holds the crown for digital sculpting, there are a thousand and one other programs that allow you to create your critters in 3D. There aren’t many that allow you to do it in a virtual room and walk around the creature as you create it. You can work with it in your lap sitting down and rotating your creation around in your hands or you can setup your work space to allow gigantic sculptures and even walk inside them as you build. With that in mind, here are some top tips for sculpting character and creature in VR. 01. Use references First and foremost reference is key to doing anything well. Designing living things without reference is never a good idea in any medium, from pencil to VR. In VR it is more important as you are actually stood in the sculpting environment and getting scale and dimensions wrong is so easy. Most VR programs don’t have and orthographic view so there's no lining up again an image in the same way you would in most traditional packages but you can usually bring in photographic references. 02. Block out Always block out your creature in a rough and ready way. The more accurate you get the initial ‘frame’ or ‘armature’ the better your overall design will read. 03. Check out silhouettes To see how it reads, don’t be afraid of working in very dark colours or temporarily spraying your model black. This then gives you an almost 2D silhouette to work with. By moving around the model now you can see where you need to add volume or tweak your proportions. If it reads well in silhouette it will probably work as a full 3D sculpt. 04. Make environments to work in Sometimes it can be hard to create in an empty 3D environment. In MEDIUM you can keep a floor grid on and even a cloudy sky. It sometimes helps to build an environment to sculpt into. For example you can create a room, floor or a stand. Once you have some geometry as a reference point it can help you to sculpt your design more accurately. 05. Break symmetry MEDIUM now has a powerful Move tool to allow you to move and rotate parts of your model. You can use it to break symmetry and this instantly brings a creature to life. You may need to save a symmetrical version before you go exploring more dynamic poses. Hard surfaces are possible in VR too, not only organic shapes More VR from Glen Southern at Vertex At Vertex, Glen Southern will be showing a workflow with an amazing program called Oculus MEDIUM, which is one of a number of recent entrants into the VR modelling marketplace. He wants to show MEDIUM because the models he creates can also be textured inside VR and then what you have created can be exported out of VR and be imported into ZBrush for more work, to a colour printer for output and maybe. Vertex 2018 is the event bringing together all areas of the VFX/3D community, for a day of presentations, workshops, recruitment and more. Some of the biggest names in the industry are coming to talk and share their skills and knowledge, from Chris Nichols and Brett Ineson, to Scott Ross. Tickets are available at the Vertex site, so head over to sign up for the latest news direct to your inbox and to buy tickets. The tickets themselves range from discounted student options, to free expo tickets and the access all areas passes. Related articles: Scott Ross to talk at Vertex Network with industry experts at Vertex The ethics of digital humans View the full article

If you've been paying any attention to the news over the past couple of days then you're bound to have noticed that there's a pair of serious new computer vulnerabilities out there. Meltdown and Spectre are critical CPU exploits that make it possible to steal passwords and sensitive data from privileged memory – including the supposedly secure kernel – with a bit of malicious JavaScript in the browser. At first it seemed that mainly Intel CPUs were at risk, but it's since become apparent most other CPUs are vulnerable too. Are you at risk? So are you at risk? The simple answer is that if you're using hardware made within the past 10 or so years, then yes, almost certainly. Whether you're using a PC, a Mac or an iPad Pro, if it's not patched against Meltdown and Spectre then it's a potential target. On top of that, both Meltdown and Spectre exploit a technique called speculative execution, which boosts performance by operating on multiple instructions at once, so there's a worry that protecting against these vulnerabilities could seriously impact your computer's speed. 9 security tips to protect your website from hackersThe good news is that this doesn't seem to be the case. Apple announced today that it rolled out Meltdown patches for both MacOS and iOS back in December, and no-one even noticed; it says that the December updates resulted in no measurable reduction in performance. And it plans to release an update for Safari on MacOS and iOS that will mitigate against Spectre exploit techniques. Of the two vulnerabilities, Spectre is the hardest to exploit but also the hardest to protect against, and Apple expects that the Spectre patch could result in a performance hit of up to 2.5 per cent. Protect and survive Things could be a lot worse, then; certainly not as bad as the 30 per cent performance hits that many were expecting when news of Meltdown and Spectre first started to appear. And as well as making sure that your system, whatever it may be, is fully patched and up-to-date, you can add an extra layer of protection in the browser by enabling strict site isolation in Chrome or first-party isolation in Firefox. However, if you're a web designer or developer then you should be prepared for Meltdown and especially Spectre to cause you ongoing grief. Cloud services are likely to be a lot more vulnerable to attacks as they're bigger and more inviting targets for hackers, and they're also more likely to be hit by performance issues as they mitigate against potential exploits, so the result for web pros could be sites that either don't run as fast as expected, or stop working altogether if critical services come under attack. All the major online services have been quick to patch, but as we've already noted, Spectre is going to cause ongoing problems for years to come as it's so difficult to mitigate against. So be careful out there, and be ready to take action if your sites suddenly run into trouble. Related articles: Download images securely with a VPN How CodePen made itself secure Send large files: 11 free tools View the full article

In this drawing tutorial, you'll learn how to draw and paint a zombie using Clip Studio Paint, the digital painting app available from Smith Micro Software. Buy Clip Studio Paint from AmazonAlthough it's specifically aimed at people creating comics or manga art, Clip Studio Paint is great for any kind of digital art – especially drawing zombies! So grab your drawing tablet (if you don't have one already, check out our guide to the best graphics tablets to help you choose one) and let's get to it. 01. Start with a loose sketch Keep things rough at this stage The first step is the initial sketch of your zombie character. When you're sketching, it's important to remain loose. At this stage, your goal is to get a general idea of how you want your finished piece to look. Don't focus on the details, just block in some simple shapes, as you'll refine this sketch in the next step. Add a new vector layer (Layer > New Layer > Vector Layer...) and name it 'Sketch'. Switch to the Lighter Pencil tool and set the colour to a pale blue. Of course, you can use any colour you like, but my preference is to go for old school blue. When you're ready, start sketching. If you need to use a reference, that's fine. Also check out these top character design tips. 02. Refine the sketch Use a new layer for this stage Now you have a general idea of how you want your zombie to look, it's time to move on to refining your sketch. Reduce the opacity of the Sketch layer to 22%. Then, add a new vector layer and name it 'Refined'. Using the same Lighter Pencil tool, refine the sketch. But this time, be more deliberate in your strokes. Perfect! You've refined your sketch. Next up is the inking, commonly referred to as line art. 03. Create the linework Try to get your linework as clean as possible Just like you did with the Sketch layer, reduce the Refined layer to 22% opacity. Then, add a new vector layer and name it 'Ink'. Switch to the Mapping Pen tool and set the colour to black. Take your time to get the linework as clean as possible. 04. Correct errors with a transparent pen This is where you'll find your transparent colour If you make a mistake, do not use the eraser tool! Instead, switch the colour of the Pen tool to transparent, then draw over the mistake. To switch to a transparent colour, select the transparent colour option from the Color Wheel. Using a transparent colour lets you erase with more precision, plus it uses the settings from whatever tool is selected so it just tends to work better. 05. Make changes Make any final changes, such as adding props While you're inking, it's fine to change your mind. Ideally, you'll have wanted to work your design out in the refinement stage, but if something doesn't sit right with you, change it now. You can even go back later and add some props, which is exactly what I did. In this case, I added some American football-themed props. But I didn't add them on the same layer – I created a new vector later named 'Football'. Then, on that layer, I added the numbers on the jersey and a football. I also opted to colour the football while I was inking it. This allowed me to cover the zombie's hand instead of erasing it. 06. Set up a mask for your colour layers Use the toolbar shown to mask off the area you want to colour I tend to use masks on my colour layers, as it means I can paint with big, broad strokes. Start by duplicating the Ink layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer). Rename the newly created layer 'Values' and drag it below the Ink layer. Then, with the Magic Wand tool, click on the background of the newly created layer. This will select all of the white space. There is one spot that it won't select: the area in between the body and the right arm. To add that portion to the selection, hold down the alt/option key, and select the empty space. Now, invert the selection (Selection > Invert selected area). With the selection inverted, it's time to make the mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Mask Selection). Once you have the mask in place, switch back to the primary canvas on the Values layer, and start blocking in the different values. 07. Start blocking in values in black and white When blocking in values, think about variation and contrast It's time to block in some values. While it's possible to start adding colour right away, it's generally a better approach to start with black and white first. When you paint in black and white, you can stay focused on things like composition, form and lighting, rather than selecting colours. Need more convincing? Take a look at this article on how painting in black and white can improve your art. When selecting values, it's important to take into account the lighting. But it's also important to think about variation and contrast – choose what works best, but keep the values limited to shades of grey, and skip the upper and lower ends. My art tends to fall within the darker values. Feel free to lighten yours up, if you'd like. As for tools, I primarily stick to the Marker Pen tool. When I block in values, I tend to change the Paper colour to 'Moss'. You can do this from the Paper layer's Layer Properties panel; just set the Layer Color to Moss using the selection wheel. With the values blocked in, it's time to move on to colour. 08. Add colour Select colours that work well together Adding colour is all about setting the tone and selecting colours that work with one another. With this Quarterback Football Zombie, I opted for the complementary colours of yellow and blue. But I didn't add them to the Values layer. Instead, I created a new layer above the Values layer. I also copied the mask from the Values layer to the newly created Colors layer. To copy a mask, alt/option drag the mask from one layer to the other. With the mask ready to go, it's time to add colour. Using the Marker Pen tool, lay down the colours of your choosing. As you do, notice how they pick up the values from the Values layer below. You can play around with the Layer Properties for different effects. For this piece, I went with 100% opacity and a 'Normal' blending mode. If you're interested in learning more about colours, take a look at Sam Hampton-Smith's fantastic article on how to master colour theory. 09. Add shading and highlights Add highlights on a separate layer The next step is to add some highlights and shading. Generally, I'll create two separate layers. For the shading layer, set the Blending mode to 'Multiply' and the opacity to 20%. Then, paint in the shading using the Marker Pen in black. For the highlights, set the Blending mode to 'Soft Light'. Also, set its opacity to 20%. Then, paint using the Marker Pen in white. Almost done! Just a little left to do. 10. Add a background and make finishing touches A spiral background makes the zombie pop The last thing to do is add a nice background to make things pop. I like to add a spiral background image to my characters. Create one final layer and place it below everything else. Rename this layer 'Background' and set the opacity to 50%. Then, with the Marker Pen tool – and a large brush size – paint in a spiral. Also, change the paper colour to 'Tungsten'. When you're happy with how it looks, you're done! Unless of course you're like me, and you feel the need to noodle it a bit more. My noodling involved creating another layer above my Color layer, and painting in some yellow irises on the eyes. You're ready to set your zombie free. Nice work. Read more: 20 top character design tips The best graphics tablets in 2018 Create custom brushes in Clip Studio Paint View the full article

2017 is over and it’s time to consider the future of app design. Apps are being adopted more and more in the workplace, and with every success and failure we are starting to notice certain successful trends appearing. These trends have risen to prominence in past months and will continue to shape the world of app design in the coming year. Want to know how to make an app in 2018? These are the themes that should be at the forefront of your mind. 01. Invisible interfaces Apple's Siri is leading the way with voice UI In 2018 our thumbs will be able to rest as our vocal chords take over, thanks to a rise in voice user interfaces (VUIs). VUIs are already being implemented by big companies, like Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana, and going forward we will see them popping up more and more. According to a report by Gartner, in 2018 some 30 per cent of our interactions with technology will happen through conversations. They may never fully replace GUIs (graphical user interfaces), as there are some situations where we won’t be able to speak, or the commands required are too intricate for VUIs to handle. However, having the option for both styles of input may soon become an industry standard. Read How to build a chatbot interface, How to design a chatbot experience and 5 essential chatbot learning resources for more. 02. Customisable interfaces Everyone is unique, which means it's difficult to design an app that suits everyone. Some people are more analytical and want to see a lot of data and options on their screen, whereas others prefer simple and large buttons that make navigation easy. The UX is a vital part of an app design, and now, thanks to significant progress in AI and machine learning, it has become possible for full-on customisation of apps based on the user’s personal data. Designers can hand the tools over to the user and let them personalise the app in a way that speaks to them. 03. Omni-channel UX Are we heading for a device crisis? When people think of apps their mind often defaults to smartphone apps, and a few years ago this was fine. Things have changed since then, and continue to do so thanks to the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Now a person’s mobile device isn’t their only point of quick access to the internet. Users aren’t necessarily going to default to a phone any more. To keep up with this, app designers will need to focus on omni-channel UX to bring consistency into this ever-growing device population. Read How to build cool stuff for the Internet of Things for more. 04. Braver colour schemes In corporate apps we often find the same boring black, white and blue every time. The intention may be to give off a professional vibe, but it increasingly comes off as boring and unoriginal. Colour can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your app, helping to bring forth specific feelings in the user and guide them through your app. Colour may sound like a simple tool, but it is an incredible one and shouldn’t be understated. Check out The designer’s guide to using colour in branding and our guide to 12 colours and the emotions they evoke, for more. 05. Time-saving apps Users increasingly value their time above all else Time is possibly the most valuable asset of a person’s daily life. Nobody wants to waste their time, and in this increasingly impatient society everyone wants apps that can help them achieve their goal as fast as possible. This trend ties in with the earlier point about user customisation – designing your app with time-saving features in mind is key to user satisfaction. This article is featured in issue 302 of net, the magazine for professional web designers and developers – offering the latest new web trends, technologies and techniques. Pick up a copy now for more insight into the trends to look out for in 2018 – or subscribe here. Read more: How to build a Progressive Web App How to make responsive web apps with container queries 30 Chrome extensions for web designers and devs View the full article

You may feel aggrieved at having to dedicate a portion of your budget to simply connecting to the internet, but choose the wrong broadband deal and you could be left with a painfully slow service or paying too much for a package you just don't need. And then there's the precious time it will cost you to hunt around for the perfect deal for you or your business. That's where Creative Bloq comes in. We've done the hard work for you, scouring the market and narrowing down the multitudes of packages to a shortlist of five to choose from. We've unearthed internet deals that will suit self-employed freelancers on a tight budget, small businesses and studios where super-fast fibre broadband is a must and all-in-one plans that include unlimited telephone calls as well. And if you're still scratching your head at the sheer amount of options out there, below the deals we have some morsels of advice to help you come to your decision. (Non-UK readers, don't despair that our top featured deals are for UK customers, as our deal finder at the bottom of this article will show you local deals for you). Best fibre broadband deal for freelancers: Best fibre broadband deal for a studio: Best value cheap broadband-only deal: Best BT Infinity broadband deal: Best broadband and phone package deal: What broadband speed do I need? Home workers: Generally, we would say that you should get the fastest internet that you can allow your budget to stretch to. So if there's fibre where you live, the extra money is worth it to ensure that your work is never hindered by a faltering broadband connection speed. That said, if the only thing you really need it for is checking and replying to emails and the odd bit of Google research, 17Mb should be sufficient. Small business or agency: Don't be faffing around with 17Mb internet if you've got a busy office with (hopefully) busy employees. Be sure to get at least the 38Mb fibre broadband. We'd actually recommend you go the next level up and sign up for a 76Mb deal instead. That equates to roughly 9.5MB per second, which should be a fast enough connection to cope with at least 10 people at once. What contract length should I go for? 12 months remains the most common contract length that internet providers will give you, especially with standard ADSL internet. However, more and more companies are now making 18 months the norm for fibre broadband deals. It's worth having a quick think ahead now before you choose your plan. If you're in a situation where you're unsure where you'll be and what you'll be doing next year, then make sure to pick a one year term – the costs of breaking a longer contract can be severe. Otherwise, 18 months can give a little more surety, as some providers guarantee you the cheaper introductory rate for the entirety of the broadband contract. Do I have to pay more to have a phone line? Not any more you don't. Not so long ago, you would have to add on an extra cost for line rental, but now it's included in the internet providers' tariffs. Today's best broadband deals where you are If you've not found the broadband deal to suit you in our recommendations above, then you're sure to in the below comparison chart. It includes the full range of internet plans from a whole fleet of providers. Pop in your postcode to narrow down the available packages where you live, and then use the filters to handcraft your ideal plan. Related articles: Top 10 best notebooks for designers How to build a thriving studio Find the perfect VPN for you View the full article

You may feel aggrieved at having to dedicate a portion of your budget to simply connecting to the internet, but choose the wrong broadband deal and you could be left with a painfully slow service or paying too much for a package you just don't need. And then there's the precious time it will cost you to hunt around for the perfect deal for you or your business. That's where Creative Bloq comes in. We've done the hard work for you, scouring the market and narrowing down the multitudes of packages to a shortlist of five to choose from. We've unearthed internet deals that will suit self-employed freelancers on a tight budget, small businesses and studios where super-fast fibre broadband is a must and all-in-one plans that include unlimited telephone calls as well. And if you're still scratching your head at the sheer amount of options out there, below the deals we have some morsels of advice to help you come to your decision. (Non-UK readers, don't despair that our top featured deals are for UK customers, as our deal finder at the bottom of this article will show you local deals for you). Best fibre broadband deal for freelancers: Best fibre broadband deal for a studio: Best value cheap broadband-only deal: Best BT Infinity broadband deal: Best broadband and phone package deal: What broadband speed do I need? Home workers: Generally, we would say that you should get the fastest internet that you can allow your budget to stretch to. So if there's fibre where you live, the extra money is worth it to ensure that your work is never hindered by a faltering broadband connection speed. That said, if the only thing you really need it for is checking and replying to emails and the odd bit of Google research, 17Mb should be sufficient. Small business or agency: Don't be faffing around with 17Mb internet if you've got a busy office with (hopefully) busy employees. Be sure to get at least the 38Mb fibre broadband. We'd actually recommend you go the next level up and sign up for a 76Mb deal instead. That equates to roughly 9.5MB per second, which should be a fast enough connection to cope with at least 10 people at once. What contract length should I go for? 12 months remains the most common contract length that internet providers will give you, especially with standard ADSL internet. However, more and more companies are now making 18 months the norm for fibre broadband deals. It's worth having a quick think ahead now before you choose your plan. If you're in a situation where you're unsure where you'll be and what you'll be doing next year, then make sure to pick a one year term – the costs of breaking a longer contract can be severe. Otherwise, 18 months can give a little more surety, as some providers guarantee you the cheaper introductory rate for the entirety of the broadband contract. Do I have to pay more to have a phone line? Not any more you don't. Not so long ago, you would have to add on an extra cost for line rental, but now it's included in the internet providers' tariffs. Today's best broadband deals where you are If you've not found the broadband deal to suit you in our recommendations above, then you're sure to in the below comparison chart. It includes the full range of internet plans from a whole fleet of providers. Pop in your postcode to narrow down the available packages where you live, and then use the filters to handcraft your ideal plan. Related articles: Top 10 best notebooks for designers How to build a thriving studio Find the perfect VPN for you View the full article

Got your post-Christmas credit card statement yet? Worried you’re going to spend all year sacrificing the good things in life in order to pay it off? Well, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are multiple ways you can earn extra income from your design skills. All it takes is a bit of extra effort and perseverance, and you could soon be running a financial surplus. In this post, we look at some creative ways you could boost your income in the year to come. 01. Turn your designs into physical products Use your designs to adorn products such as these on RedBubble One common way to make money from your talents is to turn your designs into physical products, such as prints, T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, phone cases, and then sell them online. There are plenty of places to sell your design products online, including Society 6, Etsy, Design by Humans, Redbubble and Threadless. Each has a different way of doing things so it’s worth checking out which one will suit your needs best. For example, some arrange production and shipping of the products themselves, so you just have to supply the design work and everything else is taken care of. Alternatively, you could cut out the middleman and add a shop to your own website, which would give you greater creative control and mean you can keep a greater share of the profits. If you don’t have web design skills, there are many platforms that will help you build in this kind of ecommerce functionality the easy way, including Shopify, Big Cartel and Squarespace. Most will offer free trials to get you started at zero cost. For more info on making money from your product designs, check out our articles How to sell your work online and The art of licensing: how to sell your designs to market. 02. Sell digital assets Creative Market enables you to sell digital assets such as photos, graphics, templates, 3D models and more Don’t want to make physical products? Then why not tap into the lucrative market for original digital assets, including vector graphics, icon sets, fonts, photos, 3D models, website themes, templates, Photoshop filters, and so on? You may not even need to create new work: consider whether you have any unused assets from rejected or discontinued projects you could easily recycle. There are numerous places to tout your digital assets to the design community, including Creative Market, Graphics River and ThemeForest. If you’re looking to see vectors, illustrations, icons or photography, also check out stock libraries, which can provide a potentially massive audience for your work. It’s a jungle out there, of course, and the insane levels of competition mean you may be best off trying lots of different things until you hit the right niche. To get started, check out 5 secrets to creating digital products people will buy, How to make money selling stock illustrations, How to make serious cash selling website templates and How to make money from your 3D models. 03. Write about your design specialism Creative director Shane Mielke’s book ‘Launch It! A digital handbook for creatives’ is based on the insights he’s gleaned throughout his career Even if the idea of doing design work outside of 9-5 fills you with dread, there are still ways to exploit your skills to make some extra cash. One is to write about design. This might mean, for example, penning articles for an industry blog or magazine. Of course, this field is very oversubscribed so you’ll need a specific angle or intriguing niche to get anyone interested. (And before you ask, we’ve got all the help we need ourselves!) This post includes nine popular design sites that do pay for articles, and there are many more. Alternatively, you could publish your own ebook and deal directly with your audience. To get started, read this post on our sister site TechRadar about How to Self-Publish on Kindle. Sniffy about the idea of an ebook? Although it requires a little investment, it’s perfectly possible to print your own books instead (and you can potentially charge much more as a result). Start with this advice from leading designers Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy on how to publish your own book on a shoestring. Also check out our posts on How to design a book in InDesign and How to design the perfect book cover. 04. Teach design skills Create your own design courses and sell it on a site like Skillshare Remember all the struggles you had learning to be a designer? If only you’d known then what you know now. Well, perhaps you could do the same for young designers who are struggling today, and earn some handy cash in the process. Again, there are different levels to approach this. You could start small, writing tutorials on your chosen subject for industry titles. For example, The Graphic Design School Blog, Photoshop Tutorials, Photoshop Contests, Envato Tuts, and SitePoint all pay good money for contributions (submission details in the links). Another way of sharing the benefit of your design experience could be to try your hand at speaking at design events. Unless you’re already well known in the community, you’ll probably have to do a few free gigs at small events first and build your way up, but the bigger events do pay pretty well, not to mention offer the opportunity to travel. Check out conference directory Lanyrd to find your niche, and click through to the relevant event websites for details of speaker submissions. Also check out our designer’s guide to public speaking. Then, if you really want to go the whole hog, you could always set up your own online course, either through a platform such as Skillshare, Udemy or CreativeLive, or set up your own website and sell direct. As ever, it pays to do your research first to establish that there is both demand for your topic and no current competitors in the same space. Here’s a list of 10 platforms you can use to host your online course. 05. Earn affiliate income from your website Affiliate links on graphic designer David Airey’s blog earns him some passive income It’s one of the oldest and simplest ways to earn income on the internet: place affiliate links to products you write about in your blog, which then earn you small amounts of money if people click through and buy. You’re never going to become mega-rich this way, but if you’re already writing about something like a book from Amazon or a service like Creative Market, say, it’s a no-brainer to add in a quick affiliate link, as Irish graphic designer David Airey does on his excellent blog. It costs nothing but a few seconds of time and it could end up providing some useful beer money. 06. Raise your freelance rates Are you really charging what you’re worth? Whenever you speak to experienced freelancers, you hear the same story. They’d worked for far too many years without upping their rates. Then they finally took the plunge, and were delighted to find it didn’t deter clients at all. In fact, sometimes it made them keener; by charging more, people may even think of your services as being more valuable! Obviously, every freelancer’s personal circumstances are different, and we wouldn’t encourage you to do anything that might risk your financial stability. But if you’ve been charging the same rates for years, a small rise may be worth experimenting with in 2018. Certainly, if you find you’re taking on too much work, or turning projects down because you’re too busy, you should be seriously considering it. For more on this, read How to calculate your freelance rate, 4 ways to cash in as a freelancer, and 7 different pricing models – and which you should choose. 07. Negotiate a salary rise When it comes to a salary rise, if you don’t ask, you don’t get Working in a salaried position where you’ve grown your skills and experience over time, taken on extra responsibilities, and generally feel you’re providing better value to your employer than ever before? Then in 2018, why not ask them to put their money where their mouth is, and reward you with a better salary? We’re not going to lie, though: whether you get it or not may well depend on external factors well beyond your (or even your boss’s) control. So before you rush headlong into making demands, it pays to do your research, assess the state of the business as a whole and your department in particular, put some feelers out, and get a sense of whether it’s worth pursuing. For tips and advice, read our 7 tips for getting paid more and 5 killer ways to nail that salary negotiation. 08. Ask for a promotion Getting a step up the corporate ladder means clear communication with your boss about your aims and goals If your boss won’t give you more money for what you do currently, the best way to increase your earnings may be to pursue a new, better-paid position. There are plenty of strategies for getting a promotion, but in essence it’s about deciding clearly where you want to be and working out how to get there. It’s also about communication: setting out your goals clearly to your manager so you can work towards them together, because they may otherwise have very different views on how they see you progressing. Follow our 15 tips on how to get a promotion, 20 tips for design interview success and How to craft a standout portfolio. Liked this? Read these next: 9 tools to make graphic design easier 10 designers' New Year's resolutions for 2018 10 skills graphic designers need to get ahead View the full article

The prospect of cross-browser testing is unlikely to fill anyone with joy, but it's the essential last step of any web build that you can't afford to get wrong. You might be packing the latest in responsive web design and parallax scrolling tricks, but one little slip in your testing could see a whole load of potential users locked out of your swanky new site. So to help you along and make sure you get it right, here are the top 10 things you need to do in order to ensure that your site will work, however people are looking at it. 01. Validate your code You're much more likely to experience weird behaviours between browsers if your code isn't strictly valid, so check it with the W3C Markup Validation Service to make sure it's standards-compliant. 02. Fail gracefully Design your site with the view that not all functionality will work. It's often healthy to check how it renders without JavaScript or styling enabled, to see if the user can at least tell what's happening based on content alone. 03. Know your audience Make sure you understand the browsers and devices you're targeting. Is your page mostly for mobile users? Are you working within a company that still uses legacy browsers? Test accordingly. 04. Consider using a framework If you use a well-established framework, whether for styling (eg Bootstrap) or a JavaScript framework (such as Angular or React), generally this means someone else has taken care of a lot of the cross-browser compatibility work for you. 05. Keep your design simple Web designs don't always need to be all-singing, all-dancing It might seem obvious, but the fewer cutting-edge CSS features you're trying to use, the less likely you are to have difficulty supporting all browsers. Give consideration to whether you really need them. 06. Reuse and reduce components This can start from the basics of managing your CSS classes sensibly, through to using web components to modularise your entire site. Essentially, the fewer places you have to test and maintain similar changes, the easier to manage. 07. Test with the difficult browsers first If you know you need to support Internet Explorer 6, then start out with that. You don't want to get 90 per cent of the way through your testing before discovering the first issue. 08. Create test scripts Whether you're automating or not, even for simple sites you should define the set of tests you expect to run in each browser. Otherwise, you'll end up missing things between runs. 09. Test as you go along Especially important if you're doing something that might be tricky, don't wait until you've finished developing to start testing. Take an iterative approach to catch issues early. 10. Check your features Double-check browser support of newer features online before you use them, and make use of feature detection and polyfills if you absolutely must rely on something that isn't comprehensively supported. This article was originally published in issue 267 of Web Designer, the creative web design magazine – offering expert tutorials, cutting-edge trends and free resources. Subscribe to Web Designer here. Related articles: How to use Markdown in web development 20 useful tools for web developers How do you tackle user research and testing? View the full article

A great logo, now more than ever, must cut through an awful lot of noise. The art lies in working out exactly how you do that. As with branding trends and typography trends, knowing which logo trends are proving popular with audiences right now is a useful tool – whether you want to capitalise on a trend, give one your own take or do something completely different. Here we're taking a look back at the trends that shaped logo design in 2017 to forecast the biggest trends of 2018. There's a lot of overlap in the logo design trends we've picked out here. Some logos – the best of them – used two or three trends. In 2017, a year of lots of noise and confusion, the very best logo designs offered a quiet, understated authority, something both familiar and new. "Evolution, not a revolution," is how one designer said it. That's not to say there was no room for the bold or the creative. The best logos of 2017 also took chances and dared to be different. 01. Simplicity and clarity Moonpig's new look is far more minimal Simplicity has been king for a while. In 2016, we saw it in Pentagram's redesign of the Mastercard logo, in which the agency focused on "simplicity and clarity." At the beginning of 2017, we saw it in Interbrand's bold redesign of the Juventus badge, "fearlessly embracing its potential as an identity brand." And we saw it towards the end of 2017, with Moonpig, led by the brand's in-house creative director James Turner. Greetings card company Moonpig dropped the .com from its name, and the cartoon pig that went with it, in favour of something a bit subtler. You could argue simplicity's offshoots include minimalism, black and white logos, and those with framed texts, which we've also seen a lot of. In noisy, confusing times, the trend towards making things neater and simpler looks set to continue. 02. Uppercasification The new Calvin Klein logo uses sleek all-caps typography This trend is perhaps based on principles opposite to simplicity. In noisy, confusing times, you could argue that it's necessary to be noisier than everybody else. At least, that's how logos created in all uppercase can appear. But done well – usually when paired with a simple design and a smart typeface – it gives a logo a certain authority. Done really well there's a quiet, understated authority to uppercase logos, with the typography feeling natural rather than forced and shouty. As a trend it's a bit of broad stroke, but an unavoidable one nonetheless, seen in redesigned logos in 2017 by brands such as Calvin Klein, Giraffe, Ebury and too many others to mention. 03. Modern retro The new F1 logo feels like a modern spin on a 1980s look Formula 1 recently unveiled its first new logo in 23 years. The design, led by Wieden + Kennedy London, aimed for a "modern-retro feel." It's dynamic, and a bit masculine, like the sport, but it also has a real 80s feel. You can see the idea of modern-retro logo design in new logos for brands such as SYFY, Fanta, and Nintendo. Again, you could argue that this trend is a sign of the times. With so much change going on around the world, brands want to tether themselves to the familiar, even when making a change of their own. 04. Evolution of established logos The new YouTube logo wasn't vastly different to the old one "It’s an evolution, not a revolution," said Christopher Bettig, head of YouTube’s art department, after the brand changed its logo in 2017. The new YouTube logo incorporated the already iconic play button and moved the emphasis off the "Tube." Aside from that, subtlety is key here. Evolution not revolution was seen elsewhere in 2017 logo rethinks by similar brands. Pinterest's new look is a good example. But Dropbox had it both ways, with the evolution of its logo and a controversial revolution of everything else. 05. Flat design Audi's rings were flattened in its new logo When we looked at the best logos for startups in 2017, one trend stood out: among these innovative new companies, flatness ruled where logos were concerned – check out the designs for Mush, Monzo, and Uniplaces, for example. Perhaps the best use of flatness in 2017 came in the redesign of Audi's logo. The car manufacturer has always been switched on when it comes to branding and advertising, and this update is no exception. Not only is it flat, but it's simple, modern-retro, and an evolution, not a revolution. Vorsprung durch technik indeed! Related articles: 10 huge graphic design trends to know for 2018 The 20 biggest logos of 2017 10 designers' New Year's resolutions for 2018 View the full article

Intel, Amazon, ARM, Microsoft and others have shared patch updates to keep customers informed on their mitigation efforts to protect against the far reaching Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities impacting computers, servers and mobile devices worldwide. View the full article

Character design belongs to many areas of concept art and illustration, whether they're main characters or simply a small figure in the distance. One of the important aspects of learning how to draw and design characters is to create a sense of believability, so that these characters could really exist in the world you're designing them for. While dressing your character and styling their visual appearance helps to define their overall look, the most important step to making your character believable – especially when adding them to a larger scene – is to portray their personality through gesture, and show how they would move and compose themselves. A great example of this is animation and the use of caricatured exaggeration to sell an idea. These same principles can apply to realistic character concepts, too. One of the important aspects of character design is to create a sense of believability In this workshop I'm going to take you through my process of developing a figure using Photoshop. We'll begin by sketching gestures, landmarks and simple volumes, refine the sketch and then take it through to adding values in greyscale. I'll also explain the importance of working with thumbnails. I'll be colouring the image using different blending modes before rendering out the figure. Throughout the process I'll discuss the use of colours, brushwork and edge control. This will help to add variation to the image and single out key focal points. Watch the video above to see how I created this elegant elf character, and read my step-by-step instructions and tips below to create your own. Download the assets for this tutorial here 01. Sketch quick poses Start off by sketching a range of poses I start the process by gathering a page of reference material for my female elf character. I then sketch a range of poses, keeping the gestures simple and not going into too much detail. The idea here is to create basic shapes and movement. I receive feedback from the ImagineFX magazine team, and make some refinements and changes. The team then chooses a final sketch for me to work up. 02. Use gesture Make sure you get your figure's pose right A solid figure gesture can set up your entire painting. You have the head, followed by a connecting line that will describe the longest movement of the figure. We then have feet placement and this is crucial for showing balance. Here I use the classic 'bean' technique to show torso twists and bends. I then add the rest of the figure. 03. Refine the sketch Build up your rough sketch into something more refined I imagine the figure as simple tube-like forms, then sketch a rounded bucket shape for the pelvis and a circular shape for the ribcage. External signs of the skeleton are great landmarks to show angles of the figure (hip bone, elbows, collarbone and suchlike). I pay attention to negative space around the figure to plan the silhouette and proportions. 04. Add values Start building simple shapes and forms with big brush strokes On a new layer, I begin using large brush strokes to build simple shapes and forms. I brush around the contours to show volume more clearly. When it comes to value, less is more. My initial value range will rarely go beyond 20-80 per cent, meaning that I'll not go entirely black or white. I can always boost the image later on. 05. Apply colour Once you start adding colour the picture really starts coming together When adding colour, my first step is to use gradient maps. Red for the shadows, saturated pink/cream for mid-values and desaturated cream for highlights. On a Color layer above, I add purple to the hair, overall variations in hue and red to her cheeks, nose and ears. I use a Hard Light blending mode to add saturated colours and darken areas simultaneously. 06. Paint realistic hair Don't try to paint individual strands of hair; it won't look realistic I'm not fond of the term 'spaghetti hair', but it's an accurate description for something you want to avoid. A common mistake with hair is to paint every strand individually. Realistically hair doesn't do this; it will cluster and form groups. In this step I paint larger shapes first. Single strands are then added afterwards for an element of realism. 07. Introduce a painterly texture Get a painterly feel with a few carefully placed hard-edged brush strokes To achieve a painterly feel in my work I use Hard-edged brushes at 100 per cent Opacity and Flow (in Brush Settings/Transfer set Control to Pen Pressure). I use fewer brush strokes, placed carefully. I apply them heavily and leave strokes more exposed. Using hatching and scatter brushes is a great way to blend areas together and add variety. 08. Give characters accessories Don't forget to give your character a bit of adornment Because my character is an elf, I feel I need a fantasy element to an otherwise nude female figure. I decide to give her an arm ornament made of the silver-like mithril. The ornament curves around the arm to match its tube-like shape. Darkening the skin above shows the indentation of the skin and I add shadows around the edge, and finish with highlights and chains. 09. Render the face There are a few techniques you can use to bring the face to life I refine the face by reducing the brush size and working on smaller details. I blend out unwanted brush marks and focus attention on the face geometry (planes). Her face is looking a little flat, so I used the Liquify filter (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+X) to correct the curvature. Increasing the saturation and sharpening edges helps to define the face as a stronger focal point. 10. Use Photoshop's Smart Objects Smart Objects are a great way to add intricate details to your illustration To match the armband, I design a tiara-like mithril headdress. I want to bend and shape the object. So, using a flat design, I right-click the layer and select Convert to Smart Object. Holding Ctrl/Cmd+T for Free Transform, I right-click the bounding box and choose Warp. The design can be edited at any point by double-clicking the layer icon and saving it. The design will update automatically in the main file. 11. Make eyes come alive Specular highlights and a burst of colours will really make eyes pop Eyes are a very engaging feature for the viewer and they hold a lot of emotion. A common mistake is to make the white of the eye too bright – instead, adding subtle colour and shadow will improve their form. Here I add specular highlights to the eyes and a burst of colour around the highlight edge. I've found this to be a great way of making them pop. 12. Drape fabric naturally When it comes to fabric, make sure it follows the contours of your figure On a new layer I sketch the shape of my fabric. It's important to keep true to the laws of nature by having the material fall naturally. With translucent material I ensure that any areas that overlap are more opaque. Using the dotted speckle brush I lightly add a glittery texture and finish with details to complement her jewellery. 13. Remove distractions On second thoughts, forget about the fabric The magazine team thinks that the fabric might distract from the character's anatomy, so I remove it. I brush white over the bottom half of the figure and use large brush strokes to loosely paint back in areas of my choosing. I reduce saturation in the lower body by using black on a saturation layer and I brighten the face using the Dodge tool, set to Highlights. 14. Add final touches A few finishing touches and we're done The final stages to my paintings undergo similar refinements. These include the blending or sharpening of edges, a final Color layer where I scatter random hues to add interesting variations, lighting tweaks and a final overall sharpen. For this illustration I add a subtle purple vignette that frames the character's upper body and draws the viewer's eye to her face. This tutorial originally appeared in issue 135 of ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists – packed with workshops and interviews with fantasy and sci-fi artists, plus must-have kit reviews. Subscribe to ImagineFX magazine here. Related articles: How to improve your character art 20 top character design tips 95 top Photoshop tutorials View the full article

Using pastel primers to create surfaces for your art means you can build a more textured surface to work on than paper, which holds more layers of pastel. Primers also allow you to vary that texture, helping you to add interest and even to add drama to your pastel artworks. For me, the most exciting thing about them is the way that I can create an underpainting to work over, which gets my paintings off to a lively start, and takes away that 'fear of the blank canvas'. By underpainting first, you combine drawing and painting skills even more than before, and inject a mixed media feel into your work. This can lead to unexpected developments and unplanned outcomes, keeping the experience fresh and exciting. So read on to breathe life into your pastel work. 01. Choose a pastel primer It's easiest to buy your primers ready-made Many artists prepare their own textured grounds, using various mixtures of gesso, pumice, or grit and acrylic primers, but it is easier to buy them already prepared. I like the Art Spectrum Colourfix range, which has 20 colours, plus a clear version. They can be brushed or rolled on, and thinned with water to adjust the texture. 02. Mix two colours for a tailored tone Use a cheap decorator's brush with a bit of water to apply your primer Loosely mixing Raw Sienna and Sand Colourfix Primer with a cheap decorator's brush gives a lovely soft base colour for portraits. Using mount card as the base, use a little water on the same brush to brush the primer on. Speed really is essential in this process, as the primers dry extremely quickly. Remember that the more water you use, the less texture you'll have. Primer gives your an excellent base colour for portraits When painting Nathaniel, I build up many layers, using Unison Soft Pastels, Conté crayons and pastel pencils. You can use a pencil eraser to rub out, and even add water to your pastel work. A pastel primed surface is a strong and forgiving surface. 03. Create texture with Golden Acrylic Ground A layer of Golden Acrylic Ground is great for adding texture This quick sketch of birch trees was done over a layer of Golden Acrylic Ground for Pastels. This product has no colour, so you need to add your own, or underpaint the first layer with acrylic paints, for example. I like the way that on this piece, the rough brushstrokes show through. 04. Create bright surfaces Coat layers of acrylic with Clear Colourfix Primer for a bright background When I want a bright surface to work on, I paint two or three layers of acrylic paint – in this case, System 3 Acrylic in Ultramarine. When dry, I coat with Clear Colourfix Primer, which looks milky as you paint it on, but dries transparent. This clear primer can be painted over many other types of paint or surface, so is also great for collage. A blue background can make your foreground colours really pop It can liven up your work to use background colours that are unexpected. I like the way that blues are part of the shadow colours for white animals, they also look good behind black, and make browns and oranges (a complementary colour for blue) jump off the page. Remember that you don't have to 'colour it all in' – create a feeling of space by leaving some areas unpainted. 05. Tint primers with acrylics The more colour you add to your primer, the less texture you'll get Pastel primers can be tinted with any water-based paint or ink. Keep in mind that the more paint you use, the less texture you will have to work with when applying pastel. You can let the primer dry and then wash colour over it to retain texture. In this base for a seascape, I loosely paint Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber acrylics and primer together. 06. Treat primers as paint Paint in a base with Colourfix Primers Sand and Deep Ultra To create the feeling of a windswept day up on the high moor in this piece, I loosely paint a base using Colourfix Primers Deep Ultra and sand, treating them like paint and using my cheap decorator's brush. Don't hang about! The finished underpainting dries in about 20 minutes, so I have to work quickly and cannot dwell on detail or worry about strokes. Make sure that some of your underpainting shows through Once the underpaint is dry, I work into the piece in some areas with Unison soft pastels, limiting my palette, and making sure that I leave areas of the underpainting showing. It is easy to get carried away and cover it all up, but that would lose a lot of the life and energy. Be careful not to overdo it I add more definition to the rocks, by creating sharper edges and using strong lights and darks. By adding figures, I create a sense of scale to the piece. I want the painting to have a light, sketchy feel, so I am stopping at this point. They say that paintings are never finished, they just stop in interesting places. 07. Use shades of primer to add depth Here, different shades of primer add depth to the finished painting This painting, Deep Roots, is a much larger pastel, worked over pastel primers as in the previous example, but with more depth and definition. I paint a dark blue under the rocks to emphasise their strength and weight, and cream under the sky to create contrast. In the bottom right-hand corner, I leave the brushstrokes of primer showing. This article was originally published in issue 12 of Paint & Draw, the magazine offering tips and inspiration for artists everywhere. Buy it here. Related articles: How to master colour theory Drawing techniques: 7 fundamentals of pencil drawing How to make your own canvas boards View the full article

It’s that time again when industry experts, including the team at Code Computerlove, predict what will be the key trends in the year ahead. Parallax scrolling has had its day and responsive web design is firmly integrated into the mainstream, so what's the next big thing in digital? Here, we take a look at the technology-related themes that are dominating trends talk, and share our predictions on what will be the five most significant shifts in digital techniques during 2018. 01. The year of the MVP The MVP (minimal viable product) approach has been around for a while now but we’re expecting to see its adoption accelerate in 2018, becoming the widely accepted way that digital is done. So why will this year be the tipping point? The concept behind an MVP has always been the right approach for digital platform owners, but unfortunately it’s been misunderstood or misused in the wider industry, so stakeholders have been wary of developing their digital products in this way. The MVP approach isn’t about saving money, cutting corners or accepting sub-standard work; it’s the recognition that digital products shouldn’t be released to customers in a ‘big bang’. MVP is one component of lean software delivery and is better referred to as ‘continuous delivery’. By releasing any new features and functionality as soon as they are ready to realise their value, you create a better experience for end users, more revenue for the business, or both. This iterative, continuous approach also means we only build things that work, as the success of every iteration can be measured, and the user data then determines the development path. The rigour of continuous releases removes much of the risk from the launch process and keeps the technical platform stable – as well as being easy to roll back in case of error. Without a doubt, more businesses will start to adopt this approach in 2018, especially as more brands and agencies share their success stories. It will be difficult to ignore the benefits this offers. 02. Everything data A 2018 trends forecast wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the UK's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but this is just the tip of the data iceberg. Although ‘big data’ has been a trend for a number of years, there are still a huge number of organisations – in fact, the majority – that are still not efficient at using their data in a sophisticated way. GDPR is an opportunity for businesses to reassess their data and hopefully turn its value up a notch. It’s frequently the case that businesses have a data tool, but aren’t using it effectively. The situation is not helped by the fact that there is a shortage of web analysts in the industry, so many businesses are sitting on expensive tools, with mountains of data, with no way to use that data effectively. The ultimate goal is to know all there is to know about your customers To borrow Avinash Kaushik’s 10/90 rule (first released eight years ago), for data to be meaningful, 90 per cent of the process needs to be spent on the intelligence behind the data. With data, it’s about knowing the information you need to define the problem, getting that information, then knowing what to do with it when you have it. There will be lots more investment this year as brands try to use data to greater effect, with the ultimate aim being to understand customers even better than they know themselves. Smart data insight won’t just be the domain of large businesses; 2018 will see businesses of all shapes and sizes turning data insight into more meaningful experiences with customers. 03. A shift in the agency-client dynamic What’s the point of having a sports car if you can’t drive it yourself? This is what a large number of organisations are realising as they plan their budget allocation and digital tactics for 2018. As companies work to complete their digital transformation, they’re increasingly looking to bring the creation and management of their digital systems in-house. These ‘products’ are business-critical so it’s too risky to give them entirely to a third party. Moreover, having invested in new technologies and systems, having the skills to use them to their full potential will ensure that they can get ahead and grow. This requires knowledge and new skillsets. As a result, agencies are already redefining their relationships with clients, developing genuine partnerships that involve close collaboration rather than taking the problem away and then coming back with the answer. During this collaboration, successful agencies will look to augment their clients' internal teams, offering a blend of services that complement the internal capability. 2018 will see greater investment in people-centric digital knowledge programs, design sprints and collaboration projects that ensure individuals and departments alike have the skills to use digital systems and the technologies to grow. The role of the ‘digital agency’ will evolve to augment the client skillset, empowering clients to be masters of their continuous delivery. Agencies will become part of the process that focuses on continuous improvement and innovation. 04. Addressing the problem of legacy systems Many businesses won’t be able to ‘put up and make do’ with out-of-date legacy systems beyond 2018. Consumer expectations have been raised by digital-first businesses; customers will no longer accept bad user experience, slow websites or poor customer service. They will vote with their feet, or (more likely) their cursor. Hundreds of enterprises each year face facts and accept that their legacy IT systems and databases just aren’t up to the job of creating meaningful digital experiences and interactions with customers. In 2018, the trend for overhauling an entire CMS will be more prevalent than ever. More companies will wave goodbye to clunky legacy systems But changing the CMS alone will not result in a better experience for customers. Careful consideration needs to be made when it comes to implementing a new CMS. The temptation is to replace what is there, in its entirety, in one release. This will often coincide with a completely revamped customer experience. However, this comes with considerable risk to businesses that rely on websites to acquire new customers and support old ones. Instead, we suggest a controlled rollout of the CMS and new experience, driven by data and measured against positive and negative impact on customers and business performance. By releasing in stages and using insight as part of this process, the business risk is minimised and customer experience can be improved much more quickly. 05. Being anti-trend and saying no The deluge of new consumer technologies and channels to market often results in brand owners jumping in feet-first and 'creating an app' or, most recently, saying 'we need a skill for Amazon’s Alexa' – fuelled by a fear of missing out. While being ahead of the curve with new digital experiences can be a game-changer for some, jumping on the trends bandwagon without proper consideration is a bad idea. Make sure the technology is ready to offer a meaningful and worthwhile customer experience, and that it's a solution that adds value to your customer experience. Will your product actually benefit from working with the latest hot tech? We still see many businesses approaching digital work with an end product in mind, rather than viewing it as an experiment to see what works for them. It’s difficult from an agency perspective too, as an answer of ‘not yet’ can feel like a failure, but the right thing to do next can be nothing at all. Discovery projects are being widely adopted by some of the larger brands – effectively saving thousands of pounds in wasted development time, had they commissioned a full build. We do think that the voice, AI and AR spaces will grow substantially in 2018 (see our 8 tips for designing voice interfaces and How to build a chatbot interface for advice in these areas), but we will also see businesses saying no if they need to. Read more: 11 huge web design trends for 2018 Why voice UIs are the next big thing in web design The secrets of Google's five-day design sprint View the full article

It stands to reason that responsive web design requires responsive typography to suit. But what does that actually mean, and how do you implement it? Font size, spacing and layout should work together to create an elegant, legible text setting in each viewport. But how? We asked seven leading web designers. For a more in-depth explanation, take a look at our article on the rules of responsive web typography. 01. Size your body text appropriately Differences in font size should reduce for smaller viewports, as in this site by Fresh Tilled Soil "Use a scale for different screen sizes," emphasises UX strategist Jason Pamental, author of Responsive Web Typography. "Get that right and everything else will flow from there." So how do you get it right? UX designer Clarissa Peterson, author of Learning Responsive Web Design, suggests starting with the browser’s default font scaling. "Set your base font size to 100%, and each browser will make that a font size most users will be able to easily read on that device." Typically, 100% is the equivalent of 16px. On desktop, that may look surprisingly big, but most of us have trouble reading smaller text once we reach middle age – why not make it easy? "If the text feels too big, that likely just means you need to adjust the scale of everything else," says Clarissa. We'll come back to that thought. 02. Consider the reader Viewports differ in more than physical or pixel dimensions. Think about how the user interacts with the display. Off the desktop, there's less space to play with, but the user is closer to the screen. "Your typography should scale with regard to reading," advises art director Brian Hoff. "Generally, I scale my fonts down when going from desktop to mobile. People tend to hold their phones closer to their face. Think about how people will consume the content and adjust the typography accordingly." "We should be similarly cognizant of how we treat type on larger screens, like televisions and console gaming systems, which we view from a distance" but may have relatively low resolution, says Aaron Gustafson, web standards advocate at Microsoft and author of Adaptive Web Design. "In situations like that, it may make sense to render type – and even adjust the layout – using vw units, which are proportional to the width of the viewport." 03. Watch your measure The width of a body text block, or 'measure', affects how comfortable it is to read. "When you have viewports that can grow (or shrink) indefinitely, the length of a line can become uncomfortably long (or short)," notes designer Elliot Jay Stocks. "It’s a mistake a I see a lot of people make." A guideline of 45 to 75 characters per line is often quoted from Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. Studies have found longer lines, up to 95 characters, are read faster on screen, but it’s not clear if that means readers enjoy reading more or understand better. There are too many variables to draw firm conclusions, so it makes sense to err on the side of moderation. If you're designing mobile-first, you'll tend towards a short measure to avoid text getting too small. On desktop, you may want to let lines get longer in bigger windows. A max-width declaration can avoid this getting out of hand, but shouldn't be necessary if you progressively increase padding. You can also balance font size against measure to control the number of characters per line. Here’s a CSS media query example from Stocks: 04. Adjust line spacing Line height, traditionally known as 'leading', is often neglected. What's just enough to keep lines distinct at one scale or measure may be too much at another, losing the reader's eye as they try to move from one line to the next. "No-one enjoys reading between the lines," says Hoff. "Unpleasant gaps" can be avoided, suggests Stocks, with "some very clever maths to make sure your values are directly proportional to your font size" – or "just do it by feel". "Optimise line-heights at different break points," recommends web designer Marko Dugonjić. 05. Use visual variation other than size Page layout and typography should adapt in harmony to work at different scalesIn an expansive desktop design, you might make headings several times bigger than body text for clarity and drama. On a mobile screen, oversized headings just push body text down, breaking continuity and demanding excessive scrolling. Dugonjić suggests alternative ways of achieving visual hierarchy. "On small screens, format subheads using style variations – uppercase, small caps, italic, bold – at the same font size. Indent paragraphs and use white space to separate sections." 06. Choose fonts wisely This sample site by Marko Dugonjić shows the scope of responsive typographyWorking at multiple scales demands even more of your typefaces. Besides ensuring any webfonts render well on all platforms and have sufficient Unicode scope for your site's planned internationalisations, it's worth looking for greater typographical flexibility. Multiple weights, small caps and condensed variants will give you options for better results in different viewports, suggests Dugonjić, whose Benton Modern sample site demonstrates responsive type pushed to its limits. Just don't go mad, warns Pamental. "Choose fonts sparingly. Don’t load too much, and make sure to test real type in the browser on various platforms" for appearance, page weight and render speed. Web Font Loader, co-developed by Google and Typekit, can help you control the loading experience. Don’t overlook fallback for when webfonts fail. Anna Yeaman at Style Campaign, a creative agency specialising in responsive email design, recommends testing web-safe fallback fonts and tweaking media queries to minimise reflow. 07. Use a type test rig Tools like Typetester make it easier to try font, size and spacing combinations Juggling type libraries and CSS isn’t conducive to creative flow. Dugonjić's Typetester is now a fully-fledged WYSIWYG web typography editor. You can use it to test, compare and design with over 2800 web fonts from Adobe Edge, Adobe Typekit and Google Fonts. Then export your designs as fully responsive HTML and CSS snippets. 08. Set type in context Layout can break the most meticulous typography. Remember "the white space around the words – where you eye can rest – and use of imagery," says Gustafson. This is where the responsive designer needs to be particularly alert. "On a narrow screen, images might reduce readability. A floated image could wrap long words below it rather than next to it." Width and padding values will need to vary with viewport size to keep layouts feeling visually 'right' as well as managing line length. When setting break points between multi- and single-column layouts, a wider single column with horizontal space may be more comfortable on medium-size screens. 09. Learn from others Compare existing designs to see how type settings adapt to viewport size A blank canvas needn't be your springboard. Back in 2015, Yeaman surveyed 50 responsive emails to compare the choices other designers had made in typeface, size, spacing and other factors, and found the results instructive. Whatever the nature of your project, there'll be exemplars in its field. The consensus isn't always optimal, but it's not a bad place to start. Read more: A designer's guide to typography and fonts The 5 biggest typography trends of 2017 7 great tools for testing your responsive web designs View the full article

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