Rss Bot

When it comes to picking a typeface, you can't rely on gut alone There are thousands of paid-for and free fonts available for creatives to choose from. However, when it comes to picking a typeface, you can't rely on gut alone. Making the right choice depends on function, context and a whole host of other factors. But how do you ensure you're going about it the right way? With these pointers, you won't go far wrong... 01. Think function Always think about function as well as form. There's no point finding a typeface that ticks the creative boxes, testing it and wowing your client with it, only to discover that it won't actually work for the project because it lacks key technical features. Consider these from the start. 02. Follow foundries Type should be in your consciousness, not something you only think about when you need to use it. Try following some foundries like Dalton Maag, Monotype, Hoefler & Co, Font Bureau and Commercial Type, on social networking sites, read typography blogs or simply keep your eyes peeled for good and bad examples of type you see out in the world. The more you notice, the more you'll know. 03. Test rigorously Always test your type in ways that are relevant to the project. You don't know if a typeface will work until you've seen it at the right size and tested whether the spacing works. You need a realistic idea of how it's going to look – which you often won't get from fake Latin. 04. Think effectively Like any design decision, typeface selection needs to be the result of effective thinking. The fact that you like a typeface doesn't necessarily mean it's going to convey the right brand messages to your target audience. You may convince your client, but the design won't do its job. 05. Pair up properly If you're trying to pair two typefaces, start by defining what you want to achieve: are you aiming for harmony or contrast? Are you looking for complementary typefaces with corresponding curves, for example? Be careful not to let things get too uniform. Done wrong, this can be as inadvisable as double denim. To get it right, read our article on how to find the perfect font pairing. The tips are taken from an article that originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 237. Words: Anne Wollenberg Like this? Read these! Download fonts from these top resources See some stunning examples of kinetic typography These retro fonts will add a touch of nostalgia View the full article

Chromatic aberration (distortion), also known as 'colour fringing' is a common optical problem. It occurs when a camera lens fails to bring all colour wavelengths to the same focal plane, or when the wavelengths of colour focus in different positions on the plane. It is caused by a lens dispersion, with different colours of light travelling at different speed while passing through a lens – in effect, producing a blurred image with coloured fringes (a rainbow edge in areas of contrast). 3 huge colour trends for 2018 There are two types of chromatic aberration: axial (longitudinal) and transverse (lateral). Without going into too much detail, axial aberration occurs consistently throughout the image, whereas transverse does not occur in the centre and increases towards the edge of the image. There are a few ways to minimise or remove these with photo editing apps or Photoshop CC. You may also notice this effect in some movies. Yes, it is there on purpose. It looks much better in motion than on a still, as it actually helps sharpen the picture as opposed to blur an image in photography. So, if photographers do everything to avoid chromatic aberration in their work because it is deemed 'incorrect', why would you want to add it to your 3D art? Because, if used correctly, it can make your image 'pop' and look more realistic. Here's how you can manually achieve this effect in Photoshop. 01. Image preparation Merge your composition to a single layer before you start Chromatic aberration is best added at the end, so first, complete your usual image composition. Put a copy of your layers in a folder for safekeeping (optional) or just start a new project. Make sure your composition is merged down to a single layer, then duplicate it twice. Set the duplicates to Lighten. 02. Choose your channels Turn down the colours you don't need for each channel Decide which colours you want to create the effect with. Green and blue work here. Select the first duplicate, go to Levels and change the Red and Blue output levels to 0, leaving the Green levels untouched. Select the second duplicate and set Red and Green levels to 0, leaving Blue as it is. Rename layers accordingly. 03. Distortion Don't overdo the effect, because it'll definitely look awful Select the Green layer, activate the Move tool and press the left arrow on the keyboard (twice should be enough). Select the Blue layer and shift it to the right. Do not shift them by too many clicks because it will make the distortion too great, and your image will be painful to look at. 04. Emboss Finish off with a tiny bit of subtle embossing If you want to boost your image details even more, you can try adding an overlay of Filter/Stylize/Emboss on top. Experiment and play with the options for the angle, height and amount of Emboss, to see what works best with the lighting of your scene. This article was originally published in issue 231 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 231 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: The essential guide to colour correction 5 photography trends influencing designers in 2018 Create distorted typography in Photoshop View the full article

Buy Illustrator CC 2018 or sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud now Illustrator has long been the standard when it comes to vector illustration and design. Since its first release way back in 1987, it’s been the go-to for anyone wanting to create infinitely scalable graphics. During its journey to its current CC 2018 incarnation – over 30 years after the original release – the application has evolved into much more than an ‘illustration’ tool. Whether you’re working with type, on branding projects, or designing icons for apps and the web, Illustrator has pretty much everything you need. But there are a raft of rivals out there, so is the Illustrator the right tool for you? Here, I take a look at what’s new in Illustrator CC 2018 and how these features can speed up your creative workflow – and review whether Adobe's vector graphics software is still best in class... New intelligent Properties Panel The new intelligent Properties panel, in my opinion, is the biggest update to Illustrator CC 2018 – and also the most game-changing. It streamlines your workflow by giving you access to the settings and controls – tools, effects and options – you need for the task you’re working on. For example, clicking on a path will show the Transform and Appearance panels, letting you scale, skew, flip and rotate your vector, and giving you quick access to stroke, colour and Illustrator effects. Meanwhile, the Quick Actions panel also puts various functions – such as recolor, expanding shapes and arrange – at your fingertips. What initially seemed like a minor change has become something I would miss dearly if it were to go in a future update. It’s improved my workflow vastly – even if it was a bit of a learning curve initially. Rival software already had similar functions in place, so it was about time Illustrator made this tweak to its UI. Type improvements Another notable update is that OpenType variable fonts have been added to Illustrator CC 2018. This means you can now easily customise and tweak the weight, width and even slant of a font, and stylise your type without having to outline your strokes and edit manually or use a different font entirely. With the inclusion of SVG colour fonts, you can also now add multiple colours and gradients to a single glyph. Again, this gives you more freedom to customise without having to outline your type and lose the editability of text. Emoji (woo) – which are becoming increasingly trendy as they become ingrained in pop culture – have also been added as a font, so you can go wild and include them in your work. And one additional useful type feature that’s crept into Illustrator is stylistic sets. These enable you to apply predefined glyph alternates to blocks of text without having to manually edit each glyph. Macbook Pro Touch Bar support One thing Illustrator was previously lacking was the ability to use the MacBook Pro’s touch bar. Love it or hate it, it’s a useful tool for people wanting quick access to specific tools and controls, and adjusts to your current task intuitively. People who include the touch bar in their Illustrator workflow will be rewarded with alternative options for many functions – ranging from the colour picker, which lets you drag your finger to change colour (this is super fun) to quick access to the Align tools. Whether it’s quicker is debatable, but it’s definitely an interesting gesture-based addition to your workflow, potentially providing a welcome break from constantly clicking your trackpad or mouse and keyboard. Puppet Warp Puppet Warp is a brand new tool debuting in the latest update of Illustrator CC 2018. It enables you to transform your vector graphics without having to adjust individual paths or anchor paths. Whilst the feature is limited in some ways, this could prove an invaluable tool for illustrators and animators who create characters. It lets you change poses quickly, easily and in a more natural way that will speed up your workflow greatly. What’s ace about this tool is that the pins you place to tweak your vector can be removed in an instant, making it pain free and non-destructive. More artboards and easier organisation Illustrator CC now lets you create up to 1,000 artboards (I wonder if anyone will ever hit this before their computer explodes). The new ability to select multiple artboards, and quickly and neatly organise them is a major score for heavy users of multiple artboards, making light work of what used to be quite a chore. If you’re anything like me, projects usually end up with multiple artboards all over the document – so this is a lifesaver when you need to hand over files to other designers or clients. Text Management in Creative Cloud Libraries This feature will be much welcomed if you use the Libraries feature – and you really should if you don’t. It enables you to store text in your Creative Cloud library to be used in any manner you see fit. This is especially useful if, for example, you’re working on a tonne of brand collateral across several of the Creative Cloud tools, and you need to include a bunch of headlines and body content that will be formatted in different sizes and layouts. It makes total sense to be able to store your text as well as your graphics, allowing for a more complete solution for CC power users. Should you get Illustrator CC 2018? We're used to seeing small, incremental improvements to Illustrator CC. The latest version, Illustrator CC 2018, makes a rare worthwhile update by streamlining some key functions in a reformed Properties panel. It also provides a range of additional handy tweaks and features that will speed up your workflow. When the updates were first announced back in October, if you didn't already have Illustrator in your Creative Cloud subscription, it would have been questionable as to whether it was worth purchasing as an additional upgrade. Many Mac users reported a multitude of bugs and errors after updating to the latest OS High Sierra, and Adobe gave no date for a fix – which was troubling, given the $50/£50 subscription price per month. Apple has now fixed this with an update, which is in BETA. That being said, Illustrator is still by far the most-used vector graphics software across the creative industry. It’s a powerful tool and the latest new features serve to further streamline your workflow. If you only use vector software solely – in isolation of other creative software – or sparingly, I would suggest investing in Affinity Designer. The one-time purchase trumps Illustrator in value for money, in this case, and delivers just as good a result. However, if you regularly collaborate with other designers as part of a team, or you already work within the Creative Cloud ecosystem, it's worth adding Illustrator CC 2018 to your arsenal for maximum value for money. The best Adobe deals Buy Illustrator CC 2018 or sign up to Adobe Creative Cloud now View the full article

What I love about drawing is how you can capture the imagination. It’s the thing that keeps me fascinated. My speciality is hand-drawn illustration, and in particular, the creation of line work with dip pen and black Indian ink. In this workshop I’ll show how I create my own interpretation of Mephisto, the demonic antagonist in the German legend of Faust. I start with an underdrawing, on to which the line work is inked. Through this process I emphasise anything that conveys the fantasy noir atmosphere of the tale, in particular the hard lighting. Unlike digital drawing, inking with a traditional dip pen only allows the draughtsman to push forward. It’s a live take with every mark of the pen. Every nib gives a different stroke, each responding differently to pressure and speed. With practise the range of lines that can be made with a single nib is enough to create compelling line work. Materials Paper: Daler Rowney 160gsm fine grain cartridge paper (A3 size) Mark Making: Derwent Graphic pencils, F to 2H lead Cork tip penholder Steel G nib Winsor & Newton Series 7 brush, no. 2 Winsor & Newton Black Indian Ink Miscellanous: Soft putty eraser Raised edge ruler Inkwell Small dish of water to clean nib Lint-free cloth to wipe and dry nib Lightweight rolling paper to soak up blots Scalpel to scratch up unwanted ink marks 01. Pencilling the structure Marking lightly with an overhand grip, I map where the major elements fall on the page: gestural lines, blocks, cylinders, spheres, wedges, and in this case a few anatomical landmarks. Any compositional changes are made at this stage before moving forward. If any pencil lines need to be lifted, then I use a soft eraser to ensure that the paper isn’t distressed. 02. Lay in the figure The blocks offer visual cues to lay in the drawing. Although good body language, anatomy and musculature are central in this piece, it’s more important to capture the main idea than perfect every single detail. To keep the paper intact I continue to work lightly with the pencil, especially when using a hard lead. 03. Light and shadow I refine parts of the drawing, and with the light source in mind the shadow shapes can be mapped. This is an underdrawing, so the pencil values don’t matter. What does matter is deciding where to ink in full black, and how halftones and plane changes might be inked. 04. Ease in the ink Inking with a dip pen requires precision and sensitivity. To warm up I begin on areas of the picture that aren’t critical. That means no facial details until I get into my stride. There are no golden rules with inking, but it’s always visible when an inker has found their rhythm. 05. Between the lines Rather than following the pencil work, I interpret the underdrawing, as tracing often makes a picture lose vitality. For this reason I explore ways to improve on the original pencils, so the line work moves the image along. 06. Balance is key As the drawing finds its shape my attention shifts to balancing the image. When solid blacks and halftone hatching are evenly measured throughout, it brings cohesion to the picture as a whole. The same goes for different line weights and textures. These are all techniques that I use to pull the image together. 07. Filling areas with black I spot any black areas by brush, planning the route to avoid tide marks. Many inkers prefer to leave all the black fills to the end. My own preference is to add them as I work through the drawing, so I can respond to the illustration as it emerges. 08. Adjustments on the fly With the inks in place it becomes easier to assess what might benefit the artwork. The inking usually becomes more improvised beyond this stage, so it’s good to keep in mind what the aim is, and to keep the artwork legible. 09. It’s a grey area Good hatching that flexes around the forms can help lead the eye through a picture. As a rule of thumb, if I want to cross-hatch I avoid intersecting at 90 degrees because this can look like a wire mesh. Overlaying lines of different weights is also preferable for the same reason. 10. Taking one final pass Before signing off the artwork, I like to take a look with fresh eyes. With so many details it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, even when it’s right under your nose. Now I see that leaving the lower left of the picture clear doesn’t create the effect I’d hoped for. The solution doesn’t take long to appear. 11. Embrace the unexpected As I mentioned before, visual balance is key, so when I realise that an area needs working up I let the ink dry and plan the next move. Using light pencil marks as in step one, I develop the area that needs attention. When I’m confident with the layout I go back in with ink, ensuring the line work remains consistent. This article was originally published in issue 156 of ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists. Buy issue 156 here or subscribe to ImagineFX here. Related articles: How to draw: 95 tutorials for drawing animals, people, landscapes and more How to draw a dragon: 16 pro tips How to curate a creative portfolio View the full article

Since the dawn of the personal computer, a battle for platform supremacy has raged between macOS and Windows. While Windows is the dominant force in nearly every area of business, Apple and its macOS has for a long time been the weapon of choice for creatives. Fundamentally, a computer is a tool, and if you're creating digital or 3D art or video work, you'll need bespoke tools crafted to your specific needs. That means a fast pen-enabled, multi-core CPU for modelling tasks, and enough graphic card grunt to make the most of the latest generation of GPU-accelerated workflows and render engines. When we last looked at switching from macOS to Windows, there were many compelling reasons to do so. There had been no new 'Pro' desktop hardware in several years and the MacBook Pro had proven to be a disappointment, with users who did not agree with Apple's notion that everyone needs a dongle for their laptop. With the launch of the iMac Pro and potentially a new, modular 'Mac Pro' on the way, Apple has stepped back into the professional marketplace for creatives (although this impressive hardware does come with a hefty price tag). 6 best laptops for video editing 2018 With the launch of the iMac Pro, Apple has stepped back into the professional marketplace for creatives The iMac Pro is a particularly compelling option for video artists. With the adoption of Thunderbolt 3 and better external GPU support coming for macOS, is the iMac Pro enough to make 3D and video artists ignore the pull of Windows? While there are now better options for staying loyal to macOS, there are still a large number of reasons to consider a switch to Windows – or at the very least explore a hybrid environment. As an artist who has used a mixed Windows and macOS environment for my professional work for the past four years, I can offer some insight to macOS users who might want to make the switch. In this article we'll take a look at what Windows has to offer for digital artists. Windows: The pros First of all, let's concentrate on the good points about Windows. First of all, app switching is, on the whole, pretty painless. Most software is now tied to the user and for all the big names – Cinema 4D, Maya, the Substance suite and Adobe's Creative Cloud suite – you can access your account by simply logging in and downloading the Windows version. It's the same with most plugins. For 3D artists, most of the innovation is still happening on the Windows platform. For example, GPU render engines such as Redshift are better tuned to Windows at the moment. If you want to work with a VR-certified machine, Windows is still a better choice – only the HTC Vive is currently supported on macOS. Windows also offers benefits in terms of speed; I have always found viewport performance in 3D apps to be vastly superior on Windows to Mac. Applications like 1Password and DJV make moving to windows relatively painless As for Windows itself, Windows 10 is very solid, and Windows Explorer is more 'malleable' than the Finder in Mac OS. There is also a raft of solutions available to make Windows feel more Mac-like, such as the FastPictureViewer codec, which shows thumbnails for a huge range of image formats, and DJV, which can act as a good media player. If you're worried about losing access to your favourite productivity applications, fear not – a lot of previously Mac-only apps are now available for Windows. For example, I have depended on 1Password to hold of all my password details for years; with the 1Password account feature my Windows PCs, iOS devices and Macs are now all synced. The inside of a upgradeable laptop, something Mac owners haven’t seen for quite a while Then there is the hardware itself. 3D and video artists are dependant on power, and a decent GPU-enabled desktop can be bought for the fraction of the cost of a Mac with equivalent power. If your software is dependant on NVIDIA-powered GPUs for CUDA acceleration – common both in 3D render engines and video editors – using a Windows machine is by far the easiest option (although there are macOS workarounds using external GPU boxes). Unfortunately, the graphics card shortage caused by cryptocurrency users buying up every GPU available at inflated prices does make bespoke PC building harder than it has been for a couple of years. range show Windows' ability to adapt to a variety of form factors The biggest advantage to moving to Windows is that there is a lot more choice of form factors in the Windows space: everything from touchscreen laptops to enormous 12 GPU-card equipped desktops and tablet computers. Odds are, there is likely to be a Windows machine that could suit a bespoke working environment more readily than a Mac. Windows: The cons While on the surface, performance, value for money and configurability all seem like obvious wins for Windows, there are downsides to consider. Until comparatively recently, Microsoft didn't make its own hardware, and compared to macOS, a Windows machine can still can feel like a selection of parts and drivers. There is not the hardware quality, consistency and the reliability of a Mac (especially for those of us who have access to an Apple Store). The macOS still 'looks' better out of the box, and has a lot of helpful bundled applications, including Preview, QuickTime player and the excellent Finder preview, quicklook and column view. These can be replicated on Windows but only with the use of third party apps or hacks. In terms of backup, Time Machine is still a better one-stop solution. In my experience, Macs are more dependable. Whenever I have taken a PC laptop out on a job with me, the battery has either run down because a background process has failed to quit, or the machine has only run at half-power because the CPU and GPU are being throttled. The is the powerful yet quiet creative solution that's been missing from the Apple lineup Compare this with the latest MacBook Pro, which does not throttle down any component while on battery power. The MacBook Pro also has an incredible standby time when the lid is closed and it's dropped into a rucksack. The latest generation of Macs are very quiet in operation, and while I have not used one, the new iMac Pros seem to be able to run most computationally heavy applications with little strain on the fan. Although expandability is still an issue on macOS – especially on the laptop front – Thunderbolt 3 can be an effective way of adding functionality to a Mac. For example, you can introduce more graphics grunt via an external GPU box, which now natively supports the latest AMD Radeon cards on macOS (NVIDIA support is available through some third party solutions, with native support on the way). Thunderbolt 3, as it uses the same connector as USB-C, means you can connect a plethora of peripherals to your Mac. There are signs that the pro software market is sticking with the Mac. GPU render engines such as Redshift and Octane are available for macOS with the correct hardware, and Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X are back at the forefront of their respective creative fields – especially when combined with Apples new Pro hardware. Finally, it's possible to run Windows through any Mac via the Boot Camp software, turning your Mac into a multi-platform solution. Time to switch? As with all things creative, everyone has their own workflow and solution. If your Mac is covering all your work needs, then we wouldn't recommend making a switch – especially with Apple resurgent in the professional market. However, for new and existing 3D artists, it's worth exploring Windows for the potential benefits it may offer. Windows machines offer cheaper creative solutions and form factors, such as pen-enabled touchscreens, tablets and multi-GPU desktop monsters that can chew through render tasks as fast as you can throw them at them. Plus, they can be upgraded with stock components to make your investment last. There is nothing to be afraid of whichever computer platform you choose to use. Both options are interchangeable, and there has never been a better time to craft a bespoke creative solution for your needs. Related articles: The best VR headsets for 2018 How to master creature anatomy Review: Marvelous Designer 7 View the full article

Web development is a rapidly growing field, and there's still plenty of room for you to get your start in this profession. You just need the right skills. Dive head-first into the field with the Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 and you'll pick up the talents you need in no time. It's on sale now for just $25 (approx. £18). The Complete Web Development Course 2.0 is the perfect opportunity to pick up the web development skills that you've always wanted to have. No matter your skill level, this professionally taught course will help you learn the fundamentals of web development and provide you with a complete understanding of essential programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. Once you have the basics down, you'll move up to full, creative projects that will help you put your new skills to the test. The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 usually retails for $149, but you can save 83 per cent on that price right now. That means you pay just $25 (approx. £18) for a great course that could launch your next career, so grab this deal today. About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: How to use Markdown in web development 20 useful tools for web developers 6 must-have skills for young web developers View the full article

Design is an integral part of TED’s DNA. After all, that’s what the D in TED stands for: technology, education, design. Since way back in 1984, the nonprofit has been turning out design inspiration in the form of short talks that change the way we see the world. UX design has grown up with TED, coming to maturity alongside the TED audience. So it’s no surprise that TED’s online platform is replete with talks that can inspire and improve UX design processes and outcomes. From talks on the future of prototyping user interfaces to comical musings on how to build a user-focused team, TED offers something for UX designers of every stripe. These 10 TED talks shine a light on user experience design and innovative ways of building user-friendly products. 01. Got a wicked problem? Tell me how you make toast Have a problem; make toast. Or, to put it more finely, think about the process you go through to make toast, and then apply that systematic approach to your original problem. That’s the advice of designer and problem-solver Tom Wujec. In his TED talk, Wujec walks through a simple design exercise that "reveals unexpected truths about the way we think about things". By breaking down "wicked problems" into mental models UX-ers can use to get to the heart of the why users act like they do. 02. Simplicity sells Ever thought of exposing UI blunders through some snappy musical numbers? Us neither, but former New York Times columnist and tech nerd David Pogue does just that. In Simplicity Sells, Pogue exposes the very worst UIs he’s seen, and coins the phrase 'software rage' – that feeling users get from crummy interfaces. From Microsoft to Dell, no interface is safe from Pogue’s song and dance takedown. The Steve Jobs song is a must-hear. 03. The first secret of design is… noticing He’s the man behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat, so it’s safe to say that product creator Tony Fadell knows a thing or two about great design. In his feel-good TED talk, Fadell lets us into his secrets for driving positive change in design. From understanding habituation and neuroscience to learning from Jerry Seinfeld, Fadell has some awesome tips for building better product solutions. 04. 404, the story of a page not found Uh oh. Looks like your user just got 404-ed. No one likes that. In fact, landing on a 404 is so unpleasant that it’s akin to a relationship break-up, claims Renny Gleeson. But it doesn’t have to be the case. In this TED talk, Gleeson reveals how he and his tech startup created better 404 experiences for users. The key is in having empathy for the user and recognising the UX design potential of 404s. After all, says Gleeson, “little things done right actually matter. Well-designed moments build brands.” 05. The Beauty of Data Visualization Our digital lives are full of complex data. From media trends to Facebook statuses, we as users are continually asked to parse, sort and understand ever larger quantities of information. It’s up to UI and UX designers, says David McCandless, to make that data comprehensible. In this talk McCandless, a data journalist, discusses how designers can combat ‘information glut’ by designing information so it makes sense and tells stories. There are some great visuals and interesting insights on how context, psychology and empathy help users understand the world around them. Next page: 5 more TED talks to help you improve your UX design 06. How Airbnb designs for trust As the co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia knows a thing or two about designing delightful digital experiences. In this talk, Gebbia tells the story of how Airbnb got started, and how he and his UX team create UIs that build trust. Gebbia explains the ‘stranger bias’ that Airbnb users have to overcome by describing his own anxiety the first time he let a stranger sleep on an airbed in his apartment. In this talk, he also reveals how Airbnb uses of microcopy, user flows and microinteractions to build experiences that make strangers into friends. 07. How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too) Facebook’s Like and Share buttons are two of the most-viewed UI elements ever created. Get them right, and you can make life more delightful for billions of users, points out Margaret Gould Stewart; but get them wrong and you’ve got a riot on your hands. As director of product design at the social media behemoth, Stewart has to be on top of the how and why of designing user experiences on a massive scale. Using real-world examples, she reveals three tips for how to design user interfaces for the entire world’s population. 08. Designers, think big! What happens if you move from plain old ‘design’ to ‘design thinking’? That’s the question posed by CEO of IDEO Tim Brown in this talk. Brown argues that focusing on the small stuff in design isn’t working for us, and it’s time to make the shift to design thinking. Starting with the example of the original design thinker, 19th century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Brown explains that design thinking can help us visualise the whole user experience and create new human-centric solutions through prototyping, collaboration and participatory design. Through inspiring examples of design thinking in the developing world, Brown breaks down of the benefits of thinking big in design. 09. Reinventing User Experience Design. You’re thinking about it wrong. At least that’s what Kes Sampanthar thinks. We all want to create engaging products, but counting clicks isn’t the way to do it. Instead of thinking about aesthetics or even usability, we have to think about motivating users. We need Sampanthar’s design paradigm, ‘motivational design’. Through a murder mystery story set in the Louvre and other fun stories, Sampanthar explains the psychology behind motivational design and how tapping into human pleasure centres can help us make engaging products. 10. The best computer interface? Maybe… your hands Mobile gestures. Click rates. Pixels. Just some of the things that UI and UX designers won’t have to worry about any more if designer James Patten is right. He thinks the future might well involve digital information made visceral through incorporating physicality into a UI. In this talk, Patten draws on his experience in robotics and kinetics to explore how we can use physical objects in interface design. Drafting in an army of mini robots, Patten experiments with taking the user interface off the screen and putting it into our own hands – literally. Related articles: The ultimate guide to user experience The 5 biggest UX design trends for 2018 10 rules of great user experience View the full article

Choosing the right typeface for your projects can be a tricky task, especially if you can’t find what you’re looking for. Despite a sea of typefaces online, often the best option for your work is to create your own font. That’s a challenge the graphic design students at Shillington College regularly face. They’re set the task of crafting their own fonts, taking into account weight, style, condensation, width, slant and everything they might need to create a bespoke typeface that fits a specific brief. And they’ve seriously come up with the goods. We’ve showcased a couple of stunning typeface designs here, but there’s a lot more where they came from. Head over to the Shillington blog now to be inspired. View the full article

When it comes to logo design, simple and memorable graphic shapes are often the most effective when it comes to building brand recognition. A great logo will work at all sizes, and will also translate effortlessly into black-and-white for different applications. Logos that rely on their use of colours to make sense, or depend on fine, intricate details, will face problems in certain applications. One sure-fire way to ensure your logo is fit for purpose is to give it the silhouette test. Convert it to monochrome, and study its outline: is it still instantly recognisable? Read on to be inspired by five big-brand symbols that are defined by their distinctive silhouettes... 01. Apple Apple's bite mark helps distinguish it as an apple The much-lauded Apple logo features in more than its fair share of best logo roundups, but it has particular reason to be included here. There are many myths about the bite in the eponymous apple, ranging from Eve's transgressions in the Garden of Eden, to Alan Turing's tragic suicide by biting a fruit laced with cyanide. However, designer Rob Janoff admitted to a much more prosaic reason behind the decision. An apple with a bite out of it – even shown very small – looks like an apple, and not a cherry. That practical decision demonstrates the importance of having a strong, instantly recognisable silhouette. The accompanying myths just add extra layers of meaning, intentional or not. Following Steve Jobs' death, Hong Kong-based graphic design student Jonathan Mak took the significance of the bite mark to a whole new level, replacing it with a simple silhouette of Jobs' face. Design student Jonathan Mak modified the silhouette in a touching tribute to Steve Jobs The sombre tribute touched a nerve with Apple's fanbase, and the image went viral globally. Mak was inundated with thousands of messages about his design, and the iconic status of the bite mark was further cemented in public consciousness. 02. Twitter Twitter's 2012 rebrand pared back the once messy silhouette to a clean geometric icon When DesignStudio was brought on board to help rebrand Twitter back in 2012, much of the focus was placed on how the icon was created. The team even followed the growing trend for using visible construction lines to explain the building blocks of the logo. Ultimately, the once fairly detailed bird – which in 2006 was depicted sitting on a perch and looking to the left, and later evolved into a more characterful bird in flight, complete with fluffy quiff – was pared right back to a clean, satisfyingly geometric silhouette. In short, it felt like Twitter had grown up. According to Twitter, the new logo is born from a "love for ornithology, design within creative constraints, and simple geometry". The above video demonstrates how three sets of overlapping circles – representative of how social networks, interests and ideas intersect in your Twitter feed – define the shape of the bird. 03. Playboy Unchanged since the 1950s, the infamous Playboy Bunny captures the brand's jaunty personality Originally designed by Art Paul, Playboy's cheeky, tongue-in-cheek emblem knowingly plays on the humorous sexual connotations of rabbits, without descending into smut or seediness. Introduced for the second issue of the magazine in 1953, the now infamous Playboy Bunny has stayed a constant through decades of increasingly liberal approaches to sexuality, as well as the proliferation of pornography – testament to the timelessness of its design. Its crisp silhouette, with the circular eye punched out of the outline of the rabbit's face, and the bow tie defined with minimal linework, works effectively in monochrome – a palette designed to evoke luxury, professionalism and class. Whatever your take on the Playboy brand and its place in the modern world, no one can deny the effectiveness of the stylised bunny silhouette that's come to define it. 04. Nike Nike's Swoosh is one of the most instantly recognisable silhouettes in the world of logo design Another familiar sight on best-ever logos lists, the Nike Swoosh was famously created by design student Carolyn Davidson for the princely sum of $35. Its simplicity makes its silhouette even more compelling, and like Apple, it is regularly seen in both black and white versions without an accompanying wordmark. The Swoosh must function at all manner of scales and types of application, from tiny on a sponsorship document, to an embroidered logo on a piece of clothing, to huge on a billboard. While it is widely assumed to be a 'tick', the original inspiration for the Swoosh was in fact the silhouette of a wing – a reference to Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Regardless of its origins, however, the fact remains that a simple yet ownable shape like this will pass the silhouette test every time. 05. WWF The legibility of WWF's panda suffers when the colours are reversed Our fifth example, World Wildlife Federation, is rather an anomaly on this list, as it shows the limitations of using black and white to represent the actual colours of the thing being depicted, rather than just a relatively abstract shape. WWF makes clever use of negative space in its famous panda emblem, the black silhouette neatly defining the shape of the face without the need for a hard outline. But when the colours are reversed, while recognisable, the negative image loses the essence of 'panda'. Situations like this need to be addressed in brand usage guidelines, to make sure the logo is correctly presented. Grey London changed the panda to a polar bear to raise awareness of climate change Back in 2016, Grey London took it upon itself to reinterpret the much-loved WWF emblem. As part of a campaign to raise awareness of climate change, the agency replaced the panda with its considerably more-endangered counterpart, the polar bear. Using the same basic principle of the black areas defining the white, Grey stripped it right back to an eyes, nose and mouth, so the outline of the bear fades into nothingness, to represent its decline towards extinction. As part of the campaign, Grey offered the reworked logo to WWF to use for free – but the offer was never taken up. Like the original logo, however, the clever concept had its limitations and the idea falls apart when the colours are reversed. Read more: 5 small-client rebrands that attracted big attention 8 iconic American logos that changed branding forever The top 20 US design studios of 2018 View the full article

Want to attend Generate New York, the conference for web designers, but biding your time for the perfect moment to pick up some tickets? Well Thursday 15 March might just be your lucky day. For 24-hours only – running from midnight to midnight EST – we're running a 50 per cent flash sale on full-price tickets to the show, meaning you’ll only pay $224.50 for a two-day conference pass. But don’t worry: you’ll be getting just as much bang for your reduced buck. Get full access to conference speakers First of all, your ticket will grant you access to conference sessions from some of the industry’s best and brightest. For example, Val Head, web animation expert, author, and design evangelist at Adobe, will be exploring the full spectrum of animation options, from CSS to React Motion, and showing which are the best fit for common UI design tasks. Meanwhile, Abby Covert, staff information architect at Etsy, will tackle the challenges designers face merging languages and structures across multiple channels and organisations, and introduce you to tools and concepts that will strengthen your information architecture. Crammed with talented devs and designers at the top of their game, the conference schedule also features: Amélie Lamont, product designer, thoughtbot Brenda Storer, front-end developer and designer, thoughtbot Cynthia Savard Saucier, director of design, Shopify Dan Mall, director, SuperFriendly Daniel Schutzsmith, digital technology manager, web developer and professor, Amnesty International USA Donna Lichaw, author, speaker and consultant, donnalichaw.com Henri Helvetica, developer Jason Lengstorf, developer, designer and author, IBM Jenn Lukas, founder, Ladies in Tech Jenn Schiffer, community engineer, Glitch.com Joseph Palumbo, customer success expert, Media Temple Margot Bloomstein, author and founder, Appropriate, Inc Wes Bos, full-stack JavaScript developer Enjoy additional perks and benefits But your ticket doesn’t just entitle you to two days of conference sessions from these superlative industry speakers. Tickets also include: A full-day workshop of your choice (with the three-day pass) Lunch and refreshments every day Goodie bag including net magazine Free drinks at the after party Access to videos of all the sessions Free workshops by our sponsors in the break so you can squeeze in some extra learning So if you want to get your hands on tickets for Generate New York 25 - 27 April 2018, don’t hesitate: get yours now. Related articles: 10 reasons to attend Generate NYC 2018 Learn more about APIs at Generate Generate New York is back for 2018 View the full article

Products receiving the most patches included Microsoft browsers and browser-related technologies such as the company’s JavaScript engine Chakra. View the full article

Researchers on Tuesday disclosed over a dozen critical security vulnerabilities in several AMD chips, opening them up for attackers who want to steal sensitive data and install malware on AMD servers, workstations and laptops. View the full article

You're reading Trending Ways to Use Color in Web Design, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Color is a staple design element we see everywhere in our lives such as on every website we visit or app we use. Right now you’re seeing the colors of Designmodo. If you’re reading this article on a “read it later” kind of app you’re seeing the colors of that app. No brainer. The thing […] View the full article

Samba released fixes for its networking software to address two critical vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to change admin password or launch DoS attacks. View the full article

Cyber espionage group APT15 is back, this time stealing sensitive data from a UK government contractor. View the full article

The best JavaScript frameworks make coding faster and easier, so you can focus on designing the perfect website layout – instead of becoming bogged down in code. A number of great ones have popped up on the market in recent years. In this article, we'll take a look at the biggest and best JavaScript frameworks around, and explore how to get the best out of them for your next projects. We'll look at Vue.js, React, AngularJS, Polymer and Aurelia – you can use the drop-down menu above to jump to the framework you want to explore first. Most of these frameworks are open source projects, too, so you can dig in and see how they work – or even contribute yourself. Vue.js Best for: Beginners Lightweight applications with a small footprint Vue.js is a progressive JavaScript framework for building user interfaces. An open source project (see the GitHub repo here), its ideal for beginners. The main library is focused on the view layer and all templates are valid HTML, making it easy to pick up. In the following two mini-tutorials, we'll walk through how to use Vue to manage multiple data stores, and speed up the first load to improve your site's performance. 01. Manage state with Vue As with any component-based library, managing state in Vue can be tricky. While the application is small, it’s possible to keep things in sync by emitting events when values change. However, this can become brittle and prone to errors as the application grows, so it may be better to start out with a more centralised solution. If you’re familiar with Flux and Redux, Vuex works in much the same way. State is held in one centralised location and is linked to the main Vue application. Everything that happens within the application is reflected somewhere within that state. Components can select what information is relevant to them and be notified if it changes, much like if it was part of its internal state. A Vuex store is made up of four things: the state, getters, mutations and actions. The state is a single object that holds all the necessary data for the entire application. The way this object gets structured depends on the project, but would typically hold at least one value for each view. Getters work like computed properties do inside components. Their value is derived from the state and any parameters passed into it. They can be used to filter lists without having to duplicate that logic inside every component that uses that list. The state cannot be edited directly. Any updates must be performed through mutation methods supplied inside the store. These are usually simple actions that perform one change at a time. Each mutation method receives the state as an argument, which is then updated with the values needed to change. Mutations need to be synchronous in order for Vuex to understand what has changed. For asynchronous logic – like a server call – actions can be used instead. Actions can return Promises, which lets Vuex know that the result will change in the future as well as enabling developers to chain actions together. To perform a mutation, they have to be committed to the store by calling commit() and passing the name of the mutation method required. Actions need to be dispatched in a similar way with dispatch(). It’s good practice to have actions commit mutations rather than commit them manually. That way, all updating logic is held together in the same place. Components can then dispatch the actions directly, so long as they are mapped using the mapActions() method supplied by Vuex. To avoid overcomplicating things, the store can also be broken up into individual modules that look after their own slice of the state. Each module can register its own state, getters, mutations and actions. State is combined between each module and grouped by their module name, in much the same way as combineReducers() works within Redux.pport. 02. Explore lazy load routes By default, the entire contents of the application end up inside one JavaScript file, which can result in a slow page load. A lot of that content is never used on the first screen the user visits. Instead it can be split off from the main bundle and loaded in as and when needed. Vue makes this process incredibly simple to set up, as vue-router has built-in support for lazy loading. Vue supports using dynamic imports to define components. These return Promises, which resolve to the component itself. The router can then use that component to render the page like normal. These work alongside code splitting built in to Webpack, which makes it possible to use features like magic comments to define how components should be split. Next page: React Best for: 
Sites and applications with complex view logic Quick prototypes with a low barrier to entry Launched in 2013, React is maintained by Facebook and Instagram, alongside a community of developers. It's component-based and declarative, and you can also use it to power mobile apps via React Native. Here, we'll explain how to keep your code clean by separating your concerns, move contents outside of the root component, and ensure errors don't destabilise your application. Use container and presentational components As with any project, it's important to keep a separation of concerns. All React applications start off simple. As they grow, it can be tempting to keep adding logic to the same few components. In theory, this simplifies things by reducing the number of moving parts. When problems arise, however, these large components become prone to errors that are difficult to debug. React and JSX encourage the creation on multiple small components to keep things as simple as possible. While breaking the interface down into smaller chunks can help with organisation, having a further separation between how a component works and what it looks like provides greater flexibility. Container and presentational components are special names given to this separation. The container's job is to manage state and deal with interfacing with other parts of the application such as Redux, while the presentational component deals solely with providing the interface. A container component will often be in charge of a small section of the UI, like a tweet. It will hold all the workings of that component – from storing state, like the number of likes, to the methods required for interaction, such as a mechanism for liking that tweet. If the application makes use of external libraries, include at this point. For example, Redux's connect method would provide the container with a way of dispatching actions to the store without worrying the presentational component. Containers will never render their 
own UI and will instead render 
another component – the presentational component. This component will be passed props that detail all the information needed to render the view. If it needs to provide interactivity, the container will then pass down methods for this as well, which can be called like any other method. Having this separation encourages developers to keep things as simple 
as possible. If a container is starting 
to grow too large, it makes it easy 
to break off into a smaller set 
of components. If the inner workings of a component, such as its state, needs to change, this technique allows the presentational component to remain unaffected. This also means this component can be used somewhere else in the application without needing to adjust how it functions. As long as it keeps getting served the same data it will continue to work. Render with portals React 16 introduced the ability to return lots of different types of data from a component. While previously it had to be either a single component or 'null', the latest version allows strings, numbers, arrays and a new concept called 'portals'. The return value of a render() method decides what React displays, which is shown at that point in the component hierarchy. Portals allow React to render any of these return types outside of the component they were called from. These can be other parts of the page completely separate from the main application. They still form part of React and work just the same as any component, but are able to reach outside of the normal confines of 
the root container. A typical use case of this technique would be to trigger modal windows. To get correct positioning, overlay 
and accessibility requirements out 
of a modal it ideally needs to sit as a direct descendant of the <body>. The problem is, the root of a single page application will likely take up that position. Components managing modals will either need to trigger something in the root component, or render it out of place. Here the Modal component returns a portal. The create function for it takes two arguments – what needs to be rendered and where it should render it. The second parameter is a regular DOM node reference, rather than anything specific to React. In this example, it references a <div> at the top of the DOM tree that is a sibling of the main app container. It is possible to target any node, visible or not, as with any JavaScript. To use it, another component can summon Modal just like any other component. It will 
then display its contents in the targeted node. Because React events are synthetic, they are capable of bubbling up from the portal contents to the containing component, rather than the DOM node they are rendered in. In the modal example, this means that 
the summoning component can 
also handle its state, such as its visibility or contents. Establish error boundaries Unhandled errors can cause havoc in a JavaScript application. Without catching them as they happen, methods can stop executing half way. This can cause unpredictable behaviour if the user continues and is a bad experience all around. Previous versions of React did not cope with these situations well. If an error occurred in a nested component, it would leave its parents in limbo. The component state object would be stuck in the middle of performing an operation that could end up locking up the interface. As of version 16, the way React handles errors has changed. Now an error inside any component would unmount the entire application. While that would stop issues arising with an unstable state, it doesn't lend itself well to a good user experience. To avoid this, we can create a special component called an error boundary to ring-fence parts of the application from the rest. Any errors that happen inside children of the boundary will not cause issues to those outside of it. Error boundaries work a lot like typical catch blocks in JavaScript. When an error occurs somewhere inside the component tree, it will be caught by the componentDidCatch() method, which receives the error thrown along with a stack trace. When that gets called it is an opportunity to replace the tree with a fresh interface – typically an error message. Since it only renders its children, this component 
can wrap others 
to catch any errors that happen within it. The components chosen for this will vary by application, but error boundaries can be placed wherever they are needed, including inside other boundaries. Error boundary components shouldn't be too complicated. If an error occurs inside of a boundary, it will bubble up to the next boundary up. Failing that, it will unmount the whole application as usual. Next page: AngularJS Best for: Large projects in need of structure 
Applications with lots of changing data AngularJS is an open source frontend web application framework developed by Google. It offers declarative templates with data-binding, MVW, MVVM, MVC, and dependency injection, all implemented using pure client-side JavaScript. Here, we'll show you how to use AngularJS to create reusable code blocks known as custom decorators, serve content to your users quicker, and create performant and easy to control animations with ease. Create custom decorators TypeScript is a superset that sits on top of JavaScript. It supplies features such as static typing, classes and interfaces that are lacking in the native language. This means that when creating large applications developers can get feedback on how best to work with external code and avoid unnecessary bugs. Angular is built exclusively on top of TypeScript, so it is important to understand how to utilise it correctly. Combining the strengths of both provides a solid foundation for the application as it grows. There are not many better techniques to demonstrate this than with decorators. Decorators are special functions designed to supply behaviour to whatever it is applied to. Angular makes extensive use of them to provide hints to the compiler, like with @Component on classes or @Input on properties. The aim is to make these functions as reusable as possible and are often used to provide utility functions, such as logging. In the example above, @ClassLogger is supplied to a component to log to the console when certain lifecycle hooks are fired. This could be applied to any component to track its behaviour. The ClassLogger example above returns a function, which enables us 
to customise the behaviour of the decorator as it is created. This is known as the decorator factory pattern, which is used by Angular 
to create its own decorators. To apply a decorator, it needs to be positioned just before what it is decorating. Because of the way they are designed, decorators can be stacked on top of each other, including Angular's own. TypeScript will chain these decorators together and combine their behaviours. Decorators are not just limited to classes. They can be applied to properties, methods and parameters inside of them as well. All of these follow similar patterns, but are slightly different in their implementations. This is an example of a plain method decorator. These take three arguments – the object targeted, the name of the method, and the descriptor that provides details on its implementation. By hooking into the value of that descriptor we can replace the behaviour of the method based on 
the needs of the decorator. Build platform-level animations Animations are a great way to introduce a friendly side to an interface. But trying to control animations in JavaScript can be problematic. Adjusting dimensions like height is bad for performance, while toggling classes 
can quickly get confusing. The Web Animations API is a good approach, but working with it inside Angular can be tricky. Angular provides a module that enables components to be animated by integrating with the properties already within the class. It uses a syntax similar to CSS-based animations, which gets passed in as component metadata. Each animation is defined by a 'trigger' – a grouping of states and transition effects. Each state is a string value that, when matched, applies the associated styles to the element. The transition values define different ways the element should move between those states. In this example, once the value bound to hidden evaluates to true, the element will shrink out of view. Two other special states are also defined: void and *. The void state relates to a component that was not in the view at the time and can be used to animate it in or out. The wildcard * will match with any state and could be used to provide a dimming effect while any transition occurs. Inside the template, the trigger is bound to a value within the component that represents the state. As that value changes, as does the state of the animation. That bound value can be supplied either as a plain property or as the output of a method, but the result needs to evaluate into a string that can be matched against an animation state. These animations also provide callbacks such as when they start 
or stop. This can be useful for removing components that are 
no longer visible. Serve content quicker with server rendering HTML parsers struggle with JavaScript frameworks. Web crawlers are often not sophisticated enough to understand how Angular works, so they only see a single, blank element and not the whole application. By rendering the application on the server, it sends down an initial view for the users to look at while Angular and the rest of the functionality downloads in the background. Once the application arrives, it silently picks up from where the server left off. The tools needed to achieve this in Angular are now a native part of the platform as of version 4. With a bit of set up, any application can be server rendered with just a few tweaks. Both server and browser builds need their own modules, but share a lot of common logic. Both need a special version of BrowserModule, which allows Angular to replace the contents on-screen when it loads in. The server also needs ServerModule to generate the appropriate HTML. Servers also need their own entry points where they can bootstrap their unique behaviours as necessary. That behaviour depends on the app, but will also likely mirror much of the main browser entry point. If using the CLI, that also needs to be aware of how to build the project for the server by pointing to the new entry point. This can be triggered by using the "--app" flag when building 
for the server. The application is now ready to be server rendered. Implementations will vary based on the server technology used, but the base principles remain the same. For example, Angular provide an Express engine for Node, which can be used to populate the index page based on the request sent. All the server needs to do is serve that file. Server rendering is a complex subject with many edge cases (look here for more information). Next page: Polymer Best for: Combining with other platforms and frameworks Working with JavaScript standards Polymer is a lightweight library designed to help you take full advantage of Web Components. Read on to find out how to use it to create pain-free forms, bundle your components to keep requests low and sizes small, and finally how to upgrade to the latest Polymer release: 3.0. Work with forms Custom elements are part of the browser. Once they are set up they work like any native element would do on the page. Most of the time, Polymer is just bridging the gap between now and what custom elements will be capable of in the future, along with bringing features like data binding. One place where custom elements shine is their use as form inputs. Native input types in browsers are limited at best, but provide a reliable way of sending data. In cases where a suitable input isn't available – such as in an autocomplete field, for example – then custom elements can provide a suitable drop-in solution. As their work is performed within the shadow DOM, however, custom input values will not get submitted alongside regular form elements like usual. Browsers will just skip over them without looking at their contents. One way around this is to use an <iron-form> component, which is provided by the Polymer team. This component wraps around an existing form and will find any values either as a native input or custom element. Provided a component exposes a form value somewhere within the element, it will be detected and sent like usual. In cases where a custom element does not expose an input, it's still possible to use that element within a form, provided it exposes a property that can be bound to. If <my-input> exposes a property like "value" to hook into we can pull that value out as part of a two-way binding. The value can then be read out into a separate hidden input as part of the main form. It can be transformed at this point into a string to make it suitable for form transmission. Forms not managed by Polymer that would need to make use of these bindings, the Polymer team also provide a <dom-bind> component to automatically bind these values. Bundle components One of Polymer's biggest advantages is that components can be imported and used without any need for a build process. As optimised as these imports may be, each component requires a fresh request, which slows things down. While HTTP/2 would speed things up in newer browsers, those who do not support it will have a severely degraded experience. For those users, files should be bundled together. If a project is set up using the Polymer CLI, bundling is already built in to the project. By running polymer build, the tool will collect all components throughout the project and inline any subcomponents they use. This cuts down on requests, removes unnecessary comments and minifies to reduce the file size. It also has the added benefit of creating separate bundles for both ES5 and ES2015 to support all browsers. Outside of Polymer CLI, applications can still be bundled using the separate Polymer Bundler library. This works much like the CLI, but is more of a manual process. By supplying a component, it will sift through the imports of the file, 
inline their contents, and output a bundled file. Polymer Bundler has a few separate options to customise the output. For example, developers can choose to keep comments or only inline specific components. Upgrade to Polymer 3.0 The philosophy behind Polymer is to 'use the platform': instead of fighting against browser features, work with them to make the experience better for everyone. HTML imports are a key part of Polymer 2, but are being removed from the web components specification moving forward. Polymer 3.0 changes the way that components are written to work with more established standards. While no breaking changes are made with the framework itself, it's important 
to know how the syntax changes 
in this new version. First thing to note is that Polymer is migrating away from Bower as a package manager. To keep up with the way developers work, npm will become the home of Polymer, as well as any related components in the future. To avoid using HTML imports, components are imported as JavaScript modules using the existing standardised syntax. The major difference inside a component is that the class is now exported directly. This enables the module import <script> tag to 
work correctly. Any other components can be included by using ES2015 import statements within this file. Finally, templates have been moved into the class and work 
with template literals. A project by the Polymer team called lit-html is working to provide the same flexibility as <template> tags 
along with the efficiency of 
selective DOM manipulation. Next page: Aurelia Best for: Simple applications with 
little setup Developing alongside 
web standards Aurelia is a JavaScript client framework for web, mobile and desktop. It's written with next-gen ECMAScript, integrates with Web Components and has no external dependencies. Read on for two mini-tutorials, showing you how to change how properties display value and function, and how to use Aurelia to check values in forms. 01. Use value converters Sometimes, when developing components, the values being stored do not lend themselves well to being displayed in a view. A Date object, for example, has an unhelpful value when converted to a string, which requires developers to make special conversion methods just to show values correctly. To get around this problem, Aurelia provides a mechanism to use classes to change values, known as value converters. These can take any kind of value, apply some kind of processing to it, and output that changed value in place of the original. They work similar to pipes in Angular or filters in template languages like Twig. Most will be one way – from the model to the view. But they can also work the other way. The same logic applies, but by using fromView instead of toView, values can be adjusted before they are returned back to the model. A good use-case for this would be to format user input directly from the bind on the element. In this example, it will capitalise every word that is entered, which may be useful for a naming field. They can also be chained together, which encourages the creation of composable converters that can have different uses across the application. One converter could filter an array of values, which then passes to another that sorts them. Converters can also be given simple arguments that can alter the way they behave. Instead of creating different converters to perform similar filtering, create one that takes the type of filter to be performed as an argument. While only one argument is allowed, they can be chained together to achieve the same effect. 02. Try framework-level form validation Validation is an important part of any application. Users need to be putting the correct information into forms for everything to work correctly. If they do not, they should be warned of the fact as early as possible. While validation can often be a tricky process, Aurelia has support for validating properties built right into the framework. As long as form values are bound to class properties, Aurelia can check that they are correct whenever it makes sense to the application. Aurelia provides a ValidationController, which takes instructions from the class, looks over the associated properties and supplies the template with any checks that have failed. Each controller requires a single ValidationRules class that defines what's to be checked. These are all chained together, which enables the controller to logically flow through the checks dependant on the options that are passed. Each ruleset begins with a call to ensure(), which takes the name of 
the property being checked. Any commands that follow will apply 
to that property. Next are the rules. There are plenty of built-in options like required() or email() that cover common scenarios. Anything else can use satisfies(), which takes a function that returns either a Boolean or a Promise that passes or fails the check. After the rules come any customisations of that check, for example the error message to display. Rules provide default messages, but these can be overridden if necessary. Finally, calling on() applies the ruleset to the class specified. If it is being defined from within the constructor of the class, it can be called with this instead. By default, validation will be fired whenever a bound property's input element is blurred. This can be changed to happen either when the property changes, or it can be triggered manually. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 269 or subscribe. Read more: What’s new in Angular 4? 20 JavaScript tools to blow your mind 12 common JavaScript questions answered View the full article

Adobe has today announced a raft of time-saving updates in Adobe XD CC 2018 that sees the all-in-one UX/UI app work more efficiently with Photoshop CC and rival app Sketch. Now, you can import Photoshop and Sketch assets directly into XD, with files automatically converting to XD files. This makes it possible to create interactive prototypes more quickly. In addition, you can also now copy and paste symbols between XD documents in one simple step. Previously, they needed to be converted manually. Get Adobe Creative Cloud now Elsewhere in Adobe XD, you can speed up your design process by styling grouped elements – this includes changing properties like the fill and stroke of grouped elements. And a scrolling artboard enhancement tops off the latest Adobe XD update. When prototyping, you can now edit the viewport of a scrollable artboard right on the canvas itself without having to exit and go to the Property Inspector. The result is a faster and easier prototyping experience. Seamless workflow Described by Adobe as part of its "commitment to working with the design community", the powerful updates are the latest example of the company actively listening to and implementing highly requested user feedback. Back in January, Adobe XD CC made initial steps to create seamless workflows by integrating Dropbox and other popular UX tools. Adobe XD users can now copy and paste symbols more easily Meanwhile, Adobe has also released a batch of new features in Illustrator CC and InDesign CC. In Illustrator, you can now import multiple PDFs as artboards; increase the size of anchor points, handles and bounding-box controls; and data merge with CSV files. Over in InDesign, you can now deploy Photoshop or Illustrator shortcuts, merge multiple paragraph borders, and see more detailed analytics for documents they published online. Related articles: 24 top Sketch plugins Review: Photoshop CC 2018 How to prototype a mobile app with Adobe XD View the full article

Macs are incredible machines right out of the box, but they aren't perfect. For some tasks, you have find an app to get the job done. The 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle has 10 beloved apps that promise to make your Mac the perfect machine. Get it on sale now for 96 per cent off the retail price. The 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle is packed with the programs you need to get the most out of your Mac. Headlining the bundle is BusyCal 3, an award-winning calendar app that will help you stay on top of your schedule and remain productive. You'll also find a two-year subscription to Cargo VPN, a must-have security tool for any person who travels with their Mac. HoudahSpot 4 can find files that even the Finder can't. And that's just a few of the amazing apps you'll get in this bundle. The 2018 Mac Essentials Bundle usually retails for $524.90 (around £377) but you can get it on sale right now for 96 per cent off the retail price. That's a huge saving on a collection of apps that no Mac should be without, so grab this deal today! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: 10 apps for endless design inspiration How to use animation in mobile apps Trends that will shape app design in 2018 View the full article

Amongst the multitude of problems frontend developers encounter during site creation, managing colours is definitely towards the very end of the list. Nevertheless, if you want a clean and consistent website layout, good colour management is important. Not only will this prevent your site from looking like a rainbow, but it also means you won't end up with multiple shades of the same colour appearing (which has happened to me quite a few times). This article will go through some top tips and tools I use regularly to manage colours on my web-based projects. 01. Put all your colours in a style guide Create a colour palette to keep you right First things first, before you create a site you should have a basic design style guide or colour palette that contains all the colours you plan to use. This doesn't mean you can't add colours to the site as you develop it, but it will help you keep track of colours you already have so they are not repeated with slightly different shades. Excluding black, grey and white, it's best to have no more than five different colours on your website. Of course, this is a general rule and there can be some exceptions. Need some more guidance? Take a look at our article on how to choose the perfect colour palette for your website. 02. Use one file just for colours One of the benefits of using CSS preprocessors such as Sass is the ability to separate styles into many different files and combine them to output CSS to one file. With that in mind I believe it's best to use one file for the main colours of your site, as well as any variations of them. This not only makes it easier to locate colour variables, but can also be a regular reminder of what and how many colours are being used. 03. Name up your colour variables Giving your colours variable names is a good tip It's best to give the main colours of your site variable names that correspond to the colours they actually are or what they look like, (also with custom namespacing, if you're that way inclined). So the yellow for a McDonald's site will have the variable name $mc-yellow. HTML colour names like AliceBlue and DeepPink (and the other 140 colours) don't require custom variable names, as they are already easy to remember. If you are using a library for colours that already contains variable names (such as Colour me Sass), you could make your custom variable equal the library variable, so $mc-yellow = $yellowGold. 04. Use Sass maps for colours This tip is optional, as it is dependant on the way you write CSS. Sass maps make it easier to assign class names to different colours and their relevant CSS property – very similar to looping in most programming languages. For example, if you would like a background colour class for all of the colours that are used on your site, this is the best and cleanest way to do it: This method is especially helpful for those who write Atomic CSS. 05. Use Sass for opacity, lightness and darkness Utilise the functions that come built into Sass For slight variations in the lightness, darkness or opacity of your main website colours, instead of specifying another string of HEX values it's best to use the functions that come built into Sass, along with your custom colour variable. For opacity use rgba, for lightness and darkness use their respective functions. I am fully aware that Sass also contains functions to mix colours as well as adjust hue and saturation, you are more than welcome to use these but I am yet to find a reason for them on my projects. Of course I recommend you give your colour variations custom variables to make it easy to remember them. 06. Use the custom palettes in developer tools The Chrome DevTools come with a great Eyedropper tool for picking colours. However, for experimenting with colours on background, borders, text and so on, I've found it incredibly useful to place the main site colours from my theme into a DevTools custom colour palette, which enables you to update your colours at the click of a button. 07. Try Pigments for Atom Last but not least is this fantastic package for Atom. Pigments simply highlights a colour string, hex or otherwise, with the actual colour it's representing. This sounds very basic, but Pigments becomes really useful when it's used with Sass. The plugin also highlights Sass colour variables with its respective colour wherever it is placed in the code, even in different files. It also changes colours instantly based on the opacity, or whatever Sass function that is applied to it. Pigments for Atom is more useful than you might think I can't begin to describe how helpful it is to have instant visual feedback of colour changes being made in the code. If you ignore all my other colour tips and just do this one I will consider this article a success. Related articles: The pro's guide to UI design 10 essential TED talks for UX designers 5 articles to improve your web design career View the full article

Whether you're a recent graduate, a seasoned pro applying for a new job, or a freelancer scouting for new work, you need a powerful portfolio. Curating and maintaining your portfolio should be an essential part of your professional life. In essence, your portfolio should showcase your professional work, demonstrating what you can do and the skills you have. But more than that, it should demonstrate your experience and the journey that you've been on to get there. Needless to say, it's no simple task, Through this article, I'll run through some essential portfolio advice and golden rules that can be applied to any creative discipline, to help you on your way to curating a killer portfolio. 01. Only the best will do Designer and Illustrator Becca Allen's online portfolio is clean and simple This is a no-brainer, but only include your very best work in your portfolio: it should be all killer and no filler. Although we're used to being ruthless in presenting only the key information when responding to a creative brief, it's often very hard to apply the same ruthless decision-making process to our own work. Ensure that all the pieces in your portfolio 100 per cent represent your best work. If you're unsure whether or not to feature a piece then, as a rule of thumb, you probably need to ditch it. The work featured should demonstrate the very best of what you can do. Any sub-par pieces will only let down the portfolio as a whole, and give the impression that you're unable to self-edit or be self-critical. I asked designer and illustrator Becca Allen about how she goes about selecting the work that appears in her portfolio. "My portfolio is 5 per cent of my work over the last five years. It's the pieces I slaved over, I am most proud of and through which I pushed my design knowledge. It covers a large variety of design practices to show my ability and strengths, but only the best pieces make the cut. Quality not quantity." 02. Choose the right format This is more of an interview-specific tip, really, as it should go without saying that you need an online portfolio in this day and age. If you don't, get one! There's no excuse for not having an online space to showcase your creative work – you don't even have to be able to code. There are so many off-the-peg solutions from Cargo to Squarespace, not to mention the likes of Tumblr, Wordpress and Behance. 5 hidden heroes of web design Back to the interview portfolio. This really depends on your output as it would make zero sense to print out motion work. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that traditional printed portfolios are largely redundant today. Put together an iPad presentation or even a full screen interactive PDF presentation that fits to your laptop screen and can be cycled through easily. Of course, take in actual physical copies of some of the more tactile pieces. If you've created a beautiful foil blocked and embossed book cover, that's the sort of thing people want to see and feel in the flesh. Printing that out and presenting it in a traditional format would do it no justice anyway. 03. Tell your story and present it well Pacing and presentation is key when curating a portfolio. Treat it like any other design job in the way that you present the work, and ensure that it has a beginning, middle and end. The exact aesthetic and typographic choices you make when creating your portfolio are yours and yours alone, but I'd suggest that less is more. It's better to let the work featured speak for itself and be the main event – not the vessel that holds the work. Whether it's a website or a printed folio, it should be easy to view each project clearly and identify who it was created for. "Your portfolio is a piece of artwork in itself – the order, composition, format, typography, colour palette," adds Allen. "It should all be considered just like a brief. A poorly designed portfolio could let the rest of the work down. It should be cohesive as a whole, from the first page to the last and all the pages in between." In terms of pacing, my suggestion would be to always start and end with key, knockout pieces so that the viewer is instantly impressed and left wanting more. This is easy to apply to a printed, PDF or showreel portfolio, but slightly harder online. With online portfolios, my advice as a commissioning art editor would, again, be 'less is more' in terms of the design and presentation. Make the work easy to view and then make the images big. I have definitely left illustrators and designers websites in the past, not because the work was poor but because the experience of trying to view it was so awful. Mike Sullivan, from digital design studio Mister, agrees with this. "When designing a portfolio, you want a website that is straightforward, easy to use and engaging," he says. "You want your work to be the focal point, rather than a distracting, design heavy folio." 04. Adapt for each job Your portfolio should be a living, breathing entity and should evolve over time, as your work does. It makes sense to periodically update your website and if you're looking for a job, always update what you intend to present in the interview. Don't be tempted to simply take along the same selection of work and present it in the same manner for every job role. The work within your folio should be thought about in terms of who you're going to be presenting it to. This, of course, applies to the samples that you send out when applying for the job in the first place as this is the first snapshot of your work that the potential employer will see. 05. Be confident Finally, be confident when curating your portfolio. This will speak volumes to viewers, telling people a little about yourself in the process. Choose your most interesting, dynamic and accomplished work, and pick pieces that you know you'll be able to talk about in a meeting or interview situation. Think about including some WIPS or alternative routes to a finished piece of work as this will provide valuable insight into your creative process and a talking point when face-to-face with someone. Mike Sullivan concurs: "Don't be afraid to specialise, if you want to work in editorial show this. If UX is your strong suite – show that and always share the process and backstory." Be careful not to overdo the 'behind the scenes' bit, though, and don't be tempted to retro-fit 'process' images as it'll only come off as contrived. We've all seen those spirograph logo diagrams. Now go forth and curate! Related articles: 32 brilliant design portfolios to inspire you 8 great examples of graphic design portfolios 10 tips for a killer design portfolio View the full article

You're reading wpDataTables: The Leading Plugin for Creating Tables and Charts in WordPress, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Most web designers love a challenge. Creating attractive and informative tables and charts can be one of them and a rewarding one as well. When large amounts of data are concerned however, creating a table or chart can quickly become a mind-numbing task, and an error-prone one as well. The good news for WordPress users […] View the full article

Even the best writers make some embarrassing mistakes. That's why they have editors. While your work and everyday texts don't have a second set of eyes to catch those slip-ups, you can still improve your writing with the help of WhiteSmoke. This powerful app will spot all the errors that sneak past you. Grab a lifetime subscription on sale for just $69.99 (approximately £51). WhiteSmoke is an essential tool, no matter your writing level. The powerful app makes use of advanced technology to proofread your work and identify grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style errors as you write. This versatile and easy-to-use app works on mobile and desktop, so no matter where you're writing, it can keep you from making common mistakes. Never send an email with a misspelled word again with the help of WhiteSmoke. A lifetime subscription to WhiteSmoke Premium usually retails for $399.95, but you can save 82 per cent on that price right now. Grab this must-have writing app on sale for just $69.99 (£51) and watch your writing improve in no time. About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: How to write engaging case studies for your portfolio How to write the perfect design dissertation How to write a great headline View the full article

Project case studies are one of the most important yet overlooked parts of building a design portfolio. In our efforts to design the perfect portfolio and showcase our visual work, we often rush the copy or omit it entirely, leaving only a shallow overview of who we are and what we can do. But dumping a bunch of photos on your project pages without any context sells your work short. Case studies are so crucial to the success of a designer's website that we built Semplice, a portfolio system for designers, entirely around them. (If you're after design portfolio and case study inspiration, check out the Semplice Showcase.) Your portfolio case studies are your opportunity to show prospective clients and employers how you think, how you work and what you can contribute to the world. Here are five examples of designers who do case studies well. 01. Liz Wells Wells includes videos of her website designs in action As a UX designer, Liz Wells has the unique task of making sitemaps, sketches, prototypes and user flows both visually engaging and concrete for her readers. She strikes the perfect balance in her portfolio case studies, highlighting work for brands like Google, Viceland and Spotify. Wells shares the project story from challenge to solution, taking care to explain her process along the way. Photos, videos – even early sketches torn from her notebooks – are thoughtfully photographed and laid out. All of it works together to not only showcase Wells' work, but also who she is and how she thinks. Early brainstorms offer insight into the project On my blog, I publish a series in which I interview top companies about how to get a design job where they work. Almost every company has voiced that they want to understand how you think and see your process. Think about your project in phases and share your work – even the less glamorous notes and sketches, if they’re important to the story – from beginning to end, and you’ll find you have plenty to say. 02. Melissa Deckhert Melissa Deckert’s case studies may be minimal but they pack a punch. Some, like her Food Quote GIFs case study for Tumblr, hook you in with a little secret that makes you look closer at the work. “Tumblr asked me to animate a few food quotes for an internal project,” Deckert explains in the case study. “Naturally I found a way to weave Beyonce into two out of three.” Short and sweet, but the last line creates intrigue and make you want to see more. If you hand-made a project, show off that fact Others case studies, like her In Every Moment We Are Alive book cover project, surprise you with a big reveal at the end. The case study works in reverse, leading with the finished product (the final book cover) and ending with a behind-the-scenes shot that makes you rethink what you saw before. Despite all our excuses, designers can write too. While it’s good to share your process, it also helps to remember the one person who is reading your website. They’re tired, they’re busy and they’ve probably reviewed dozens of portfolios today already. If your case study surprises them and brightens their day, it will be remembered. 03. Naim Sheriff Explain the visuals, don't just dump them on the page Naim Sheriff breaks his case studies into sections, making the page easy to read and digest. He leads with a brief paragraph introducing the client and task at hand, then shares each project element in bite-sized pieces. Most importantly, he explains his visuals instead of just dumping them on the page. Sheriff’s case studies are rich in imagery but he doesn’t just show, he tells. Just as with a newspaper or magazine article, it’s important to remember people are scanning your case studies. They may decide to read deeper if something catches their interest, or they may just skim and move on to the next project. Use your layout to guide them through the content and draw them deeper. Make your captions meaningful for scanners, and write easy-to-read paragraphs for the ones who stay. 04. Mackey Saturday Mackey Saturday’s case studies, like his whole portfolio, are clean and light. His identity designs for brands like Instagram, Oculus and Luxe stand on their own (as logos must do) but his case studies, complete with videos, polished photos and before and after GIFs, explain the nuances and decisions behind the finished product. Most notably, Saturday reveals his entire perspective on branding and design in his case studies. Before/after GIFs help emphasise design nuances “Redesigning a globally recognised logo is a polarising opportunity: Do you put your personal style on display, or stay true to what the brand’s users are familiar with?” he writes. “I believe the best designs channel a company’s culture, not the designer’s.” Don’t be afraid to share your opinion and perspective in your case study. While you should avoid sharing opinions like, 'I really hated working with this client', you should, where relevant, express your beliefs about design and how you applied them to your work. Tell people what inspires you, what principles guide you, share your feelings about the final result. This adds personality and helps visitors understand who you are as a designer. Read more tips for writing case studies here. 05. Kali & Karina Make it clear what your role was in the project Kali & Karina tee everything up for their case study readers with a strong introduction, including the project challenge, the project brief (in one sentence), as well as the partnering agency, their client and their role. They then follow through with their approach and the outcome. On of the most common portfolio mistakes is forgetting to mention your role and give credit to your team. Giving credit doesn’t make your work on the project any less impressive. In fact, it shows you can work well and collaborate with a team. It also helps a potential employer or client understand where your main skills lie and how you’ll fit into their team or project. Read more: Inspiring redesigns of design agency portfolios 6 ways to power up your portfolio How to start a blog: 10 pro tips View the full article

Sketch is the go-to UI tool of choice for many people working in the design industry. What you might not know is that there's a diverse and powerful community of people working to extend Sketch's functionality and features by building custom plugins. In this article, we'll share some of the best Sketch plugins around. The good news is that the management of your Sketch Plugins is even easier now. Plugins update automatically and outdated ones are disabled, plus a string of other small but highly intuitive improvements have been made. Making the plugin ecosystem even more useful is Sketch Cloud, a file-sharing service that anyone can sign up for, where you can view, download and comment on Sketch documents that have been shared publicly, or privately straight from Sketch. So let’s take a look the best Sketch Plugins around – the ones that could drastically change the way we design user interfaces. Once you've spotted one you'd like, read up on how to install Sketch plugins. 01. React Sketch.app This Sketch plugin helps you manage design systems Price: Free Summary: Render React components to Sketch Managing design assets can in Sketch can be difficult. This handy Sketch plugin provides an easier, more reliable way to manage your assets. Implement your designs in code as React components, then use this plugin to render them into sketch. It also makes it easier to fetch and implement real data into your Sketch files. React Sketch.app was developed by Airbnb for use with its design system, with the aim of helping bridge the gap between designers and developers. 02. Git Sketch Plugin Price: Free Summary: A Git client built into Sketch This plugin aims to bring version control into Sketch. It works by exporting an image for every part of the design, then generating pretty diffs so it's clear what changes have been made. By documenting each step of the design process, everyone on the team can see the how the design has progressed. Git Sketch Plugin was created by Mathieu Dutour, who has since moved on to creating a more comprehensive, paid version control system called Kactus. 03. Auto Layout Price: Free Summary: Responsive design for Sketch Group Resizing is a native Sketch feature that enables you to change the way objects react when your artboards or parent groups are resized. Auto Layout, built by AnimaApp, takes this functionality a little further. Where Group Resizing lets you create fluid elements and pin objects to a corner (think: :fixed positioning in CSS), Auto Layout also lets you offset elements by a certain number of pixels, define minimum and maximum dimensions for elements (think: min-: and max-: in CSS) and do everything that Group Resizing allows you to do but with a much less confusing UI. 04. Launchpad Launchpad is an efficient way of converting .sketch designs into static HTML websites Price: Free Summary: Convert designs to static HTML webpages LaunchPad offers an ultra-simple way to convert .sketch designs to static HTML webpages. It's from the same people who created Auto Layout, and in fact you can combine these two Sketch plugins to export responsive .sketch designs as HTML. LaunchPad doesn’t export a ‘finished’ design – you’re still expected to fine-tune loading times, tweak the code to ensure your design responds properly to different screen sizes, and optimise the code output to ensure the site loads quickly and runs smoothly. However, it does give you some pretty solid foundations to work with. After trying Launchpad out with a couple of low-fidelity mockups, I can see that the output is relatively simple, so there's no need to worry about bloated code. 05. ImageOptim ImageOptim brings a sophisticated image optimisation workflow Price: Free Summary: Image optimisation in Sketch While Sketch offers its own solution for optimising SVG files, there is no range of options for compressing JPG and PNG images. Since ImageOptim has been offering a solid service for a number of years, it makes sense that it would bring this functionality to Sketch. Any designer who cares about loading times and image optimisation (which should be all designers) should add ImageOptim to their toolbox. Note that as well as the plugin, you'll need the core ImageOptim app (free) installed on your macOS system, and you still need to mark layers as exportable in Sketch (navigate to ‘Export and Optimise All Assets’ to begin). 06. Magic Mirror Price: From $4/mo Summary: Image perspective transformation tool If you're trying to make impressive product mockups but have to keep jumping into Photoshop to deal with the tricky stuff, Magic Mirror could be a life-saver for you. It's an image perspective transformation tool, enabling you to create perspective mockups and other distorted effects without ever leaving Sketch. 07. Export More Make Mac-ready icons and animated GIFs with Export More Price: Free Summary: Export Mac-compatible icons and GIFs Previously two different plugins – Generate ICNS and Generate GIF – Nathan Rutzky's Export More brings them both together in a single package that addresses a couple of glaring holes in Sketch's export options. With it you can export icon designs as Mac-compatible ICNS files, and create simple animations that you can export as GIFs, all without ever having to step out of your Sketch workflow. This Sketch plugin is ideal for embracing the renewed enthusiasm for GIFs – while you could use Photoshop for or After Effects for your GIF design, you don't necessarily need a full-featured Adobe app, especially when creating relatively simple animations. Export More treats each artboard as an individual frame and combines them together. You can then choose whether to have the GIF play once or on a continuous loop. Navigate to ‘Plugins > Export More > Artboards to GIF’, choose the desired playback method (default or loop), then select the desired frame rate. 08. Sketch Style Inventory Pull all your designs into a single style to rule them all Price: Free Summary: Manage your styles easily Design can be a peculiar combination of freeform exploration and carefully structured process, and Sketch Style Inventory helps you marry the two: it gives you an overview of all the styles you've used and then helps you merge the styles of similar layers into one, enabling you to nail down a final style from all of your various experiments. 09. Day Player Price: Free Summary: Automatically generates placeholder images Adding placeholder images to a design is a necessary part of prototyping, but finding the actual images can be a pain. So rather than waste any time on it, leave it all to Day Player. This allows you to add customised placeholder images to any Sketch document, from a number of different placeholder image services, so the biggest decision you'll have to make will be whether you want to use Bill Murray, Nicolas Cage or kittens. 10. Marketch Turn your designs into lovely CSS with Marketch Price: Free Summary: Turn Sketch artboards into HTML and CSS If you want to retrieve CSS styles from your Sketch designs then a plugin like Marketch is absolutely essential. It enables you to export your Sketch artboards as a zip file full of HTML documents that you can then extract in order to pull out plenty of sweet CSS, ready to go. 11. Sync Sketch Plugin Convenient syncing for your design team Price: Free Summary: Share styles via Google Sheets Keeping your design team in sync is made easier by this plugin that holds your text styles, layer styles and colour palette in a Google Sheet. When you run the plugin it looks into the spreadsheet and changes your Sketch styles and colours to what's stored in there. A great way to share your styles instantly. 12. Segmented circles Segmented circle diagrams Price: Free Summary: Create precise circular graphics Here’s a quick way to make segmented circles for charts and diagrams. This plugin can produce various styles of circular diagram including dashed and tickmark circles, and the thicknesses are controlled via a simple list of comma-separated values. 13. Sketch Runner Sketch Runner is macOS’s Spotlight equivalent for Sketch Price: Free Summary: Spotlight for search Sketch is well-loved for its minimalist keyboard workflow. That being said, there’s always two or three keyboard shortcuts that you always seem to forget or confuse with another design app like Photoshop – and let’s not forget those less common tools and features that don’t have a keyboard shortcut and are hidden deep in the Sketch menu. Sketch Runner solves these issues and does so in a way that macOS users are familiar with – Sketch Runner is the macOS Spotlight, but for Sketch. 14. Icon Font Icon fonts in Sketch Price: Free Summary: Manage icon fonts Icon fonts are a highly efficient way of using icons in your web designs without having to export and optimise a ton of image assets. Typically we reference icon fonts in the <head> section of HTML webpages, as we do with CSS and JavaScript. However, using them in Sketch is a little more complicated. Thankfully, Icon Font makes it easy. After downloading and installing Sketch IconFont, download SVG font files or download this font bundle, which includes the font files for FontAwesome, Material Design Icons, Ion Icons and Simple Line Icons. When you’re done, navigate to ‘Plugins > Icon Font > Install a Font-Bundle’ , select the downloaded fonts from the Open File dialog, then navigate to ‘Plugins > Icon Font > Grid Insert > [your desired icon font]’ in order to insert an icon. Even if you’re intending to design a custom icon set for your design, having ready-made icons at your disposal can help you with rapid prototyping in the early stages of design, adding a little more clarity/fidelity to your low-fidelity mockups. 15. Find and Replace Price: Free Summary: Find and replace text in selected layers Text editors aren’t the only place you need find and replace – it’s useful in Sketch, too. This plugin has lots of advanced options, and it enables you to search for instances of particular words or phrases in the text in selected layers (and everything contained within), then replace it easily. Next page: More time-saving Sketch plugins 16. Content Generator Generate random placeholder content to populate your designs Price: Free Summary: Generate dummy data Built by Timur Carpeev, this tool lets you generate random content, whether that be people's names, addresses, profile pictures, background photos – you name it. The way it works is simple: create a shape (for images) or a text block, select it, go over to the plugins menu bar, run Content Generator, and choose from a variety of options for the kind of content you would like to see. This is extremely useful for populating designs. For example, to quickly mock up a friends list on an app, you could create a grid with circles and a label below, select them and, with this plugin, generate profile pictures and names in seconds. 17. Sketch Dockpreview Preview your work on the OS X Dock Price: Free Summary: Preview your icon design in the Dock This is a great utility if you are working on a Mac app icon – a simple shift+cmd+D will preview your current artboard on the OS X Dock, replacing the Sketch gem. Useless if you are working on a web page or an app, invaluable if you are working on icons. 18. Swap Styles Swap Styles uses a handy keyboard shortcut to swap styles with another later Price: Free Summary: Swap styles between two layers With the help of a handy keyboard shortcut, Swap Styles quite literally swaps styles with another layer. It's is a huge time saver when designing hover states. Let’s take a menu navigation, for example. A menu navigation would appear on every screen, although the active state would differ from screen to screen. On the settings screen the ‘Settings’ menu item might be underlined, and on the newsfeed screen the ‘Newsfeed’ menu item might be underlined. You usually have two options: either awkwardly move things around for every artboard, or create an insane amount of shared styles and/or symbols. In this example, Swap Styles lets you move the active state style to another menu item simply using the keyboard shortcut: cmd+ctrl+S. 19. Color Contrast Analyser Find out if your colour combinations meet MCAG guidelines with this plugin Price: Free Summary: Check your colour contrast meets accessibility guidelines To ensure your website is accessible to most users, there needs to be a certain amount of contrast between different design elements (for example, the background and body text). This contrast is measured using a formula defined by the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Color Contrast Analyser is a handy Sketch plugin that compares two colours and defines the contrast ratio between them. Contrast ratios are split into three levels (A, AA and AAA) – AA is the minimum specified by the WCAG. If only one layer is selected, the colour will automatically be compared against the background colour of the artboard. This plugin helps you make solid design decisions using internationally recognised design standards, and is a must-have for designers trying to improve both the readability and accessibility of their work. 20. Craft Craft is a super useful toolbox that supercharges your design and prototyping workflow Price: Free Summary: Suite of design and prototyping tools Craft does a lot more than sync your .sketch designs with the InVision web app. In fact, most of Craft’s features can be used without having an InVision subscription at all. Craft supercharges your design workflow by letting you build your design with realistic data and images, rapidly tile objects horizontally and vertically, and create libraries of styles and assets that can be stored in the cloud, shared between your team and accessed at any time. There's also Craft Prototype, which not only lets you demonstrate user flows, transitions and dynamic components such as fixed headers/footers, but also sync those demonstrations into the core InVision app with Craft Sync, bringing your entire team into the loop with an abundance of top-class communication, collaboration and design handoff tools. InVision app subscriptions start at $15 a month, which is suitable for small teams. However, Craft itself can be used for free. 21. Sketch to App Store This plugin creates and exports all the screenshots you need for the App Store Price: Free Summary: Generate App Store images easily This plugin got a lot of exposure when it came out, mostly because it's so brilliant. If you design or develop for iOS, you probably are familiar with the pain of creating a range of screenshots for the App Store, especially now there are two new iPhone screen sizes. What this plugin does is take your screenshot, create a simple but completely customisable template with an iPhone and text on top, and export 45 screenshot images: a set of images with the iPhone and text, and a set with just the screenshot (and an extra Android one), all in JPG format and ready to upload to iTunes Connect. 22. Sketch Notebook Plugin Price: From €4.99 Summary: Manage functional documentation and notes When it comes to presenting your designs to a client or co-worker, sometimes it's nice to explain the thinking behind it. This plugin will add a tasteful sidebar to the right of your document. You just have to select an element of the project, hit ctrl+alt+cmd+9 and type your comment. The plugin will add the appropriate number and respective comment in the sidebar. 23. Sketch Measure Add overlays with useful information to your designs Price: Free Summary: Overlays your design with specs If you work alongside other people, especially developers, it's great if you can deliver your final mockups with some specs overlaid – things like the distance between elements, the dimensions of those icons, the HEX code of the colour you are using, or the font of a label, for example. If this sounds familiar to you, Sketch Measure will make your life easier. With a couple of clicks of your mouse, you can automatically create overlays on your design that contain this kind of information – all in the most unobtrusive way possible, and easily hidden. 24. Divine Proportions See examples of golden spirals or golden ratio grids to help guide your design Price: Free Summary: Check your design against classical ratios Designers love grids. They love logic behind emotion, and divine proportions are just that – divine. This plugin takes a shape and generates, for example, an overlaid golden spiral or golden ratio, or a grid based on the sections created by the golden spiral, or it divides it by the rule of thirds. You name it. It's a fundamental tool when it comes to layout work. How to Install Sketch Plugins Sketch Plugins can be installed in a variety of ways. Most developers simply upload their extensions to GitHub in the form of a .sketchplugin file. This is easy enough, but you’d have to check back regularly for updates as extensions are known to break when newer versions of Sketch are released. We can also use Sketch Toolbox to search for, install and manage Sketch Plugins. However, there’s no assurance that you’ll be given the latest versions, and some (such as Craft and Zeplin) aren’t even included in the toolbox. SketchPacks is updated more often and usually includes the big boys like AnimaApp – yet it’s still missing the private-source plugins like Craft and Zeplin. The newest version of Sketch (version 48) tries to update Sketch Plugins when it can, but using Sketchpacks or even the GitHub GUI – if you’re familiar with GitHub – could serve as a suitable alternative. For more guidance, look here. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in net magazine. Subscribe here. Related articles: How to automate your Sketch handoffs Implement beautiful typography in Sketch Jargonbuster: Mockups, wireframes, prototypes View the full article

Don't miss Vertex 2018, our debut event for the CG community. Packed with inspiring talks from industry pros working in games, VFX and more, plus career advice, workshops, an expo and more, if you work – or play – in CG, it’s unmissable. Book your ticket now. Creating realistic 3D portraiture will more than likely include simulated hair, but there may also be many other situations when a hair modifier is useful in a scene. Not only for dressing a human head, but also for clothing items, fabrics, animal hair, carpets and grassy surfaces to name but a few. 3ds Max comes with a very intuitive tool for creating realistic and styled hair and fur. This modifier is found under the World Space Modifiers drop-down list. V-Ray also has a (less flexible) hair creation tool found under Geometry and VRay: VRayFur. How to perfect hair in your portraits The 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier enables you to comb, style and trim hair strands on screen and interactively, as if using a comb and scissors. This is fantastic for creating detailed, brushed hair styles and it can be additionally deformed by adding external simulated forces like wind. Styling with VRayFur is tricky and less intuitive however, as it requires tweaking the variables in linked procedural maps in the material editor. For this reason VRayFur is best used as a tool for creating random furry objects such as deep pile carpet or even grassy areas, as it doesn't lend itself easily to such close control. V-Ray also supplies a very nice material specifically for use with hair and fur objects. I find this to be a superior material to the default option offered in the 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier. To get the best out of both worlds and by selecting one or two additional parameters, it is of course possible to use the V-Ray material together with the 3ds Max Hair and Fur modifier. 01. Create a base for the new hair plume Start with a simplified surface To begin, create a simplified surface in 3ds Max with the line tool whilst snapping to vertices on the top of the cap. The surface does not need to cover the entire cap, but only a reduced area where the plume will appear. Next, create the form with shapes bounded by three or four vertices at most (rectangles or triangles) and then weld all the vertexes. Apply the Surface modifier and ensure the normals are pointing upwards. Make the surface non-renderable in its properties dialogue. 02. Hair and fur assignment Use the Hair Count option to adjust the hair's thickness With the new surface selected, we now need to open up the drop-down Modifier list in the top right, and select the Hair and Fur option. Start by adjusting the general parameters in order to achieve the approximate length required for the plume. Tweak the hair strand thickness and the hair density to your liking with the Hair Count option. Adjust the amount of hairs on display to help with GPU memory under the Display tab, and then switch on the guides icon. 03. Comb and cut Channel your inner Vidal Sassoon in the Styling tab Under the Styling tab choose the Select button and select an area of hair guides that you might want to work on. Then click the Hairbrush button and the Scale button underneath. Work in the top and side viewports and stretch the hair with the green comb icon on screen. Switching from the Scale button to the Translate button will enable you to easily comb the hair into a style of your choosing, and switching from the comb to the cut icon will allow you to snip off ends in order to neaten and tidy the plume. 04. Render settings Finally, render out your hairy creation Once the hair has been combed and cut into the required style open the mr Parameters tab, select Apply mr Shader and click into the box under. Choose VRayHairMtl. Drag and instance the material into an empty slot in the material editor and adjust the colour and glossiness parameters, or choose a preset. Next open the Environment dialogue from the Rendering tab in the main top menu and select the Effects tab. Add Hair and Fur and under Hair Rendering Options select 'mr prim' for the Hairs options. This article was originally published in issue 231 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 231 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Book your Vertex 2018 ticket now On 13 March we’re launching Vertex 2018: a one-day event in London for the CG community. Featuring a jam-packed schedule of inspiring talks from the industry’s most exciting practitioners, there will also be workshops, networking opportunities, a busy expo and lots more. Get your ticket to Vertex 2018 now. Related articles: How to sculpt fur in Maya How to create manga-style hair in motion How to create hair in Cinema 4D View the full article