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You might not know the name of the world’s most sought after set designer – but you’ll know her work. Es Devlin designed the London Olympic closing ceremony. The theatrical mastermind is also responsible for the mountainous landscape of Kanye West’s Yeezus tour, Beyoncé’s rotating cinema, and unique experiences for Adele and U2. She’s sent Miley Cyrus down a tongue-shaped slide, and created Benedict Cumberbatch’s crumbling mansion in the Barbican’s Hamlet. The list goes on. The London-based set designer, who will be speaking at Design Indaba 2018, specialises in blurring the boundary between stage design and art. She practices the ‘suspension of disbelief’ – but while redesigning traditional experiences in surprising ways is central to her craft, the theme of time is also becoming increasingly important. "I think now I'm really aware of time," she told CNN. "I have this sense of being halfway up a mountain." Es Devlin designed the London Olympics closing ceremony, which featured Damien Hirst’s huge spin painting One project where the theme of time really took shape was Devlin’s disorientating 2016 Mirror Maze installation in London (pictured below). The project used video projections and visceral sound design to explore how scent can trigger memories. As visitors wandered around the maze, which was filed with mirrors and dead-end staircases, their reflection was projected onto the walls around them. The project was inspired by an experience Devlin had while working on Adele’s Belfast arena tour. “Where we were working,” she told Creative Review,“I was staying in a hotel and I opened the cupboard door and smelled mothballs.” Mirror Maze was commissioned by ID and Chanel “I was so tired and I immediately felt like I was falling and plummeting through space into my five-year-old self smelling mothballs in my grandmother’s house in South Wales. I thought … ‘Could I make people feel that? Could I set up this kind of maze and involve people’s brain wandering around the maze, then suddenly plummet them, or remind them of what that plummeting sensation felt like?'” For Devlin, Mirror Maze also marked the start of a new line of enquiry: making the visitor part of the work. By experiencing her designs, people become the hero. In September, Devlin was awarded the prestigious Panerai London Design Medal. Previous recipients have included Zaha Hadid and Ron Arad, and a showcase of her work is planned for the V&A in celebration. She’s also been thinking about a retrospective exhibition. “I need to create some kind of thesis of my 20 years of work,’ she told Wallpaper. “I’d love to create an installation where you could travel through my stage sets. You could walk in through Kanye’s mountain, and then out through Wagner’s Parsifal tunnel and then slide down Miley’s tongue. Wouldn’t it be fun?” It gets our vote. We’ll be bringing you more from Devlin at Design Indaba 2018. The three-day creative event kicks off on 21 February, and we’ll be reporting live throughout. Related articles: Design Indaba 2018 headlines with Thomas Heatherwick 8 things you didn't know about design for film Design Indaba 2018: Building outspoken landscapes View the full article

We all know finding work in the design industry is an extremely competitive process, even if you do have a killer design portfolio. With so many talented people around, just getting noticed is a job in itself. Designers and illustrators around the world have long been coming up with unusual creative strategies to give their resumés an edge in the hunt for employment. If you're in need of inspiration for your own CV, here are some of the best creative resumés out there to help get the creative juices flowing. 01. Andy Morris Andy Morris thought small when it came to his new CV Art director, artist and designer Andy Morris caught the design industry's attention for all the right reasons with this fantastically creative resume. Rather than sticking with the traditional paper, Morris commissioned a LEGO minifigure in his own likeness, complete with a tiny laptop in one hand and a mini-CV in the other. To update prospective clients with the information they need, the packaging features a bitesized run-down of Morris' skills, plus contact details. 02. Pierre-Marie Postel Click the image to see the full CV Graphic designer and illustrator Pierre-Marie Postel – also known as Paiheme – decided to use his CV to show off exactly what he's best at. His creative resume displays his impressive illustration style, and mimics a Japanese print advert. It's not style at the expense of substance, however – this CV includes plenty of key information, plus some quirky additions such as character designs to show off Postel's personality. The monochrome colour palette ensures it doesn't become overwhelming. 03. Brennan Gleason Brennan Gleason decided to combine two passions Interaction designer Brennan Gleason was nearing the end of university and needed to get his name known by potential employers. To do so in style he brewed up a batch of blonde ale, packaged it up in a neat cardboard carrier, and printed his CV on the back. The idea being that prospective employers could sit down for a quick drink and peruse Gleason's design skills at the same time. 04. Curriculum 3D Benjamin Benhaim's 3D CV really stands out Inspired by this great-looking flat CV from Jimmy Raheriarisoa, Paris-based art director and motion designer Benjamin Benhaim set to work and made this stunning 3D rendered resumé. Created using Cinema 4D, Octane and After Effects, it covers all the bases and features plenty of playful touches, and each image took around seven minutes to render. Time well spent! 05. Tatiana Del Valle Gorodenskaia Click the image to see the full CV Design student Tatiana del Valle Gorodenskaia's colourful CV showcases her personal style perfectly. She splits her skills into those connected to her head and her heart, to give a rounded overview of what she offers. The design combines charming biro sketches, fun graphic patterns and neat typography effectively. 06. Robynne Redgrave You'd be all over this if it turned up in the post This portfolio mail package created by Robynne Redgrave, a Canadian graphic designer based in Helsinki, is a real attention-grabber. It contains not only her CV but a whole load of stuff including a hand-bound portfolio book, a letter of intent, application form and certificates. 07. Livia Natalie An animated CV is a bit of a risky proposition, but Livia Natalie's effort really pays off. It's beautifully animated, covers all the salient points that prospective employers need to know about her, and it's done and dusted in just over a minute, which makes it a lot more likely that people will sit through the whole thing. 08. Robby Leonardi Robby Leonardi's interactive CV caused a real stir when he launched it Robby Leonardi is a multidisciplinary designer based in New York City. Specialising in illustration, graphic design, animation, and front-end development, he has worked with the likes of Fox, Speed TV, FX Networks, myNetworkTV, and G4. His incredibly fun interactive design resumé will have you scrolling for hours! 09. Julia Miceli Julia Miceli's CV is testament that creativity can also be practical Julia Miceli – a graphic designer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina – managed to hit all the right notes with her creative resume. It's simple compared to many of the other in this list, but still oozes personality. The bold orange colour is unusual and eye-catching, and there isn't an element that hasn't been carefully art directed. Miceli has also considered practical aspects: the CV is a standard A4 size, but sits in a wallet that shows it off to its full potential, and there's a neat slot that holds a business card the viewer can pop out and keep. 10. Zhi Liang A simple and inventive approach to the résumé design Singapore-based student Chen Zhi Liang was set a task by his graphic design tutor to create an inventive résumé that would make him stand out from the crowd. The semester-end assignment was to create an infographic résumé and we think he's come up trumps with this design. Showcasing the all-important qualifications and skills, the résumé is eye-catching without being overwhelming. Liang's minimal approach is perfect for an overcrowded job market. We'd definitely hire him! 11. Ed Hamilton Ed Hamilton's Google Map resumé uses personalised placemarkers to highlight his skills When London-based copywriter Ed Hamilton was out of work, he decided to put his time to good use and develop a creative way to stand out to prospective employers. Using Google Maps' My Maps feature, Hamilton mapped his resumé, using different coloured pins to create personalised placemarkers, each accompanied by explanatory text. The brilliant design includes pins for where Hamilton lives, his interests and his previous employment. Related articles: The secrets of fulfilling a creative design brief How to be the designer every agency wants to hire Top tips for making design awards work for you View the full article

As an art director, commissioning illustration can be one of the most rewarding parts of the job. But it can also be one of the most frustrating. Illustration has no limits in terms of scope, or style, or subject matter. You can communicate ideas of all kinds, whether abstract or literal – and totally change the look, feel and mood of a piece of design. It takes experience to get the commissioning process spot-on, and sometimes you don't have the time, or the budget, to do so from scratch. That's where savvy use of stock imagery can come in, or a different solution entirely. But if you do have time to go down the commissioning route, here are our eight top tips to improve your illustration commissioning skills. 01. Choose the right style Illustration can give the same design template a very different look and feel Once you've decided that commissioned illustration is the right route to take for a project, the crucial first stage is to determine what style is the best fit for that particular job. You may already have a look and feel in mind, or even a specific person (see our hot list of the best new illustrators for inspiration). But it's worth compiling a moodboard of different potential illustrators before making an approach. Test some of their previous work in situ in your design if you can. If you have a rough concept in mind but aren't sure who to do it, illustration agencies can be helpful in bridging the gap and suggesting options. Design magazines such as our sister title Computer Arts, creative conference line-ups, or schemes such as the World Illustration Awards are also useful sources of inspiration. As a commissioner, it's always helpful to use an illustrator's previous work as a reference point. It proves they can execute the concept you have in mind if they've done something similar. But remember, many illustrators aren't keen on treading the same ground, so be prepared to work with them to push the idea in fresh directions. 02. Consider composition early For this 'clients from hell' cover, Mat Roff provided a thumbnail to show how his idea would work in the template It's vital to nail the composition of the piece at an early rough stage – particularly where hand-drawn or handmade illustration is involved – as it'll save a lot of potential hassle further down the line. Sometimes this can be as simple as a quick thumbnail sketch that demonstrates an understanding of how the illustration needs to function alongside other elements of a design. It's rarely shown in isolation, after all. Roff's final cover composition stays true to his original thumbnail sketch If you have a clear concept and composition in mind from the outset, it may be necessary for you to provide this sketch as part of the initial brief to avoid confusion and make sure you're on the same page as the illustrator. 03. Set a detailed brief Toby Triumph's commission requested a multi-armed, Hindu-style 'god' to symbolise a multi-tasking freelancer There are times when giving an illustrator the freedom to develop their own concepts can yield stunning results that go beyond your wildest expectations. It's a collaborative process, and two heads are usually better than one. However, sometimes a very tight brief is the best way to deliver the concept you need for the job. A totally blank sheet of paper can be a curse as well as a blessing for the illustrator, and it can be reassuring to know that their commissioner has a clear vision in mind. If there's a particular concept or visual metaphor at play, as well as discussing the composition of the piece consider particular elements that could be included, and suggest options. Just try not to be so restrictive and controlling that you end up cramping the illustrator's style. 04. Discuss references Visual references included intricate geometric patterns from India, and the vibrant colours of the Holi festival References and visual moodboards can provide an invaluable creative steer for the illustrator, whether at the initial commissioning stage alongside discussions about concept and composition, or further down the line while adding detail. Stock image libraries can be a treasure trove for this kind of material, whether or not you end up using the assets in the final design – as can visual platforms such as Pinterest, Behance or Instagram. Triumph's final cover design blended an unusual colour palette with intricate background patterns Remember, these are only references at this stage, and the final illustration could take a very different direction. Your moodboard may only inform the broad colour palette, help determine the shape and form of certain elements, or inspire a background pattern, for instance. If you're looking to ground your commissioned illustration in the look, feel and heritage of a particular culture, the more research the better. In the interests of authenticity, use someone with first-hand knowledge and experience if you can. 05. Brainstorm concepts Daniel Stolle was briefed to explore the idea of 'sharing his wisdom' as an illustrator If your brief is more open and conceptual, provide the illustrator with enough of a theme or direction for them to explore concepts at an early sketch stage, and then work with them to develop them further. Think of it like the process you go through when developing logo ideas for a client. There may be elements of different ideas that you can combine, refine or take in new directions. Stolle's final cover develops his idea of the illustrator's head being a roll of paper As a designer, you know what it's like to be on the other side of the table with a difficult, indecisive and inarticulate client. Don't be that person: help steer the illustrator towards the best solution, and work together to find it. 06. Collaborate on layouts Daniel Stolle worked closely with the CA team, sketching layout roughs for the feature inside When it comes to spot illustrations, often the brief demands very specific dimensions to fit into predetermined boxes. If the layout is fixed at the point of commission, or if there are certain design elements the illustrator must work around, be sure to specific this very clearly at the outset. If, however, there's more flexibility in the design – such as small, moveable elements that can fit around illustration – then consider collaborating with the illustrator on something more dynamic. 07. Give direction with annotations Inspired by an existing portfolio piece, CA provided illustrator Guillaume Kurkdjian with this rough biro sketch During the collaboration process between designer and illustrator, sometimes feedback is best provided in the form of notes and annotations to steer the design in a very specific direction. This is much quicker, more accurate, and ultimately less likely to be lost in translation than just trying to describe the changes in an email or over the phone, for instance. Kurkdjian's initial design (left), and handwritten notes provided by CA art editor Mark Wynne This type of sharply focused art direction is particularly helpful once a concept is locked down, and finer details are being tweaked and refined, although broader-brush notes are also useful at the compositional stage. 08. Reuse key elements Guillaume Kurkdjian's final CA cover illustration Due to time, budget or other constraints, sometimes a main 'hero' illustration needs to take priority over smaller spot illustrations in a design. One solution is to consider the re-use of certain elements from the outset. If you're commissioning a digital illustrator, if possible make sure they supply a layered file with key compositional elements kept separate. Vector files are even better, as there's more scope to manipulate scale and colour to keep things fresh. An example of layered elements from Kurkdjian's illustration being used as part of an internal layout This isn't always possible, of course, either because the illustration doesn't lend itself to this kind of reuse, or the usage rights you've negotiated as part of the commission don't permit it. Even if they do, it's good practice to explain to the illustrator how you intend to use it – they may have some suggestions of their own to bring to the table. It's a collaborative process, after all. Thanks to CA art editor Mark Wynne, and former art editor Jo Gulliver, for their help providing images (and for art directing these covers in the first place). Read more: 5 ways to use images more effectively in editorial design 7 biggest illustration trends of 2018 6 fantastic editorial designs and what we can learn from them View the full article

One of the bugs could allow a successful attack simply by a user viewing an email in Outlook's Preview pane. View the full article

It's just the latest reported vulnerability for the secure messaging application. View the full article

You're reading Postcards – Drag and Drop Email Template Builder, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Postcards is here and we want to show them to you! Using Postcards, you can create beautiful emails/newsletters in minutes with drag and drop features and ready-made modules. Generated and exported emails are optimized for most popular email service providers and email clients (desktop and browsers). View the full article

Barack and Michelle Obama returned to the limelight yesterday as their portraits were unveiled at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The event, which is usually seen as a perfunctory occasion, drew worldwide attention thanks to the portraits' striking painting techniques, which are a stark contrast to the traditionally formal depictions of American presidents. Political commentators have noticed that the distinctive portraits reflect an unorthodox presidency that saw Obama challenge and push expectations of what could be achieved in office. Painted by African-American artists of the former first couple's choosing, the two portraits were hotly anticipated by Democrats and art critics. Barack Obama chose Yale University alumni Kehinde Wiley to paint his portrait, while Michelle Obama selected Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald. Both artists are known for signature stylistic flourishes which appear in these paintings. Click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image For his portrait of Barack Obama, which the man himself described as "pretty sharp", Wiley incorporated the vibrant and floral motifs that have made his name. But while the former president asked the artist to tone down some of the pomp and ceremony found in his other works, he couldn't stop the painter from staying true to life. "I tried to negotiate less grey hair, and Kehinde's artistic integrity would not allow him to do what I asked," Obama joked during the unveiling. "I tried to negotiate smaller ears; struck out on that as well." Wiley is the first African-American artist to paint an official presidential portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. "What I was always struck by when I saw his portraits was the degree to which they challenged our ideas of power and privilege," Obama said. Barack Obama's life is told through the many flowers in the background of the portrait. There's the chrysanthemum, which is the official flower of Chicago, where Obama's career began. There's also a jasmine for his birthplace of Hawaii, plus African blue lilies, which are symbolic of Obama's heritage. Click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image Meanwhile, Michelle Obama's portrait appeared more muted and understated. Depicted with a greyed-out skin tone and wearing a patterned dress with her chin resting on her hand, the former first lady claims that her portrait will herald a new era of presidential portraits. She went on to add that the portrait will give inspirations to girls and girls of colour as they will finally be able to see people like themselves in positions of authority. Given that the Obama presidency was seen as a boundary pushing and controversial era, it's no surprise that these portraits have provoked a similarly divisive reaction. Some were quick to attack the artists by pointing out that Wiley once painted black women decapitating white women, while others praised the breath of fresh air that these portraits represent. Given that Obama's successor has also taken a revolutionary approach to the presidency, all eyes will be on Donald Trump to see how his portraits compare. Related articles: 20 phenomenally realistic pencil drawings Create a self-portrait with just 4 colours Draw Faces in 15 Minutes View the full article

You're reading Google Announces AMP Stories for Creatives, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! AMP, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project aimed at making mobile pages load fast, just got updated to include custom visuals. It was about time. AMP Story changes everything! The newly launched AMP Stories format is an addition to the AMP Project and allows content publishers focused on mobile to deliver news engagingly and visually. A Visual-Driven Format […] View the full article

While there are many steps in creating a website, branding is one of the most important. Whether you're working for another company or simply designing your own web design portfolio, it's vital to choose an approachable and relatable colour palette. This can seem a bit tricky, but don’t fret! In this article I'll offer some advice for finding the right colour palette for you, using psychological studies and colour theory. Know what emotions colours evoke You may have an idea of what you’d like the colour palette for your business to be, but before you set anything in stone, try to take a look at what the colours you’re thinking of using actually mean. That means asking: Do the colours convey the right emotions and are they attractive to my target market? It might seem like a silly question, but you can gain a lot of insight by looking into the psychology of colours. Think of the logos of some companies you know, like Coca Cola, Facebook and Apple. They are three incredibly recognisable brands, all of which you can likely recall the colour of their logos as red, blue, and white. For a more in-depth look at this, take a look at our article on outstanding uses of colour in branding. Click the icon in the top-right to enlarge the image While a logo’s colour may seem like a casual choice made by the brand, you can be assured a lot of thought went into it. The colours used in the logos of these brands exude what they stand for – or at the very least, what they’re trying to stand for. If you're confused or lacking inspiration, the best place is to start is by playing around with some online colour tools. There are plenty of these around, and you'll find our pick of the best ones in our roundup of the best colour tools for web designers. Choose your dominant colours Once you're feeling inspired enough, you can begin choosing your main or ‘dominant’ palette colours. These are the colours that you will want your target audience to recognise you by. They will adorn your website and business cards, so it’s important to get them right. While it’s not imperative, you’ll most likely only want two dominant colours, with the others left as accent colours (we'll cover these later on). It’s also important to note that out of your two dominant colours, one will be used more than the other in your branding materials, whether it be a website, banner or anything else. Explore different tones and tints to find the right balance First and foremost, your dominant palette colours should either complement each other or contrast well together, and neither should outshine one another. If they do, you can play with tints, tones and shades to find a happy balance between the two. Here’s a quick explanation of these last terms: Tones: Mixing grey to a pure colour Tint: Mixing white to a pure colour Shades: Mixing black to a pure colour This isn’t a step that’s to be rushed, as these will be the defining colours of your brand. You’ll be happy that you spent the extra time finding the perfect colour values. Choose your accent colour(s) Accent colours play an incredibly important role – they’re supposed to draw your viewer’s eyes to something you want to highlight. A poor choice can make people miss what’s essential for you. Accent colours are usually bolder than your dominant colours. Accent colours draw attention to key elements (here, the orange CTA) For your website, accent colours are best applied to elements like your navigation menu, calls to action and other crucial items that you would like to showcase. A great example of a successful accent colour application can be found in the Design Conference template by Wix.com. The red accents on the menu show you what section of the page you are on and the bright Buy Tickets call to action is begging to be clicked. Apply with the 60-30-10 rule With your colour palette complete, it’s time to give yourself a pat on the back, but you’re not done just yet. The way you actually apply your colour scheme matters, and you can let the popular 60-30-10 rule guide you: use 60 per cent of your dominant colour, 30 per cent of your secondary colour and 10 per cent of your accent colour. When it comes to web design, you can rework the rule as 60 per cent negative space, 30 per cent content, and 10 per cent ‘call to action’ elements. This is a good rule of thumb when applying your colour palette One good way to visualise this rule comes from MMI Creative: “Think of a man in a business suit: 60 per cent is the slacks and jacket, 30 per cent is the shirt, and 10 per cent is the tie”. By following this rule, you will be able to achieve balance both in colour and content for your website. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue #302. Subscribe here. Read more: 3 huge colour trends for 2018 8 free apps for picking a colour scheme 10 great examples of web design portfolios View the full article

Whether you want to learn how to draw animals, or you’re pondering how to draw people, faces, scenery, landscapes or more, we’ve got you covered with our ultimate collection of drawing tutorials. You’ll find pro techniques and tips on how to draw anything you can imagine in this article, so bookmark it and come back whenever you get stuck, or want to sharpen your drawing skills in another area. Some of the drawing tutorials here use digital tools, while others focus on traditional methods – but there's plenty of core skills to learn from both. So no matter what you want to learn how to draw, you'll find something helpful here. On this page we focus on how to draw animals. If you’re looking for tips on how to draw something else, you can use the page drop-down or links below to navigate to any of the following sections: How to draw people How to draw faces How to draw landscapes How to draw mythical creatures Read on for these insider tips on how to draw animals… How to draw dogs How to draw cats How to draw horses How to draw birds How to draw bears PAGE 1 How to draw people How to draw faces How to draw people: Basic tutorials How to draw people: Advanced tutorials PAGE 3 LANDSCAPES AND SCENERY PAGE 4 How to draw mythical creatures View the full article

Web developers are the people who keep the world wide web spinning on its axis. They make sure that behind the scenes, everything continues to run smoothly. It's a career that rewards structure as much as it does creativity, and you can join their ranks by working your way through the Ultimate Web Development eBook and Course Bundle. Get it on sale now for just $19 (approx. £14)! For any aspiring developer, the Ultimate Web Development eBook and Course Bundle is the ideal place start learning the ins and outs of the profession. This collection of 7 best-selling eBooks and 21 hours of video content can help anyone—even a complete beginner—learn how to code using the most important languages in web development, from Angular 2 to HTML5 and CSS3. Work your way through this bundle and you'll master the skills you need to launch a new career. You can get the Ultimate Front End Developer Bundle on sale for just $19 (approx. £14), 95% off the retail price. That’s a massive savings on a bundle that could help you get a start in a growing industry, 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: 20 useful tools for web developers How to use Markdown in web development 6 must-have skills for young web developers View the full article

There is an almost endless supply of fonts whirling around the web. No matter what you're after, whether it's handwriting fonts or calligraphy fonts, you can bet it's out there somewhere. But what if you're looking for something a bit more... fun? That's right, fun fonts are the order of the day. We've scoured the web for 10 of the most fun fonts to liven up your projects and put a smile on your readers' faces. There are plenty of free fonts here as well as premium ones. Explore the list below and don't worry – Comic Sans didn't make the cut. 01. Escafina This fun font was inspired by mid-century advertising Format: OTF Escafina is an upright script font that reinvents the lively 1960s-70s serif swash cap aesthetic for the digital age. It also draws inspiration from vintage signage and mid-century advertising. This fun font was created by type designer and lettering artist Riley Cran, who's also the man behind Lost Type. 02. Buffon Buffon is a reverse-contrast font with a modern twist Format: OTF The playful Buffon is a reverse-contrast typeface designed by The Australian Graphic Supply Co. It comes with four weights, a generous character set, and ligatures and stylistic alternatives. It's available to purchase through Lost Type, which comments that it "shrugs off the tired Spaghetti Western stereotype so often associated with reverse-contrast – but could make a very nice Wanted poster, if the need arose." 03. Rocher Yabba dabba doo, is this fun font for you? Format: OTF Rocher is a rock-solid fun font family that has been made to feel like stone. If you take a closer look though, you'll see that there's nothing obviously stoney about the design. That's because the creators used rounded edges and the right amount of roughness to make sturdy letterforms that feel like stone, but don't resort to cliches like cracks and rubble. Buy it for £43.99. 04. Masqualero Masqualero comes with six weights and italics Format: OTF Taking its inspiration from the life and work of Miles Davis, Masqualero is at the classy end of the fun font spectrum. Designed by Monotype, this dual-natured serifed typeface packs the flair of Davis' electric funk and rock sounds. It can be yours to own and use for £169. 05. Marshmallow This fun font looks good enough to eat Format: OTF With its fat shape, the super high-contrast script typeface Marshmallow looks just like the squidgy, tasty treat it's named after. Marshmallow might not be suitable for every occasion, but with 820 characters and a range of stylistic alternatives, it's certainly carved out a sybaritic niche. You can download it for £37.99. 06. Konga Rock Let's all do the Konga (Rock) Format: OTF If you're familiar with the delightfully bubbly Konga Pro font that was released in 2012, you'll love the more rough and ready version: Konga Rock. Dotted with little stylish imperfections, Konga Rock has a screenprinted feel that is sure to give your projects a handmade feel. Grab the complete family for £64.10. 07. Argö No, not the Ben Affleck film Format: OTP Just like Masqualero, the Argö typeface is a fun font that veers towards the sophisticated. Initially designed as an Art Deco display font, Argö is a serif typeface whose horizontal lines have been replaced with Medieval-style ascenders to create greater flow and versatility. It can be yours for just $30. 08. Quarz 974 Quarz 974 is a chiselled font perfect for logos and posters Format: TT The geometric Quarz 974 takes its inspiration from simple lines and triangles. This has resulted in a jagged, spiky font that has a lot of fun translating different word forms into its signature style. It's only composed of capitals and numbers, but this makes it the perfect eye-catching choice for posters and logos. Download it for £29.99. 09. Rosecube There's more to Rosecube than meets the eye Format: TTF Looking like a font from a Wild West wanted poster, Rosecube is a deceptively odd seriffed font. Its chunky capitals look like refined enough, but when placed side by side the letters have a sort of higgledy piggledy scruffiness about them. Rosecube has been a stalwart fun font since 2005, and you can download it for free. 10. Duke We love the shadows on this font Format: OTF When it came to designing Duke, creator James T Edmondson was inspired by the signage for the Cup & Saucer luncheonette in New York. Available as a pay-what-you-want font for personal use (or from $30 for a commercial license) Duke includes three layers: fill, shadow, and fill plus shadow. You can even try out Duke on the Lost Type site to see how you like it. 11. Ribbon Ribbon started out as a numeral set Format: OTF The road to release has been a long one for the Ribbon font. It started life as a purely numerical set, before creator Dan Gneiding expanded it into a complete display face that you can download for personal use at a price that suits you. Commercial Licenses start at $40. 12. Kitten This is the purr-fect font for cat lovers Format: OTF Rounding off our list of the best fun fonts is a special feline themed set. Say hello to Kitten, a multi-weight script family with a range of variants, alternates and ligatures. With its curvy, bouncy shape and variety of weights, this sassy font can be tailored to fit logo designs and longer text blocks. Available in 40 languages, Kitten is available to download from €58. This list is only the tip of the fun font iceberg. We're bound to have missed your favourite, so why not recommend your fun font of choice in the comments below? Related articles: The secrets of typesetting 40 free retro fonts 19 top free brush fonts View the full article

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, starting in 2001, heralded several watershed moments in visual effects. It showed off the talents of Weta Digital and Weta Workshop, it kicked off the mocap career of Andy Serkis, and it saw the development of the Massive crowd simulation software. 30 inspiring examples of 3D art Massive was the brainchild of Stephen Regelous, who while at Weta Digital built the system to enable armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Orcs to battle it out, seemingly autonomously. In fact, that’s exactly what Massive was designed to do; its fuzzy logic capabilities enabled computer-generated ‘agents’ to respond to their surroundings and other agents, appearing to fight, and sometimes even take flight. After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Regelous continued to develop Massive as a product that could be licensed to other visual effects and animation studios. He and his team have added countless features to the software, including, most recently, a ‘horse and rider’ agent function to add to the ‘ready-to-run’ agents already in the program. That required a custom motion capture shoot and several adaptations to Massive itself. Here Regelous breaks down how to quickly generate a crowd in Massive for Maya by loading agents, adding terrain, running a sim and rendering a result. 01. Load an agent Agent and group nodes are grouped under the Massive node Click on the agent icon in the Massive shelf. This opens the file select browser. Select an agent and click on the Open button. The agent should appear in the viewport, visible as segments, and its group node should appear under the Massive node in the Outliner. 02. Add terrain A simple polygonal grid gives the scene geometry Add geometry to the scene. In this case we have added a polygonal grid. Click on the terrain tool in the Massive tray to make the geometry active terrain in Massive. 03. Place the agents Add points to the polygonal generator until you're happy Click on the Place tool icon in the Massive shelf. This opens the Massive Place tool. Select the polygon generator icon in the Place tool. Click on the add button in the Place tool. Add points to the polygon generator by clicking on the terrain in the viewport. Press the enter key to finish adding points. In the Place tool, set number to 80, distance to about 150 and angle variation to about 160. In the Attribute Editor for massiveAttribs, under the view section switch on geometry and switch off skeleton. Click on the Place Agents icon in the Massive tray. The agents should appear, with their geometry and texture maps visible. 04. Run the simulation By making the geometry active terrain in Massive, the agents can then be placed on the terrain and are able to walk on it Click on the Maya play button to see the agents move. Click play again to pause it. The agents move much quicker if the skeletons are displayed instead of geometry and texture maps. So switch off geometry and switch on skeleton in the Attribute Editor. Clicking on the play button again we can see the agents walk, avoiding each other but with no preferred direction. 05. Add a lane By creating a lane, we can effectively guide the agents where we want them to go We can add a lane to guide the agents. Click on the Lane tool in the Massive tray to begin adding a lane to the scene. Click on the terrain to add lane points. As soon as the lane is started a lane node will appear in the Outliner. Press the enter key to finish adding lane points. Set the lane width in the Attribute Editor to 1,000. When playing the simulation the agents will follow the lane. Drag a lane point to adjust the lane. This can be done interactively while the simulation is running. Now the agents will follow the new direction of the lane. 06. Record the simulation The software also allows for the recording and playback of simulations, with easy scrubbing In the Attribute Editor for massiveAttribs, under the sim pass parameters section, set End Frame to 200. Next switch on the Sim checkbox under Output, and make sure that the directory shown in the text widget to the right already exists, or change it to one that does. Click on the record button. Click on the play button. The simulation will now be recorded, and it will stop at frame 200. If we look in the Sim directory we will see the APF files that have been written. Switch on the replay button in the Attribute Editor. This will cause Massive to read back the motion files instead of simulating. Now we can play back the simulation more quickly, and we can scrub the timeline to get to any frame of our recorded simulation. 07. Preview render Switching off the geometry can save memory and processing time First we add lights to the scene. Here we have added a sky dome light and a directional light. Scrub to somewhere around frame 140, and position the camera in order to better frame the agents. Click on the Massive node in the Outliner. Then in the Attribute Editor, under render passes select the Arnold render pass. Next select the preview render icon. The render should appear with the agents. Note that it isn’t necessary for geometry to be switched on for it to appear in the render. This can save a lot of memory and processing time when dealing with large scenes. 08. Batch render Remember to change Maya to Rendering mode Click on the render settings icon. Set the image format to TIF. Set the filename pattern in Frame/Animation ext. Set the frame range. Change Maya to Rendering mode in the dropdown. Click on Batch Render under the Render menu. Soon we should have our rendered frames. Related articles: The best 3D modelling software 2018 How to model a complex 3D city scene in Blender Behind the scenes of Blade Runner 2049 View the full article

If you haven't heard already, we're now just one month away from the debut of our CG event Vertex. You really can't afford to miss it and here's why... 01. Chris Nichols will explore the creation of digital humans With the rise of digital humans in mediums such as film, what role will this type of CG play in the future? Chaos Group Labs director Chris Nichols will take an in-depth look at CG Labs’ Wikihumans project and what they have learnt along the way. 02. Digital Domain founder Scott Ross will discuss the effects of Brexit on the London VFX industry VFX veteran Scott Ross will speak to 3D World editor Rob Redman about the state of the industry in Soho and what the future holds for the workforce and the economy after Brexit. The discussion will take the form of a fireside talk and if you’re currently working in the VFX industry or aspiring to be, this talk is an essential listen. 03. Explore new ways of working with our workshops The best way to get your skills up to scratch is by attending one of our expert masterclass workshops, from the likes of The Mill’s Adam Dewhirst to VR extraordinaire Glen Southern and the VFX geniuses at Saddington Baynes. 04. Get inspired at our Expo area You’ll be able to discover and even try out new tech and software in our Expo area in the East Hall. The latest advancements will be on show so make sure you give them a go! 05. Allegorithmic CEO Dr Sebastien Deguy will bring Substance to Vertex Artists working in the videogames industry are no stranger to the Substance suite of tools, but the VFX industry is being shaken up by the texturing software too! In his talk, Dr Deguy will discuss how tools like Substance and others are empowering today’s artists. 06. Boost your career prospects Whether it’s our recruitment fair, networking event, Portfolio Review sessions or Ask An Artist spot, there are countless ways for you to upgrade your employability at Vertex. You’ll meet experts from Creative Assembly, RARE, Framestore, MPC, Double Negative and more, helping you to get your next job, troubleshoot your skills and make your portfolio even better. 07. It’s the first time 3D Artist and 3D World are working together That’s right, it’s the first time that our two sister magazines will be working in tandem to bring you the best event we can. We’re super excited and we can’t wait to see you there! Get your tickets now! Read more: What will Brexit mean for the British VFX and CG industry? Upgrade your textures in Substance Designer China: the new Hollywood? View the full article

Adobe's Creative Suite is an essential set of tools for graphic designers. They are the apps all the experts rely on and are packed with tools to help make your work truly take off. You can master these programs with Graphic Design Certification School. Grab it on sale now for just $39 (approx. £28)! Adobe's suite of creative apps have become the go-to tools for bringing digital art to life. You can learn why experts love and rely on these tools with the Graphic Design Certification School. You'll find three courses packed with information that will teach you how to make the most of Adobe's powerful design tools, including Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. You'll get lifetime access to expert-taught lessons that will show you how to take your ideas and bring them to life on screen—plus you'll get certifications to prove your skills after each course you complete. The Graphic Design Certification School is valued at over $1,197, but you can get this incredible bundle of courses on sale for just $39 (approx. £28)! It's a deal you won't want to miss, so grab it while you can! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com. Related articles: The best free graphic design software 32 graphic designers to follow on Instagram The best laptops for graphic design 2018 View the full article

The attack could have been averted through a technique called subresource integrity, according to researcher Scott Helme. View the full article

When it comes to talking about money, logo design is one of the most contentious areas of graphic design. After all, how much work can it possibly take to design a logo? How can it cost companies millions to commission logo designers, when a straightforward tick seems to work well enough for the likes of Nike? Understandably, this sort of attitude can push graphic designers over the edge. Designing a great logo is, of course, much harder than it might appear to the untrained eye. But how do you tell your client that creating a logo takes a fair bit of time and money? Pricing yourself is a common problem – especially when you're just starting out. Luckily brand strategist and Blind founder Chris Do is here to help creatives secure themselves the best deal. 10 ways to find logo design inspiration Recorded as part of a Money Talk workshop, this video sees Chris explain how to pitch your logo design services. Running at half an hour, this in-depth video tackles the vagueness of logo design pricing with the help of real-world examples, as well as providing some useful tactics creatives can use in the future. Check out the full talk below. Related articles: 25 logo design tips from the experts How to create a retro logo with Affinity Designer How to take your vector logo from 2D to 3D View the full article

For a long time, offline functionality, background synchronisation and push notifications have differentiated native apps from their web counterparts. The Service Worker API is a game-changing technology that evens the playing field. In this tutorial, we'll use it to build a page that can serve up content even while there's no internet connection. Download the code from FileSilo 01. An HTTPS server The easiest way to think about Service Workers is as a piece of code that is installed by a site on a client machine, runs in the background, and subsequently enables requests sent to that site to be intercepted and manipulated. Because this is such a powerful capability, to work with Service Workers in a live environment you need to be running over HTTPS. This ensures they can't be exploited, by making sure the Service Worker the browser receives from a page is genuine. For development purposes, however, we can run without HTTPS since http://localhost/ is permitted as an exception to this rule. The simplest way to get started is with the npm http-server package. 02. Set up a basic page There's nothing on the server right now, so let's make a basic page to serve up. We'll create a new index.html file, and when we run the server it will now be accessible at http://localhost:8000. At this stage, you'll find that if you terminate the HTTP server and refresh the page in the browser, you'll get an error page since the site can't be reached. This is entirely expected since we haven't cached any offline content yet. 03. Register a Service Worker We've now got a fairly unremarkable page running, and it's time to start thinking about implementing a Service Worker. Before we get coding, it's worth taking a moment to understand the lifecycle of Service Workers. The process kicks off with the 'registration' of a Service Worker in your JavaScript, which tells the browser to start installing the worker – the first step of its lifecycle. Throughout its lifecycle, a Service Worker will be in one of the following states: Installing: Once a Service Worker has been registered, its installation is typically used to download and cache static content Installed: The worker is theoretically ready for use but does not immediately activate Activating: An installed Service Worker will activate itself if either there is no existing Service Worker, or certain conditions lead the existing one to expire; activation is typically used to clear old files from cached offline content Activated: The Service Worker now has control over the document, and can handle requests Redundant: If the Service Worker failed to install or activate, or if it is replaced by a newer Service Worker 04. Check you're registered Let's register a Service Worker. This effectively points the browser to the JavaScript file which defines the Service Worker's behaviour. Registration is done using the serviceWorker object which is the entry point to the API. We'll also check the API is actually present in the browser before trying to do so. The register() function can safely be called every time the page loads, and the browser will determine whether the Service Worker has already been registered. 05. Implement Service Worker Next we need to implement the Service Worker itself. Service Workers can listen for a range of events related to their own lifecycle and activity on the page. The most important ones are install, activate and fetch. Let's start by creating a listener for the install event, which triggers once the worker's installation is completed. This enables us to instruct the Service Worker to add some offline content in the current folder to a cache. We also need to name our cache – since old caches can persist, updating/versioning this cache name enables you to serve up newer versions of content later on. 06. Fetch event Our page will now cache content when loaded, but we need some mechanism to intercept requests and redirect them to this cache. To do this, we need to listen for fetch events, which are triggered when a request such as obtaining our index.html file is made across the network. We then match the request against the cache, and serve up the cached resource if found. Otherwise, we fall back to a Fetch API request to the server. It's worth at this point noting that we have a heavy dependency on JavaScript Promises to work. These can be a little tricky, so are worth familiarising with if you haven't used them before. 07. Extend fetch event If you test it out now (terminate the HTTP server and refresh the page), you should find that your page works both online and offline. It's likely, however, that you'll want more intelligent offline behaviour, with different content or functionality available when the server is unavailable. To achieve this, we can extend our fetch event response further to check specifically for navigation requests and respond with a different offline page when one is detected. This index_offline.html file can be a variation of your online page, or something completely different, and can also use other resources you've cached such as custom.css. 08. Delete cache There's one more thing we need. If you now try modifying your offline content, you'll find it doesn't update when you test out your page – you still get the old version! This is because the older files are still cached. You need to implement something to clean out outdated files from the cache to prevent them being served up. This is done by responding to an activate event and deleting all caches which do not match the name specified in currentCache. You can then add a version number to currentCache each time you modify your offline content, to ensure it is refreshed. This article was published in Web Designer magazine issue #268. Subscribe now. Read more: A coder's guide to APIs Get started with WebGL using three.js 12 huge web design trends for 2018 View the full article

Choosing the right colour palette is a fundamental part of creating an eye-catching brand that people want to interact with. Get your colours right and you've got a brand that will last for years and boost your business. Get it wrong and... well, you'll be hiring another graphic designer sooner than you think. When it comes to deciding which colours will work for your brand, you'll need a solid grasp of colour theory. With this knowledge, you'll be able to determine which colours are suited to your sector and what the different hues imply. It's all too easy to brush off colour theory as a pseudoscience, but the team at Printsome have set out to prove just how important it is to pick the right colour scheme for your business. In the third series of GIFs created by the T-shirt printing agency in collaboration with graphic designer Natasja Van Dinther, the colours of famous logos are swapped to create strange and unsettling alternatives. The designer's guide to using colour in branding Take Airbnb and Booking.com. They're similar companies, but with branding colours at opposite ends of the spectrum. Swap them around and Airbnb starts to look like some Silicon Valley startup, while Booking.com's web address name is at odds with the warm Rausch pink of its competitor. We're sure this won't irritate hardcore comic fans Printsome has described the colour swap between Marvel and DC as the least dramatic switch, but we're sure that fiercely loyal fans of each publication will disagree. Marvel seems to lose its dramatic impact with a blue logo, while DC's chunky typography looks over the top with a red palette. Asda and Tescos might run similar operations, but their mission statements have resulted in contrasting logo colours. Asda's focus on freshness has lead to a refreshing green logo, whereas Tesco has an emphasis on helping people, which resulted in a palette more reminiscent of an airline or a bank. Changing them round simply doesn't work because the typography and graphics have been tailored towards each supermarket's goal. Colours have a huge impact on how customers perceive taste. By switching the colours of Guinness and Stella Artois around, we expect different flavours from the brands. The heavy taste of Guinness suits the uncompromising black colour scheme, but with a red background the beer comes across as having a lighter flavour. Stella Artois doesn't look too bad with a black finish, but it doesn't reflect the drink's piquancy. [Via Printsome] Related articles: 21 outstanding uses of colour in branding The designer’s guide to using colour in branding A short lesson on colour theory View the full article

It's still early in the year, so no doubt you're keen to learn some new web design skills to carry you into 2018. We have various learning resources in this month's round up of new web design tools, as well as tools that make it easier to do hard things, such as transition to CSS Grid, or build a progressive web app. As well as that there are colour tools, cheat sheets, and lots of little things that make life easier. 01. JavaScript Object Explorer An enjoyable interface for exploring JavaScript objects Instead of digging through the docs, use this tool by Sarah Drasner to find the object method you need. Use the drop-down menus to explain your situation and what you want, and you get a concise explanation of what you need as well as a link to the docs, should you want to delve deeper. 02. Workbox Workbox takes a lot of the hard work out of building progressive web apps This set of JavaScript libraries and Node modules from Google help you build better progressive web apps by making it easy to add offline support. 03. Kap 2.0 Simple screen capture utility that generates great quality results Kap is an open-source GIF and screen-recording app for MacOS. It’s great for capturing GIF, MP4, WebM and APNG files, and it exports easily to Giphy, Imgur, S3 or the clipboard. The newest release has some useful new features including trimming, plugins, full-screen capture and window capture. 04. Pigment Great for building logos This colour palette tool is a good choice if you’re creating something with two main colours and you want to see how one stands out against the other. You can adjust the intensity of the colours as well as the lighting to get a different range of options, and each colour pair comes with two additional, related palettes. 05. Duotone Make any image duotone Duotone is another one from ShapeFactory that helps you to convert an image to a duotone. Select any two colours and drag the sliders to get real-time results. 06. Learn CSS Grid Get going with Grid in just four hours With sponsorship from Mozilla, Wes Bos has created this video series for free that will get you well on your way to being proficient in CSS Grid in just four hours. The course consists of 25 videos and a collection of starter files and exercises to teach you how to use the new web layout system. 07. Basin Get forms up and running easily Save yourself the bother of writing form backends by using Basin instead. It’s easy to set up and has lots of useful features for handling submission data and tracking conversions including spam filtering, auto responses, CSV export and the facility for form-users to attach files. 08. CSS Gridish CSS Gridish generates useful resources for your team that smooth the transition to Grid This tool from IBM aims to make it easier for teams to take advantage of the power of CSS Grid sooner by creating several useful resources to smooth the transition. Check out this post to get an idea of what it can do for you. 09. Scrimba Interact with screencast code Scrimba is a tool for teaching and learning code using interactive screencasts that enable users to play around with the code they’re learning. It’s a good platform if you have something you want to share, and also great for picking up new skills. 10. CSS Cheat Sheet Click through to get further information from the Mozilla Developer Network Your choice of CSS cheat sheet will come down to personal taste. But allow us to offer this one by Adam Marsden for your consideration: it’s nicely laid out and provides links to further detail on the Mozilla Developer Network. Related articles: 30 web design tools to speed up your workflow in 2018 View the full article

The eyes are the most important element of any successful portrait, but many people struggle to know how to draw them correctly. In this article, I will run though some tips for painting sparkling human eyes, with the focus on achieving a realistic effect. I’ll teach you about the importance of judging values and observing the anatomy of the eyes so that your portraits can come alive. I've also included some videos to show you exactly how I do things. 01. Tint the canvas Although it may not seem important, it is crucial to avoid working on a white canvas. I recommend tinting the canvas with a wash that is a mixture of thinner and any oil paint (in this case, burnt umber). This is to help you judge values more efficiently. It also eliminates the natural fear of putting the first brushstroke onto a clean surface. 02. Consider the anatomy of the eye Establishing an anatomically correct sketch is very important. Every eye is different and looks different from different angles. Keep in mind that the eye is a round ball with an iris, covered with a cornea shaped like a dome. The eyelids have thickness as well and they will form shadows on the white and iris of the eye. 03. Block in colours To block in first colours or/and values, you need to try to look past the details that will always try to grab your attention. Squint your eyes and block in similar adjacent colours and values in one go. Don’t worry, this is only a base for the details that will come later. Pay no attention to eyelashes and wrinkles. Think big. 04. Add detail Now is the time to start adding details. If you blocked in the base colours properly, you will now only need to worry about refining details and adding paint where it will make a difference. Adjust shapes and apply textures. Don’t overdo it though – it is easy to forget yourself and render too much. Paint only what you see and not what you think should be there. This article was originally featured in Paint & Draw issue #12. Buy it here. Read more: Paint a portrait in oils 10 sketching tips for beginners Create a fast and anatomically correct sketch View the full article

You may have heard of Moqups and assumed it was just for creating wireframes and mockups. Far from it: Moqups is a full-featured web app that includes powerful wireframing and prototyping tools – and could revolutionise your creative workflow. With this all-in-one creative platform, you can design, prototype and diagram collaboratively – all within one flexible app. In short, it will take you all the way from preliminary brainstorming and ideation to final product design. Read on to find out even more about what Moqups can do. Feature focus Moqups is designed to streamline and enhance your project workflow. Developing a new product requires a whole range of different assets and elements, from sitemaps and wireframes to prototypes. These elements don’t exist in silos either – they all need to work together, and they often evolve in parallel as ideas develop and issues get ironed out. To keep things streamlined, it makes sense to have all your product management assets on one platform. Because Moqups is an all-in-one tool, you can create all of these different materials without ever having to switch apps. It's completely flexible, and you can use it in whatever way suits your approach or project – start with a wireframe, flow diagram, sitemap, or just dive straight in with a prototype! Click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image With Moqups, it’s simple to jump seamlessly between these different elements to see how your product might work. For example, if you want to elaborate on a particular element of your wireframe, you can always use Moqups’ interactivity feature to link that element to a diagram with extra specifications or requirements. This keeps the wireframe clean, while still providing your team with all the information they need. Moqups is perfect for creative collaboration, too. Your whole team can get involved to create parts of the project and explore each others' ideas. The issue of multiple stakeholders is also addressed: the platform helps establish a shared creative context, so everyone from system architects and product managers to developers can stay on the same page, and contribute to the project in real time. And we all know what a great time-saver that can be. Working within an all-in-one platform like Moqups is also a win for management – there's just one subscription, one budget and one invoice to worry about. Plus, there's one learning curve for your whole team (plus stakeholders); no more fumbling around trying to get to grips with the intricacies of multiple different tools at once. If you're after an all-in-one online design platform that's smart, simple and fast, Moqups could be perfect for you. Try it today to see how it can transform your product design workflow. View the full article

A strong composition is crucial to a successful piece of art. It's what attracts a viewer's eye, and what holds their attention once they take a closer look. It can mean the difference between an action-packed piece of art and a solemn, contemplative one. But how do you make a composition convey the mood you want, and what is it that makes a composition successful? There are a many long-standing rules regarding what makes a good composition, such as the Golden Ratio, the Golden Spiral and the Rule of Thirds. But in my opinion they aren't really rules at all... Think of them as suggestions… or better yet, as optional templates. Traditional methods like these are just one answer to a problem which has an infinite number of solutions. Their purpose is just to offer a simple method for an artist to use to make a more pleasing image. By creating strong lines for the eyes to follow, you can decide what path you want people to take I'll discuss some of these techniques, explain why they're successful and how you can use that knowledge to make a better image. To begin, all you really need to know is this: a good composition is nothing more than a pleasing arrangement of shapes, colours and tones. That's simple enough really. Chances are, most of you can make a good composition with your eyes closed. But we don't want good compositions, we want great compositions! We want to be masters of composition, bending it to our will. In order to do that, we need to understand the basic properties of composition... 01. The basics The root of all composition lies in relationships. Look at the image above. Although it's technically a composition, it's not a very successful one. The viewer doesn't know where to look, nor is there any sense of flow to the image. By altering one of these squares, even slightly, I've created a much more successful composition in the second image. As simple as the image is, it already has a sense of motion, and depth. How? Through relationships. By causing a disparity between the shapes, I've given the viewer a means by which they can compare those shapes. "This one is bigger, that one is lighter." The grey square appears to be moving and receding only when compared to the black square. The process of comparing these shapes requires that the viewer moves their eyes repeatedly around the canvas, and therein lies the true goal of a great composition: controlling that eye movement. 02. The Golden Ratio Let's look at the Golden Ratio. The idea was started by the ancient Greeks, who were strong believers in the Platonic concept of ideals. They believed that all things, both tangible and intangible, have a perfect state of being that define them. They also felt that one should always strive toward achieving this ideal state, be it in mathematics, one's physique, politics or aesthetics. Like implied lines and contrasting values, colour can be used to draw the viewer's eye to anywhere we want Greek mathematicians, after repeatedly seeing similar proportions in nature and geometry, developed a mathematical formula for what they considered an ideal rectangle: a rectangle whose sides are at a 1:1.62 ratio. They felt that all objects whose proportions exhibited this were more pleasing, whether a building, a face or a work of art. To this day, books and even credit cards still conform to this ideal. 03. The Rule of Thirds This states that if you divide any composition into thirds, vertically and horizontally, then place the key elements of your image either along these lines or at the junctions of them. You'll achieve a more pleasing arrangement. But does it work? Let's look at Edmund Dulac's painting, The Little Mermaid: The Prince Asked Who She Was (above). Dulac was great at using empty space to his advantage, partly because he tended to abide by the Rule of Thirds. Here Dulac has placed the column and the horizon line perfectly along a line of thirds. But what if he didn't? With the column and horizon line in the centre of the image, the result is less successful. The column dominates the image, stealing focus away from the figures. The viewer's eye is now glued to this strong shape that bisects the canvas, instead of wandering around the image like it originally did. 04. How the rules work The Rule of Thirds works because it demands that the artist makes one element more dominant than another. This dominance creates an imbalance, and an imbalance of any sort will always attract the viewer's eye. Bisecting an image perfectly in half creates the least amount of interest, because everything is equally balanced. Look back at those black and grey squares. The first composition is boring because it's too balanced. Making one area of your composition more dominant creates tension, and therefore adds interest. It also makes your eyes move around the canvas more to compare all of these relationships. The fact that the composition is divided into precise thirds is really of minimal significance. You could divide a composition in fourths, fifths or even tenths. So long as there's some sort of imbalance, the composition will exhibit tension. As you'll soon see, this concept of imbalance applies to many aspects of composition, including value and colour. 05. Implied lines These are probably the most important aspect of a composition, because you notice them first. When painting realistically, there's no actual line around a subject. The illusion of a contour is a result of different values and colours contrasting. But even the impression of a line is strong, and our eyes will go to it and follow its length until it ends, or until it meets another line, which we'll follow again. A great composition makes strong use of this natural attraction to lines. By creating strong lines for the eyes to follow, we can decide what path we want people to take and where we want that path to end. In this painting you can see a strong contour that follows along the cape, down the woman's arm, to our subject's face, down her arm, and then back up to the cape. This creates a circular current that keeps the viewer's eyes flowing around the composition, holding their attention. That current also brings their eyes past every key element of the painting, one at a time. And don't forget, whether you're working for print or for websites, the borders of your composition are an implied line, too. 06. Reinforcing those focal points As well as using implied lines to draw the eye all around a composition, you can use the same method to make someone look immediately at your chosen focal point. In fact, you can do it repeatedly, from multiple directions. This is particularly useful when your image is a portrait or a pin-up, and the character's face is the most important element. To bring more attention to a particular character, try to make surrounding objects, such as arms, swords and buildings, point to your subject. You can also use implied lines to frame the subject's face, locking the viewer's eyes in place. Next page: Find out why threes are everywhere and the magic of colour... 07. Threes are everywhere The Rule of Thirds seems to work its way into most aspects of picture making, and value is no exception. When constructing compositions, I tend to think in general arrangements of foreground, middle-ground and background. To heighten the relationship between these three depths, I try to restrict each to a range of value, favouring black, white or grey. For instance, you can let the background predominately be white tones, the middle-ground predominantly greys and the foreground predominantly black tones. Of course, any arrangement of these three values will work. By restricting your values in these areas you reinforce your image's sense of depth and make the silhouettes very easy to read – and that legibility is important. Muddy values hurt the viewer's ability to discern shapes, especially at a small scale. That's why you'll see this technique used so often in trading card art. When your image is just a few inches tall, high-contrast compositions work especially well. Triptych value schemes like this are readily apparent in the works of the Old Masters, particularly in the engravings of Gustave Doré. His paintings all show different arrangements of black, white and grey to emphasise the difference between foreground, middle-ground and background. 08. Imbalance of values Looking at Doré's engravings, not only has he divided his composition into three obvious layers of depth by using three ranges of value, he also creates an imbalance in the proportions of those values. For instance, he may use a large amount of grey, and a small amount of white, but rarely equal amounts. This reinforces the importance of imbalance to create tension. By letting the composition be dominated by grey, the small accents of white and black garner more attention, and draw our eye toward the subject. 09. The benefit of contrast Black and white are inherently powerful tones. If you use them sparingly, and right next to each other, you can draw the viewer's attention to a particular spot with ease. When painting, try reserving the purest whites and blacks for your focal point. For instance, if your main character has very pale skin, try placing something extremely dark on them, such as black hair or black clothes. This is one of the easiest and most successful ways of making your subject pop. In my painting Blood Divided, I did just this to make sure the heroine sat apart from the background. 10. Making magic Colour is an extremely powerful tool, and can inject a piece of art with mood and light. But it's also a strong compositional tool. Just like implied lines and contrasting values, colour can be used to draw the viewer's eye anywhere we want. As mentioned before, disparities draw the viewer's eye. So, if there's a colour scheme in place that's predominantly red, any other hue (particularly a complementary green) draws attention to itself. Or you can create a disparity between levels of saturation, such as a mainly grey painting with high saturation in a small area. The greater the disparity, the greater the attention it receives. I often use this method to create the illusion of magic or dramatic lighting. A colour can appear intense simply by making the rest of the composition relatively desaturated, and/or complementary, in comparison. My painting Soulborn is primarily red and purple, yet everything besides the similarly hued 'magic' element has been slightly reduced in saturation. 11. What's your angle? Imbalance can create a more exciting flow to your composition, but it can also add drama. The next time your painting isn't exciting enough, try tipping the camera angle. Even the slightest tip to the horizon line can turn a mundane scene into a cool action shot. Experiment with the psychological impressions that different camera angles create. Straight, this painting lacks real excitement. The bricks, rain and hair all create simple vertical lines, and don't do much to enhance the drama of the piece. Tipping the image gives it a whole new feel. Suddenly it appears like the woman is being thrust against the wall. There's also more of a sense of weight to their poses 12. Putting it all together A good composition is one where the artist controls the movement of the viewer's eye to a beneficial result. We can do this by a number of means, such as reinforcing the focal point with the Rule of Thirds, implied lines, contrast of value and selective colour saturation. Putting all of these tools into action in a single piece, Jean-Léon Gérôme's Duel After a Masquerade Ball is the perfect example of using all compositional devices to your advantage. Like this? Read these... How to draw and paint - 100 pro tips and tutorials The secret to becoming a successful street artist How to become an artist without traditional art school View the full article

Besides the thrill of being your own boss, one of the most appealing parts of going freelance is the ability to work from anywhere – whether that's a home studio, your favourite coffee shop or on a beach sipping a cocktail. As WiFi hotspots spring up everywhere and laptops get lighter, this dream is increasingly becoming a reality. Working remotely as a freelancer comes with its own set of challenges, of course, but with the right equipment you can face them head on. So read on for our guide to eight of the most useful tools for remote working as a freelancer... 01. Lightweight laptop Let's assume you already have a decent-quality smartphone and tablet. If you're on the move a lot, a lightweight laptop is the most essential item on this list. No one wants to be lugging too much weight around if you can avoid it, and every pound counts. Provided you have a decent-sized monitor, or separate desktop machine in your main office space, then it could be worth sacrificing screen real-estate and ports to slim things down as much as possible. On the weight and portability front, a MacBook is a great choice. At just 0.9kg (2 pounds) you barely notice it's in your bag. And if you can manage with a 12-inch screen and the infamous single USB-C port, we recommend it for all your roaming needs. If you need more ports, power and screen space, upgrading to a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will double the weight as well as the price. But if price is no object, Microsoft's 2-in-1 Surface Book 2 packs considerable punch, so you can tackle the most demanding tasks on the move. The 13.5-inch version weighs in at 1.5kg (3.3 pounds), 50 per cent heavier than a MacBook, but you don't need a separate tablet of course. The 15-inch version is slightly heavier than the equivalent-sized MacBook Pro. Dubbed the "best laptop money can buy in 2018" by our sister site TechRadar, Dell's XPS 13 is fast, with a stunning screen and exceptional battery life of up to 22 hours. Plus it weighs just 1.2kg (2.7 pounds), not much more than a MacBook. The battery life alone could swing it if you're going to be working somewhere really remote – MacBooks can only boast 10 hours of wireless web use, after all – although the next item on our list could help with this. 02. Battery pack There's nothing more frustrating than hunting for a power socket to charge your phone, tablet or laptop, only to be tethered to the same spot while your device charges. Or worse, fail to find power at all and watch helplessly as your battery ticks down to zero. You may already carry a small power pack to give your phone an extra boost of juice when it needs it. But if you work remotely a lot we recommend investing in something with a bit more clout, such as the Mophie Powerstation USB-C XXL – which boasts a 19,500mAh battery that can fully charge a MacBook from empty. It isn't the cheapest battery pack on the market. But having that amount of power in your pocket to effectively double your working time is a compelling reason to invest. There's a USB-A plug too, so you can charge your phone or tablet at the same time. 3. USB-C hub That single USB-C port on the MacBook has caused controversy and frustration for some, and you need to consider the trade-off with weight and portability if you regularly use a lot of USB peripherals or need easy access to SD cards, for instance. Fortunately, there's a useful way to tackle both these problems in one on the move, with an all-in-one solution. The HyperDrive 5-way USB-C hub, for instance, plugs into the MacBook's USB-C port and give you two USB-A ports, an SD and micro SD slot, as well as a USB-C port that supports pass-through charging. HyperDrive also makes MacBook Pro versions – the jewel in the crown being an 8-way hub that features two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, an SD, a micro SD, a 4K HDMI and a 4K Mini DisplayPort. For style-conscious designers who insist that all accessories coordinate, the hubs also come in silver, gold and space grey to match your MacBook nicely. 4. Mobile WiFi hub If you find yourself working in stations, hotels, airports or coffee shops it's pretty unlikely that WiFi won't be available for at least a short spell, although free public WiFi certainly has its fair share of security and reliability issues. To prepare yourself for regular remote working, or heaven forbid the coffee shop WiFi going down, it's worth investing in a Mobile Wi-Fi (or MiFi) hub such as the Huawei E5770. It comes with its own microSD card slot and Ethernet port, and the 4G/LTE Cat-4 model offers you up to 150Mbps on the fly. This stylish unit has a meaty 5,200mAh battery that Huawei claims can keep up to 10 devices connected for 20 hours, although at over £130 it's not a cheap bit of kit. Make sure you'll be spending enough time working outside useful WiFi zones to justify the expense. 5. Noise-cancelling headphones Remote working will often require being surrounded by the general public, as well as all manner of other noisy distractions to disrupt your work. Rather than screaming at those around you to shut up, invest in some decent noise-cancelling kit such as Bose's Quietcomfort 35 II headphones. They're light and comfortable; wireless, with a long battery life; and extremely effective at blocking out unwanted sound. And with Google Assistant built into the latest model, you can also play music, receive texts and get answers without the need to reach for your phone. 6. Portable wireless printer Need some last-minute physical printouts while working remotely, that simply can't wait 'til you get back to the studio? Whether it's a crucial pitch document before heading to see a client, or a hasty portfolio update, it could be worth investing in a wireless mobile printer so you can nail it on the fly. One great option is the Canon Pixma iP110, which is small and relatively light (twice the weight of a MacBook at 2.2 kg / 5 pounds), and can connect via WiFi or USB to your laptop, tablet or smartphone. There's a 50-sheet paper capacity, and it can print surprisingly high-quality photos. 7. External SSD One of the tradeoffs of a lightweight laptop can be storage space, with 256GB or 512GB SSD drives the only options to choose from on a MacBook, for instance – although you can upgrade to 1TB on a MacBook Pro or Surface Book 2. Having a fast, lightweight and durable external SSD drive with you on the move can not only expand your available file space but also provide you with a drive to regularly back up your laptop as you go, rather than waiting 'til you're back in your studio. If you're constantly stuffing your laptop in and out of your bag, giving it a battering while you're on the road, and putting it on display in public places, you also can't afford your work on the built-in SSD to get damaged or stolen. Adata's SD700 is an IP68-rated external SSD that's suitably rugged for all scenarios: dustproof, waterproof and even military-grade shockproof. It comes in three sizes up to 1TB, and is lighting fast at 440MB/s. Beware if you're using a MacBook, however: there's no USB-C connector, so as with many MacBook accessories, you'll need an adaptor. A great USB-C alternative is the G-Tech 1TB external hard drive, which while it doesn't have the speed of an SSD, or the durability of the SD700, still offers up to 130MB/s. 8. Virtual Private Network Finally, if you're working remotely in public places you can't be too careful when it comes to security and data privacy. Using a MiFi hub rather than public WiFi is a good start, but setting up a VPN network is even better. According to our sister website TechRadar, VyprVPN is the best all-round VPN on offer. Its account management software is easy-to-use and intuitive, and its performance levels are excellent: TechRadar found download speeds more than doubled with the VPN enabled. VyprVPN also provides additional security features, including a NAT Firewall, as well as its own 'Chameleon' technology for preventing deep packet inspection (DPI), VPN blocking and bandwidth throttling. 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The creative proofing process has long been due an modern upgrade, and finally it's here: GoProof is an Adobe Creative Cloud tool that takes all the stress and hassle out of getting your creative work approved. No more messing about with exporting PDFs and confusing comments in email chains, this is an easy-to-access, online space where all stakeholders can view, give feedback and approve creative proofs. Thousands of creatives and clients across the world are already using it, and it’s totally free for collaborators. With GoProof, proofs are viewed in an online space The traditional approach has been to export a PDF when you want to share a design concept for review, and then wait around for another PDF to export every time you make a change. That means waiting around for your designs to export. Not only is this a frustrating time-suck, those precious minutes are also unbillable. With GoProof, proofs are viewed in an online space. That means no PDFs floating around different email threads, no confusion about who has seen what or which version you're talking about. Everyone is connected to the same proof – no stress, no misunderstandings. There are a number of particular features that make it especially great for designers. Read on to find out more. Creative proofs made easy A special extension means you can integrate GoProof directly into Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator CC, making it ideal for designers and illustrators. You can send proofs out directly from within your favourite design programme, with no time wasted at all. And don't worry – your collaborators don’t need to be Creative Cloud members to view the proof. GoProof provides an environment that is geared up towards creative collaboration. Rather than confusing email threads, all parties can comment directly on the shared content, making for a much more open environment. All collaborators, from freelance designers and in-house creatives to brand guardians and creative directors, can view the proof, add notes directly, and engage with the design process for free. And if you want to direct your comment to a particular team member, just @-tag them. GoProof integrates seamlessly into your Adobe apps Text changes can be the bane of any print designer's life. GoProof has a copy editor built into it; InDesign CC users can include text boxes in the proof, enabling collaborators to edit the text themselves in a previewer. Don't worry, the changes won't affect the original document – once the client has found an edit that works for them, they can request their changes direct from the designer. The basic version of GoProof is totally free to use, so there's no reason not to give it a go. There are also upgraded subscriptions available that offer more storage and users. Visit the GoProof website now to sign up and experience the future of online proofing. View the full article