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When collaborating in a team – and especially if you're working from home or remotely – it can be tricky to make sure everything flows smoothly. You need to share tasks out and communicate clearly and often enough to avoid teammates getting caught up with certain tasks and causing bottlenecks in your workflow. With the right set of tools, a team can maximise their potential and build creative workflows at any time and in any place. In the sea of communication and collaboration tools on the market, finding the ones that will take your team’s productivity to a new level is not an easy task. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the most powerful tools to help your team stay focused on real work – no matter where they are or what they are working on. 01. Slack Functional and free, Slack is an incredible toolFree No matter whether you work with a remote or in-house team, Slack gives you an incredible opportunity to communicate with your colleagues through instant messages and chatrooms. Plus, it lets you create open or private channels and make voice or video calls. You can drop any files, documents and images into Slack to share them with anyone in the team. With Slack you can connect all the tools you use, incorporate feeds from social media into the application, and archive any messages and files in one central place. 02. Figma Figma is the first interface design tool tailored towards UI designFree (individual plan) Figma is an excellent tool that lets teams collaborate on a UI design project and immediately share it with other team members. It’s the first browser-based interface design tool that lets you design vector-based UIs, edit, comment, share and store your work all in one place. Figma does for graphics what Google Docs does for text, connecting to the cloud so that many designers can work simultaneously on projects. To learn more, check out our article on how to create a responsive dashboard with Figma. 03. Active Collab Stay connected in one place and in real time with Active CollabFrom $25 (around £19) per month Active Collab is a project management tool that helps your team stay organised in real time. It allows you to keep track of tasks and events, upload files, comment directly on tasks and keep all of your project feedback in one place. It also offers a number of features to help with collaboration, time tracking, task management and invoicing – you can issue invoices to your clients in just a few clicks. The tool runs in the cloud but you can also install it on your server. 04. Zapier Zapier takes the tedium out of organising daily tasksFree (basic) Zapier saves you time by enabling you to connect over 750 different apps and services and move information between them. It can automate daily tasks between applications too, such as uploading files you receive in an email to the team's Dropbox, then alerting you via Slack. On top of that, the tool gives you access to task history and lets you import and export via connected accounts. If you want to step up from the basic plan, a work plan costs from $20 (around £15.50) per month for an individual. 05. IFTTT Streamline your to-do list effectively with IFTTTFree IFTTT (‘If this, then that’) is another handy collaboration tool that helps you link up a variety of internet-connected apps, services and devices and set up automated sequences. IFTTT works with over 400 services, including Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify. So for example, if you’re making a status update or posting a photo on one of the channels, you can set up IFTTT to replicate the actions on another channel. These trigger-action relationships (referred to as ‘applets’) can save your team from drowning in endless administrative tasks. 06. Buffer Focus on the important work by letting Buffer take care of social mediaFree (personal use) Buffer makes managing your social media a breeze. Buffer helps your team share content at any time, throughout the day. Simply add great videos, images and articles to Buffer and it will instantly share them on a variety of social channels. You can manage several accounts at once, and it’s possible to timetable posts for specific times or set them up to fill the next available time slot in your schedule. You can upgrade to a business plan from $10 (around £7.70) per month. 07. Zoom Catch up face-to-face via video with ZoomFree (basic) Whether you are part of a small businesses or a large corporation, Zoom helps you improve your communications. It’s a one-stop video conferencing solution that enables you to conduct online meetings or group messaging in one software-based conference room. This means team members can chat easily with each other or clients, without needing to be in the same room. Upgrading to a pro account so that you can host conferences costs from $14.99/£11.99 per month per host. 08. Google Hangouts Google Hangouts has the clean interface we've come to expect from the companyFree Google Hangouts is another communication platform that gives your team members quick access to chat and enables them to make video calls with users across various platforms. The interface is clean and simple and the installation process is relatively easy. With a number of fantastic features such as video chats, group hangouts and the ability to add pictures directly into your conversations, it’s no wonder Hangouts is loved by users worldwide. 09. Join.me Uncapped free video conferencing will help your team band togetherFree Join.me is an excellent communication tool, and it’s totally free. With Join.me, you can keep everyone in the loop with unlimited video and audio conferencing. It also lets you instantly share your screen or a single window, and join a meeting in just a click without having to sign up or download anything. 10. Google Docs Google Docs is so easy to use it's no surprise it's so popularFree Google Docs is the easiest way for teams to collaborate by editing documents with other people in any real time. It’s a free web-based application that allows you and your team to create, edit, import and update documents and spreadsheets. One of its biggest assets is that it allows your team to store documents they create online, without running a risk of data loss. Finally, it’s compatible with most presentation software and it’s totally free. Next page: 10 more tools to boost your productivity 11. Dropbox Access data anywhere, from any device, with DropboxFree (basic) Dropbox is a feature-rich document collaboration and storage platform that lends itself to a number of features, most notably document and file storage. Features such as easy and simple sharing, file and version recovery, smart sync and a team folder manager make it an ideal tool for your team and business. As it's in the cloud, you can access your data from any device, wherever you are. While you can have a Dropbox basic account for free, Dropbox Plus and Dropbox Business are paid subscriptions, costing from $9.99/£6.58 per month. 12. Red Pen Red Pen's drag and drop functionality makes feedback quick and easyFrom $20 (around £15.50) per month Red Pen offers an exciting and intuitive way to mark, assess and annotate digital work, making team collaboration super-fast. Because it’s web-based, team members can access it at any time and anywhere, without having to install any software. It enables you to insert audio comments, highlight work, add position notes and drag-and-drop. 13. Dropbox Paper Centralise your work and apps with Dropbox PaperFree At its core, Dropbox Paper is Dropbox’s version of Google Docs. It has a clean and minimalistic interface and offers a flexible and user-friendly workplace within which your team members can connect and share their ideas. Users can collaborate on documents by centralising their work from other apps. With Paper, you can keep a team’s work organised in one shared space, and control who can access what content. 14. Evernote Evernote acts as a personal digital assistant to keep you on trackFree (basic) Evernote is a powerful note-taking application that enables anyone to easily capture ideas, images, contacts or pretty much anything they want to make a note of. It can be accessed on all of your devices, enabling you keep all your work in one place and start in-app discussions. Plus, it acts as your personal digital research assistant. A business account is priced from $10/£10 per user per month. 15. SaneBox Stay on top of your inbox with SaneBoxFrom $7 (around £5.40) per month SaneBox is the ultimate organisation tool that helps you keep track of and prioritise your email by filtering unimportant messages out of your inbox. You can set SaneBox to notify you if your emails haven’t received a reply, rescue real emails from spam, or upload attachments to your cloud – helping your team get work done. 16. Mural Bring people together to share ideas with MuralFrom $12 (around £9.25) per month Based in the cloud, Mural is a visual collaboration workspace that enables your team to brainstorm ideas, organise them and collaborate with ease. Mural provides shared, digital whiteboards where your team can visualise problems and deliver solutions. There are also templates and built-in frameworks you can use to kickstart the problem-solving process. 17. Cage Say goodbye to long-winded meetings with CageFrom $24 (around £18.50) per month Cage makes collaborating on design projects simple and hassle-free. Share, manage and approve your creative work with your team and your clients, and avoid marathon meetings and bulky email threads by receiving regular feedback. Cage aims to help you reduce the number of revisions you'll need, and help you complete your projects quicker. 18. TeamViewer Stay connected to your team remotely with TeamViewerFrom free TeamViewer is a remote, easy-to-use access program. Its appeal is that it lets you access your office computer from your home PC or mobile device with very little lag time. Share your files or simply drag-and-drop them from one device to another. With TeamViewer, you can offer technical support to a friend, hold meetings, hold video calls and generally interact with other people as if you were in the same room. Simply install TeamViewer on both host and admin computers and you are ready to go. It's free for personal use or from £32 (around $41.50) per month for a business plan. 19. Help Scout Share an inbox with your client with Help ScoutFrom $8 (around £6) per month Help Scout is a helpdesk software specifically designed to help improve the customer experience. The most important feature of Help Scout is its shared inbox, which should help keep the entire team on the same page. Further to this, it’s possible to create multiple inboxes for each shared email address, or to manage a few brands from a single account. Use the Note Feature to start an internal discussion on a specific topic with your team before replying to a customer. 20. Zeplin Zeplin is a straightforward way of bringing designers and developers togetherFrom free Zeplin is a collaboration tool that helps designers and web developers leverage their workflow and communicate smoothly and speedily. It allows designers to upload their visual designs from a desktop app such as Sketch or Photoshop and add them to a project folder in Zeplin. Once both designers and engineers have an account, sharing design specs such as sizes, colours, and margins and contributing to it is simple. While working on one project is free, pricing increases as the number of projects increases. It starts from $17 (around £13) per month. Related articles: Review: Adobe Creative Cloud 2017 22 ways to boost your productivity Send large files: 11 free tools View the full article

When it comes to communicating a character's personality, animators have plenty of tricks up their sleeves to get the message across. Body language is one of the most effective ways to express what a person is feeling, but studying how people hold themselves is difficult in real life. After all, you wouldn't ask an angry person to hold their pose a little longer while you capture what their rage looks like. To get around this problem, stop-motion animator Kevin Parry decided to film himself imagining how emotions and characteristics affect the way a person walks. Originally intended as an animation reference, this video has found a broader audience thanks to Parry's hilarious interpretations of timeless moods like 'sassy', 'sore back' and 'secret run'. Watch the video below and stay tuned for Parry's moon walk. It's worth it. The quick-fire walks have left us laughing out loud, not just because they segue from the sublime to the ridiculous – 'broadway musical' to 'something in shoe' is our favourite – but because Parry's posture, movement and facial expressions are spot-on. Other animators have found the video useful, too: And with Parry working on the likes of Kubo and the Two Strings and Boxtrolls, who knows, maybe we'll see some of these distinctive walks in films in the future. More fun articles here: This AI's inspirational posters are hilarious Happy 30th birthday GIF! This firm's straight-talking contract cuts through the BS View the full article

Looking for inspiration to take your design work to the next level? Then look no further than the 2017 World-Class Design Asset Bundle. You'll find all of the assets you need to make your work stand out, and you can get it on sale for 96% off the retail price. Having access to professionally designed assets will make any job easier for a designer. In the 2017 World-Class Design Asset Bundle, you'll find over $770 worth of professional-grade templates and assets that have been crafted by experts who know exactly what designers need. You can put them to use in any project and see your work taken to the next level. You can get the 2017 World-Class Design Asset Bundle on sale for just $29 (approx £23). That's a huge saving of 96% off the retail price for this collection of assets. No designer should be without these assets, so grab it today! View the full article

The glaring privacy issues tied to an online health and beauty retailer allows customers to log-in to their users accounts with just their email address - no password needed. View the full article

It's hard to avoid toe-curlingly awful inspirational posters online. You know what we're talking about – the ones featuring a superficially deep and meaningful quote set against a photo of a mountain or a sunset or a mountain at sunset. Yeah, those. They're the reason why you should never add distant family members, or people you went to school with and haven't spoken to in years, on Facebook. Here, though, is a source of inspirational posters that we can really get behind. InspiroBot, we're told, is is an AI dedicated to generating unique inspirational quotes for the endless enrichment of pointless human existence. Makes you think, eh?It's a joy to use. Simply head to the InspiroBot site, hit the Generate button and it'll make you a brand new and fab-looking inspirational image, complete with the sort of quote that your slightly racist second cousin would find deep and meaningful and would definitely get printed on a mug (yes, you can do that). SHARE IF YOU AGREE LOLSuch are InspiroBot's delights that it's terribly easy to just sit for ages, pressing the Generate button and enjoying the never-ending stream of fake pretentious nonsense. The little messages that Inspirobot comes up while it's generating images are also fantastic. Keep clicking – interesting stuff happens after a while! Never keep clicking and sharingOur only issue with it is that we suspect that it's not really the work of an AI. Or if it is, then someone's giving it a hand along the way. Some of the things it comes up with, along with the imagery and the typesetting, seem just a little too finely tuned to be the work of a computer. Regardless, though, it's a splendid way to waste some time, and to find stuff to post on Facebook that'll really annoy people who don't get the joke. There's even an Instagram account with a wealth of its greatest hits to explore, too. Scroll through the gallery below for some of our favourites. Have fun! Related articles: 28 inspiring examples of vintage posters The top 25 movie posters of all time 12 beautiful travel posters View the full article

http://thehackernews.com/2017/06/windows10-controlled-folder-access-ransomware-protection.html … View the full article

You're reading 8 Tools You Want to Use Before Starting Your Next Business, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! One of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs are facing in the fast-paced online world is staying on top of new trends and products. With an abundance of tools and resources accessible online, many choose to go down the trial and error path in search for the perfect fit. However, to quickly scale an idea and […] View the full article

Michael Bay's latest Transformers movie, The Last Knight, takes place mainly on Earth. However, the planetary home of the Transformers, known as Cybertron, also makes an appearance, and it was down to the team at ILM to bring it to life on screen. So how did they do it? "Cybertron is in many shots and was dauntingly complex," states ILM associate VFX supervisor David Fogler, who oversaw the development of the world-building. "Cybertron as a basic concept was a challenge. What it should look like? How should it behave? We spent a year and a half figuring out what it should look like and that's not an exaggeration." Destruction and explosions are seamlessly integrated with CGNumerous concept designs were developed by production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and ILM art director Ryan Church. "Michael Bay chose a few of those concepts that were his favourites," explains ILM visual effects supervisor Jason Smith. ILM spent 18 months deciding what Cybertron should look like "Once we had those key pieces of art, David Fogler, Scott Farrar and I boiled them down to key elements that were built into the model that we could then vary, duplicate and reuse. At the end of the day, that model is of a planet broken up into chunks and each chunk is hundreds of thousands of parts. It's more complicated in terms of the number of parts and geometry than most of the robots." During the film's shooting in Detroit, buildings were practically destroyed"Just coming up with a way to handle that complexity was a huge challenge for our pipeline," says Smith. "Then there was dealing with it crashing into the moon. The simulation team here is used to dealing with buildings being crushed, or fire or smoke. But when something of that scale crashes into the moon causing destruction, you have to handle all of those elements in one shot because parts of the Moon will liquify, break as solid rock, and become dust. "Those shots were a large challenge for the simulation team because of the heaviness of the model, the complexity of what those shapes are, and then the fact that all of those simulations have to work together." This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 223. Buy it here! Related articles: The 10 biggest 3D movies of 2017 15 most imaginative movie wallpapers Are these vintage concept movie posters better than the originals? How to break into the VFX industry View the full article

Web design isn’t just about making sites that look pretty – it’s about making interfaces that perform a function, and serve visitors in a way that’s seamless, pleasurable and useful. And that means web designers can’t just work in a bubble, but need to be aware of broader trends influencing how users expect websites to look, feel and function. In this post, we’ll look at some of the biggest and most popular changes happening on the internet right now and bring you up to date. 01. The rise of voice and chat Are you ready for the voice and chat revolution? Customer service chatbots – conversational interfaces that make you think you’re talking to a real person, when you’re actually communicating with a computer program – have been around since the early 2000s. But recently the rise of new AI technologies have given the chatbot a shot in the arm, and they’re now seemingly everywhere you look on the web. Right now, most chatbots are really just a fun and user-friendly way of filling in a web form. But when combined with voice recognition technologies, it’s now increasingly possible to actually, you know, chat with chatbots. While that may sound a bit sci-fi and creepy to some, a lot of people seem to be happy to do so: Google revealed at I/O last year that an astonishing 20 per cent of it mobile enquiries were made by voice. In some cases chatbots can come across as intrusive and annoying. But for ecommerce sites in particular they are likely to become increasingly necessary to drive conversions and sales. And with Amazon, Apple and Google all feverishly developing their own voice UIs, alongside mass-market conversation devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, they’re going to get more and more accurate and useful. To learn more about how to get involved in the voice and chat space, check out our articles 5 essential chatbot learning resources, How to design a chatbot experience and Why voice UIs are the next big thing in web design. 02. The streaming revolution Streaming is rapidly taking over from broadcast and cable TV In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re undergoing nothing less than a revolution in terms of how we enjoy our audio and video content. Netflix now makes up more than 30 per cent of home entertainment revenue in the US, and streaming music led by Spotify has surpassed physical music sales in terms of revenue. Right now, the giants of the web are busy trying to nudge out broadcast TV when it comes to live streaming video. Twitter especially seems to see its future in this space. During the last American football season it struck a one-year, $10 million deal to live stream NFL games. And in December it announced the streaming of live, interactive 360 videos via Periscope. This year, though, Amazon beat Twitter on the NFL front, reaching a deal to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games this year for around $50 million, while Facebook Live has struck a deal to live stream Champions League soccer games with Fox Sports. And that’s without even mentioning the competition from the likes of YouTube Live, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch, Livestream, YouNow and UStream. Downloads, broadcast and cable TV are dying and the future is firmly fixed on online streaming. In a sense, Gil Scott-Heron was right: the revolution will not be televised. 03. The ads apocalypse Ad blocking services are proving the death knell for free online mediaRemember those heady days when we all thought we could make a living from our blog, just by putting up a few ads on it? Well, those days seem to be numbered, even for big media. As the overall supply of ad space has increased, the more programmatic ad systems have driven the price down across the board, and busted that model entirely. The experiences of major newspapers point to the way this trend has evolved. A decade ago, they all thought they’d be able to fund their journalism by giving it away for free online, and making money on ads. But with disappointing returns, everyone had to add more and more intrusive commercials to their pages, which led to the rise in ad blockers, which led to more ads to make up the shortfall, and the vicious circle has continued. As a result, many newspapers are now retreating behind paywalls or, in cases like The Guardian, ending each article with a begging letter for donations. Ironically, over the same period, the total volume of ad spending online has increased massively. In the US this outstripped TV spend for the first time in 2016, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PwC. But that’s been no help to traditional media, because it’s all going to Google and Facebook, which currently control a staggering 85 per cent of online ad growth. 04. The VR web VR offers a new way to experience web contentYou probably think that virtual reality is a gimmick, that you can just ignore and it will soon go away. And that’s probably because you’ve either not experienced it yet, or you've only experienced it through a cheap headset attached to a mobile phone, creating a somewhat clunky and underwhelming experience. But believe us, once you’ve tried out a VR program such as Google’s Tilt Brush, on a high-end system attached to a powerful computer, you’ll think differently. Like Skype, HD or streaming video, VR is ready to change the world, and it’s only matter of time. And that will certainly include the web. Right now, it’s providing web designers with a lot of client work for big brands, as everyone tries to jump on the VR train and how it can work for them. You can see some great examples in our post 8 amazing uses of VR that will blow your mind. To further explore the scenarios that browser-based virtual reality enables, and dive into the new tools and frameworks that have evolved alongside it, check out our article 5 ways VR is changing web design today and these tutorials to help you use VR in your design work. 05. Content skimming Like it or not, users increasingly prefer to skim, so you need to design your website content for that purposeWe all like to think that when a lot of people share our blog posts online, it means they’re a hit. But it ain’t necessarily so. Research has shown that a staggering amount of people sharing content on Facebook and Twitter aren’t actually looking at the content – they’re just looking at the headline. A study by Columbia University and the French National Institute, for example, found that 59 per cent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked. In other words, people were sharing an article without actually reading it. It’s a sign of how time-poor we are in our busy lives, as well as how much other digital stuff is competing for our attention. We’re not sure what the solution is here, but one thing’s for sure: when it comes to designing your site, you certainly can’t rely on people reading your website’s content from cover to cover. And when it comes to approaching things like hierarchy, you need to take this fundamental truth into account. For detailed advice on how to lay out your web pages, check out our article 23 steps to the perfect website layout. View the full article

The global outbreak of the Petya/ExPetr malware wasn't a ransomware attack, it was wiper malware aimed to sabotage, according to experts. View the full article

Ubuntu fixed a Linux bug that could have let an attacker cause a denial of service or execute arbitrary code with a TCP payload this week. View the full article

Communicating to a fanbase isn’t always easy. As a brand you’re talking to an audience that knows its preferred subject inside-out and will be all-too eager to call you out if it spots a misstep in your messaging or imagery. For the global, multi-platform media brand SYFY, the situation gets even more complicated as it caters to a diverse range of interests. It covers genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural and the paranormal, with the different TV shows, movies, comics and other things it reports on having little in common when it comes to creating an overarching aesthetic. So for its latest rebrand, which celebrates its 25 birthday, SYFY decided to take a different approach. Working with creative branding agency loyalkaspar and NBC Universal, SYFY’s revamped look, custom font and new logo design are all editorial-led and follow the channel’s focus to deliver round-the-clock content. SYFY rebrand design brief The old SYFY logo had a softer, more bendy lookLoyalkaspar’s executive creative director Daniel Dörnemann explains that when SYFY approached the studio, there was no physical brief to speak of: “So in a way the brief was: ‘This is going to be a whole new SYFY. You shouldn’t hold on to any of the current identity, including the logo and distinct purple colour palette. "'We need an identity that goes beyond the traditional On-Air package. We need an identity that allows us to connect to our community through our passion and POV.’” SYFY reports on a wide range of genre programmingThe new yellow SYFY logo with its blocky letter shapes is certainly a stark contrast to the channel’s previous, curvy version. Thanks to its distinctive geometric shape, the new SYFY logo is a flexible design that is perfectly suited to different platforms. What’s more, it’s not tied down to a specific genre. “That was one of the challenges – to make sure we didn’t lean too much into one specific vernacular,” says Dörnemann “SYFY isn’t just about science fiction and space, but includes fantasy, horror and superheroes. All these genres have very different and specific visual languages. So, we needed to create a logo and font that would nod at the genre overall without feeling out of place in any one specifically. “As far as the font goes, we wanted to evoke the quality of a headline font, since a lot of the communication centres around covering events and news.” Showing brand personality For the bulk of SYFY’s programming there is a lot of associated imagery, whether this is a particular show with prominent symbols and characters, or a genre with longstanding stylistic cues. Crafting a fresh identity for a platform that reports on these shows therefore took a lot of careful consideration. It would be all-too easy to rely on images that a fan base was attached to rather than creating something new. “We often say: The hardest thing about creating a solution is to really understand the problem,” Dörnemann reveals. “So, in a way, I think the secret to creating any identity is to really understand the brand’s personality, its goals and the experience the brand wants to create for its audience and then make sure we deliver on that.” Fans of genre entertainment have often been represented in a less than positive light (the socially awkward stars of The Big Bang Theory spring to mind), so for the loyalkaspar creative team it was important to make sure they weren’t talking down to their audience. Luckily for them they were surrounded by the very people they were trying to target. “Working so closely with the team at SYFY, it became clear very early on that we were working with people who didn’t just understand their audience, they were the audience – fans with passion, insights and opinions,” says Dörnemann. And it was this interaction that fed back into the personality of the rebrand. “Their opinions were often differing, which led to passionate debate around one central theme: making connections within the larger universe of everything science fiction, without ever being authoritative or exclusive,” he explains. News inspiration The new typeface was inspired by sites like WIRED and The New York TimesPart of the rebrand problem-solving process involved highlighting what had gone before and avoiding it. For SYFY this meant looking at traditional sci-fi TV networks. What loyalkaspar found was a predilection for dark palettes and cinematic visuals – elements that weren’t in keeping with the engaging, content-driven approach SYFY was going for. This led loyalkaspar to look outside SYFY's genre stablemates. “With the shift in focus to not only content, but conversations, we took inspiration from news outlets like WIRED magazine and The New York Times, which inspired a more editorial approach,” Dörnemann says. “The result is an approach centred around a simple typographic system that could step back and let the message take centre stage, while always being (visually) clear about where that message is coming from.” Liked this? Then read these: 5 ways type can define brands Vital brand strategy rules 10 commandments of logo design View the full article

A new Linux operating system designed specifically for people who use their computers to create has landed. System76 has developed Pop!_OS for people working on “complicated, professional-grade software and products, sophisticated 3D models... or makers working on their latest invention”, among others, it says – good news for 3D artists and other creatives looking for an alternative to Windows or macOS. Pop!_OS is available now as an alpha releasePop!_OS is a Zero UI operating system built on Ubuntu, meaning the interface is unobtrusive and can be customised to suit your own needs. It's currently in an alpha release but already reportedly offers plenty of open source software and development tools. The OS can be customised in a multitude of ways“While our operating system and computers are great for any user, the ideas and features we develop for Pop!_OS will be squarely focused on the professionals and makers who use their computers to create,” says Carl Richell, CEO of System76, a Linux specialist. An alpha version of Pop!_OS is available to trial now, with the full stable release scheduled for 19 October. System 76 is inviting users to trial it and to get involved in the final stages of its development over at reddit and GitHub. Do you want more? Then read these other great articles: 10 great new tools for 3D artists this June Understand the 12 principles of animation Why you should be excited about Zero UI View the full article

There is a huge number of web APIs available and sometimes as a web developer it can be hard to keep track of new ones. So we've helpfully collated a list of web APIs that are not finalised yet, but are likely to become important in the following months or years. These include APIs for handling payments, connecting to sensors and more. To stay up to date with the latest developments you can have a look at the GitHub page of the Web Incubator Community Group, or the news page of the W3C. Stay tuned! 01. Payment Request API When you look at payment forms and workflows on websites and web applications they often differ from one another. However, in principle the workflow should always be the same: confirm the shopping cart, add the shipping and billing address, select the payment method, confirm everything, accept the terms and conditions and send the final request form. From a usability point of view this difference can actually have a negative effect. Similarly, implementing a new payment flow every time one is required can be a very time-consuming process for the developer: different forms need to be implemented, different payment methods like PayPal or credit card integrated and everything has to be secure. The Payment Request API currently developed by the W3C looks set to simplify the process for everyone. It aims to facilitate and standardise the process of creating payment workflows and provides several interfaces. 02. Web Share API and Web Share Target API These APIs standardise sharing resources from one application to anotherThe goal of the Web Share API is to provide a standardised way of sharing resources (text, images, URLs and so on) from a mobile application to a destination specified by the user – this could be another mobile application, a website or a system service provided by the mobile OS. The Web Share API extends both the interface's Navigator and WorkerNavigator with a method share(), which takes the shared resource as parameter. While the Web Share API defines how to share resources, the Web Share Target API defines how to receive such shared resources. Applications (either native or web) and other services can use this API to register themselves for the share event to receive shared resources. 03. WebUSB API USB is one of the standard ways of connecting external devices to a computer. While devices like mouse and keyboard are automatically recognised, less common devices require you to install native drivers (in other words, native code). This native code means these devices cannot then be used by browser in a standard way. This is where the WebUSB API comes into play: the idea is that USB devices expose their services through this API so web applications can access those services. To achieve this, the interface Navigator is extended with the property USB, which then gives you access to an object of type USB, the main entry point for this API. Using the method getDevices() you can, for example, retrieve a list of all devices that are currently available and subsequently directly start working with them. 04. Geofencing API The Geofencing API lets you set up geographic boundariesToday you can already determine the current geographic position of a device through the Geolocation API. However, with the new Geofencing API it will be possible to set up geographic boundaries around specific locations and get notified when a device enters or leaves those locations. The API will be based on Service Workers, so even if the Geofencing API is used in a web application that has been closed it will still receive notifications. 05. Presentation API The Presentation API can be used to control presentations via JavaScriptThere are a lot of libraries for creating presentations based on HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. However, there is no standard way to handle the interactions between the controlling part of a presentation and the actual presentation. This is where the Presentation API comes into play. The idea behind it is to be able to have one webpage that contains the presentation and one webpage that runs the code for controlling the presentation. Depending on the capabilities of the presenting device and the connection mechanism (DVI, HDMI, Chromecast, AirPlay and so on), either both webpages run in the same user agent (on the controlling device) or one runs in a user agent on the controlling device while the other one runs in a user agent on the presenting device. 06. Shape Detection API The ability to detect shapes in images can be very useful (think of Facebook's face detection features) and there are some libraries available for this, like tracking.js. The Shape Detection API, which is currently in progress, defines interfaces to detect different shapes in still images or in live image feeds. At the current stage the API has three sub-APIs: one for detecting faces, one for detecting barcodes and one for detecting text. The three interfaces FaceDetector, BarcodeDetector and TextDetector are all used in a similar way: they all provide a method detect(), which takes an image source as input and returns a Promise object with a sequence of detected shapes. 07. Async Cookies API The current interface to work with cookies (document.cookie) is not very comfortable: there are no standard methods for adding, reading or deleting cookies, so all of this has to be done manually via string parsing and string manipulation. Of course there are helper libraries to facilitate all of those operations, but with the Async Cookies API it will be much easier and more performant as well. The idea is to not only store the cookies in document.cookie, but also provide a new object named cookieStore, which will be accessible both in webpages and in service workers. The object has methods like write() and set() for adding cookies, delete() for deleting them and read() for reading cookies. They all work asynchronously, so even if some cookie processing takes longer, this will not impact on the overall performance. 08. Input Device Capabilities API Input events like the click event are only abstract representations of the device input; they do not contain information about the actual device that has been used to generate the event. Developers need to make assumptions about which actual input device triggered such an event. When supporting both mouse and touch events this can lead to problems and difficulties: it is hard to find out if some event (e.g. mousedown) was triggered from the mouse (because a mouse is used) or just because of compatibility reasons (but the actual device is a touch device). The new Input Device Capabilities API wants to solve those problems and introduces a new interface (InputDeviceCapabilities), which provides information about the device via a new property sourceCapabilities of the UIEvent interface. 09. FlyWeb API With the rise of the Internet of Things, how devices and electronics connect and interact with each other is becoming more and more important. The idea of the FlyWeb API, which is being developed by the Mozilla team, is to be able to serve web applications on electronics and to then connect to these applications from other electronics (for example, with smartphones) within the same network. Say that you want to connect a smartphone to a game console. The latter would provide a small FlyWeb server, and this would then be visible to the smartphone. 10. Push API The Push API allows servers to push messages to the clientIn traditional web applications there was no way for a server to actively send messages to a client – for example, to update a news ticker or to update some real-time data stream. Instead developers used techniques like Long Polling, XHR Polling or Hidden Frames to simulate real-time connections. Fortunately, thanks to Web Sockets and Server-Sent Events (SSEs) those techniques are not necessary any more. With Web Sockets you can implement a bidirectional communication between the client and the server, and with SSEs a unidirectional communication going from the server to the client, which is perfect for sending updates actively from the server to the client. However, both technologies require a browser window/tab to be open to receive those updates. With the new Push API this is not necessary: it is directly connected to the Service Worker API and allows service workers to receive messages from a server. This means that even if a web application has been closed, the service worker can still receive the messages – for example if you want to send notifications via the Notifications API to inform the user about any updates. Next: 5 more new APIs you need to know about 11. Generic Sensor API There are already a lot of Web APIs that define interfaces for different kinds of sensors (for example, the Device Orientation API and the Geolocation API). Unfortunately those APIs do not have a common interface and are all used differently – for example, by providing callback handlers in one case, or by registering event handlers in another. The goal of the Generic Sensor API is to define a set of common, generic interfaces for accessing any kind of sensor. Concrete sensor APIs that are based on the Generic Sensor API (such as the Ambient Light API) extend generic interfaces and add functionality as required. 12. Accessibility API Accessibility is an important point when developing web applications. There are already standards like ARIA, which provides an ontology of roles, states and properties to define accessible user interfaces on the web. It can also enrich HTML elements (on a markup level) with information that can be used by assistive technologies like screen readers. However, the Accessibility API creates a standard Web API for JavaScript, based on ideas from ARIA and other existing accessibility APIs like Web Accessibility and Actions by Microsoft, the Web Accessibility API by Mozilla or other native platform APIs (including the Java Accessibility API). Using the new property a11ement on DOM elements, developers can access semantic information about the element like the role, the state, relation to other elements and many more, using JavaScript. 13. Font Loading API With the Font Loading API you can load font faces dynamically with JavaScriptWhen you are using custom fonts on a webpage, downloading the font files can take time, depending on the bandwidth and the size of the font files. This can then lead to display problems, such as flickering content when the webpage starts rendering without the font face being loaded first. The new Font Loading API addresses this problem and it can define a standardised API for downloading font faces by utilising JavaScript. Developers can choose when to load a font face and what to do when it has been downloaded. 14. Web Bluetooth API The Bluetooth protocol is a standard that is often used in the field of IoT, for example to connect a smartphone or tablet to other devices like health trackers to read certain sensor values. For mobile web applications it is already possible to connect via Bluetooth by using PhoneGap and its plugins, but if you want to use Bluetooth inside a web application on a desktop computer or laptop then you will still need to install an extra browser plugin. The goal of the Web Bluetooth API that is being worked on by the W3C Web Bluetooth Community Group is to provide a standardised API for accessing Bluetooth devices through the browser, without the need for any plugins. 15. Visual Viewport API The Visual Viewport API solves those layout viewport vs visual layout clashesAs you know, web applications contain two viewports: the layout viewport, which represents the space where a page lays out its elements into, and the visual layout, which represents what is visible on the screen. However, working with those two layouts can be a confusing task: while some properties like innerWidth and innerHeight are relative to the visual viewport, other properties such as those for accessing event coordinates are relative to the layout viewport. On top of that, the browser behaviour can also differ when you pinch-zoom into an application (an online demo that visualises those problems and the relationship between these two different layouts in general can be found here). To overcome these problems and disparities, the goal of the Visual Viewport API is to add new properties that are all related to the visual viewport, as well as to introduce a property visualViewport on the window object. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 292; buy it here! Related articles: 15 APIs developers need to know Framework choices for developers 4 of the most game-changing developments in tech View the full article

Colourising a scanned hand-drawn pencil sketch to get rid of the black lines can save an artist lots of work and aggravation. Dark, black lines are hard to paint over while maintaining the sketch. Thankfully, there's an easy way to colour and soften those black lines using Photoshop. Here's how. 01. Open in Photoshop Use the Levels tool to lighten the black tonesOnce scanned, open your sketch in Photoshop and use 
the 'Image > Adjustments > Levels' menu commands to maximise the white and minimise the black. Move the white adjustment marker to the left so the lightest grey areas become white. Then shift the mid-value adjustment marker to the left so the black lines become light grey. 02. Add a new layer The coloured sketch after merging down the colour layerCreate a new layer and set the blending mode to Color. Then start adding colour to the lines of the sketch. For my lizard sketch I filled this layer with an olive green that would eventually become the colour of the lizard, and I used a brush to paint pink over the small flower. Merge Down the colour layer and save the image. The sketch now has lighter values and the colours are closer to those that will be used in the painting. 03. Blend On! Experiment with Photoshop to get different effectsThere are several additional Blending Modes that work as well but with somewhat different results. Color Burn will give a coloured sketch that's darker. Soft Light will give a more subtle effect with a bit more grey. Try additional Blending Modes for different looks. Like this? Read these! The 60 best free Photoshop brushes Grammy-winning artist Klaus Voormann on why hand-drawn is best How painting in black and white can improve your art View the full article

Even if you've been out of school for years, it's never too late to learn new skills. All you need are the right resources. That's where Virtual Training Company comes in. Grab a lifetime subscription to its educational courses on sale today for just $79 (approx £62)! For anyone hoping to learn a new skill, Virtual Training Company is an invaluable asset. You'll find more than 1,000 courses spread across 15 fields that you'll be able to learn at your own pace. If you're interested in design, coding, animation, 3D, game design, graphics or just about anything else, you'll find a course that's perfect for you. Plus, new ones are being added regularly, so you’ll never run out of things to learn. A lifetime subscription to Virtual Training Company usually retails for $2,500, but you can get it now for just $79 (approx £62). That’s a massive saving of 96% off the retail price for courses that could change your career, so grab it today! View the full article

When learning how to paint, virtually every student starts out afraid and overwhelmed by the unforgiving nature of painting in oils. But the transition to oils can be made much smoother by utilising some simple and practical painting techniques. In the video below, I demonstrate 10 great tips that will help get you started on the right path. (Spoiler alert: it all begins with the fundamentals!) Now let's go through these 10 oil painting tips in more detail. 01. Hold the paintbrush in the right place! Hold your brush at the end for maximum controlThere are many different grips on the paintbrush that an artist can use while painting. However, there is one 'go-to' method that every artist should know: to get the most fluidity and sensitivity with your strokes, hold the brush handle as far back as you can. This might feel uncomfortable at first, but it offers the greatest degree of control because it allows you to paint with your whole arm rather than just your wrist. 02. Master your brush orientation Using every angle of your brush adds to your versatilityDuring the process of painting, it can be very easy to forget that your brush has two sides or orientations! You’re not limited to always making wide strokes using the flat side of your brush, as every brush can be turned on its side for sharper lines or strokes. Learning to control your lines with your brush orientation will help you paint faster and with more versatility. 03. Vary your pressure By varying pressure, you’ll vary texture as wellAvoid having 'heavy hands' with your paintbrush. Sometimes the pressure that you apply with a stroke can make the difference between perfection and a mess. The heavier your pressure, the more your paints will blend and create ridges along the sides of your brushstrokes. Get familiar with how your light, medium, and heavy strokes look on the canvas and vary your pressure appropriately to achieve your desired effects. 04. Harness the power of the painting medium Painting mediums can modify your paint in amazing waysOil painting is not solely about the paint. An absolutely essential part of controlling paint is the artist’s use of a painting medium – typically a mixture of solvent and oil used to modify the paint and make it behave in different ways. Adding lots of medium will make your paint flat and transparent like a wash, whereas adding just a little medium will give your paint a mayonnaise-like consistency. 05. Keep your colours pure Keep your brushes clean so you don’t contaminate your colourBe careful when you grab from the paint piles on your palette. Make sure that your brushes are clean or you will taint the colours you want to use. It’s vital to preserve the intensity of the colours straight out of the tube so remember to clean your brushes regularly and often – even between strokes if necessary. 06. Use two-colour mixtures if possible The fewer paints you mix, the more vibrant the resulting colour will beGrabbing from every single pile while mixing will create a dull and less intense mixture. Practice mixing what you need using only two colours and white. By increasing your colour knowledge and getting better at mixing, you will paint much more efficiently and quickly and your work will benefit from it. 07. Don't over-mix Only mix as much as necessaryWhen mixed colours first bump into one another, there are tiny inconsistencies in the mixture that help add vividness and interest to your paint. So, when you combine colours to create a mixture it’s important to make sure that you only mix them as much as necessary before applying the stroke. If you over-mix two colours, you will turn your interesting mixture into a flat and uninteresting pile of paint. 08. Don't skimp on paint Use as much paint as necessary to realise your visionSometimes you want a thin wash, but other times you need a thick stroke in order to achieve your desired effect, so make sure that you're using enough paint to create the type of stroke you need. Don't hold back on the paint at the expense of your painting. If you find yourself constantly swirling a brush around a thin pool of paint on your palette, then it's probably time to remake that mixture. 09. Try wet-on-wet versus dry brush Use wet versus dry effects to your advantageRemember that you can paint directly onto a wet surface or wait for it to dry and put wet paint over that. Paints will blend on the canvas when working wet-in-wet, which is great for getting transitions or gradients. Painting with a dry brush will give you a more textural effect, which is perfect for painting brick or dirt. 10. Don't forget the palette knife Sometimes, the best brush for the job is not a brush at allThe palette knife is not just a trowel that you use to mix paint! It can also be used quite effectively at times to make interesting strokes. A palette knife is particularly useful for making textural and unpredictable strokes – effects that you'd be hard-pressed to duplicate with a brush. Want more painting articles? Start off with these: How to draw and paint - pro tips and tutorials 7 must-know painting techniques for artists The secrets to painting like Matisse View the full article

Zero UI doesn't mean getting rid of the interface entirely. Rather, it's a process where many of the visual interfaces we spend so much time with recede into the background, leaving us open to engage with the stuff that is important and useful to us. It is analogous to inbox zero, where we strive to achieve a blissful state in which everything is dealt with, calm and invisible. This shift away from the very controllable  environment of screen and pointer means the things we are trying to do are becoming more complex. They now have to take into account a lot more ideas around human behaviours, motivations and emotions. We’ve always had to bring aspects of psychology and perception into our work, as understanding what would make someone click a button, how users would retain information, and the barriers to committing to a decision, is important . But for all the elegance of the interfaces we have designed, they are two-dimensional, with simplistic cues and triggers. Why design Zero UI? Why are some interfaces so difficult?As we move into a connected world where objects, people and environments are all joined together by a mesh of invisible electronic tethers, the decision making, the services we want, and the results we expect from our interactions become exponentially more complicated. A system will have to predict what someone wants to do next. But it will also need to know where they are, where they're heading and what their intent is. It will be about how we as humans interact with entire systems. I don’t think there is a huge groundswell of opinion bemoaning the terribleness of interactive systems, products and devices. Quite the opposite in fact: we seem to be entranced by them all. And why not? The devices are beautiful, the systems are intelligent and the services make life so much easier. There are pretty strong arguments for the social and emotional discord that our addiction to electronic media causes, but the benefits of the digital world still exceed the problems. Nevertheless, we can all agree that removing the complexity that these devices bring into our lives would genuinely improve the state of things. Not just for the older generations, who try as they might are often confounded by the intricacy and closed-shop paradigms of software, but for all of us who have ever struggled with an update or service switch. Designing intuitive interactions Explore adaptive interfaces with Aaron Gustafson at Generate London and discover a battle-tested tool for planning, discussing, building and testing adaptive interfaces The phrase ‘Zero UI’ is designed to provoke designers, who spend a lot of time thinking about the way things look, and not much time thinking about anything else. We are primarily visual animals, so we sometimes forget how important all of those other senses are in conveying experience, and how important a part of our memory and identity they are. If we think of the ways in which we can make use of those other senses, we can start creating interactions that become easier, more intuitive, more pleasurable, and more subtle. The objective is to be able to spend less time fiddling around with computers, but to still achieve the same outcomes and enjoy their content. Interaction design was originally designed to help us understand how a computer or a machine works and to provide an interface for us to operate it. When I was younger, I was the only one in the family who could program the VCR. I would think: this is really bad, why can’t it be easier? That is the motivation of any designer. A lot of those purely functional parts of the UI have been solved now, with the help of patterns that are pretty good for simple kinds of interface problems. You could design a whole different set of patterns, but they probably wouldn’t be as good and would require people to learn new ways of interacting. However, there is a whole set of more complex things we are trying to do now. One example is the Uber app for Apple watches. In principle it's a genius simplification of the experience  –  just open the app and call a car. But if a flaky GPS sends the car two blocks away, the extremely simple interface gives the user no way to fix the information. They have to use their phone, and the magic is killed. We will need multiple layers of failsafe and redundancy in systems to allow these types of interactions to become commonplace. Zero UI to coordinate systems The Apple watch could be just one of many devices to coordinate seamlessly in futureImagine a Zero UI scenario where the user wants to travel to the other side of the country. Leaving aside the booking of the plane ticket for now (the complexity of which requires a detailed visual interface), all the systems that enable you to get to your destination could coordinate. This would link the alarm that gets you up in the morning, to your coffee machine grinding a double shot, to the alert that tells you when to leave and that you need to take the subway, to the system that allows you to walk straight through the pay barrier at the train station, and so on. Recently Matías Duarte, Google’s VP of design, talked about how atomised apps are the future of the mobile experience, and how even computer power will be distributed into smaller units, away from the device. This is very close to the vision I have for Zero UI, but perhaps a bit more conservative (necessarily). I would love to see a world where we can go about our daily business without having to waste valuable brain cycles on trivial things like making sure the cab finds our exact GPS coordinate. This article originally appeared in issue 279 of net magazine. Learn more about adaptive interfaces with Aaron Gustafson at Generate London. The conference for web designers will return to the Royal Institution on 20-22 September for talks covering web animation, accessibility, performance, conversational UIs and more, while workshops will cover UX strategy, building scalable responsive components, design and content sprints, idea generation and the selling of the idea. Save £95 on a conference & workshop bundle. Reserve yours today. Related articles: 8 minimal UI designs and why they work 11 great UI designs These bad volume sliders are a masterclass in terrible UI design View the full article

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The designer–writer partnership has produced some of the greatest creative work ever. But in the thick of a project it's easy for both sides to retreat into simply defending their own territory. And that's no good for anyone. So how do we make things less frustrating, and more fruitful? This starts when writers and designers better understand – and better appreciate – each other's craft. In this article we'll look at the art of writing a great headline. For student accommodation provider Hello Student, Reed Words adopted a positive voiceThe words you put at the top of a page are usually the most important, so it's no surprise that getting them right can take so many false starts. Headlines are tricky because they matter. They're the thumb flagging down passers-by, the sign of things to come. And if you're a designer, a headline can either be the cherry on top of your work, or its downfall. At Reed Words, we often encounter some pretty strong assumptions around what makes a great headline. It will probably be pithy, such as Volkswagen's 'Think small.' A little cheeky, like Wonderbra's 'Hello boys.' And almost certainly intriguing, like Avis' 'We're number two.' We love these kinds of headlines. They sound glamorous – the kind of thing Don Draper might write. But we're fans of another kind of headline, too. One that doesn't get quite so much fanfare. Below are a few examples: The next bank holiday in England and Wales is 14th April Find a nursery school place What happens if your child gets in trouble with the police These lines are all from the GOV.UK site – and they're great. They are absolute masterpieces of straightforward communication. No frills, no fireworks, and a complete understanding that, in this context, it's the message, not the tone, that matters. Now imagine if GOV.UK's writers had got it wrong, and gone for a 'snappier' approach: Guess when the next bank holiday is in England and Wales! Find the perfect nest for your little chicks to flourish Uh-oh, junior's been causing trouble again… Figuring out the job of your headline is the first step to writing a great one. Is it meant to tease and entertain? Inform and explain? Appeal to a 10-year-old, or a subscriber to the Times Literary Supplement? Appear on the side of a building, or be placed at the top of a website? When we wrote headlines for student accommodation provider Hello Student, we knew that tone was going to be just as important as message. So we developed lines that were fun, optimistic and accompanied with a bucketload of possibility and positivity. For Citizens Advice, a more matter-of-fact tone was requiredWe took the opposite approach for Citizens Advice. Because if you need to find out about your local GP's opening hours, the last thing you want to read is some copywriter's gag about waiting rooms. If you're stuck for a headline, you might just have set off from the wrong place. Put your assumptions aside, and forget seeking out the perfect pun for a moment. Go back to the beginning. Figure out what your headline is supposed to achieve, and who exactly you're expecting to read it. What is your target group interested in? What's likely to catch their attention? Figure all that out, and take it from there. This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 266; buy it here! Related articles: How to write a good web design proposal How to write engaging copy for your site How to write a business plan View the full article

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You're reading Zurb Releases Foundation 6.4, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! World, meet Foundation 6.4, the most powerful, flexible, and stable version ever. Foundation is an advanced responsive front-end framework aimed at allowing developers to quickly build websites or apps that work on any kind of devices. It comes with a customizable, responsive grid (that just got updated to… Flexbox), a large library of Sass mixins, commonly […] View the full article

Microsoft is warning customers of an “important” update to its Azure AD Connect service that could allow for an elevation of privilege attack against affected systems. View the full article

HackerOne released its first report on its bug bounty program, and reveals an industry shift toward enlisting hackers for better cybersecurity. View the full article

After many years as a graphic designer and type enthusiast, I decided try my hand at designing a typeface. Much has been written about type design, and there are plenty of great typography tutorials out there. But where exactly do you begin if you want to make your own font? If you're a designer or illustrator new to this discipline, what are the first practical steps, the common software and early considerations to get you going? To get started on the right path, I enrolled in the short Type Design (TDi) course at Reading University, which I can highly recommend. I thought it might be helpful to share some of the insights and practical methods I learnt during the two intensive weeks to help you to make your own font. 01. Start with a brief Type specs and drawings from Reading University: 'a' by Lisa Timpe, 'k' by Louisa-Helen Fröhlich and Bengali character by Tim HollowayDesigning a typeface can be a long journey so it's prudent to have a clear vision of its purpose. You might begin with something purely self-expressive. However, the usual practice is to create a typeface in response to a brief. Developing your own brief will inevitably require research and reflection. How will it be used: is it for a specific project or personal use only? Is there a problem you might solve? How might your typeface fit into a landscape alongside similar designs? What makes it unique? The options are vast. Typefaces have been created, for example, specifically for academic texts, to provide better number systems for engineering documents or as a one-off for public lettering. Only when you know what your typeface will actually be used for can you really get started on the design. 02. Fundamental choices There are a number of choices you need to make early on. Will it be a serif or sans-serif typeface? Will it be based on a writing implement or be more geometric? Will your design be a text face, comfortable at small sizes and suitable for long documents, or will it be a display face with an imaginative style, that works better a larger size? Tip: It was suggested on the course that designing a sans-serif typeface can be more challenging for beginners, because the features that provide these typefaces with their identity are much more subtle. 03. Start from scratch You might decide to start by digitising your own handwriting. This can be a useful practice exercise, but because handwriting is so individual, without much refinement your typeface could be restricted to personal use. You should also avoid basing your design on an existing typeface's outlines. 'Helvetica with wings' is not going to produce a better typeface or help you develop your skills as a type designer. This should go without saying, but I'm told that typefaces like these are regularly submitted to foundries (unsuccessfully). 04. Use your hands Even if you are a Bézier curve master, I'd advocate defining your letterforms by hand in the first instance. Articulating certain shapes via computer when establishing your design can be awkward and time consuming. Try to create graceful shapes on paper for the first few characters before refining them digitally. Further characters can then be constructed on screen by matching key features, such as terminal endings and stroke widths. Tip: The hand naturally draws smoother, more accurate curves in a concave arc pivoted by the arm and wrist. To take advantage of this, keep turning your paper rather than adjusting your position or drawing against this pivot point. 05. Start with 'control characters' Designing certain characters first can help set the style of your typeface and bring the other characters into harmony. These are often called 'control characters'. In a lowercase Latin typeface they would be the 'n' and o, and in the uppercase, 'H' and 'O' are often used. On the Reading University course, we steadily added to these, building the word 'adhesion', which is used for testing the type's basic proportions (though initially, it was 'adhecion' leaving the tricky 's' for later). 06. Move to your computer Photo: Kelly Sikkema There are a variety of ways to get your drawings onto the computer. Some people advocate tracing programs, however I prefer manually tracing my drawings because I want full control over where the points on my curves go. Most software requires a well-defined drawing to work with effectively, so when you're happy with a sketched character, try outlining it with a fine tipped pen (to get a shape edge) and then fill in the shape with a marker. Tip: You can then take a snap with your phone's camera, and send it to your computer. 07. Choose your software FontLab is a popular programme choiceLike myself, many designers from a graphic design background will naturally opt straight for Adobe Illustrator to start drawing their type. For drawing individual letterforms and experimenting, this is fine. However, it soon becomes obvious that this is simply not the right tool for creating a typeface. From the outset you will benefit from working in an environment that gets you thinking about letter spacing and word creation. The current industry standard seems to be FontLab Studio (Mac and Windows), but new software like Glyphs and Robofont are gaining more traction with type designers. The programs aren't cheap, but Glyphs does have a 'Mini' version on the Mac App Store, with some functionality removed that beginners are unlikely to miss. Both also offer a 30-day free trail. The other obvious advantage of these packages is that you can export your work-in-progress as a font. 08. Draw some letters I was using Glyphs, as recommended on the course. The interface is good and there are handy videos online, but like any software, it takes a little time to become familiar with. Once you've imported your image, the drawing interface is pretty close to Illustrator, however I found the control of Bézier curve points and handles much more accurate in Glyphs. Tip: Where possible, place your points on the extremities of the letterform curves (top, bottom, left, right) for greater control. 09. Move into text view mode Once you have drawn a few letters, you can start typing words using the text view mode. One major advantage of Glyphs is that you can edit your shapes in the same text view to start harmonising the characters together in words. You can then begin making adjustments to the letter spacing, looking at the rhythm of the counters and refining the overall proportions, like the x-height, weight and width of your typeface (if you're in need of a refresher, take a look at our glossary of typography rules and terms). 10. Test out some words Modifying your shapes within a text view in GlyphsAs Matthew Carter is oft quoted: 'Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters'. With this in mind, aim to start looking at your design from a line and paragraph level as early as possible. Create a simple InDesign document with text frames and paste some words into them. I set each text frame to a different font size for comparison (the sizes will depend on what your typeface is to be used for). Finally, export your typeface and select it within your document to see it in action. Tip: While you're still in the early stages of your design, before you've settled on any spacing, you can use InDesign's built-in kerning tool to optically space your letters, maybe with some extra tracking, for a quick and dirty impression. When it comes to doing the job properly, take a look at out expert tips for kerning type. 11. Study other typefaces To create a credible typeface, you need to study other good examples. Looking at them in a critical way, from a contextual or historical perspective, will help you understand why certain design choices in these and your own typeface have a particular effect. Look at how the system of shapes work together consistently while forging an identity. Our article 5 ways type can define brands starts to unpack the different effects certain type features can have. The advice I was given is to look at both typefaces that are in a similar style to your own, and those text typefaces that are generally accepted to be good examples. 12. Scale it down It's important to review your typeface at different sizes in your test document. Depending on your brief, readability might be critical at smaller sizes, or you might be concerned with how your display text reads at a distance. A change of scale can be troublesome. Looking at how your shapes behave at a variety of sizes, and learning what design decisions affect them, takes practice. 13. Get it on paper Seeing your typeface in print gives a different perspectivePrinting your progress and seeing it away from the confines of pixels and backlighting will help you view it from a different perspective. To me, it seems much easier to spot issues with misshapen characters, the rhythm of counters, the modulation of strokes and so on, when printed out and pinned to a wall. It's also easier to make notes and sketches for adjustment. Another benefit of printing is that when making thousands of micro-adjustments over a long development period, a printout can help you track your progress so you can see how far you've come. 14. Add special characters My printed work being critiqued by course director Gerry LeonidasYour typeface might comprise a limited set of characters because it's for a particular project, personal use or if it's a very decorative design. However if your aim is for it to be used by other designers, for a variety of projects, then it needs to be flexible and have a broad character set. This would generally include small capitals, diacritic signs (accents), a choice of numerals, ligatures and more. 15. Explore different styles, weights and widths Designers need plenty of optionsWhen a designer is choosing a particular typeface, they are likely going to need a palette of options to design with. Does your typeface have a true italic, not just a slanted roman? Would your typeface suit a condensed version? This goes back to your brief and use cases for your typeface. 16. Consider global usage So you've created something that you're quite proud of. Did you start with a Latin typeface? What about the 250 million readers of Cyrillic in Eastern Europe and central Asia? Or the 220 million Devanagari readers in India and Nepal? There is a growing market for non-Latin typefaces and some scripts are woefully under-served. A common question that I also asked myself is: Can a non-speaker design a good script for a language they do not read? The answer is emphatically yes. It takes a lot of research, learning about the script's history and culture, meeting native speakers and exploring historical examples, but a large number of excellent typefaces have been designed this way throughout history. 17. Put it to the test Well-used Gujarati metal typeOne you've crafted something you're happy with, you'll want to start seeing how it performs at a range of tasks suited to the original brief. Try using your font on some previous design projects, replacing the original typeface. Create some specific artwork that will put it under pressure, or perhaps ask a designer friend to test it out and give you some feedback. 18. Further reading The focus of this article is deliberately narrow and simply highlights the most useful methods I've learned. To further develop your knowledge of this exciting field there are some excellent resources to help you. I Love Typography: So you want to create a font – A good starting guide, if a little dated now Thinking with Type – Good resources for those interested in Type Design Typographica.org – A discussion on good reading lists Type Cooker – Type drawing exercises Typeface design – Final work from the University of Reading 8 Faces – Interviews with leading designers about typography and lettering Adhesion text – Dynamic text generator Diacritics Project – All you need for designing fonts with the right accents View the full article