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Regardless of what you want to call them – voice assistants, voice services, voice UIs, one thing is clear: the artificial intelligence behind voice technology is already advanced enough to make it the most efficient way to perform many common tasks. The user experience is improving at an impressive rate. In fact, the machines behind voice services such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana are growing smarter by the day. They can understand different utterances, variations in syntax and different accents – and thanks to cloud computing they can access vast amounts of data in the blink of an eye. In order to train the next generation of voice designers, tech school CareerFoundry has built a comprehensive Voice User Interface Design course in collaboration with Amazon Alexa, and in the process, discovered these eight important things that you need to consider when designing for voice... 01. Users don’t talk the way they type Users have developed a specific way of instructing devicesIf we want to find a good sushi restaurant in Berlin, we might type ‘best sushi Berlin’ or ‘top sushi restaurant Berlin.’ In contrast, in speech with a friend, we might say something like, ‘Do you know any good sushi restaurants in Berlin?’ or ‘What’s your favourite sushi restaurant in Berlin?’ When using a voice service, we tend to be aware that we’re talking to an artificially intelligent machine – so we don’t necessarily say, ‘Alexa, what’s your favourite sushi restaurant?’ but rather, ‘Alexa, find me a good sushi restaurant in Berlin’ or ‘Alexa, where should I eat sushi?’ There’s a new pattern of commands emerging, where the voice service assumes the persona of a helpful assistant. We speak to them with natural speech, but not as we would to a friend. Over time, this may change. Who knows, maybe Alexa will respond, ‘Say please', to ensure we don’t lose sight of our good manners. Otherwise, we might end up in a future where we talk to our partners with the same directness as we do our devices. 02. Personalisation is paramount Voice interfaces that remember preferences add to the ease of useAlready in voice-operated devices there’s a clear tendency towards personalisation. This is all part of creating a quick, efficient experience. A great way to do this is for a device to remember your preferences so you don’t have to input information every time you use it. For example, if you use the Deutsche Bahn Alexa skill to check your train times to work, rather than naming your departure and arrival station each day, the device remembers your route to work. Similarly, you might not want to order from Amazon and have to tell it your address and postcode through speech (‘8TK’ ‘80K?’). However, once you’ve ordered online once, Amazon will remember your delivery address and simply ask you to confirm it when you’re placing repeat orders via voice. 03. We need new conventions for showing system status Cortana has different animations to indicate what it's doing When you’re waiting for a webpage to load, not receiving feedback is incredibly frustrating. Mainly because you don’t know if it’s crashed or if it’s just taking its time. Status feedback is an important part of good user experience – if a site has to search through a large database to find what you need, it’s important to keep the user informed on where it’s up to. When you’re talking to a voice service, you’ll also want reassurance that it’s switched on and listening or performing a given action. However, you don’t necessarily want it to talk over you and disrupt your flow. This is where other indicators like lights or sound effects, which don’t disrupt your speech, can serve a valuable purpose. Have you ever had the experience of being on the phone and suddenly wondering if the person on the other end is still there? Thankfully we often use subtle audible clues to let the other person know we’re still on the line when they’re in the middle of a long anecdote. Similarly, voice services can find subtle ways of letting us know they’re switched on and at our service. Amazon Alexa devices reassure their owners that they’re listening with flashing lights and non-disruptive sound effects. Maybe in future we’ll be so used to them being failsafe that we won’t need any reassurance. 04. Adapting for flat navigation is key Users need to be able to direct voice assistants easilyWhen designing the UX of website, the site navigation is crucial. What are the most common actions a user performs? What options should be available on the homepage? How many click-throughs does it take a user to perform a simple task? When users interact with the web using voice, they’re likely to bypass many intermediary stages and go straight to the information they need. For example, a user who wants to order from Amazon will not say, 'Alexa, go to Amazon.com, then go to my account, then view my history, then find coffee, then place the order again.' They’ll simply go straight to the final step: ‘Alexa, re-order coffee.’ 05. Talking should come naturally The aim is to make the voice interaction as intuitive as possibleUsers don’t want to memorise hundreds of commands to perform specific tasks. The whole point of voice services is to leverage our most natural communication style and applying this to computers, not to create something new that takes time to learn. Graphical interfaces have a few codes we have come to understand. For example, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s probably hiding in the hamburger menu. With voice, we may end up with a few established conventions, but in general the aim is to make voice interactions so intuitive that anyone could pick up a device and start using it. This will be an exciting task for designers and programmers: understanding the natural cues in conversations and teaching computers to understand us and seamlessly provide an answer or perform a task. The database of utterances that machines can understand is growing daily, and it’s very possible that we’ll reach a point where machines are better at deciphering our drunken slurs than our friends are. 06. Accessibility has different implications for voice Voice interaction designers need to be aware of speech or hearing impedimentsAs any UI designer will tell you, one of the most important things to worry about is accessibility. Fonts, colours, and graphics are not just aesthetic matters, it’s also about making sure everyone can access the content – for example, is the contrast making your content illegible for people with visual impairments? The designer's guide to digital accessibilityConsiderations around accessibility are important in voice interactions, but they take a different form. Voice interactions rely on two things working successfully: the device understanding the person talking, and the person understanding the device. This means designers should plan for speech impediments (not just regional accents), hearing impairments, and any other factors that could influence the communication, such as cognitive disorders. 07. It's difficult to curate answers but avoid bias We’re used to finding hundreds of results when we search on Google, however, when we’re interacting via voice we often just want the device to intelligently pick the best answer for us, rather than reeling off a long list of search results. This could get complicated quickly. For example, imagine asking your voice service to tell you what the best headphones on the market are. The information is quite subjective and could easily lend itself to commercial bias. Search engines will also have a huge role to play in determining which content is picked up by voice services, and this will no doubt result in some debates and accusations. 08. Privacy and fraud present a problem We may need a way for our devices to adapt what they offer depending on who's talkingFrom your children talking to Amazon Alexa and re-ordering tons of chocolate, to people overhearing your confidential information – there are lots of considerations around privacy and security when it comes to voice interfaces. An obvious solution is password-locking devices, but again, with voice it probably won’t take much effort for the kids to learn it. In the future, it’s likely that shared devices will recognise users by their voice and personalise their experience accordingly. In the meantime, we’ll have to think carefully and recognise that there are some use cases where voice just isn’t appropriate. Embracing voice interactions Alexa is even on smart watchesAs voice interaction evolves and machines become smarter and smarter, there will no doubt be loads of considerations that we haven’t even thought of today. Voice is potentially the next huge paradigm shift in technology, and with machine learning moving at the rate it is today it’s highly possible that over the next few years machines will become better than humans at deciphering human speech. If you’re working in technology, you’d be silly to ignore voice. There are lots of exciting initiatives out there, and Amazon, Cisco, IBM and Slack are just some of the big companies investing heavily in voice startups. If you’re keen to learn more about designing for voice, check out CareerFoundry’s 8-week Voice User Interface Design with Amazon Alexa online course. Related articles: Léonie Watson on making accessibility integral to web design process 8 minimal UI designs and why they work Why you should be excited about zero UI View the full article

The launch of iOS 11 is right around the corner, making right now the perfect time to master the art of app development so your projects can climb the App Store ranks. Get your start with the Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle, on sale for a price you can pick! The Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle is here to give you a preview of what iOS 11 will bring to iPhones around the world and how you can take advantage of it as a developer. This bundle includes four levels of course packages, each building upon the knowledge gained from the last. Work through the fundamentals all the way up to the tips and tricks that experts count on. By the time you're finished, you'll be building your own apps from scratch and launching them in the App Store. The Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle usually retails for $596 but you can get it on sale now for a price you can pick! Beat the average to unlock it all, get on the leaderboard, or just pay what you want. No matter what, you're going to get a bundle that you won't want to miss! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com View the full article

CSS Custom Properties, commonly known as CSS variables, have been steadily making their way into browsers for some time now. With the release of Microsoft Edge 15 back in March, they are now supported by all major modern browsers. This means that for projects that aren't burdened by having to support legacy browsers such as Internet Explorer, CSS variables can be considered – for all intents and purposes – safe to use. A guide to writing better CSSMany developers already use variables with preprocessors such as Sass or Less as a means of reducing code repetition. Native CSS variables work in largely the same way, but don't require any additional build step, cascade like a regular CSS property, and most importantly, are available at runtime. These benefits give native CSS variables an edge over their preprocessor siblings, and opens the door for developers to do a lot of interesting things with a lot less code. In this tutorial, we'll be exploring how we can use CSS variables to implement website theming into a mock web app called NoteApp. This will involve writing CSS and JavaScript to allow the user to change the colour scheme and toggle the amount of columns shown. We'll then leverage the Web Storage API to make sure any changes are saved for future sessions. Get the tutorial files First things first, download the project files from Web Designer's FileSilo. To do this, go to FileSilo, select Free Stuff and Free Content next to the tutorial. Note: First time users will have to register to use FileSilo. 01. Set up the workspace In the '/website-template' directory you'll find the static NoteApp webpage in which we'll be implementing website theming using CSS variables and the Web Storage API. Open the directory in your preferred text editor. 02. Set up our CSS variables In 'main.css', you'll find much of the project's CSS. At the top, create a block targeting the 'root' pseudo-class. Within it define variables like in the snippet below. This root block contains global variables that will cascade down through our stylesheet like any regular CSS property. 03. Replace colours with variables Go through the stylesheet, either manually or using find/replace, and swap any static colour hex codes with their corresponding variable from the root block. To do this, use the var function and pass the variable's name. This tells the browser to reference that variable's value. For example: 04. Locate inline SVG for icons Open 'index.html' and one of the first things you notice is a large SVG element. This contains the paths for all the page's icons, each wrapped in a symbol element, and given a unique ID. These symbols are then referenced where needed with the 'use' element, allowing for the reuse of icons without any duplication of SVG code. 05. Add CSS variables to the SVG One benefit of using inline SVG instead of a .SVG file is that CSS can access its internal structure. This means so can our CSS variables (Except Edge, at the time of writing). In 'index.html', replace the SVG's style block with the snippet below. Now each of the SVG's colours are linked to the values of our CSS variables. 06. Create a columns variable We can also use CSS variables for properties other than colour. Create a new variable in the root block, call it 'columns', and give it a value of 3. This should match the default value of the 'Columns' UI component on the page. When functional, this component will toggle the number of columns. 07. Implement a columns toggle Using our new columns variable and the calc() function, we'll now calculate how wide each note component should be in order to create the correct number of columns. For example, if columns is set to 4, each note should have a width of 25%. 08. Add JS classes and data attributes When applying JS behaviour to a DOM element, hook into it via a class with a JS prefix. This decouples the functional aspects of an element from CSS ones. Let's add a 'js-update-variable' class to all colour and radio inputs as well as a 'data-attribute' referencing the corresponding variable to update. 09. Add JS to update CSS variables Open 'main.js' and add the snippet below. This loops through all our 'js-update-variable' inputs and adds logic, so on change, the variable referenced in its data-variable attribute is updated with the inputs value. The colour swatches and column toggle should now be working! 10. Attach a JS class to the Save button It makes sense to only save the user's colour scheme when they click the save button, as that allows them to experiment with themes as much as they'd like without automatically overriding the current one. To start, add '.js-save-colours' to the 'Save' button to function as our JS hook. 11. Create colours array Back in 'main.js', declare a new variable called 'colours' and assign to it a new array containing all the colour variables we want to be saved once the save button has been clicked. 12. Build Save button event listener Below the colours array, create a click event listener for the 'js-save-colours' class which we previously added to the Save button. Inside it create a new variable called 'htmlStyles' and assign it the computed properties of the root HTML element. We will use this to access our CSS variables. 13. Record CSS colour variables Next, within the event listener, create a new variable called 'coloursToSave' and assign it an empty object. Next, create a FOR loop using the 'colours' array from step 11. Within it, we'll add a complete key/value record of the variables mentioned in the 'colours' array to the 'coloursToSave' object. 14. Send coloursToSave to localStorage Now we have all the colour variables saved in 'coloursToSave', we'll send it to a component of the Web Storage API called localStorage. This is essentially an object that persists across sessions. We can store other objects within it using its 'setItem()' method. Let's send it our 'coloursToSave' object. 15. Add a JS class to Columns In addition to colours, we also want to make sure that our chosen columns number also persists across sessions. The first step towards this would be to add 'js-update-columns' to all radio inputs within the columns component. 16. Send columns to localStorage For each 'js-update-columns', we'll next assign event listeners to watch for changes. On detection, we'll then send the current value of the 'columns' variable to localStorage, again using its 'setItem()' method. Unlike with colours, we don't need to stringify this value as it's not an object. 17. Handle new sessions If the user returns after previously choosing a colour and column preference, we need to build logic so this saved data is turned back into CSS variables. The first step is to define a 'DOMContentLoaded' event listener, and then an 'if' statement to check for any saved data in localStorage using its 'getItem()' method. 18. Amending colour variables In the colours 'if' statement, create a new variable called 'savedColours' and assign it the value of a parsed colours object from localStorage. Using a FOR IN loop with 'savedColours', grab each colour key/value pair and append it to the root HTML element as a CSS variable. 19. Gather column variables data Before we can amend the columns variable, we have to first grab references to the saved data in localStorage and also the radio inputs within the 'Columns' component. The latter is so we can updates its state to make sure the correct number is pre-selected. 20. Amend variable and state Finally, we'll update the columns CSS variable with its saved localStorage counterpart and set the checked attribute of the relevant radio input within the 'Columns' component to true. The 'columns - 1' is to compensate for the fact that the columns NodeList is zero-based. 21. Test the finished product The finished product: everything on the mock NoteApp page should now workThat's it! Everything on the mock NoteApp page should now work. You can create your own colour scheme by clicking the swatches and then commit it to localStorage via the Save button. If you wish to toggle the amount of columns shown, click the appropriate number in the columns component. This article originally appeared in Web Designer magazine issue 264. Buy it here. Read more: What is Sass? How to get started with Sass 7 tips to manage colour better on the web View the full article

Want to know how to create a realistic 3D architectural fly-through but aren't sure where to focus your efforts within the pipeline? If you know the basics of 3D modelling and texturing, this tutorial is for you. Although we will use XSI as a frontend, the steps should be fairly software agnostic. More detail is given on setting up global illumination in Redshift, so most of this will be applicable to a Maya frontend too. 29 free 3D models01. Define your aims Consider your audience carefully before starting a projectThe first questions we ask any client at Fluid Pictures is who the project is for. You need to have a really good idea of who the audience is so you can be clear about how you want it to look. In this case, the project is to be shown to a TV executive and played off a laptop, and the idea is that it looks like it could have been shot on a smartphone. 02. Find references Taking pictures of your own home could help you visualise what you're aiming forOnce you have a concept in mind, go forth to the internet and find as many images as you can as reference. It is so much easier if you have something to hand to provide you with ideas, or to show you exactly what something looks like in indoor lighting. 03. Model simple geometry Start creating your room with basic geometryGet a primitive cube and start to model the base geometry of the architecture. In this case, it is a traditional two room ground floor North London house. Decide where the windows should be and make sure you’ve got all the major bits of architecture in place. If you’re having internal lighting (I’m not in this case), then get stand ins for those, too. 04. Start lighting Decide on how many light sources your scene will have and where they are Add a white diffuse material to your walls and set up your lighting. My scene doesn’t have any additional interior lighting as it is supposed to look ‘off your phone’ real and not ‘shot like a movie’ real. I start with a HDR sky dome and a small area light for the sun to achieve sharp sun shadows. 05. Set up global illumination Redshift's Brute-Force GI Engine makes lighting scenes much quicker You’re not going to get anywhere without being able to the bounce light in the room. In the past, you either had to simulate each area of light falling into the room, or turn on global illumination and sit back for a long wait. Now you can switch on Redshift Brute-Force GI Engine and get good results in a fraction of the time. 06. Model furniture Get some basic furniture but don't worry about detail and texture at this stage You need some furniture, so head to your web-based CG model shop, or make them by hand. Just create the major components that you know you’re going to need. Don’t go mad with detail and texturing just yet, but if you do build anything properly, make sure there are no problem polygons flickering away. 07. Set up camera moves Think about how you want your viewer to see the sceneI want to be walking round the room, so set up a simple camera pan and fly-through at head height with a bit of automatic camera shake. Once again, get references; I walk about the room with a phone camera to get an idea of what a hand-held camera looks like. Don’t guess if you don’t have to. 08. Add detail to the architecture Extra details like the texture of a fireplace add realism to your scene Once you’re happy with the way your camera is moving, you can start adding detail and textures to the architecture where you’re going to see it. Use those references to tell you where to add those unexpected bits of detail that make it real. 09. Add more detail to the scene Add as much details as you can to the rest of the scene Kiss your weekend goodbye and keep adding detail. Use your reference to see what should be lying under the table. Texture the spine of every book, add rounded edges to everything. You might not see it, but you’ll know the detail is there. Keep going till you run out of time, money or willpower. 10. Check references and relight Continual checks with your references will help get accurate lighting So all is looking good. Check your reference again and make sure the colour balance looks convincing. Think about exposure. If you are shooting on a phone, it will vary the exposure as it looks into the light. Do you want to simulate that here, or in the grade afterwards? Render some low-res tests. 11. Decide on a global illumination method Keep testing until you're happy with illumination levels Redshift’s default GI is a brute force method that (fortunately) only has a couple of main parameters. If your render is noisy, as it likely will be – crank up the number of samples until it becomes smooth. However, this can take a very long time if you have big smooth white walls. Your best bet to avoid waiting ages is to invest in a noise reduction plug-in such as Neat Video. The other GI option is number of GI bounces. You may be tempted to think that ‘more is better’, but be warned that a lot of GI bounces can flatten out your image and lose contrast as energy is bounced through the scene. My advice is to make yourself comfortable and keep testing. The other main GI method is Irradiance point clouds and caching. Switch your primary and secondary GI to this, and the results will look a lot smoother with no grain. This method is great for large smooth areas of colour – a lot of the calculations are pre-processed so it can be faster for grain-free results. The issue with irradiance point clouds is potential blotches in your render and you can sometimes see artefacts on fast-moving camera shots. And yes, you’ll have to render it out to realise you have issues, and then slink back to Brute Force and its longer render times. 12. Start compositing Redshift enables you to experiment with various effectsThe aim of this project is to see what could be achieved in a single pass. But with Redshift, you are able to split up the render into its various components, so you can render out passes and then composite, adding subtle grades and effects as you do so, although at the moment, you can’t create custom AOVs. 13. Adjust grading Adjusting the colour grading is the final step in creating your room sceneYour final render should be a thing of beautiful reality, and the last thing to do is adjust the grade and add any effects. You should have thought long and hard about your digital cinematography so changes should be minor, but this is where you can push that big filmic grade, or in our case start to desaturate and get a low-tech look. I don’t feel the need to add grain, video streaks or the appearance of a rolling shutter as I am replicating a phone camera. Just a few tweaks on the levels and you’re done. This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 224. Buy it here. Related articles: How to create realistic CG cloth in Redshift 17 tips for modelling a complex city scene Make realistic plants in Cinema 4D View the full article

Julia Khusainova, experience designer at Airbnb, will give a presentation about designing the pivot at Generate London next week, where she will share her process for developing new products from ideation, testing and validation, development, to release and beyond. Airbnb's mission is all about making people feel at home – whether that's during a stay with one of its hosts or on its website. That means communicating effectively with a global user base, and building a design language that can scale with the company as it continues on its meteoric trajectory. We chatted to vice president of design Alex Schleifer, about how the design team is helping Airbnb fulfil its mission. How has the role of design changed at Airbnb since the company launched? Alex Schleifer: Design has always been important at Airbnb – it was founded by designers and the first guests were coming to a design conference in San Francisco. Some of the biggest changes have come from scaling and adapting to the momentum. Our design team has evolved. We have researchers, writers and even engineers that all are today part of the design organisation at Airbnb. We've built better tools and processes. We have designers embedded in all our product groups. It's constantly evolving but at its core it hasn't changed all that much – there's a deep passion for design. At Generate London, Julia Khusainova - experience designer at Airbnb - will walk through her process for developing new products How is the design team structured? AS: Design is a multidisciplinary group that includes experience design and research, content strategy, localisation and design operations. These teams impact everything a user will interact with – this includes internal users like our customer agents. It's a real advantage to have so many disciplines within the same team, as you're constantly exposed to many different facets of the work. What are the core principles your design teams work by? AS: Airbnb has a clear mission that drives all of our decisions: To help build a world where everyone on earth can feel like they belong anywhere. When applied to product design, the key principles this translates to are designing for trust and designing for everyone. These really apply to everything we do and impact the progress we make towards our mission most substantially. In April 2016, Airbnb introduced an updated app designed to match people to the homes, neighbourhoods and experiences that will help them live like a localHow do you apply those two principles in practice? AS: Building trust is really about creating an environment where trust can manifest itself between what are often two strangers. There are very explicit ways to do this, like reviews or verifying profiles, but also subtle ways, like how much we emphasise real people and real homes. As for designing for everyone: We're building a product for a truly diverse and global community. There's something unique about our global reach – when a host and guest meet they're often from different parts of the world. That means every decision we make needs to be done with a global lens. Our community is also incredibly diverse, and making sure everyone feels like they belong on Airbnb is in part the responsibility of our user experience design. What's the role of research in this? AS: We have a strong research team that does substantial global studies and is constantly meeting with our community all around the world. Without local knowledge we can't develop a truly global product. The research team helps develop and iterate on features by capturing real user feedback, but it also takes on larger, long-term research projects that guide the overall product strategy. The work of researchers is critical to every decision we make on the product. The same goes for data science. Our community is so large and diverse it's incredibly important to have a team that helps us understand behaviours on our platform. In most cases, data scientists will work closely with researchers to help us learn more about our users. All of our designers are motivated to learn more about data and how to read it. There's a healthy balance between art and science that makes working here really rewarding. Data and research really help us fine-tune our intuition. Research and data science play a key role in developing Airbnb's productsHow do you manage the design of Airbnb products? AS: We set out to build a design language system (DLS) with some specific goals: create a common language that is understood across disciplines, establish an iconic visual language, and define components that make designing and building software easier. It's all in the name of creating a beautiful, cohesive, usable app or website. For this to happen we need everyone involved, not just designers. It's been great to see engineers really engage with the project. Something at this scale is never easy and there are many ways to define what a component is, how atomic you should be in your definitions, what's called what. These are the conversations that improve the system and since its launch six months ago it's only become a bigger part of the conversation at Airbnb. What was your process in putting the DLS together? AS: We started with a small team that essentially built a manifest of all the patterns, flows and elements that existed in our products. It was important to quickly build a scaffold of sorts for the system; a set of common components with common names. This showed us we could take something that had been developed over years by many different people and organise it into a very reasonable set of patterns. We did visual and brand work alongside this to get a sense of what we wanted our future products to feel like. We knew we wanted to let the photography shine, to bring in typographic qualities that support a range of languages, and so on. Then the work really started. We began building some of the components and getting deeper into the UI. This involved many more teams and conversations around specific philosophies in design and engineering. How is the DLS used now? AS: It has already changed the way we build. It's now owned by everyone that works on our product, which means it's growing and changing every day. The way we look at it, we'll never be done. A design system needs to evolve at the pace of the company – or preferably even be slightly ahead, so it can support new projects. Airbnb's design language system is made up of common components that translate across disciplinesHow important is storytelling? AS: It's incredibly important to us. We actually use storyboarding for a lot of our projects. We are big fans of companies like Pixar and often use professional illustrators to communicate a concept. We also create a lot of content ourselves: short films, animation and music that get integrated into the app or communication. There's a huge variety of incredible talent at Airbnb and we're lucky to have a community that brings so many amazing stories with it. How often do you bring in outside contractors? AS: We will work with the best talent the project requires. This means we've worked with many incredible people over the years. We will usually find people that have specific skills, like illustrators, musicians, data designers and so on. What's your workspace like? AS: Most of the design team is based out of San Francisco in an incredibly varied and creative space. We work in what are essentially neighbourhoods built around large 'project rooms' that are modular spaces with displays, whiteboards, pinboards and tall tables. Everyone is free to pick up and work in the many open spaces distributed around the office. People are also free to change spaces by decorating them. The design team is distributed, but we have a few key spaces that are shared. There's a crit room that really is our main home, as well as the common studio, which is set up with a variety of creative analogue and digital tools. How do you communicate with your team? AS: We're growing very rapidly so reducing the communication overhead is important. Distinct product teams have their own cadence. There is one all-hands every two weeks where the entire team gathers for updates from various parts of the organisation. Individual disciplines also have stand-ups weekly, where most (if not all) of the week's work gets an update. I try to personally meet with different people from the team as much as possible, but it's become harder as it has grown to over 100. I will walk the office and try to chat to whoever I meet about what they're working on. It's one of my favourite things to do. The office layout centres around large project rooms, surrounded by plenty of free workspaces Do you use any particular tools? AS: I'm a big fan of Slack and its integrations. It's really easy to share files and feedback. Our team uses it pretty much constantly. I always have it open on my desktop – I like being available if anyone on the team needs to talk to me. We're also building internal tools for asset management, file sharing and prototyping that we'll share in the coming months. In general, we try not to burden people with too much software, as each team has their own needs. Tell us about the role of atomic design at Airbnb... AS: Any company that builds software at the rate we do ends up using some sort of atomic process. There's no way to scale if you don't become somewhat capable at building systems. We've got a lot better at componentising everything and building tools as well as processes. Tools are a huge part of this. We have a team dedicated to building and integrating tools for our designers; everything from asset integration into Sketch to prototyping environments. Having access to everything quickly is crucial, whether it's an icon or a piece of research. As the company has grown, what have you learned about implementing design thinking in a large organisation? AS: I think it's about creating simple frameworks and giving people the right environment. We're lucky because design thinking has been part of Airbnb since day one, which makes things somewhat easier. The other thing is to make sure you don't consider 'design thinking' as something that exclusively resides within the discipline of design. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 287. Airbnb will be represented by product designer Julia Khusainova at Generate London on 22 September, a two-day/one-track conference with 16 presentations covering prototyping, adaptive interfaces, web animations, user research, performance, accessibility, UX strategy, and lots more. Get your ticket today. Related articles: 11 great UI designs 10 essential tools for freelance UX designers How Jaime Levy became a UX strategy guru View the full article

Black Friday 2017 [LINK] is steaming ever closer: are you ready for the biggest shopping day of the year? If you’re in the market for a creative bargain but don’t have time to permanently monitor Amazon for the best discounts, fear not. We’ll be bringing you all the best Amazon Black Friday deals for designers, illustrators and artists – right here. Whether you’re a studio owner, freelancer or work in-house, we’re on hand to help you make huge savings on everything from hardware (including workstations, laptops, graphics tablets, cameras and more) to software, studio kit, design books, lifestyle items and more. So bookmark this page and make sure you check back regularly – not just once Black Friday 2017 has kicked off on 24 November, but in the run up to Thanksgiving as well. We’ll be scooping up all the best early bargains for designers and creatives. A word of warning, though. The online retailer doesn’t divulge how much stock it has, so if you see an Amazon Black Friday deal you like, it's good advice to purchase the item while you can. (We're not advocating snapping up every deal you see, of course. We're just saying don't expect quality deals to last long.) How can I get the best Amazon Black Friday deals? Aside from checking in regularly to this page, if you’re serious about bagging a bargain this Black Friday, an Amazon Prime subscription is recommended. Last year, Amazon gave subscribers early access to some of its blink-and-you-miss-them Lighting Deals – which you tend to find on the Today's Deals page. These usually centre around items where stock is low and don’t last for long. Start your FREE 30-day Amazon Prime trial today: UK Start your FREE 30-day Amazon Prime trial today: US Amazon also aimed some of its 2016 Black Friday deals exclusively at Prime users. And subscribers benefitted from additional discounts on prices that were already reduced, too. For those who don't already have one, an Amazon prime subscription will set you back £79/$99 per year. For that, you'll get access to Amazon Prime Video (like Netflix), Amazon Prime Music (like Spotify), special offers throughout the year, faster delivery and unlimited photo storage in the cloud – among other benefits. The best Amazon Black Friday deals Amazon gave the Wacom Intuos Pro Small graphics tablet a 30 per cent discount in August The million dollar question: what are the best Amazon Black Friday deals that designers and illustrators can expect in 2017? According to our sister site TechRadar, you can “almost certainly guarantee” that Amazon's own line of products – including the Echo and Echo Dot speakers, Fire stick, Fire tablets and Kindle e-Readers will get a discount too. Based on last year's results, we’d also hope to see some cracking offers in the following areas... Phone Black Friday dealsSave £120 on the Samsung Galaxy S8+ One deal already up on Amazon gives you the chance to pick up the Samsung Galaxy S8+ smartphone for just £626.99. It launched in April 2017 for £779 in the UK – which is what you’ll get it for at most leading retailers – but Amazon has knocked £120 off the price (and we'd hope to see more offers like this over Black Friday). TechRadar gave the Samsung Galaxy S8+ 4.5 our of 5 stars in its review, which you can read here. Camera Black Friday dealsSave £220 on the Nikon D7100 Digital SLR Camera Body Need a new camera for your studio? Amazon is already offering the Nikon D7100 Digital SLR Camera Body for just £629.99 – down from £849.99. It boasts a 24.1 MP DX format CMOS sensor, 3.2 inch LCD and dual SD memory card slots. TechRadar reviewed the camera and awarded it four out of five stars. Graphics tablets Black Friday dealsAmazon recently offered some tasty discounts on select Wacom and Bamboo gear for its #ShopTheFuture event. We’d hope to see more of these repeated over Black Friday 2017. Computing and accessories Black Friday dealsLast year saw a plethora of computing deals, including an HP Slimline 410-135na Desktop machine for £329.99, and – reports TechRadar – £200 off the ASUS Flip UX360UA 13.3-inch Touchscreen Zenbook Notebook. We'd hope to see workstations, laptops, monitors and a host of computing accessories discounted over Black Friday. View the full article

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16259810/huawei-apple-global-smartphone-sales … View the full article

Animating just got quicker and easier with CrazyTalk Animator 3.2’s new PSD export function. With this tool, character designers can effortlessly move assets back and forth between Photoshop and CTA3. By doing so, you can adjust the look of your characters, experiment with image effects, and pose them with the help of specialist frameworks. Animate Photoshop character instantly Your character drawings can quickly become animationsWith the launch of CrazyTalk Animator 3.2, character designers and Photoshop users will find their work process become five times faster than if they didn’t use the software. This is because they’ll have access to the software’s new PSD character modification and PSD graphic design tools. Creating a professional animation can be a long and difficult task. Even with the help of digital tools, designers and animators can find the whole process a chore that takes longer than it needs to. CrazyTalk Animator 3.2 makes animation faster and easier than ever. CrazyTalk Animator is a 2D animation software that’s already won over a legion of fans in the creative community thanks to its simple animation tools that deliver amazing results. These tools include a motion library for humans and other creatures, templates that can turn any image into a 2D character, plus a range of props and scene elements that can be controlled just how you want. The best complementary tool for Photoshop With the ability to access PSD character modification, animators, video creators and graphic designers will be able to make use of visual enhancements such as textures, colours, and make-up editing. This opens up the possibility of creating truly unique looking character designs, complete with individual touches that you couldn’t deploy before. Exporting to Photoshop allows for custom editingWith the capability to launch Photoshop and synchronise updates, CTA3 can send props or characters to Photoshop in layers for further custom editing. You can easily design clothes, alter colour shading, or apply filter effects to your animatable assets. By using CTA3’s powerful pose and expression tools, designers can easily transform a single character to a full series of actors, each with different styles and gesturesMeanwhile the PSD export function will allow creatives to easily export PSD files from CrazyTalk Animator 3.2 to external tools such as Photoshop and other compatible tools. This will allow for better character modification options, as well as providing the opportunity to recreate a character pose and refine their overall look. Customise your characters with different clothes and accessoriesWhen used together, these tools mean that an animator, video creator or graphic designer can work five times faster than if they didn’t use CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. Use framework tools to bring life to your imagesThese tools provide lots of opportunities across all sectors of graphic design and animation. Along with the other features on offer with CrazyTalk Animator, these additions will instantly bring an image, logo or prop to life. Users can apply effects themselves to get the perfect animation, or choose from a selection of motion templates to whip up movement in a matter of seconds. Topped off with a powerful 2D bone editor rig that creates a realistic sense of movement and weight, plus facial puppets and audio lip-syncing tools, the hassle of creating an animation has gone out of the window thanks to CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. You can even try the tools before you buy, or upgrade in a matter of clicks on the CrazyTalk Animator homepage. Check out more about CrazyTalk Animator here, or learn more about CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. View the full article

Researchers find six previously unknown memory corruption and unlock-bypass vulnerabilities in major chipset vendors' firmware code. View the full article

Google fixed 81 vulnerabilities, including 13 critical remote code execution bugs, in the September edition of its Android Security Bulletin on Tuesday. View the full article

Modern web browsers are tremendously versatile, to a large part by virtue of the wide range of third-party extensions that can be used to add extra features and functionality. 30 Chrome extensions for web designers and devsYet extensions are not just about the browsing experience for the end user. Designers and developers have access to a wide and varied range of extensions for just about anything they might want to do. They will help make your life easier and/or improve the quality of your work. Here, we'll take a look at a small handful of some of the most essential extensions that you need and which can really make a difference. The chances are that you'll be developing primarily with Chrome or Firefox, so we'll focus on extensions which support either or both of these browsers. 01. Web Developer Web Developer is the Swiss Army knife of developer extensionsWeb Developer: Chrome Web Developer: Firefox Developed originally for Firefox and ported to Chrome (and Opera for that matter), Web Developer is the Swiss Army knife of developer extensions, and neatly complements the built-in developer tools of both browsers. The extension adds a toolbar with a wealth of useful features, including the ability to extensively inspect the page structure, manage cookies and form content, enable or disable various things like JavaScript and caching, plus CSS styles and much more. It can also check for common issues with pages such as broken images or non-standard code. One especially useful element is the CSS style inspector; this enables you to hover over any element on the page and see the styles applied to it, which can quickly solve mysterious style behaviour. This one really is a must-have. 02. DevTools Autosave Changes made in DevTools are saved to the source files as you make themDevTools Autosave: Chrome This extension a bit fiddly to set up, but is really useful once you get it running. You can already make changes in Chrome DevTools and see immediately how they reflect on the page. The DevTools Autosave extension, however, enables modifications to be automatically saved back to the source files as you make them. This can be especially useful for CSS tweaks to get your page looking visually spot on. In addition to installing the extension itself, you need to install and run a server. Instructions on how to do this are available on the extension's GitHub site, which is linked to from its page on the Chrome Store. Once you've got things set up, it can support either local filesystem or server-based development. 03. IE Tab Test your work in an IE tabIE Tab: Chrome There are still a significant number of people out there using Internet Explorer, and while these days Microsoft is well-engaged with the web standards community, in the past it's fair to say there was some deviation from the norm when it came to IE's approach to rendering pages. If you're looking to test your work out in IE, then IE Tab provides a straightforward way of doing so. You also have the option of selecting the standards you want to render with. This means that you can test backwards compatibility with the likes of IE7, which rather remarkably can still turn up in enterprise environments 11 years on. In the past, IE Tab was also available for Firefox. However, it is unsupported in the latest version of Firefox and it's unclear whether it will receive an update. 04. HTML Validator A handy alternative to online toolsHTML Validator: Firefox It's easy for mistakes to creep into HTML, and there are a number of online tools already available which can validate your page content. If you find it a bit fiddly or time-consuming to get to them, this could be the extension for you. The button it adds will fire up a source view of the current page, highlighting and listing any HTML errors or warnings. It's particularly good for catching things like missing end tags, deprecated features and general bad practice. You can also choose between validation algorithms to suit your needs. Even if you're a seasoned web developer, it can be useful to run your HTML through validation since things can always slip through the net. Of course, passing validation is no guarantee of good HTML, but it does help! 05. User-Agent Switcher Useful if you've inherited some existing codeUser-Agent Switcher: Chrome This one is prone to cause some debate. In an ideal world, your pages shouldn't be checking for user agent (a fancy way of saying browser version, operating system and rendering engine). It's much better to use feature detection (that is, checking ‘does the user's browser support HTML feature X?'), and have your page progressively enhance or degrade gracefully rather than serving up different content to older browsers. Nonetheless, whether you've inherited some existing code, or have a legitimate need to check user agent in your own code, this extension provides a quick and easy way to switch between them without having to load another browser or power up a different device. 06. Google PageSpeed Insights Access PageSpeed Insights with a single clickGoogle PageSpeed Insights: Chrome Google PageSpeed Insights: Firefox It's worth spending some time optimising the performance of your page, since this can make a subtle yet significant difference to how it is received by users. You might already be familiar with PageSpeed Insights, an online service from Google which will evaluate the performance of your site and make a set of often very useful recommendations on how to optimise it. PageSpeed Insights will also highlight optimisation steps you've already taken (sometimes inadvertently!) This is really a convenience extension which provides a link through to PageSpeed Insights so you can test your page with a single click. It's the same service you get online, but without the need to open up a new tab and navigate to it. The extension itself also provides a performance score before you click through, but really it's the link to the detailed analysis that's useful. 07. BuiltWith Technology Profiler A one-click way to see under the hood of the page you're viewingBuiltWith Technology Profiler: Chrome BuiltWith Technology Profiler: Firefox Ever wondered 'how did they do that?' when browsing the web? There are a variety of reasons that it can be useful to understand the technologies and standards that websites are using when you visit them. The BuiltWith extension gives you a one-click way to see under the hood of the page you're viewing. The tool will give you insight into JavaScript libraries being used, analytics platforms, web standards, frameworks and more. All of the information is delivered in a very readable manner, with straightforward explanations of what each technology or standard is about to save you going off to research them. Taking a look at what some of the most popular and modern sites out there are using can be a great source of inspiration as you try to keep pace with ever-changing stacks and standards. 08. SEOquake A detailed breakdown of traffic and ranking statisticsSEOquake: Chrome SEOquake: Firefox It's likely that SEO will be a factor for you when developing a site, and there are a multitude of tools available which can help you maximise your chances of being seen. SEOquake is one of a number of such tools. The extension provides a very detailed breakdown of traffic and ranking statistics, assuming your site is popular enough for them to be calculated. Also useful even for smaller sites is the ability to click through to SEOquake's own online diagnostic service, which will provide a number of useful recommendations to ensure your page is findable. It will also examine internal and external links and compare domains and URLs. By default the extension will also overlay SEO information onto search engine results. However, it's highly configurable, so if this troubles you then you can disable it in the options. 09. Emmet Re:view Rapidly test out your page on a number of screen sizes side-by-sideEmmet Re:view: Chrome Responsive design is probably at the front of your mind as you work, but testing is not always the easiet stage of development. It can prove to be a real hassle trying to see a site in action on the myriad screens and devices that a site may be viewed on. Luckily, Emmet Re:view gives you the ability to rapidly test out your page on a number of screen sizes side-by-side. You can choose between a 'breakpoints view' which shows a view for every CSS breakpoint on the page, and a 'device wall' which mimics popular mobile and tablet devices. The device wall is configurable, with a large list of devices available to mimic. What's particularly nice is that you can continue to interact with the pages while they are displayed in Emmet Re:view. This gives you the ability to test out form submission, button clicks and much, much more once and see the result across multiple views. 10. PerfectPixel Overlay a transparent, static image onto a webpage in the browser - useful for matching to a wireframePerfectPixel: Chrome PerfectPixel: Firefox PerfectPixel enables you to overlay a static image onto a webpage in the browser, with a degree of transparency so the underlying page can be seen beneath. It's also possible to add multiple overlays if this is needed. This can be useful during the development phase as it allows you to match the implementation to a wireframe or template exactly – even a single pixel deviation will become evident, hence the name. It might be particularly useful for team projects where a hand-off takes place between design and developer(s). Once you've added the overlay, the extension can also scale and move it. Since it's only a static image, it won't of course respond to changes in screen size, so you may want to use multiple overlays to test responsive designs. Next page: 10 more essential browser extensions for web professionals 11. FireShot Take full-page screenshots of webpages without any fiddling aroundChrome Firefox Available for a wide range of browsers, in spite of the name, FireShot fulfils one very simple requirement – it allows you to take full-page screenshots of webpages, without any fiddly scrolling, cropping or trying to stitch together various screenshots with the help of Photoshop. You've almost certainly needed to do this at some point, and it's almost bizarre that there wasn't a straightforward way to do so. While it's an extremely simple extension, there's some flexibility provided – you can choose whether to capture the whole page, only the visible part, or just a selection. Once the image is captured, you can choose whether to save it as an image or PDF, email it, copy it to clipboard, or even print it. FireShot is a great example of a simple extension doing what it does very well. 12. Code Cola Select any element on the page and adjust the styling applied to it with an intuitive interfaceChrome Code Cola offers a very intuitive interface to modify page styling within the browser. You can select any element on the page and adjust the styling applied to it by, for example, dragging a slider for opacity or selecting a font from a drop-down. It's very powerful, but at the same time offers much better readability than DevTools. Essentially this allows you to take a WYSIWYG approach to styling, which, let's be honest, can be very useful with CSS. Once you've played around with styles to see what works visually, the extension also gives you the ability to copy the code changes so you can retrofit them into your CSS. Alternatively, for added power, you could combine this with DevTools Autosave and have the changes automatically saved back to their source files. Just be careful you don't get carried away with experimentation! 13. iMacros Record and replay macros (scripted interactions) within the browserChrome Firefox The iMacros browser extension is a free, pared-down companion to a commercial product, but nonetheless offers some valuable functionality. As you might expect from the name, iMacros enables you to record and replay macros (scripted interactions) within the browser. It's very easy to do so – simply click Record and then interact with the site as you would normally. When you play back the macro, it'll perform the same steps as quickly as the connection will allow. While this could be useful for performing repetitive tasks, the real power for developers is as a testing tool. It enables you to very quickly and intuitively set up automated tests which you can run every time you make a change. This can save tremendous effort manually regression-testing pages, without the need to develop a fully fledged automation test suite using something like Selenium. 14. Check My Links Check whether your links are workingChrome Check My Links will crawl through every link, both internal and external, on your page and check whether it's working. It generates a report as it goes, showing the outcome, and colour-codes good and bad links on the page. This is particularly useful if you have a site with a large number of links to external content, since it can be very hard to know whether they've broken without clicking through every one. There are a number of configuration options available to modify the HTTP request type, control use of caching, and more. In most cases, however, the out-of-the-box settings should do just what you need. It's worth noting that there are a number of similar extensions which offer similar functionality for Firefox. 15. UX Check Adds annotations indicating potential UX issuesChrome User experience should always be front of mind when working on the web. There's no substitute for testing with real users, but it can also be helpful to have an expert, 'heuristic' UX evaluation performed on your site. The UX Check extension is designed to make that straightforward. With UX Check, a UX designer or tester can add annotations to a site highlighting UX issues, and then package these annotations up along with screenshots (which are taken automatically) to send to the designer or developer working on the site. This avoids a lengthy process of stitching together screenshots and comments. The UX Check extension encourages the classification of feedback into one of ten different categories based on the '10 Heuristics for User Interface Design' by renowned UX practitioner Jakob Nielsen, although you can customise these categories if you so wish. 16. JSONView Applies styling and syntax highlighting to your JSON documentChrome Firefox If you're working with HTTP requests returning JSON data, as many developers do these days, you may find yourself frustrated by the lack of formatting and syntax highlighting when Chrome and Firefox present JSON to you. Luckily, JSONView comes to the rescue here. When installed, this will apply styling and syntax highlighting to your JSON document, and adds a context menu to grab individual values. This makes for a tremendous improvement in readability, and can make it much easier to spot the data you're looking for, or even errors. You can also customise the formatting with a built-in style editor, which uses CSS to define the colours and formatting applied. If you ever work with JSON in the browser, there really isn't a good reason not to install this (or any one of several other similar extensions). 17. ColorZilla Hugely popular tool that gives you loads of information about the colours on a pageChrome Firefox ColorZilla is extremely popular, and it has millions of users for a good reason. Very simply, it gives you a wealth of information about the colours used on a page, which can be useful whether you're taking inspiration from another site you've seen, or picking your own from a palette. The extension includes not only a very well-designed eye-dropper tool, but also the ability to analyse and highlight all the colours used on a page, plus a set of colour palettes of commonly used colours. It also links through to a handy CSS gradient generator by the same author which can quickly give you the code you need for gradient backgrounds. Try ColorZilla in combination with DevTools Autosave to experiment with colours on your page visually and on-the-fly. 18. AXE Automatic checking for accessibility problemsChrome Firefox Accessibility – this is, ensuring that sites are equally usable by people with disabilities – is important on the web. Yet unfortunately it isn't always front-of-mind for developers, and so testing tools which help ensure the right focus can be extremely valuable. The aXe extension adds functionality to the browser's Developer Tools which enable you to check for accessibility problems automatically. Not only does this give you the benefit of rapid, automated testing, but one of aXe's strengths is in avoiding false positives, so you know its findings need to be addressed. Note that the same is not true in reverse, however – just because aXe finds nothing does not guarantee an accessible page, so there is no substitute for following best practice, and testing as extensively as possible to get the right result. 19. Page Ruler Adds an on-screen ruler to the browser for measuring pixel dimensionsChrome Page Ruler adds an on-screen ruler to the browser, which enables you to obtain pixel dimensions and positioning for any elements on the page. While this might sound trivial, it can make a huge difference when you're working with CSS. Want to add a new element to the page, having spent too much time trial-and-erroring the size and positioning? Use the ruler to get the values spot on first time around. The tool is pretty simple to use and has a couple of different ways in which the ruler can be used Either you can click and drag free-form to outline a region to measure, or if you need to work with existing content on the page, you can enable 'Element mode' on the left of the ruler's toolbar, which will highlight individual elements on the page as the mouse passes over them. Once done, the measurements make an appearance in the toolbar at the top of the page. 20. Open Graph Preview Control how your site appears when shared on Facebook or other social media sitesChrome Shares on social media are a major source of traffic, but did you know you can control how your site appears when shared on Facebook or other social media sites? The Open Graph protocol is a metadata standard which defines properties read and displayed by social networks. For example, <meta property="og:title" content="My Page"/> controls the title Facebook gives your shared page. The Open Graph Preview extension allows you to see how your page will appear when shared on Facebook and Twitter (plus a couple of others). Once your site is live, you can also use this extension to see how many times your page has been shared on each of the social networks, which it will display below the appropriate icon. This article originally appeared in Web Designer magazine issue 264. Buy it here. Read more: 30 Chrome extensions for web designers and devs 3 handy Chrome extensions for front-end developers 10 top design feedback tools View the full article

When you first lay eyes on the Surface Studio in the flesh, it’s undeniably a thing of beauty. A huge 28-inch, high-resolution, high pixel density display is at the heart of the machine, which seems to float above the base that houses all of the hardware. Surface Studio vs iMac We know your first question: is this a suitable alternative to an iMac? The answer, on first impressions: 100 per cent yes. Apple has done a great job in blending aesthetics with power – but with the Surface Studio Microsoft has produced something as desirable, if not more so, thanks to its unique Studio Mode feature. What is that? Well, with a light touch – and it is literally a one-handed light touch – you can lower the Surface Studio down to an angle upon which you can sketch. The hinge is actually quite remarkable, enabling you to position the display at pretty much any angle you like (down to a drafting position – it can’t go completely flat). Surface Studio: drawing experience Another thing you don’t get with an iMac is a touch-sensitive display (10-point multi-touch). Not just touch-sensitive, mind, as you can use the new Surface Pen to accurately sketch, draw and design – it’s got 4,096 levels of pressure-sensitivity and can recognise tilt and so on. Using the Surface Pen on such a large screen is, frankly, a fantastic experience. There’s pretty much no lag at all and we felt it to be a hugely responsive drawing experience. There’s another trick – the Surface Dial. This is a puck that you place on the screen or next to your keyboard giving you extra controls. For instance, turn it as you’re drawing to change the tone or width of your line. Using the Dial on-screen is a very interesting experience and one that is very intuitive – although we’re still not quite sure how it actually stays on the screen. With a click and a turn you can select different options for controlling your brushes and so on. There’s only a few apps that currently give you specific options when using the Surface Dial (Creative Cloud apps don’t have any special functionality, so you’re limited to zooming there). We had a play using Sketchable and switching between line width and colour was fluid, and, actually a lot of fun. As soon as Adobe updates its apps to work with the Surface Dial, we’ll be even more interested – but until then the Dial is a little bit of a gimmick. Surface Studio: screen Let’s go back to the screen. In real life this thing is incredible. Absolutely stunning. With a PPI of 192 and a 4500 x 3000 resolution this is pretty much as good as it gets. It's bright and blacks are incredibly black – we have absolutely no complaints. And build quality is equally impressive, with the screen at only 0.5-inches thick. Surface studio: specs Our time with the Surface Studio was limited, so we couldn’t put the machine through rigorous testing – and we couldn’t install Creative Cloud. So we’re going to have to save that part for the full review, coming soon. Get Adobe Creative CloudOn paper though, the Surface Studio is no slouch. The base model has a 64GB SSD with 1TB HDD (hybrid drive), 8GB RAM, a Core i5 CPU and GeForce graphics with 2GB RAM. And even this, the lowest-end model, will cost you around a whopping £3,000. Yes, three grand. Spec it up to a 2TB hard drive, a Core i7, 32GB RAM and 4GB GPU and you’re looking in the region of £4,250. An outrageous amount of money. Port-wise you get 4 x USB 3.0, an SD card reader, a Mini DisplayPort, Ethernet and 3.5mm headphone jack. But all of the ports are on the rear. We wouldn’t mind the aesthetic being slightly marred by having a USB port on the front of the base. Oh, and there’s no Thunderbolt either, in case you were wondering. We’d like to see better graphics in the Surface Studio – due to older graphics cards it doesn’t officially support VR on the base model, and only just tops Oculus’ requirements on the high-end machine. We’re not sure this will be a deal-breaker for creative pros, but it’s something to bear in mind (and we didn’t test any VR apps in our review). Oh, and of course it runs Windows. Windows 10 to be precise. These days cross-platform file compatibility is less of an issue, but bear in mind that you will have to adapt to a new OS if you’re switching from an iMac. Value for money? It’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s forthcoming iMac Pro compares for price versus specs (and specs look hugely impressive ). The point is the Surface Studio is a huge investment, and that's even before you add the cost of the Surface Dial. One thing we’d also say is the keyboard and mouse felt pretty cheap for such an expensive machine – they didn’t match the aesthetic of the display, hinge and base at all. But, the fact is, when you’re sitting in front of the Surface Studio, the expansive screen engulfs you. It’s an immersive environment in which to work. And very natural as you can, with just a small hand movement, adjust the screen from sketching to accurate plotting or editing. Although our hands-on time with the Surface Studio was limited, we came away thinking of all the unique possibilities. The Dial has a lot of potential but needs to be supported – and implemented in the right way – by the likes of Adobe for it to be truly useful. The Surface Studio feels like an evolution of what the all-in-one is for the creative professional. It looks incredible, has ample power (at a price) and can be adjusted to your liking, making it a more personal creative environment. Also read: The best laptops for graphic design View the full article

2016 was a seismic year for the world of SEO. Google dramatically altered the rules – so much so that a website built with great SEO 12 months ago could well have fallen foul, and dropped in the rankings. Changing the way SEO works is nothing new in the fight against 'dirty SEO', but even by Google's standards, the changes the world's biggest search engine made in 2016 have really altered the SEO landscape. As web designers and developers, if you're not fully up to date, you risk a backlash from customers and your reputation as cutting-edge could well be gone forever. SEO hasn't been a fashionable topic for years, but it's essential you understand the latest trends to stay ahead of your rivals. So what exactly changed last year? Perhaps the most important was the switch to mobile-first indexing, while there was a big push for HTTPS and SSL-based websites, as well as greater AMP usage and adoption. There was also a crackdown on pesky pop-up ads, and Google's search algorithm began to have a greater understanding of content. It might not seem like much on the surface, but it has significantly altered the game for designers and developers. Here we look at these changes in depth and how they will alter the way you work. We've talked to some of the biggest names in the industry to give you the ultimate rundown of everything you need to know about mastering SEO in 2017. Build for mobile Let's start with the most important aspect of SEO in 2017. The way users search Google has been changing for years, and searches made from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, have finally overtaken the traditional desktop methods. Google recognised that in November 2016 by introducing mobile-first indexing into its search criteria. Your SEO strategy should shift to mobile straight away – it's no longer an option to be mobile friendly, it's an absolute essential. Mobile is a trend that is only going to get bigger, and its importance to your online presence cannot be understated. Paul Tyler, head of SEO at All Response Media, believes the new mobile-first indexing will ensure that mobile is the primary focus going forward. "As the number and percentage of searches on mobile has surpassed desktop in many verticals, not approaching SEO from a mobile-first mindset has become too big of a business risk, " he says. Simply having a responsive website won't be enough. An understanding of what makes a great mobile experience is equally important, as Tyler explains: "Whilst many organisations have a mobile friendly website, they still don't understand the role that each type of device plays in the purchase journey as yet, which is critical to maximising both UX and site conversions." If your site isn't optimised properly for mobile, users won't go back to it. It's time to take building for mobile very seriously. Build your brand Social media should form a major part of your SEO strategy. In fact, it probably does now without you knowing it. Your business is present in many more places than just a single website. You'll have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, Instagram profile, YouTube page – the list goes on. The next time you search on Google, spend a bit of time having a look at the number of social media accounts on the first page of results. While Google hasn't officially made the correlation between social media and SEO – the reality is obvious. Building your brand in this way is known as 'off-page' SEO. 'On-page' SEO is the technical SEO that underpins your site (metadata, load times, CSS etc), while off-page is the stuff that happens outside your site. External elements like social media likes, shares and follows help to raise the ranking of your webpages in Google searches. Natural off-page SEO helps tell Google what users think about your site. Building a brand will have a positive effect on your SEO results, helping to increase traffic and make your business easier to find online. Site speed HTTP/2 Use the new standard to boost site optimisationGoogle is placing much more emphasis on the speed of your website this year. Although that's always been a big selling point to users, Google is now purposely looking more and more at the holistic SEO experience, and speed is playing a huge role in page rankings. Some of the technical changes being championed in this feature could have an adverse effect on website performance, so it's absolutely essential that you make sure your site functions at 100% after making those changes. Limiting errors like redirects, 404 pages and orphaned pages will not only help performance, but it will give you a huge SEO boost. Implementing HTTPS/2 will have a positive impact on website optimisation. Daniel Stenberg notes that the amount of data now required to load the home page of an average website is 1.9MB, with over 100 individual resources required to display a page. HTTP/1 hasn't been updated since 1999. It's fair to say that websites are built differently in 2017. Jump onboard with HTTP/2 (it is backwards compatible) as soon as possible. "Site speed is being pushed hard by Google ," says Tyler. "It will be an even bigger focus as HTTP/2 implementation increases over the next few years." You've been told. Voice search One of 2016's biggest trends was the increase in searches made by voice. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's Echo have fundamentally changed the way users search with their mobile device. It's a market that has seen tremendous growth, and that won't change anytime soon, so SEO experts need to bear it in mind. To understand how important voice search is to SEO, some commentators believe that by 2020, 50% of searches will be made by voice. Users definitely search differently with their voice, using longer sentences and more natural language. It's easy to imagine searches becoming requests for immediate action, and this will impact on your keyword research and site mapping techniques. Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, says: "The good thing is that voice search optimisation is fairly straightforward and intuitive. I find it to be much less robotic than the more antiquated SEO techniques. By getting on board right now and making it as easy as possible for digital assistants to understand your content, you'll be in a position to thrive for the foreseeable future." You can find out more on optimising for voice search here. Backlinking Backlinking: Some times the old ways are still the best. Build a catalogue of external links to boost your brand's popularityBacklinking – those links directed to your website and used by search engines as an indication of popularity and importance – isn't anything new in the world of SEO, but it remains a great way to boost your SEO ranking. We won't go into detail about the various back-linking techniques available (because there are dozens), but its importance can't be understated, even if it's become an unpopular method in your SEO arsenal. "What's really disturbing," says Moz's Cyrus Shepard, "is some people are giving up completely on link building when it's still a really huge part of Google's algorithm." Need more encouragement from Shepard? See here. "When you're doing link building right, you don't even need the links because you're doing good marketing, " he continues. "You're pushing your content out there, you're talking to those influencers, you're getting traffic to your site, and those just happen to be the signals that Google wants to reward." Content is king Content is king: It's no good having great design if your site doesn't meet your audience's needsUsers are becoming more and more demanding. The days of stuffing sites with a barrage of keywords has long gone. Those pages were easy for a search engine to crawl through but the user experience was generally appalling. Google is clever enough to sift through a wall of keywords, demote those pages and instead promote what it believes is great content. It's easy to see how the role of a good copywriter has become essential to web agencies. They agree – content is king. You wouldn't buy this magazine just because it looks good. The words on each page are equally as important to the readers. As Tyler argues: "Even a site with a great technical foundation that loads extremely quickly will not drive business performance if your content doesn't address the right audience or the right questions that need to be answered." Great content builds a community, creating a subtle link between what you say and what your audience is searching for. On the other hand, don't think that updating frequently is enough. Users are on the lookout for authentic content, and they want articles to be well researched and be packed with multimedia content. That content should always be shareable to your social media channels, helping to attract and retain visitors. User experience As machine learning makes Google's algorithm more advanced, UX is pivotal to the future of SEO. These advances have enabled the search engine to focus on providing the most relevant results, in not only content but user experience as well. "Users are becoming more demanding and just having good content is not enough anymore," explains Tyler. "Content needs to be fast to load, feature excellent design on all devices, utilise the right format, match user intent and, of course, have great UX." If UX isn't part of your SEO strategy right now, you desperately need to broaden your horizons or you will lose pace with your forward-thinking counterparts. Convention may tell you that SEO and UX are completely different parts of web design, but you'd be a fool to ignore this perfect marriage. In his article UX vs SEO: Web Design Battle Royale, Zach Rutherford argues that good SEO mixes well with good UX. "They have way more qualities in common than one might assume, " he explains. "Concise, legible, and informative copy – sprinkled lightly with high-quality keywords – serves the purposes of both UX and SEO. Not only that, but properly structured sites are intuitive for search spiders and users alike." Video marketing Revolution: Video marketing is a hot trend for 2017As an entertainment medium, video is hard to match. Just look at Facebook's evolution from a simple photo-sharing hub to a feed full of video, or the rise of YouTube and more recently Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Some of the most impressive new websites are built with videos scattered into the design – what better way to introduce your brand than with a homepage video? Video has wide-ranging consequences for eCommerce sites in particular, providing a better way to show how a product operates, how best to use or store it, and how it looks in regards to quality or size. Visitors to your site are more likely to buy a product or understand a topic through approachable step-by-step videos and tutorials. These videos don't necessarily have to be of the highest quality, but they are definitely worth doing because they offer a great way to become an authoritative voice, build a trusting relationship with your audience and also increase your site's conversion rates. Technical SEO Technical SEO is also going through a development renaissance at the moment after being considered less important for the last few years. It ensures that your website architecture is compatible with essential search engine guidelines, and can be indexed and ranked for keyword searches accordingly. This includes optimising for speed, but more recently Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project. It might offer limited functionality at the moment, but the positives (prominent real estate in Google's mobile carousel, increased traffic, higher click through rates, etc) far outweigh them. As Tyler pointed out earlier, technical SEO should be the foundation of your SEO but it's only part of the strategy. Keep your eye on Google Want to keep up to date with the world SEO? Follow Google!We've highlighted Google very heavily in this feature, but there is good reason for that. While Bing might be registering good numbers thanks to the popularity of Windows 10 devices, and DuckDuckGo has become the search engine for the security conscious among us, Google is still firmly number one in the market, and that isn't going to change anytime soon. So if you want to stay ahead of the SEO game, Google is the search engine that you need to base your development around. But that can actually be quite tough, because Google is constantly changing the SEO goalposts and creating an SEO landscape that is almost always in a state of flux. To give you an example, Google changes its search algorithm approximately 500 times a year. You need to know when these changes are implemented and explicitly how they affect individual pages on your website. SEO tactics you employed two or three years ago might not work in 2017, and that can have wide-reaching implications for the business if you don't invest time and effort into reevaluating your SEO strategy. What's the best way to stay number one on Google? Analyse your performance to get a greater insight on how you perform so that you can implement change with authority. As Tyler argues: "Ongoing testing is key to learning what works for your site, your audience and your SEO strategy, as these will all change over time and if you are not learning and evolving, your competitors probably are." The world of SEO is changing fast – make sure you're not left behind. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 295. Buy it here. Related articles: Master the art of search engine optimisation with Webtexttool 30 best SEO tools 7 tips for driving traffic to your portfolio website View the full article

In recent decades, graffiti has moved from an urban nuisance to a professional business thanks to the rise of street art as a serious creative force. And with the artform ever growing in popularity, there are now a wealth of graffiti font styles available online for creatives to use as the typography in their urban artwork. Here, we've scoured the web to find you the best examples of free fonts in a graffiti style for designers. Enjoy! 01. Smasher 312 Custom Smasher 312 Custom is tag-tastic with excellent shading detailsNew from French typeface design workshop ImageX is Smasher 312 Custom, a splendidly cartoony graffiti font with some lovely shading details. It comes in TTF format and it's free for personal use; if you want to use it commercially, contact ImageX. 02. Sister Spray ImageX's Sister Spray is gloriously messyGet messy with this fantastically rough and ready font, again from ImageX. It's made up of a full set of spray-painted uppercase characters, plus a couple of lowercase ones for emphasis, as well as some splatters, splodges and strokes to complete the look. It's free for personal use; contact ImageX if you want to use it commercially. 03. Tag Type Graphic designer Andy Panchenko was inspired by graffiti tags when creating this edgy designGraffiti font Tag Type was created by graphic designer Andy Panchenko. A student project, Panchenko's design was inspired by graffiti tags and is free for personal and charity use. 04. Bombing Give your designs an authentic graffiti feel with Bombing typefaceFrench designer Quentin Aquila is behind this striking graffiti font Bombing. The design is free for personal use only, with commerical licenses available directly from Aquila. 05. Urban Jungle Typeface designer Kevin Christopher designed this gorgeous typeface, which is perfect for creating stand out poster and flyer designsThis big, bold typeface 'Urban Jungle' was created by designer Kevin Christopher of KC Fonts. The eye-catching free graffiti font is perfect for creating stand out graffiti-style posters and flyers. There's a charge to get hold of the full font but you can do personal work to your heart's content with this free demo version. 06. Blow Brush Blow Brush is a handwritten marker style font inspired by the hip hop culture and graffiti communityDesigner and frontend developer Petar Acanski is behind this bold, quirky graffiti font Blow Brush. "Blow Brush is a handwritten marker style font inspired by the hip hop culture and graffiti community," Acanski comments on Behance. "Even though the main intention was to bring that street style to your content, the importance of font functionality was a top priority. The result are legible letters, clear type, a lot of variations and a font that is useful for a wider audience 07. The Fresh Prince The Fresh Prince font was created with a standard felt tip markerThe first font from Team Knorke, The Fresh Prince graffiti design is one of our favourites. "We had the idea for this after some beers and a discussion about the wackness of most graffiti fonts" team member Felix Schwarze comments on Behance. "We sketched the letters pretty dirty with a standard felt tip marker – street style." 08. Gang Bang Design Ideal for adding a touch of stylised street swagger to all your subway photosAnother all-cap font, designer Maelle Keita has two sets on offer for free. They are both caps, one with and one without the dripping paint element. 09. Polla Polla is a lively brush font filled with smudges and splattersCreated by Finnish designer Juha Korhonen, Polla is a wonderfully messy brush font, awash with smudges and splatters that will really bring your text to life. It's free for personal use, and if you want to use it commercially it'll cost you just €15/$20. 10. Damsterdam Damsterdam's bold, crooked letterforms brim with energyAnother one from Juha Korhonen, Damsterdam is a heavyweight all-caps font made of thick, rough brush strokes, with crooked, staggered letterforms that are simply full of energy. As with Polla, it's €15/$20 for commercial use but free for personal projects. 11. Happy Brown Cat Happy Brown Cat will have you purring with delightWho can resist a happy brown cat? This isn't your traditional graffiti font, but LazyPoony's is big and bouncy and crammed with fun. It's free for personal use; if you want to use it commercially you'll have to buy this version for a very reasonable $10. 12. Ruthless Drippin ONE These dripping calligraphic letterforms are a must for digital taggingIf you're after a sick tag font then you'll have a hard time finding a better one than Måns Grebäck's Ruthless Drippin ONE, combining striking calligraphic letterforms with distinctive paint drips. It's free for personal use. Next page: 10 more free graffiti fonts 13. Peinture Fraiche Slightly cracked letters and in-your-face drop shadow make for a fresh graffiti fontGive your graffiti a certain gallic je ne sais quoi with Quentin Aquila's Peinture Fraiche. Its bold cartoon letterforms are slightly shattered to give them extra character, and a heavy drop shadow makes them leap off the page. It's an all-caps font, but with a special set of caps, each adorned with a little arrow to add impact. 14. Misdemeanour Misdemeanour is a stencil font with a graffiti edgeMisdemeanour is a spraypaint stencil font by Kevin Christopher. Free for personal use only, this could be the perfect graffiti font for your Banksy-inspired designs. 15. You Murderer You Murderer conveys a serial killer vibe masterfullyWant to convey the deranged killer vibe? Then the self-explanatory You Murder font offers a suitably psychotic graffiti font for you to try out. Created by Nate Piekos, it's free for personal use only. 16. Brooklyn Brooklyn is available in two versions, regular and inlineOne of our favourite graffiti font styles, Brooklyn was developed by graphic designer Paul Reis, who describes it online as 'a calligraphy-based typeface that is both sleek and brutal'. Created as a result of his calligraphic exercises and doodles, Brooklyn is available in two versions, regular and inline. 17. Stylin' BRK Styli' BRK is a simple marker style tag design. Image © BerakaStylin' BRK was the first font created by graphic and web designer Beraka. One of many graffiti font styles developed by this artist, the simple marker style tag design is by far his most popular download. Free for personal use only. 18. A Dripping Marker Give your graffiti designs an authetic feel with A Dripping Marker by Wick van den BeltThe name says it all: A Dripping Marker, created by designer Wick van den Belt, is free for personal use only and comes complete with a full set of upper and lowercase characters, numbers and selection of special characters. A worthy inclusion in our list of the best free graffiti font styles. 19. Maelstrom This detailed graffiti font was created by designer Chung-Deh TienChung-Deh Tien is the man behind this heavy, detailed typeface design Maelstrom. Tien describes this font as his 'contribution to civic eyesore'. The detailed design is one of the most inspiring graffiti font styles we've seen - and it's free for personal use! 20. Juice Juice is one of many typeface designs by FontaliciousThis font is one of over 100 designs which, collectively, have been downloaded over 10 millions, by Fontalicious. A popular choice among free graffiti fonts, with its quirky, marker-style design it has received over half a million downloads to date. 21. Street Writer Get an authentic graffiti feel with this cool Street Writer fontIf you're looking for free graffiti font downloads, this one is well worth considering. Give your graffiti illustrations an authentic feel with this font by Noah. The interesting design incorporates small pictures outside of each letter and includes a full set of uppercase letters and numbers. 22. Amsterdam Graffiti Jesse Kuiper's Amsterdam Graffiti is free for personal useDesigner Jesse Kuiper was the brains behind this brilliant free graffiti font. A popular choice, it's received nearly 1.4million downloads since its release. It's free for personal use only, with donations to the author, as always, welcome. Next page: 10 more free graffiti fonts 23. El&font Block Create striking designs with the El&font Block typeface. lllustration © Jerome DelageTypeface designer Jérôme Delage is the brains behind this brilliant free graffiti font titled El&font (see what he did there?) Block. A member of Dafont.com - the archive of freely downloadable fonts - Delage is the author of eight typefaces on the popular site, which collectively have been download over seven million times! Next page: 10 more brilliant graffiti fonts 24. Urban Decay Urban Decay is inspired by inner city lifeA handmade brush stroke font inspired by Zofos' love of graffiti, urban exploration, street calligraphy and inner city living, Urban Decay is donationware that you're free to download but encouraged to pay a donation to the author. 25. Ghang Make an impact with your work by using typeface Ghang. Image © Måns GrebäckGraphic designer Måns Grebäck specialises in font, logotype and typography design and he developed this free graffiti font, as well as a host of other typefaces in this particular style. The demo version of Ghang is available as a free download or the full font can be purchased for $59 on Grebäck's site Mawns . 26. Nosegrind The Nosegrind typeface was inspired by similar graffiti styles found on walls in Austin and onlineThis free graffiti font comes from Scriptorium Fonts, an Austin, Texas-based type foundry started in 1992 by game designer, editor and historian Dave Nalle. Describing the typeface, Nalle says on his website, 'Nosegrind is based on skate-culture graffiti gleaned from various samples of similar style found on walls in Austin and online'. 27. The Pricks A brilliant, aptly named typeface by designer Hydro74. Image © Hydro74We love this simple block font with mean spikes by Orlando-based designer Hydro74 aka Joshua M. Smith. The free graffiti font is just one of many typefaces Hydro74 has come up with. While many of them you have to pay for, the generous designer also has a bunch of brilliant free fonts up for grabs on his site. 28. Aerosol Another bright idea! Aerosol doesn't employ the can paint aesthetic, but is a great free font nonthelessThis font sums up the spirit of a clean, cartoon-inspired style of graffitti art, that doesn't use the spray can look that you may expect from the name. Bright Ideas offers caps and lowercase, and you can even see what various sentences look like before you download. 29. Degrassi Degrassi by typeface designer Ray LarabieDegrassi typeface creator Ray Larabie describes this free graffiti font as a 'somewhat wack, graffiti inspired font', which pretty much sums it up. President of Japanese company Typodermic Fonts, Larabie has designed numerous typefaces, many of which are free to download on his site. 30. Brock Vandalo Typeface Brock Vandalo looks like it was hand drawn effortlessly. Image © Luis MarquesGraphic design student Luis Marques aka Brock Marques is the man behind this free graffiti font. The design features rounded shaped characters with thin ends and hairpin bends. Marques describes his typeface as being 'joyous and sometimes disorganised but with a sense of urban scrawl graffiti'. 31. Inner City Add a bit of old school to your work with this cool, free Inner City typeface. lmage © Mike WolfWe love this 3D drop font by type designer Mike Wolf. His particular use of colour in the above design reminds us of the old school graffiti you still see on the walls of many concrete jungles around the globe. Free for personal use, the font includes a full set of caps and digits. 32. Graffonti The Graffonti typefaces incorporates many styles, including drop 3D and gradient fillThis cool 3D drop font was created by 30-year-old programmer Xero who has created typefaces as a hobby since 1997. The designer runs the site Fontvir.us where you can read all about and download more of his brilliant creations. Next page: 10 more graffiti fonts 33. Please show me love Download this cool font to add a handwritten scrapbook-inspired feel to your work. Image © Andrew HartDesigner Andrew Hart is the author of Dirt 2, a site dedicated to design resources - a section of which offers font downloads. There are many to choose from but we particularly liked his handwritten scrapbook-inspired free graffiti font titled 'Please show me love'. Note: the free version is limited to demo only for non-commercial purposes. 34. Hardkaze The uniquely named designer Pizzadude created this cool graffiti style typeface HardkazeThis casual looking, hand drawn free graffiti font was designed by Jakob Fischer aka Pizzadude. Based in Copenhagen, Fischer describes his style as 'Loose, laid back and goofy, which especially comes to expression through unique handmade fonts.' 35. Whoa This cool Whoa font was inspired by graffiti styles of the early 90'sIf you're looking for a free graffiti font that packs a punch then check out this 'Whoa' font by Stockholm-based creative Johan Waldenström. The designer comments on his site 11-D productions, 'As a kid I was often fascinated by all the hiphop graffiti I saw around the early 90's. The oldschool era of graffiti was (and still is) very fascinating to me'. 36. Ruthless One Create stunning graffiti designs with this brilliant Ruthless One typeface. lllustration © Måns GrebäckAnother typeface from Måns Grebäck, we couldn't not include this brilliant free graffiti font. The designer has nearly 100 fonts available to download for free personal use on Dafont.com, many of them with a graffiti style. For a full collection of Grebäck's work, head over to his website Mawns. 37. Ruthless Two Take your pick! Ruthless One and Two are related but subtly differentClearly Grebäck's original Ruthless One was so popular that he created a follow up. Ruthless Two is a little less stylised than it's older brother, but has equal attitude. Head over to see all of Grebäck's fonts at Mawns. 38. DJ Gross Helo yourself to this cool hand drawn graffiti font and many more styles at SD FontsDespite its name, there's nothing at all gross about this hand drawn free graffiti font. The design comes from Finland-based designer who goes by the name of Ritzy (real name Sami), owner of SD Fonts. And thanks to generous creative, DJ Gross is just one of many fonts he has created and offered as a free download. 39. Most Wasted All capital letters for this font, Most Wanted is something for a noisy designA nice play on the once criminal associations with graffitti in cities that have since welcomed tags and burners onto their walls with open arms, this is an old school, loud font. And with all caps, there's nohing subtle to see here! 40. The Battle Continues Win your creative battles with this cool typeface by designer Christopher HansenThe Battle Continues was created by typeface designer Christopher Hansen. Dedicated to his craft, this creative has 28 gorgeous fonts available as a free download on Dafont.com. With over eight million downloads collectively, it is clear to see - just from this free graffiti font - why this designer's work is so popular. 41. Broken Records Fancy adding a bit of a sophistication and sexy to your designs? Then take advantage of this free graffiti font by freelance designer Timo Kuilder. Broken Records is available in two versions, fill and outline and includes a full set of capital letters and digits. 42. ReskaGraf Make your work stand out with this bold typeface by designer Olivier ZitouneBase your designs around this bold typeface for a really eye-catching piece of work. ReskaGraf was created by designer Olivier Zitoune, who also composed another similar styled font titled Zit Graffiti. The free graffiti font set includes a mixture of both capital and lower case letters and digits 0-9. Next page: the final 14 free graffiti fonts 43. Graffogie Make a bold statement with typeface Graffogie. Illustration © Ogeday KoçGraphic and web designer Ogeday Koç is the designer behind this street style typeface. The free graffiti font has a full range of upper, lower and special characters available for both personal and commercial use. 44. London Graffiti This font celebrates the work of 26 London graffiti artistsCreated by Mr Alfabetman, London Graffiti is a caps-only affair, and each letter is drawn in the style of a different London graffiti artist. The end result is understandably a little disjointed, but there are some fab characters in there. 45. PW Graffiti PW Graffiti is free for personal usePeax Webdesign's graffiti font features a full set of capital letters and numerals, plus an assortment of characters and decorative glyphs. It's free for personal use; if you want to use it commercially it'll cost you $15. 46. Sprite Graffiti Sprite features a full set of Cyrillic letterformsDesigned by Four Plus as part of FontFabric's campaign for Sprite Graffiti Fest 2014, this is apparently the first Bulgarian graffiti typeface to use the Cyrillic alphabet. Luckily it also comes with a complete set of Latin letters as well. 47. Wassimo Graffiti Wassimo's letters some in outlined and filled flavoursWassimo's striking letterforms come in caps only, but in outline and filled forms. If you want to use the filled set, simply type out lowercase letters. The font's completely free for personal and commercial use. 48. Fozzie Got A Posse Typeface This graffiti font is explicitly based on taggingThiago, aka TIPS, is a 29-year-old graphic designer from São Paulo, Brazil and he's generously made this organic font based on graffiti tagging available as a free download. A brilliant graffiti font with a name you can't help but love. 49. Graffiti Treat Ray Larabie is the designer behind this angular graffiti-inspired fontFree graffiti font Graffiti Treat was created by Typodermic Fonts founder Ray Larabie. He comments: "Graffiti Treat is a staggered, angular, graffiti inspired display font." 50. JustFist JustFist includes a traditional and paint drip designThis strong, bold, free graffiti font comes complete with two files; a traditional design and another that features paint drips from each letter. However, there are no lowercase letters, numbers or special characters. Free for personal use only. 51. Zit Graffiti Make an impact with Olivier Zitoune D's Zit Graffiti fontMake an impact with this cool block font created by designer Olivier 'Zitoune' D. Free for personal use, this free graffiti font includes a full set of uppercase letters only. 52. Tags Xtreme Tags Xtreme was created by web and font designer Jakob FischerTags Xtreme was created by web and font designer Jakob Fischer aka Pizzadude. The free graffiti font has a full range of uppercase characters, available for personal use only. 53. The Battle Continuez For an authentic graffiti style, check out The Battle ContinuezIf you're looking to give your graffiti designs an authentic feel, look no further than the The Battle Continuez. Created by designer Christopher Hanson, this design includes paint drips and splatters for a true street style. 54. The Graffiti Font The Graffiti Font is available in both black and white and colour. Image © Mike KarolosThis handmade graffiti font was created by 27-year-old graphic designer Mike Karolos who currently works as an art director in Athens. The bold colour and fresh, funky feel to this free graffiti font makes it perfect for injecting life to any bare wall. Only upper case letters are available but the font is free for both personal and commercial use. 55. Take Warning This cartoony take on the graffiti font really hits the spot for usCreated by Skyhaven, aka Alex Tomlinson, this is a cartoony take on the graffiti font that really hits the spot for us. It's free for personal use, while commercial use requires a donation. 56. Marsneveneksk This best seller (you can donate to Ariq before downloading) is a simple marker style tag designIndonesian designer Ariq Sya has created a cap-only font with numbers to boot – and with 300,015 downloads so far, it's his second most popular font. View the full article

Graphic design is a form of art, but the tools used to create it are very different to those used for traditional art forms. Learn how to make use of the programs and apps made for graphic designers with the Graphic Design Bootcamp, on sale for 88 per cent off the full retail price. No experience with graphic design? No problem. The Graphic Design Bootcamp is here to get you up to speed in no time. This collection of expert lectures is designed to quickly pack your brain with the knowhow you need to do design work. With lessons focused around teaching you to use powerful tools like Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, you'll learn how to use apps that have become the industry standard. You will work through common design projects such as designing posters, logos, adverts, ebooks, brochures, business cards, and a portfolio website. You can get the Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator courses on sale for just $15 (approx £12). That’s an 88 per cent saving off the full retail price for an invaluable crash course that will teach you the basics, 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 View the full article

The world of games is full of weird and wonderful characters. If you're in the process of learning how to draw, you could even create one of your own to grace the pages of your design portfolio. But everyone has a favourite video game character, right? From Lara Croft to Master Chief, there's arguably no better way to immerse yourself in a game than with the perfect protagonist. Here are 10 of the best character designs and why they're still winning the show. 01. Abe Oddysee – Odd World Abe was created by Oddworld co-founder Lorne Lanning in 1997At first look Abe's comical appearance and dim-witted voice makes him seem wilfully unprepared for his mission. Undeniable funny, cunning and sneaky, this surprising juxtaposition of appearance to abilities is what gives the player the drive to take Mudokon Pops off the menu for good. 02. Lara Croft – Rise of the Tomb Raider Lara Croft has become an iconic character since she first appeared in the 1996 video game Tomb RaiderLara Croft is a refreshing step away from the male centric character design in the original Tomb Raider but still keeps the universal truths that make her iconic. She would be nothing without her gymnastic abilities and utility belt. 03. Alyx Vance - Half-life 2 The 2004 design of Alyx was based on the looks of actress Jamil MullenBased on the looks of actress Jamil Mullen, the design of Alyx was impressively uncanny. Similar to the evolution of Lara Croft, Alyx as a character is well written and individualistic rather than gender centric. 04. Vaas Montenegro – Far Cry 3 Vaas is a guy you wouldn't want to mess withSurrounded by drugs, guns and paradise has made this 2012 character slightly insane. Although he is never seen directly in the game, his cut scenes are some of the best acted and most memorable. Couple that with the great first person camera work, he really was a fantastic example of a guy you wouldn't want to mess with. 05. GlaDOS - Portal series Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System is a fictional artificially intelligent computer system from 2007All she wants to do is carry on testing. She doesn’t see it as a bad thing and can't understand why you, the test subject, doesn't want to stay locked up in a research facility until the end of time. You can't help feeling sorry for her whilst listening to her lie and deceive to keep you there. Plus there is cake… So that's a bonus. 06. Master Chief and Cortana – Halo series Cortana and Master Chief's continuously developing relationship that makes them some of gaming's most iconic charactersHalo (2001) was the game that defined the early days of Microsoft's Xbox, and has continued to do so since. The story is only as good as its characters, and Bungie created two classic figures – Master Chief, the Spartan soldier leading the battle against the Covenant Armada, and Cortana, the sharp witted artificial intelligence that guides the Chief through the games. It's their banter and continuously developing relationship that makes them some of gaming's most iconic characters. 07. Joel and Ellie - The Last of Us The relationship between Joel and Ellie is extremely well executedThis game (2013) has some the best characterisation in a video game or in any media, the relationship between Joel and Ellie is so well executed that this game is about as close to playing a movie as you can get. Ellie in particular was designed to remain close to the player and to echo their experience in the game's world. The design also built to foster a relationship between Ellie and Joel, as she was created to lead him to cover when needed, whilst he naturally puts his arm around her, creating a relationship between the two. 08. Prince of Persia – The Sands of Time The Prince's amazing agility forces players to utilise new ways to get around From $7.99/From £3.96 The Sands of Time (2003) featured some great animation and characterisation that felt and looked like a cool cartoon. This was especially highlighted with the Prince's amazing agility in the game, forcing the player to utilise new ways to get from point to point. 09. IDA and the Totem - Monument Valley Ida and the Totem's designs are simple, but very effectiveThis design is so simple in terms of form but the interaction between Ida and the Totem is to sweet not to be included in this round up. Designed and based on a visual style based on Japanese prints and minimalist sculpture, the 2014 game used colour to highlight where the player could interact. 10. Mario - Super Mario Bros A list of top gaming characters just wouldn't be complete without MarioWe couldn't talk about video game characters without mentioning Mario. Designed to make it easy for new players to understand the game, Mario's character was engineered to engage and excite fans in the game, using subtle design attributes to achieve this. For example, making Mario small so that he can then become big which left players feel more content. Mario has been through many iterations since he first graced our computer screens in 1981, but the original 8-bit version remains our firm favourite. Related articles: How to choose the right drawing tools How to improve your character drawing Check out these inspiring examples of 3D art View the full article

In certain areas of the industry there's still have a prejudice against using stock imagery in design work. But as much as designers might want to craft a bespoke typeface, say, for each and every project, budget and time constraints mean it often isn't possible. Doing so is often impractical – especially when you can pick up a beautiful set of fonts from a font foundry that fits your design vision perfectly. The same applies to stock imagery. These days, the quality of photography and imagery coming out of the best stock image libraries is sky-high, and there are millions of great images to choose from. So in this post, we offer five tips for making the best of what’s on offer. 01. Harness libraries' powerful search tools Increasingly sophisticated search tools means you can find the right image for your project more quickly Stock image libraries can save you a whole heap of time compared to setting up your own photography shoot, crafting your own illustration or designing a new set of icons. And if it’s taking you a long time to find the right image, you’re probably doing something wrong. In 2017, the best stock image libraries have highly sophisticated search engines that allow you to hone your search according to a range of technical and creative criteria. For instance, you might only want to search for images with or without people, or within a particular colour spectrum, or in a specific aspect ratio. Keywords are also a great tool for finding what you’re looking for, and it’s worth trying words that both specifically describe what you’re looking for (like ‘dog’, ‘pet’, ‘canine’) and the kinds of feelings or themes you want the image to evoke (like ‘happiness’, ‘excitement’, ‘affection’). For more advice on how to search for stock images, check out our Quick tips for finding images faster. 02. Search within Photoshop and Sketch You can now search for images directly within Sketch or Photoshop using Craft Stock from InVisionTraditionally, if you were looking for an image to use in your design project, you’d have to exit the design software you were using and open up a new window to search the stock library site. It's not the worst problem in the world to have, but a little bit clunky nonetheless. More recently, though, stock libraries and design software companies have been teaming up to save you from having to perform all those extra clicks. And so there are now plenty of free tools and plugins that help you search for and download images directly within Sketch and Photoshop. For example, Craft Stock from InVision enables you to search from millions of premium images from the iStock and Getty Images libraries without the hassle of having to exit Photoshop or Sketch. That means you can populate your designs and mockups in a single click. Handily, tools like this often let you download watermarked versions of stock images so you can try them before you buy. By experimenting this way, you can get a lot of benefit from stock imagery even without parting with a penny. 03. Take inspiration from library images Elegant Stripe Waves, a stock illustration by Jobalou available from iStock by Getty Images (click the image to see it on iStock) Another way to benefit from stock imagery without paying for it is simply to use it as visual inspiration. Stock libraries are filled with millions of images, including photography, illustrations, 4K videos and other graphical elements such as patterns, textures and icons. And these can all be great inspirations for your own creative vision. Plus, because they’re neatly categorised, with powerful search functionality, it’s easy to find ideas that relate to the subjects you’re looking for, fast. For more tips on using stock libraries for creative inspiration, check out our 7 sources of free design inspiration from stock libraries article. 04. Make your images and typography work together This design was created using Photoshop and InDesign and some floral imagery from a stock library (click to go to our tutorial) Like it or not, some designers are still sneery about stock imagery. That’s often because they associate it with cheesy photos plonked willy-nilly on a page by amateur designers. But as with every kind of asset, getting the most out of stock imagery is about finding the right visuals and incorporating them carefully and creatively into your design, so they work harmoniously with the other design elements. In our How to use stock photography creatively within your design work tutorial, you’ll learn how to do just that, by creating the striking design shown above using Photoshop and InDesign and some floral imagery from a stock library. Similarly, our How to design an event poster using stock photography article walks you through setting up a simple grid within InDesign, type setting, as well as choosing and editing the right images for your poster design using stock imagery. 05. A/B test your images A/B testing allows you to try out two versions of the same web page with your audienceIf you’re using your stock images in a web design project, then there’s one surefire way to check whether or not they’re resonating with your audience. A/B testing, also known as split testing, involves setting up two versions of the same web page and seeing which performs better. By creating versions with alternative images, you can see whether a particular image (or crop of that image) gets more clicks. The results can often be surprising and may challenge your deep-seated assumptions about your audience. You can learn more about A/B testing in Hubspot's A/B testing checklist, and you’ll find a deeper dive into the topic in our article, How A/B testing can fuel your creativity. Meanwhile for further stock image advice, check out our 10 ways to use images better in your agency projects article. View the full article

You're reading Stockio, the Free Stock Website for Creatives, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Stockio.com is a new contender in the already overcrowded “free stock resources” ecosystem. But, I won’t complain about that. More free resources mean a boost of creativity. While there are quite a few sites where you can find photos, various kinds of icons, lots of music and even videos for both personal endeavors or commercial […] View the full article

At Generate London in a couple of weeks, Giles Colborne will analyse opportunities as well as pitfalls of conversational interfaces. Get your ticket today. In the mid-2000s, virtual agents and customer service chatbots received a lot of adulation, even though they were not very conversational, and under the hood they were merely composed of data exchanges with web servers. Chatbots are the latest form of artificial intelligence to cause a stir in the tech scene. Even though a huge number of examples of ‘weak AI’ exist (including Siri, web search engines, automated translators and facial recognition), with major investment from big companies, there remain plenty of opportunities to hack the conversational interfaces of the future. 5 essential chatbot learning resources Giles Colborne will look beyond the hype of conversational interfaces and chatbots at Generate London As well as being trendy, chatbots can be useful. They don’t need to feel like a basic replacement for a standard web form, where the user fills in input fields and waits for validation – they can provide a conversational experience. Essentially we’re enhancing the UX to feel more natural, like conversing with an expert or a friend, instead of web browser point-and-clicks or mobile gestures. The aim is that by providing empathetic, contextual responses, this technology will become embedded directly in people’s lives. Here is a practical way to design and build a chatbot, based on a real project-intake application in a service design practice. 01. Set a personality It’s important to ensure the chatbot’s personality reflects that of the company it’s representingAs this practice serves over 110,000 members globally, the goal was to provide a quick, convenient and natural interface through which internal stakeholders could request effective digital services, instead of having to fill out confusing forms. The first step was to establish the chatbot’s personality, as this would represent the voice of the service design team to its stakeholders. We built on Aarron Walter’s seminal work on design personas. This greatly helped our team develop the bot’s personality traits, which then determined the messages for greetings, errors and user feedback. This is a delicate stage, as it affects how the organisation is perceived. To make sure we had as much information as possible, we immediately set up stakeholder workshops to nail the appropriate personality, colour, typography, imagery and user’s flow when engaging with the bot. After we had gained all the necessary approvals – including seeking legal counsel – we set out to convert archaic request forms into a series of back- and-forth questions that mimicked a conversation between the stakeholders and a representative of our design services team. 02. Use RiveScript This simple scripting language provides everything you need to design and build a chatbot POC We knew we didn’t want to get too deep into AI markup language for the processing part – we just needed enough to jump- start the experience. RiveScript is a simple chatbot API that is easy enough to learn and sufficed for our needs. Within a few days we had the logic down to intake a project request from the bot, and parse it with enough business logic to validate and categorise it so it could be sent it through JSON REST services to the appropriate internal project tasking queue. To get this basic chatbot working, head to the RiveScript repo, clone it and install all the standard Node dependencies. In the repo you can also gain a taste of the interactions you can add with the various example snippets. Next, run the web-client folder, which turns the bot into a web page by running a basic Grunt server. At this point we can enhance the experience to suit our needs. 03. Generate your bot's brain The next step is to generate the ‘brain’ of our bot. This is specified in files with the .RIVE extension, and thankfully RiveScript already comes with basic interactions out of the box (for example, questions such as ‘What is your name?’, ‘How old are you?’ and ‘What is your favourite colour?’). When you initiate the web-client app using the proper Node command, the HTML file is instructed to load these .RIVE files. Next we need to generate the part of our chatbot’s brain that will deal with project requests. Our main goal is to convert a selection of project tasking intake questions into a regular conversation. So, for example: Hello, how can we help? Great, how soon do we need to start? Can you give me a rough idea of your budget? Tell me more about your project... How did you hear about us? A typical accessible web form would look like this: With web forms, we’re very familiar with certain patterns: you click the ‘Submit’ button, all form data is sent to another page where the request is processed, and then most likely a cheeky ‘Thank you’ page pops up. With chatbots, we’re able to take the interaction of submitting a request, and make it more meaningful. 04. Design a voice To convert this form to a conversational user interface served in RiveScript’s chatbot web client, we need to convert the information architecture from rigid to fluid; or field labels into UI strings. Let’s consider some accessible field labels, and their related question tone: Request: How can we help? Not sure? Do you mind if I ask a few questions? Timeline: How soon do we need to get started? Budget information: Can you give me a rough idea of your budget? Project description: OK, can you tell me a summary of the problem to be solved? Reference: Also, who referred you to us? Next we need to convert the web form’s code into AI script, following RiveScript’s very learnable processing logic for two-way conversations: 05. Request submission As opposed to standard form variables being sent to another page or service to process, chatbots can validate and submit information entered by the user in a chat window (or spoken) immediately, which means users can also revisit previously entered values easily. We needed to send the user’s request entered in the chatbot UI via the JSON REST API to an external project tasking server. In RiveScript-js we are free to make use of an XMLHttpRequest object to submit the request almost simultaneously, as the data is entered by the user: 06. Fear not Soon, current ways of interacting with computers to obtain information will give in to AI-based technology like chatbots, where people just make simple voice commands or text queries. The web design community need not fear – we should all be embracing the added value of this new technology. It could be a game-changer for the companies it works for, offering fully scalable customer service and improved customer intelligence. This article was originally featured in net magazine issue 290. For more on designing conversations, don't miss Giles Colborne's talk at Generate London on 22 September. The two-day conference is preceded by a day of workshops covering design and content sprints, user experience strategy, building scalable responsive components, and how to sell your ideas to stakeholders. Reserve your spot today and save £95 on a combined workshop and conference pass. Related articles: How chatbots are learning - interview with Giles Colborne 5 essential chatbot learning resources How conversational interfaces are innovating banking View the full article

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In the 1920s, a group of psychologists in Germany developed a series of theories of visual perception. The Gestalt principles – or Gestalt Theory, as it's also known – form the basis of many design rules we follow today. Get Adobe Creative CloudThat's why it's important for graphic and web designers to learn the principles. If you understand what they tell us about how we perceive visual objects and their arrangements, you'll be able to create a more coherent design that will better connect with your audience. What is Gestalt Theory? The term Gestalt means 'unified whole', which is a good way of describing the over-arching theme behind the Gestalt principles. These refer to the way in which humans, when looking at a group of objects, will see the whole before we see the individual parts. If you collect together your design elements in a visual arrangement using one of the various approaches that we explain below, your design will feel more connected, coherent and complete. The prominent founders of the collection of theories and principles were Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka. But while the principles were developed over a number of years, they came to prominence in part thanks to Rudolf Arnheim's 1954 book, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. This became a must-have art book of the 20th century, and regularly features on university course text lists. Six Gestalt principles The best way to understand Gestalt is to look at the different principles. It's well worth reading Arnheim's book, but to summarise there are six common, basic Gestalt Principles. We've broken each of these down with a simple example below. 01. Similarity This design has similarity because the individual elements that make up the design have the same basic shape characteristicsWhen objects looks similar to one another, viewers will often see the individual elements as part of a pattern or group. This effect can be used to create a single illustration, image or message from a series of separate elements. Attention is drawn to the different element in this composition because it breaks the pattern of similarityThe similarity between different elements can be shape, colour, size, texture or value. The more commonality that individual elements have, the greater the sense of coherence, thanks to similarity. This cover for the Beatles' album Hard Day's Night uses the principles of similarity and anomalyA particular element can be emphasized when it's dissimilar, breaking the pattern of similarity. This effect is called an anomaly. 02. Continuation In this example the eye is led through the first design element towards the star that aligns with the curveContinuation is the principle through which the eye is drawn along a path, line or curve, preferring to see a single continuous figure than separate lines. This can be used to point towards another element in the composition, and is seen where a line is cut through one object, often in a curve, aligning perfectly with a secondary element. This illustration consists of 4 lines that meet at the central point, but we prefer to see two intersecting lines rather than 4 lines that converge03. Closure The World Wildlife Fund logo uses the closure principle to describe a panda, even though the shape is not fully closedClosure is a common design technique that uses the human eye's tendency to see closed shapes. Closure works where an object is incomplete or the interior space of an element is not fully closed, but the viewer perceives a complete shape by filling in the missing information. This technique is often associated with stenciled artwork, but is also closely associated with logo forms. Next page: more on the Gestalt theory 04. Proximity (aka grouping) The arrangement of boxes on the left are not close enough to have proximity, while the group on the right is perceived as a single whole elementProximity uses the close arrangement of elements to create a group association between those objects. If individual elements are also similar, they will tend to be perceived as a single whole, even though they are separate elements. The shapes don't have to be regular to achieve proximity. Similar shapes arranged together to describe a bigger image, such as this illustration of a flameProximity or grouping can be achieved with lots of different commonality including shape, colour, texture, size or any other visual attribute. 05. Figure/ground Figure and ground often uses the idea of light and shade to help create an image that jumps out from a series of shapesThis principle describes the eye's tendency to see and separate objects from their surrounding background. A classic example uses a vase/candlestick illustration to show two faces peering at each other, but you can also see this effect in a variety of logo designs. It works because human eyes want to see the figure (foreground object) and background (ground) as two different planes of focus. MC Escher's famous woodblock Sky and Water 1 (1938) uses the figure and ground principleEverything that is not figure is considered ground, which can be used to create some interesting visual effects and tricks, particularly when the designer or artist introduces deliberate ambiguity - a favourite technique of the surrealist MC Escher. 06. Symmetry and order Put simply, this principle says that a composition should not provide a sense of disorder or imbalance, as otherwise the viewer will waste time trying to locate the missing element, or fix the problem, rather than focusing on the message or instruction. The symmetrical figure that makes up the windmill shown below provides a sense of order and balanceYou can achieve symmetry by providing a good balance or sense of symmetry in your design elements, such as the windmill illustration below. This provides the viewer with a feeling of harmony. Related articles: The designer's guide to the Golden Ratio The designer's guide to grid theory 25 logo design tips from the experts View the full article

Contemporary character design is both exciting and ever-evolving. As technology advances and becomes ever more complex, designers are using these advances to go in the opposite direction – playing with their characters in ways that are perhaps simpler and more child-like than in the past. Best iPad art apps for painting and sketchingNew technologies are shaping the way that characters are created, and the way they interact with audiences. And as we become increasingly obsessed with our own image, tweaking the way our own ‘character’ or self is portrayed online, artists are reimagining faces and expressions in innovative ways. Read on to discover more about how modern life is shaping character design, and sometimes, vice versa, with these five exciting character design trends. 01. Viral design Edel Rodriguez’s depiction of Donald Trump has taken on a life of its ownNot so much a design trend as an audience trend, more so than ever before, the characters we design do not belong to their creators. As they become charged with our projection, imagination, fantasy and longing, they gain a virtual identity or life 
of their own, making them independent from their creators. This has arguably always been true, but the internet has increased the speed of their diffusion. Characters now act as autonomous agents, roaming freely across media, spreading like wildfire across social networks and attaching themselves to other artefacts beyond our control. The recent Pictoplasma Conference explored this trend. Its theme was Character Upload, and the opening titles and the talks explored the challenges for artistic creation and authorship that designers face in our age of viral circulation. One character that has taken on a life of its own is Edel Rodriguez’s illustration of Donald Trump, which has been featured on many magazine covers, from Time to Der Spiegel, and has been appropriated by many people at political demonstrations. Rodriguez has made this Trump icon his signature, constantly recombining the colours and elements, and his viral work draws on other trends in illustration, with an eschewing of realistic depictions in favour of typographic and symbolic abstractions. Sean Charmatz turns everyday objects into charming charactersAnother example embodying these issues is Sean Charmatz’s Secret World of Stuff. Charmatz creates characters by using Photoshop to add simple lines to his photos of found objects, such as egg boxes, pizza, leaves and bin bags. He has a huge following on Instagram and his work is often shared without proper credit – a big issue for artists today. The reason for his viral success probably lies less in the character design itself, but in the work’s ability to tell simple short stories in one image. There are silly stories, but also images related to friendship, family, death or loneliness. This emphasis on storytelling is present in many fields, from branding to interface design, and makes this an exciting time for designers and their characters. 02. Illustrating with 3D shapes Jack Sachs' Shhh! for Tate BritainIn many cases, character design is about breaking down shapes into geometrical forms. This is one of the fundamental rules of animation production, and has been essential for enabling international teams to work on the same thing in different places. Currently playing with such geometrical elements for character design in an inspiring way are 3D artists. In sharp contrast to the hyper-realistic simulation that has long been dominant in 3D, artists can have fun experimenting with a simple way of juggling geometrical forms to create pleasing new characters. Jack Sachs, who recently moved from London to Berlin, works as animator and illustrator. He studied illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, but while recovering from a hand injury, he had to take a break from traditional drawing and started making 3D work on the computer. These two practices have fused to become the work he makes today: jumbled up faces, bright colours, and lumpy shapes, inspired by the pioneers of early CGI. His 3D renders are often consciously misplaced into live action video footage, with characters emerging from a solid floor, as in his recent work SHHH! for Tate Britain. Cecy Meade's Toxic BoyCecy Meade from Monterrey, Mexico, has a similar approach – exposing the geometric configuration of 3D modelling. Her works often depict characters head-on and in a less dynamic way than Sachs – leading to a direct confrontation with the viewer. Like many 3D illustrators, she constructs her work based on hand-drawn sketches, which she then reconfigures in geometrical elements. Tube Dude by Julian GlanderJulian Glander, from New York, works in various genres including comics, video games, short films and illustration. He never sketches, but combines simple geometric shapes straight in the free and open-source 3D software Blender. His pastel toned yet vibrant Florida-inspired colour palette stands in contrast to the often violent and dystopian undertones of his work. 03. New expressions in selfie culture Fabio Tonetto began digitally overlaying heads in photos a few years agoWe live in times of photographic terror. Our smartphones, the internet and the speed of data means we are constantly producing and reproducing our visual identity through selfies, and playing with it through face-swapping apps, Instagram and Snapchat filters. This selfie cult has sparked various artistic reactions. Artists and designers have come up with creative alternatives to reinvent facial representation. Italian artist Fabio Tonetto began digitally overlaying heads in photos a few years ago, while Paris-based Geneviève Gauckler has long been experimenting with the combination of mundane photorealistic objects and graphical identities. Geneviève Gauckler combines mundane photorealistic objects and graphical identitiesGauckler's artwork replaces the head in photos with simple geometric shapes and combines elements to form new faces. Her work is all about nostalgia for mundane everyday objects and her love for the absurd. The simplicity of her character design emotes the feeling of being a spectator, an outsider looking at things as if for the first time. Guillaume Kashima's Face-off self-portraitGuillaume Kashima is a French-Japanese illustrator living in Berlin. His style is minimalist yet bold – he works mainly with black and white, plus strong, primary colours to create simple facial designs for a range of contexts. Recently, he has started to experiment with classical portraits, giving them warped facial features, multiple eyes and thoughtful poses. His Classics series of Risograph prints subvert traditional ideas and artwork by inserting playful images, such as fed up-looking naked woman farting, on classical vases. Ton Mak's Flabjacks series is an extension of the artist's doodlesAfter quitting her job in a branding agency, Ton Mak from Shanghai decided to fully concentrate on what she had been unconsciously doing most of the time – doodling. Within a short time, she simplified her style to create the expanding Flabjacks universe, a lumpy, chubby species differentiated through hairstyles, clothes and props. Their curious, ambiguous faces are a vehicle for the artist to reflect on her own identity. She also experiments with photomontage, which she bases on portraits of herself and her family. 04. Interactive characters Eran Hilleli creates mysterious characters in his signature geometric style In 1994, Karl Sims, computer graphic artist and MIT researcher, released Evolved Virtual Creatures – animated videos showing creatures that had been tested to see whether they could perform a given task, such as swimming or jumping, and then evolved accordingly. They reacted to their environment and interacted with the others, similar to characters in a game. This ground-breaking work is still influential today. Eran Hilleli, an animation filmmaker from Israel, is currently expanding his work in this direction. He is renowned for his geometric style and mysterious characters created with cinematic flair. In addition to animated shorts, music videos and adverts, he experiments with GIF loops, such as a group of characters around a camp fire or some ethereal-looking vegetation moving in the wind. For his animated trailer for the Style Frames conference, he first tested the walking cycles of his characters constructed of geometric shapes to see if they felt organic. From this exploration, he put together his cast of eclectic characters for the parade featured in the animation. Hilleli's Character Synth is an interactive installationHilleli’s latest exploration Character Synth is an interactive installation, in which a male character is portrayed on a computer screen. Visitors can sit at the desk to interact with the character through a midi controller, which operates oscillating sine waves and random noise and results in the character deforming as if injecting waves into its bones. By combining different commands through the midi, players can observe endless different ways of transformation, meaning that Character Synth is a system that can be stimulated and interacted with, rather than a linear animation with different options that tell a story. Character Upload by Mate SteinforthAnother animation artist expanding his practice is Mate Steinforth, creative director at Berlin studio Sehsucht. His Instagram feed is an exploration of the behaviour of detached parts in a hyperrealist rendered setting – hands float through the air, geometric forms bounce at each other, a face is a Tinder screen to swipe through. These clips are neither interactive, nor based on a program within a system. Rather they seem to be experiments of Technoself Studies – singling out specific contexts of our cultures and letting them spin in autonomous loops. Based on such experiments, Steinforth worked on the animated trailer for the recent Pictoplasma Conference. He created a cast of occult monks and allowed them to move through void 3D environments. Following this research of the behaviour and movement of his characters, he created the final animation. Seoul-based animation director and media artist Jun seo Hahm adds a biological perspective to this type of research, replacing real creatures in the natural world with artificial ones in a CG environment. He examines the behaviour of simple forms and how their movement is based on their restrictions, and his film project Walking Follows Form is a stunning expression of how a character’s body structure informs its style of walking. 05. Breaking the rules of gaming Pikuniku by Rémi Forcadell and Arnaud de BockFrom Space Invaders to Super Mario, early computer games have been key to defining the aesthetics of contemporary character design. Games have the potential to develop a character-driven narrative, in particular when the design defines the characters’ abilities to move and act within the designated world. Mainstream titles have tended to design characters to fulfil a function in a given story, but within the current movement of indie games, it is character design that is at the forefront of the development process. There is also increasingly room for plots that are not about winning but exploring. Currently under development, Pikuniku breaks the traditional rules of gaming. It is a “therapeutic playground where the player will need to think creatively.” There are no enemies to fight or kill, the avatar is not a hero, and, most importantly, you cannot die. The character is a red, oval shape with just two eyes and thin, long, waggly legs, and its mission is to rebuild a community. The character’s design is also key – it was the starting point for the game. One of the two creators, Rémi Forcadell, had animated a short clip of its movement, and when Arnaud De Bock saw the short GIF online, he contacted him and proposed working on a game together. Pikuniku has not only maintained the character’s oddness but bases everything on it. It moves through the game seeming helpless at first, but learns to act socially through encountering other creatures that require its assistance. Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser's OobletsIn a similar tone, Ooblets is also about creating social coherence through farming little creatures, the Ooblets. Though it’s much more refined and polished in its look than Pikuniku, Ooblets also began with design rather than concept. The promotion of Ooblets has also been outside of traditional norms, as creators Rebecca Cordingley and Ben Wasser have been actively promoting the game’s characters and scenes online in order to build a fan base before the 2018 release. Samuel Boucher's FacesThe recently released GNOG is a puzzle game about exploring virtual toys, and has the option to play in VR via PlayStation VR. The player has to experiment with a new GNOG head in each level – by pushing and pulling different levers or rotating the head, for example – to uncover its secrets. Its lead designer, Samuel Boucher of Montreal-based KO_OP studio, has a passion for experimenting with facial designs, and it shows. In GNOG, the character’s vibrant face is the environment – it’s a facial machine to operate and to play with. Once again, there are no winners or losers as such, making the experience more akin to child’s play than is traditional in gaming. This article originally featured in Computer Arts issue 268. Buy it here. Read more: How to improve your character drawing Make your own character bible 10 best video game character designs View the full article

Over 70 per cent of freelancers say a client has stiffed them on paying their invoice. The best way to avoid these cheapskates is to use a solid contract and get paid upfront. But, if preventative measures have failed you, here are six steps for getting what you deserve. 01. Don't work without getting paid By working without pay, you remove your client’s primary motivation for paying you in the first place. “If you are still invoicing for past work and you’re not getting paid, immediately stop,” suggests Brennan Dunn, founder of Double Your Freelancing. 02. Charge late fees This handy invoice template comes from Free Agent (click to see the full infographic) Begin to charge payment late fees when your contract stipulates it will happen. Most invoicing software can automate late payment fees for you. Resend your invoice with the added late fees. Start sending it by email and snail mail if you don’t get a response. 20 top tools for freelancers03. Don't leave it alone Always pursue payment truancy. Half the payment horror stories on Clients From Hell could be solved by the submitter being less polite. You’re running a business, and that business needs money to survive. An automated warning that a client is about to be charged late fees is an excellent way to motivate clients without baring your teeth. 04. Waive late fees for a short time By saying you'll waive late fees for a limited time, the combination of urgency and savings can motivate clients to pay up. 05. Send a letter from your attorney or a collections agency Attorneys and collections agency are hard to ignore, but they’re not cheap solutions. Consider this option as a next-to-last resort. 06. File with a small claims court The final option is to resolve the issue in a small claims court. Make sure the amount is worth it, as this option will drain time and a bit of money. See GOV.UK for guides in the UK. In the US, the process and point of contact varies from state-to-state, but this guide from the California Department of Consumer Affairs may be of use. This article originally appeared in Computer Arts magazine issue 268. Buy it here. Related articles: Why designers need to talk about money How to balance money and happiness as a designer 25 tips for staying sane as a freelancer View the full article