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You don't have to wait for Black Friday 2017 to score a bargain. For today's daily deal, we've got you a great discount on CPD certified Microsoft Excel training courses that you can take from your desk. If you think of Microsoft Excel as a boring old spreadsheet, it's time for you to take another look. This program is way more powerful than it might appear at first glance, and there is a reason it's trusted in just about every workplace. Learn your way around the essential piece of software with the eLearnExcel Microsoft Excel School. You can get a lifetime subscription on sale now for just $39 (approx £30). You can't walk into an office environment without seeing Microsoft Excel up on a computer screen. The program is integral for all sorts of tasks at all levels of businesses. Learn how to make the most of Microsoft's powerful program by working your way through the eLearnExcel Microsoft Excel School. You can get lifetime access to eight comprehensive courses that will teach you the ins and outs of this program. You'll also receive a diploma after you complete the courses to prove your skills. You can get a lifetime subscription to the eLearnExcel Microsoft Excel School on sale now for just $39 (approx £30) thanks to a massive price drop from the original retail price of $999. Don't miss out on these huge savings – 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 the Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com Related articles: 16 top online coding courses 20 tools to make your team more productive Write without distractions with this BlankPage offer View the full article

For over 50 years, D&AD has been dedicated to recognising and celebrating the very best of creative excellence from studios and agencies around the world with its Pencil awards. Alongside that, the not-for-profit organisation works with students and young creatives to discover, nurture and elevate talent wherever it’s found, with its New Blood awards. And of course, this attracts energy and talent; persistence and curiosity – those forces that keep our industries in a perpetual state of change. This perpetual state poses challenges. We spoke to D&AD’s CEO, Tim Lindsay, and Bethan Morris, manager of D&AD’s New Blood Programme to find out more about how young creatives can future-proof themselves. 01. Consider alternative routes Despite media hand-wringing about algorithms, robots, and AI, you and I will still be part of the future, somewhere, somehow. And so too will a new batch of creative talent. But how will they be educated, and where will they come from? “Universities still offer excellent routes in,” says Morris, “but we need alternatives,” she insists. “Creativity struggles to be valued and is frequently overlooked by education systems and governments alike,” explains Morris. “In the UK alone, we’ve seen teacher shortages, a drastic reduction in the numbers studying design and technology, and a big mismatch between what’s being taught and the skills needed.” Where does D&AD come in? “We want to help creative people realise as early as possible that there are career paths open to them where they can get paid for doing what they love,” says Morris. Lindsay adds that creative roles need to be open to all. “The idea that creative excellence is available only to those who already have the ‘right networks’ has limited us for too long,” he says. “We want to work with businesses to attract a far greater diversity of talent into the industry. People who can challenge what has gone before can provide different perspectives and solutions.” 02. Be adaptable ‘What should I be learning now?’ seems to be a question we ask ourselves with increasing frequency. Which piece of software, which programming language, which APIs? While we can’t know now what we’ll need to know in 20, or even 10, years’ time, Morris recommends staying informed, and dabbling in new platforms, trends and technologies (Udemy offers great free courses on all sorts of topics and tech to get you started). But ultimately, what’s more important is cultivating a progressive outlook on the world. “What you need is the urge to learn on the go, and to be prepared to adapt to whatever the situation calls for,” says Morris. Even for those in their dream job, not every project that lands in your lap is going to give you goosebumps, which is why Morris stresses the importance of side hustles and passion projects. “There’s a real need for mavericks and ‘entrepreneurs’ within agencies,” she says. Morris gives Ross Norman – New Blood Academy class of 2016 attendee, Pencil winner, and Kingston student – as an example of someone who has such adaptability and passion. He recently launched Peep, a publication about celebrating side projects and creative play. “Every project in Peep has play, freedom and experimentation at its core,” she says. 03. Question your motive Make choices for the right reasonsAs well as questioning what you’re doing to prepare yourself for the future, Lindsay also thinks you should be asking why you’re doing it. “The future of the planet is still largely dependent on business seeking to grow in a sustainable way – if indeed growth is the answer.” Doing good will increasingly become good business, he adds, but it’s important to do this authentically and honestly. “This movement is not about hijacking issues for dubious ends or playing with people’s hopes and fears,” warns Lindsay. “If you’re going to change how business is done, you’ll need creative courage, and be willing to take risks.” Lindsay admits that taking such risks is not easy. “We’re not going rose-tinted specs here,” he says. “There are real challenges on the way to making it. There’s the risk of anonymity and the challenge of cutting through the competition for your talent to shine. “There’s trying to move from serial placements to a permanent role, or even landing that placement in the first place. And then there’s balancing the need to gain experience and make connections with the need to pay your bills.” 04. Put yourself out there Tom Watkins’ When I’m a Dad book features 10 imaginings of life as a parent and won a Black Pencil in 2015But D&AD New Blood can help. It has free events, tools and resources to give everyone industry-standard insight, and offers a platform to identify and spotlight creative talent, help people rise to the top, open doors, and start conversations. You can’t just rely on D&AD, though. Morris emphasises the importance of learning from your own mistakes. “It’s up to you to continue that conversation, put yourself out there, meet people, make connections, take advice to avoid some pitfalls, and learn the hard way on others.” It’s up to you to put yourself out there, meet people, make connections, take advice to avoid some pitfalls, and learn the hard way on others Getting out there and making stuff for real will always get you noticed over pictures on a page. And you’ll learn more, too. “It’s one thing to conjure up a beautiful concept under lab conditions,” says Morris, “but taking it out into the messy real world and solving problems and patching things up until it works will teach you a load of skills you’d never get in the classroom.” We see this in the work that wins, too. Take Tom Watkins’ 2015 New Blood Black Pencil winner, When I’m a Dad. The touching and original approach to the subject matter took it a long way, but the fact that Watkins put the project out there by starting a conversation online was perfect proof of concept, and showed that his piece had the power to engage outside the jury room. The world of commercial creativity is already a rapidly changing beast, and will undergo seismic shifts in the years to come as new technologies become commonplace and consumer expectations and behaviours adjust – and D&AD will continue to celebrate, stimulate and evolve with the best of this new world. “It will always be key to celebrate and reflect the best of the industry as it is,” says Morris, “but with programmes like New Blood and Impact, D&AD will continue to set out a vision for and champion the best of the industry as it should be, rather than limiting ambition and representation to the industry as it is.” 05. Adjust your priorities D&AD’s headquarters in London are full of lovely peopleFinally, you can shape your future with your priorities: by putting humans before companies; choosing fun over money; being approachable rather than formal; and innovating rather than always sticking to the norm. The company you work for is just a building full of people. So think hard about your interactions. Are you nice to people because you worry about upsetting them? Do you know them so well that your honesty can mutate into rudeness? Do you trust each other enough to be unselfconscious and have genuinely novel ideas? Treat fun as a valid source of measurement, alongside all the other metrics you use to judge the success of your company’s culture. Make sure you give yourself the time and space to be playful. It doesn’t matter if you’re a junior designer or an ECD – you should treat everyone the same. Marketing jargon needs to go. Layers of sign-off on every piece of work need to go. Trust needs to be handed out and fuck ups need to be expected. This is better than the alternative where everyone is afraid and just looks after themselves. Seek out the weird, and the cutting-edge. Not all of it will find its way into a project, but resist the urge to self-censor or give people what you think they want. Question everything. If people tell you: ‘This is the way to do it because that’s how it has always been done,’ question it. Sometimes a small tweak or even a complete deviation will result in something better. This article was originally published in Computer Arts issue 269. Buy it here and subscribe here. Related articles: How to get into design without a degree Back to school: essential design kit for the new term The designer’s guide to Brexit View the full article

Calibrating your monitor for your digital design work is a no-brainer. Not only will the colours and blacks in your Photoshop works, Illustrator creations and other designs be true, it'll be better for your eyes, too. After all, people see colours very differently and displays differ as well. Get Adobe Creative CloudOnce you've got a great monitor (see our buying guide to the best monitors for designers for help choosing one), there are now plenty of options for calibration including software downloads, online tools and the built-in calibration tools within Windows and macOS. But nothing offers the accuracy and continuity of a hardware calibrator. A hardware calibration tool need not break the bank, so we've rounded up the five best options for you below. As well as making laptop screens and desktop monitors just right, the Spyder5ELITE provides a lot more in terms of setup but only takes around five minutes to calibrate (less for subsequent calibrations). There's a simple wizard-based mode but also an expert mode, too. There are 'unlimited' calibration settings plus grey-balancing. You can calibrate all of your displays to a single target, while there's room light monitoring to determine the optimal monitor brightness. You're able to see 'before and after' results using your own images. This incredible package comes with a heap of options, but then you do pay for it. You're able to use your profile across multiple displays (either on the same machine or network) as well as assess the ambient light in your workspace to set your monitor up for best results. A technology called Flare Correct will measure and adjust your display profile for reduced contrast ratios caused by glare on your screen. Video colour standards are also incorporated, so video editors can set up their display for best results, too. The X-Rite i1 Display PRO is a little expensive, so perhaps look out for discounts such as the upcoming Black Friday deals. This is a really simple route to colour accuracy and is best for hobbyists, students and prosumers rather than pro designers. It's an easy four-step process with just two settings and you can see a 'before and after' view on preset images. The software is available via a download link provided with the box. Professional creatives will probably be looking for more, though. The X-Rite ColorMunki Smile features some of the best monitor calibrator software anywhere. All you need to do is start it up, place the ColorMunki Smile on your monitor and click 'go'. Quick and easy is the name of the game – just plug the device into your computer's USB port. As with the other contenders here you'll be able to see the before and after results to check out the level of improvement. This awesome tool enables professional designers – or indeed anybody who works with colour – to calibrate LCD and laptop displays, RGB and CMYK printers, and digital projectors. You can create and name unlimited custom colour palettes using the included software, while you can automatically synchronise your palettes to Adobe Photoshop and InDesign in addition to QuarkXpress. You're also able to export them to other photo and design applications. Related articles: The best monitors for designers 2017 10 colour management terms designers need to know 95 top Photoshop tutorials View the full article

Getting your first junior designer role is an exciting time; you've aced your design job interview and got a foot on the ladder now, and surely the only way is up. Careful, though; you don't want to skewer your career prospects just as you're getting started. For a much smoother route to design success, here are five common mistakes that you really want to avoid making. 01. Getting possessive There's no need to get too possessive"We always tell people that we don't want precious designers," says Ben Jory, founder and creative director at Jory & Co. "We don't want to hire people who will say: 'This is my idea and I want to take ownership of it.' There's nothing worse than a precious designer." When you work for a studio, it's not just your idea – it's everyone's, to work on together. 02. Tuning out Make sure you're listening [Photo by Jerry Kiesewetter on Unsplash] "It's hard in a busy studio if you brief someone and they just haven't listened to what you've said," says Design Culture director Kristen Streten. "It's incredibly frustrating as a manager at any point along the line if you're not taking notes, not listening to briefs and not asking questions." However obvious a question might seem, it's better to check than to do a task wrong, she notes. 03. Hiding mistakes Everyone makes mistakes; just own up and get it fixed when you make one tooSloppy work doesn't look good to your employers or your client. It can be hard to remember this when you're working under pressure, but meeting a deadline doesn't mean quality goes out the window. However, everyone's human. If you do make a mistake you can't fix, tell someone about it straight away so it can be fixed in good time. Chances are they'll appreciate it. 04. Losing heart Every task is a learning opportunity"I remember finding it difficult that I wasn't being given more responsibility. I was really ready to go," Streten says, recalling the beginning of her career. "You feel so capable and so energised – but you do have to understand that we've all been there, we've all been junior in a company and had to do these tasks. You'll be amazed by what you learn while you're doing them." 05. Over sharing Count to 10 before you share a work rant online [Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash] Be very careful what you post online. It's one thing to retweet the studio's latest project, but quite another to say anything that could breach confidentiality, offend clients or just make you look bad. Always treat social media like a postcard that travels via your manager's desk – assume they can read everything on it, along with everyone else. This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 255. Subscribe here. Related articles: 20 tips for design interview success How to transform a design internship into a job How do you judge your success as a designer? View the full article

There is no skill more in demand right now than the ability to code. Whether you're looking to launch a career as a web developer or just want to add a new ability to your resume that may put you in line for new opportunities, you can pick up the skills you need to take part in the new wave of development with the help of the Learn to Code 2017 Bundle, on sale now for a price you choose! The Learn to Code Bundle is packed with courses for people of all skill levels that will give you the know-how you need to be a talented developer with the talent to succeed. You'll find dozens of hours of actionable content in these 10 professionally-caught courses on the most important programming languages from Python to Ruby on Rails to Java. Add new skills to your toolbox so you can create great works online for fun or get a promotion and take home more money on your paycheck. The Learn to Code 2017 Bundle usually retails for $1,573. Right now, you can pick the price you pay for it. Beat the average to unlock it all or get on the leaderboard. The price is up to you but you can't go wrong no matter what you pay, so grab it today! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at:deals@creativebloq.com Related articles: Web animation: No code required 12 must-have code testing tools 16 top online coding courses View the full article

If you're a budding designer eager to get your work seen by some of the biggest names in the creative industry, the D&AD New Blood Awards 2018 offer the perfect opportunity. Open to young people aged between 18 and 24, plus students and recent graduates of any age, the New Blood Awards are an invaluable introduction to the reality of working in the creative industry. And with today's launch of the 17 new creative briefs for the 2018 awards, there's no better time to try and win a highly coveted D&AD Pencil. 8 big portfolio trends for 2017This year, the briefs have been set by some familiar faces like the BBC, John Lewis, Nationwide and Pearson. There are also some new partners, including Adidas, Bacardi, JCDecaux and Microsoft. Also returning is Hasbro. The briefs are specially crafted by the partners to push the next creative generation. They want young designers to hone and apply their skills to a wide range of business challenges and social issues. This year, the briefs ask young designers to rethink the medium of paper by using it to create a new tactile experience; shake up an in-store experience for future shoppers; use graphic design to champion a cause; and empower older generations through informal learning – amongst others. This could be you!This year also see the launch of the first New Blood Side Hustle, run in partnership with Adobe. More than just a creative brief, the New Blood Side Hustle invites creatives to show off their entrepreneurial spirit. So if you've been spending your spare time working away on an innovation, startup or app, this is the place to show it off. Winners will scoop up a share of prize money, as well as gaining access to D&AD training courses relevant to their field, and the opportunity to be mentored by a D&AD judge. Their work will also be promoted on the D&AD website and in the 2018 Annual. Plenty of those shaping the industry now got their break thanks to bagging a New Blood Pencil Paul Drake For emerging talent, the New Blood Award briefs are an ideal way to understand the pitch process and the demands they can expect to face from clients. The hard work is worth it, as winning could kick-start your career. D&AD Foundation Director Paul Drake comments: “The New Blood Awards are a unique opportunity for emerging creatives to cut their teeth on real projects with some of the world’s leading brands. "They challenge entrants to work on complex themes and develop them into great ideas, beautifully executed. And winning gets you noticed. Plenty of those shaping the industry now got their break thanks to bagging a New Blood Pencil.” To view all of the 2018 briefs, be sure to visit the New Blood Awards site. Entrants have until 5pm GMT, 20 March 2018 to submit their work. Winning work will be selected by a panel of judges and awarded either a Wood, Graphite, Yellow, White or Black Pencil. Winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony in early July 2018 in London. Good luck! Related articles: 5 big branding mistakes to avoid 7 pro tips for staying competitive as an artist Is it better to be a competitive or collaborative designer? View the full article

When it comes to web development, it is pretty easy to assume that JavaScript is top dog. But, obviously it's not that simple. Imagine turning up for an interview and saying 'I'm great at JavaScript'. We think they might want to know a little more than that. JavaScript is the basis for thousands of different libraries and is included in endless frameworks. There's a few that spring immediately to mind, such as React and Angular. But web development is not just about JavaScript either – there are hundreds of libraries that a developer could have in their arsenal, but you cannot learn them all, so it's very much a matter of choosing the right ones to ensure that you get the job you want. And, if the libraries and tools that populate your dev arsenal are in demand, you can make a little more money than expected. Skill Up 2017 Global tech publisher Packt recently released Skill Up 2017, its developer skills and salary report. In a nutshell, the report takes a look at the tools developers are using, who's getting paid the big bucks, and some of the emerging trends that web developers should be on the lookout for. The report is based on replies from over 4,700 respondents from across the globe. In its executive summary it revealed that full-stack development is dominating as a technical role across industries; 60 per cent of respondents have either a 'reasonable amount of choice' or a 'significant amount of choice' over the tools they use at work; developers need to work in an environment they love – IDEs are among the most loved tools; 47.57 per cent of respondents say their manager has less technical knowledge than they do; there's a container revolution happening – Docker is being learned across today's tech workforce; and Python remains consistently popular across job roles. The big earners by role were big data engineers, security engineers and information architects Looking further into the report, what else did we learn? As well as being a global survey – which included respondents from the US, UK, Brazil, Australia and India – it revealed the average salaries of developers and tech professionals. As you might expect, it's the US that comes out on top. They earned an average of £104,000, compared with Europe that sat at £75,000, while North Asia came in at around £55,000. To put this into some kind of perspective, it wasn't web developers that topped the list. The big earners by role were big data engineers, security engineers and information architects. But, we all know web developers aren't in just for the money; they are in it for the love. Docker, Angular and React More importantly, what tools were popular? In a straight top tools chart (including all job roles), it was Python that was happily sitting at number one. Elsewhere in the top ten were Git, Java and Docker, with JavaScript coming in at number 11. Other notable tools included React, Jenkins, Sublime Text and PHP. Drilling down by role revealed differing results. For web developers, Git was number one; for mobile developers, Xcode was top choice. But, if you are looking to boost your salary above the average, there are certain tools that can help you achieve this. By role, web developers needed to know Fiddler and Bootstrap. But, as we have mentioned, it's not all about the money. So, what tools are web developers and tech pros planning to learn? Docker, Python, Angular and Jenkins. For web developers specifically, it was Docker, Angular and React. We have only skimmed the surface here. Get your hands on the full report and find out how you can start making the big bucks and discover the tools and skills that people want. This article originally appeared in Web Designer issue 265. Buy it here. Related articles: The 5 biggest web design trends of 2017 so far Dive into Python with this programming bundle Get your start as a web developer with this course View the full article

A joint Technical Alert, TA17–293A, describing the activities of a Russian APT may contain signatures and rules likely to trigger false positives in some security systems. View the full article

A modern smartphone is of course a staple of the designer – a large screen can help you improve productivity on the go, and a fantastic camera can be used to shoot textures, images for comps and pitches, and just random inspiration you see on your travels (all in high-quality). 4K video is now a standard on smartphones as well, meaning pro-quality video doesn’t need a pro-quality setup. So with these things – and more – in mind, let’s take a look at the best smartphones for designers and creative professionals on the market today. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is all about the screenSamsung has quite a lot to prove with the Galaxy S8, its new flagship smartphone. After the debacle that was the Note 7, with its tendency to explode in people’s pockets, the company needs to win back the trust of consumers everywhere. And with the brand new Galaxy S8 it could just do that. There are two models – the S8 and S8+, and it’s the latter we’re interested in here at Creative Bloq. This is a monster of a smartphone – in every sense. Both S8 and S8+ models feature an ‘infinite display’ that curves around the edge of the phone (like the S7 Edge) but the S8+ features a huge 6.2-inch screen with a resolution of 2960x1440 pixels. The camera pretty much remains the same as the excellent S7: a 12-megapixel sensor. We’re a little disappointed that there’s no dual camera or tech as found in Sony’s Xperia XZ Premium, if we’re honest. There’s no home button either. This phone is ALL screen. The Galaxy S8 and S8+ will launch with Bixby – a new virtual assistant similar to Siri (but Google Assistant is on the S8 as well). There’s also face unlock, IRIS unlock and a fingerprint sensor. But this smartphone is all about the screen. It looks incredible. In terms of aesthetics, there isn’t a more beautiful phone available. And because of the lack of bezel, you get a larger screen in a smaller form factor. The Galaxy S8 can also become a desktop PC through the DeX dock. You may not want to do this, but hey, you can! It launches on 28 April. The big draw of the Pixel XL 2 is its cameraThe Pixel 2 XL (and the smaller Pixel 2) are this year's followups to Google's own-brand smartphones – tying a native, non-skinned or tweaked version of Android O with Google hardware that should run its OS in the best possible way. And it’s a fact: the native version of Android O running on the Pixel 2 XL is fast. So fast. Everything about the Pixel 2 works in double-quick time, from the fingerprint sensor unlocking to the homescreen to the camera launching. You’re never waiting for anything, and that’s a huge plus. Oh, and you also get Google Assistant – a kind of supercharged Siri that you can ask contextual questions. The screen on the Pixel 2 XL is 6-inches (a decent amount larger than last year's model), with a resolution of 1440x2560 pixels, and it’s bright and sharp. But for a 6-inch phone it feels pretty compact thanks to its small bezel (it’s not like the S8’s edge-to-edge screen by any means, but it’s certainly more compact than the iPhone). One of the real winning features of the Pixel 2 XL is the camera. Sure, it doesn’t have a dual-camera setup like the Huawei P10 Plus, but its 12.2-megapixel offering produces shots of the highest quality; details are sharp and colours natural. And it’ll shoot video in 4K. One word on the design. On the back of the Pixel 2 XL is a glass panel (what is it with smartphone manufacturers making EVERYTHING out of glass?). You may want to pick up a case – the official Google ones are the least intrusive. But add this £30 case to the cost of the phone outright and it soon becomes very expensive (and like the Huawei P10 Plus, it’s only splash-proof). Annoyingly, Google has also followed Apple's lead by dropping the 3.5mm headphone port, so you'll need an adaptor if you want to plug in your wired headphones. If you're after something jazzier, Huawei also offers the p10 Plus in Pantone colour of the year ‘Greenery’Huawei (pronounced Hu-Wah-Wey if you’re interested) has really upped its game recently with its range of Android-powered smartphones. And the P10 Plus is its latest, combining a huge 5.5-inch QHD screen with a dual Leica camera setup. The latter is very interesting – there’s two cameras and sensors here, one for monochrome shots and one for colour. Just flick between them using the camera software. The monochrome sensor is 20-megapixels; the regular camera 12-megapixels. And the custom camera app really is excellent, giving you access to such features as a wide aperture mode. There’s enough in the camera alone to make this phone extremely appealing to creative professionals. Oh, and it’ll also shoot in 4K. One other interesting thing is that Huawei has partnered with Pantone to bring the P10 Plus in ‘Greenery’ – Pantone’s colour of the year. To be fair, you may want to stick with black (Graphite Black) or silver (what Huawei call Mystic Silver – oooh, mystical silver). And this is one of the slimmest ‘big’ smartphones out there. Software-wise, the Huawei P10 Plus runs a modified version of Android N called (rather snappily) EMUI. When you compare it to say, Google Pixel XL and the native experience on offer there, it’s nowhere near as slick. That said, it’s better than previous versions – and reinstates the app drawer so you don’t have to have all of your app icons across multiple screens. The camera may convince you to try this out – and we wouldn’t blame you. But bear in mind you don’t get the waterproofing of the iPhone 7 or Galaxy S8 (so don’t spill coffee on it or drop it in a puddle). And it costs £680, which is right up there with premium phones. Another great iPhone from AppleWhat can we say about the iPhone that you probably don't already know? Apple's smartphones have revolutionised the mobile industry, though for the past few years it feels like Apple has played it a little safe. So, iPhone 8 Plus looks like the iPhone 7 Plus, which looks like the 6S Plus, which looks like the 6 Plus. If you love the look and feel of existing iPhones, then 2017's updated model will definitely be for you. Whilst the screen remains pretty much the same as the iPhone 7 Plus (a meagre 1080p affair compared to some lesser-priced Android devices), the camera on the 8 Plus is its real selling point. It’s a dual-camera affair, but unlike Huawei and Leica’s offerings, the iPhone 8 Plus camera is about zoom – optical zoom. One lens is a wide-angle, one a telephoto. This means you can zoom anywhere from 1x to 2x using pure optical zoom, which obviously yields better results with less noise and artefacts. You can also use the digital zoom up to 10x. Optical image stabilisation is another great feature. It’s one of the best cameras out there. The iPhone 8 Plus is a little heavier than the majority of phones this size (the Pixel 2 XL feels very light in comparison) and feels bigger due to its fatter bezel – one-handed operation can be a bit of a struggle (unless you’re a goalkeeper). But build quality is better than anything out there (maybe excluding the Galaxy S8), and features such as 3D Touch and Touch ID with Apple Pay make it a real winner. And of course the depth and breadth of apps is always a swaying point. It ain’t cheap at £949 for the top model... you could almost get a MacBook for that! Sony is aiming to revolutionise camera tech with the addition of Motion EyeThe XZ Premium is Sony's latest flagship handset, and while the 4K screen seems like the headline feature, it's the camera that really impresses. Sony has a rich heritage in camera tech and it’s looking to rewrite the rulebook with the XZ Premium, in the form of Motion Eye. Yes, it’s all a bit ‘marketing hyperbole’, but Motion Eye tech looks amazing for those regularly shooting on their smartphones. For one, it features super-slow motion video – recording at 960 frames per second (yes, 960!). Sony says this is four times slower than other smartphones. Next, there’s predictive capture, which basically starts buffering your shot a second before the shutter is pressed – and then gives you four images to pick from. Its 19-megapixel sensor also has intelligent exposure controls to automatically adjust light levels (there’s also manual focus controls), and 5-axis stabilisation should make for steady 4K videos. The other big selling point – potentially – is that the XZ Premium is the first smartphone to have a 4K HDR display (before the Galaxy S8 at least, even though the Galaxy will go on sale before). It’s an all-Gorilla Glass affair so should be pretty robust, and it’s a real stunner with ergonomic rounded edges. With high-res audio built in it’ll sound as good as it looks. Add-ons can transform this into a top cameraIn terms of innovation, the Moto Z could be our favourite phone out there at the moment. Why? Because of the different modules you can buy to extend the device. It kind of takes what was so cool about the LG G5 and expands on it, making your smartphone a real jack-of-all-trades. Moto Mods, as they’re known, clip onto the back of the Moto Z using strong magnets. Our favourite has to be the Hasselblad True Zoom Mod, which essentially turns your smartphone into a high-quality camera with 10x optical zoom. Yes, it’ll cost you an extra £199, but it shoots in RAW and gives you an optical zoom level that no other smartphone has. Then there’s the Insta-Share Projector, turning your smartphone into a portable projector capable of projecting at sizes up to 70 inches, meaning you can project your ideas and even short films onto any flat surface on the fly. Again, it’s not cheap at £250, but is a real innovation. And there’s a JBL speaker and an Incipio battery pack. Whilst it isn’t by any means the most cutting-edge of smartphones on its own, by adding Moto Mods you can transform it into a top camera, mobile projector or portable speaker in an instant. And that’s what’s so impressive. Like this? Read these... The best new tech for designers to drop in 2017 Apple patent transforms iPhone into a MacBook The 30 best iPhone apps for designers View the full article

Graduating from design school and trying to get your first job can be one of the most frustrating times in your career. You need a design portfolio to get a job, but you haven't had a full-time design job before, so what are you going to put in it? Worry not. There are quite a few different things you can do to help bulk out your portfolio – and not all of them involve designing for free. These tips don't just apply to recent graduates, either – if ever you find that your portfolio could do with a refresh but you're not getting to right client projects to do so, come back to these ideas and give one a go. 01. Work on your own brand Your personal brand is your first chance to make an impressionIt's not just a good portfolio that will impress potential clients: how you present yourself to clients is, in itself, an opportunity to provide them with a sample of your work. Having a solid brand identity for yourself as a freelance designer will also help you seem much more professional. So, why not design yourself a logo, some business cards, and a slick website to showcase your other work. Take the advice of experienced graphic designers and spend 75 per cent of the time you work on client work again on developing your own company image. 02. Help a local business Look close to home for your first clientsWhether it's a local charity, a company belonging to a friend or family member, or just a place where you really enjoy the service – you can always make the first move and volunteer your services. If you've noticed that your favourite café's menu could be better, why not suggest that to the owners? If you've chosen not to work pro bono, then make sure you charge for your work. 03. Create your dream project Set your own brief tailored to the kind of work you want to doClients want to see how well you are able to work to a brief and design according to their specific needs. However, there's no rule to say that your portfolio has to be filled with real life projects. If you don't have any examples to show off your best skills, why not make up your own brief? The advantage of these kinds of projects is that you can imagine your perfect job and picture your ideal client. What type of design work would they need? This way, you are making your portfolio more attractive to the kinds of people that you actually want to work with, not just the kinds of people you end up working with. Just make sure you flag up that it's a personal project on your portfolio site. 04. Enter design competitions Awards give you recognised accredationThird party recommendations are always more convincing than self-promotion. By winning a competition, you'd be proving that you can out-do several other designers in front of a panel of impartial judges – possibly the best third party recommendation you could hope to receive. There are a whole host of recognised accreditations out there that would look as good on your CV as paid work, if not better. In fact, the Adobe Design Achievement Awards were created specifically to help students and recent graduates launch their careers. Whatever you do, make sure you retain copyright of anything you submit. Which leads us onto our final tip… 05. Avoid online design marketplaces Avoid spec work – it's bad for you and for the wider industryThese sites are the cause of substantial debate within the design industry. Online design marketplaces, such as 99designs and Crowdspring, enable employers to post briefs for professional designers to ‘compete' for. Yes, that means that new designers have as much chance as experienced designers of being picked for the job. But it also means you have to put in a lot of time and resource into a design, and there's no guarantee that the employer will like your concept the most. This is spec work and, while it's rife in the creative industry, can you imagine asking a plumber to work for free in the hopes of being paid? You wouldn't eat at different restaurants and only pay at the best one. In the same way, you should never work for free (unless it's pro bono work). Doing so is not only bad for you, it's harmful to the wider industry too. Read more: How to craft a standout portfolio 10 tips for a killer design portfolio 10 brilliant image-led portfolio sites for 2017 View the full article

We've looked at some useful painting techniques over the years here on Creative Bloq, but few compare to the impressive brushwork of Japanese artist Keisuke Teshima, otherwise known as onestrokedragon. You can get a taste of Teshima's work above. As you can see, he specialises in dragons that appear to writhe across the page. Every dragon he paints has a body made up of layer upon layer of scales that look like they've taken an age to paint. Not so. How to paint scalesThanks to a Japanese painting technique called Hitofude Ryuu, Teshima is able to create the intricate details of a dragon quickly and without taking his brush off the page. Hitofude Ryuu translates to 'dragon with one stroke' and you can watch the mesmerising art technique in action in the video below. Impressive, eh? The painting technique might be quick, but we can't help but imagine how long it takes artists like Teshima to master it. In the video you can see how steadily staggered brushstrokes create the impression of scales. The same technique is also used to realise the dragon's whiskers, and it's there that you get a better look at how Teshima's hands carefully pause just for a moment as he drags his brush across the page. When it comes to the body of the dragon though, Teshima's technique is so smooth that it's difficult to spot how he creates the scale effect. The paint just seems to emerge from his Sumi brush in slabs as if by magic. To give his dragons a sense of movement, Teshima delicately coils their bodies without taking his brush off the page or losing momentum. The way the colours are loaded onto the brush and the expert amount of pressure exerted on the page help to give the body a sense of shape. Rounding off the dragon is the tail, which sees the brush marks ending with a long sweep. If like us you've been mesmerised by this video and you want to have a go at Hitofude Ryuu yourself, just remember that you need a Sumi brush, a steady hand, and years of practice. Otherwise, you might create something like this Twitter user's valiant effort: [Via Business Insider UK, @Timelapsevids] Related articles: How to paint fantasy beasts 14 fantasy artists to follow on Instagram 10 sci-fi and fantasy art painting tips View the full article

Fantasy portraiture is my favourite subject. Bringing an original character to life is exciting, but can be difficult to achieve. To avoid mistakes and save time I try to follow a few rules. But they're really just guidelines, so feel free to adapt, change and test other techniques that might better suit your painting process. There's more to portraits than knowing how to draw a face. It's worth spending time and effort trying to understand how a face 'works', such as under a particular lighting setup. Such a skill won't be grasped overnight. The most important thing to bear in mind is to take your time. This is the best advice I can give, because nothing good comes from rushing a painting. Take your time – nothing good comes from rushing a painting. Melanie Delon The main challenge in a portrait painting is to make the character stand out. Usually there's no surrounding decor in the environment to help you achieve this goal, and a finished, polished portrait can often end up looking flat and boring. Thankfully, there are several simple and effective ways to achieve a striking portrait. 01. Plan with preparatory sketches Rough sketches will get your portrait headed in the right directionBefore starting an illustration, I always do some quick pencil drawings to lay down my ideas. This helps me to see more clearly what I want to do and express, and be more confident about the direction I want to take. I use these sketches to build the composition, reworking them slightly in Photoshop CC if necessary. Usually I like to keep them rough, because this gives me more freedom during the colouring process. I feel restricted by perfectly clean line-art. 02. Get the proportions right Practise getting your facial proportions rightIt's important to be aware of the proportions of a human face. Of course, they're only guides – everyone has a different face shape that doesn't necessarily meet the beauty standard – but it's essential to know these rules, if you're going to play by them and break them. I recommend practising with facial proportions until it almost becomes instinctual to apply them to a portrait piece. I always start with a basic oval and then slowly add the facial features to build up the character's face. 03. Avoid pure black and white Skin consists of a multitude of coloursUsually the biggest mistake in a portrait painting is the skin's colour: it's never either beige or black. Skin comprises a multitude of colours, from pale blue around the eye, to pink, to hints of yellow for the mouth's corners. I start painting with very few colours, and progressively add more hues. I save my colour palette in a corner of the illustration so it's always on hand. So I don't end up with a muddy look, I avoid using pure black or white. Instead, I increase the saturation to the colour I using for the shadows. 04. Develop a dynamic composition Composition and placement can make things more dynamicThe composition and placement of the character in the illustration is essential for introducing dynamism to the painting. I always try to imply a slight torso movement, which avoids a straight and boring posture. Placing the character's face in the centre is a classic approach and works well, but I also like to nudge the character towards a corner of the image to add a little originality, and free up space in the scene. I find that slightly tilting the character's head helps to add visual interest and life to an image. 05. Work the background A relatively plain background keeps the focus on the characterThe background can also help give more impact to the portrait. I don't like to overload it with details, preferring instead to leave it relatively plain to avoid any unnecessary visual distractions. I usually add subtle texture and a gradient to avoid a flat, lifeless look. An alternative is to add blurred elements, such as a forest or a building, to give the character context and hint at their story. 06. Introduce realistic details Veins and beauty spots can add realismSmall details such as veins or beauty dots won't be immediately apparent, but will give the last touches of texture and realism to portraits. These can also tell a story: for example, exposed veins can be useful for depicting a vampire or a person who's ill. I generally use the same brush to create these details: a very fine brush that allows for precise work. I slightly blur the brushstrokes' edges to unify and soften the details. 07. Emphasise key facial features Concentrate on detailing the areas you want to draw attention toIt's easy to get lost in the details, even in an intimate portrait piece. To avoid this and save time I don't detail the entire illustration, instead only working up the areas that I want to draw attention to. For a portrait the most obvious area is the eyes, but depending on the lighting and the story I want to tell I can add a second focal point, usually a key costume element. 08. Maintain eye contact Eye contact will always grab the viewer's attentionEven in the busiest of compositions, a face will always catch the viewer's attention. And to make the face even more powerful and striking, ensuring strong eye contact remains the most effective trick. The viewer is instantly connected with the character. It's an effect that I use a lot in my portraits… perhaps a little too much! But I also love to play with more subtle glances, which are less direct and help to develop a sense of mystery, raising questions in the viewer's mind. Next page: More top portrait painting tips 09. Give lips texture Dots of bright light can bring lips to lifeLips are an important facial feature. They can draw attention as much as the eyes do, and help the character to express emotion. To get them right it's just a matter of texture. Lips aren't a flat, plain element: I paint the little wrinkles with a very thin brush, which gives them texture and a lot of volume. Indeed, volume is the key to bring life to the lips, so I always add some intense dots of light to make them more realistic and attract even more attention. 10. Add new focal points to profile portraits Emphasise details in profile, to make up for the lack of eye contactDeveloping a character's profile is tricky because there's no eye contact to play with and only half of the face to show. I use light and contrast to compensate for the lack of interaction with the character, and enhance the costume design to hold the viewer's attention. Here, the figure's hair does almost everything: it defines her head shape and contrasts well with the bright, empty background. 11. Play with light and saturation in the eyes Use light and saturation to help eyes stand outThe eyes are usually the main part of a portrait, and are my favourite element. They can look sad, sparkling, mysterious or dangerous… and done well, can bring any character to life. I like to give them a lot of intensity with unusual colours such as purple or yellow. The trick to make them stand out is to play with the light and saturation. I use a precise brush to create some colours variations in the eye and finish it a bright dot of light that will give volume to the eyeball. 12. Tell a story There are plenty of ways to introduce hints of a storyA portrait leaves very little space to tell a story, so the general style of the character is important and can give a lot of indications and information about their life. I try to pay special care to their clothing, even if the viewer can only see a small part of it. I also spend time on their hair and details like a crown, to give the maximum amount of visual information. Their story can also be told by elements on the skin, like a tattoo, a scar or tribal markings. 13. Explore interesting lighting Get your lighting right and you'll add atmosphere to your workThe light is crucial in a portrait. If you get this right, it adds to the atmosphere of the piece, and brings life and volume to the face. I always start a portrait with neutral mid-tones and gradually add shadows and light. I love to accentuate the light in a chiaroscuro style; I think it brings a classic feeling to my fantasy theme. However, I keep my shadows very soft, and my gradients are usually very smoothed, because the face is made of curves and not sharp angles. 14. Add flaws to your skin Flawless skin looks fake; work in some blemishes The skin is obviously an important element in a portrait painting, and a common mistake is to make it look flawless. It's relatively simple to paint clean, soft-looking skin, but if you're not careful your character will end up looking like a plastic doll, and besides, nobody has perfect skin. To avoid this, I start with a textured base and use a soft brush with a little grain texture to recreate the skin's irregularities. I also add some dots of light to create pores, particularly on the nose and around the eyes. 15. Play with contrast Contrast helps to draw your character out from the backgroundAnother trick that works very well is to add contrast to the composition. I achieve this by adjusting the lighting, playing with complementary colours, or using warm and cold hues. The trick is to separate the character from the background. My favourite approach is to use a very dark background and an unusual light source to illuminate the character. The light captures the viewer's initial attention, who then moves on to my character portrait. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 138; buy it here! Read more: How to paint an atmospheric portrait in Photoshop 10 digital artists you need to know about How to use digital tools to create a hand-drawn look View the full article

Houdini's strong point has always been its procedural nature. With a few nodes and a small set of expressions, you can create complex and naturalistic results – models and scenes that would take forever to create in traditional ways. For a long time Houdini has been the backbone of many large-scale productions in the visual effects industry. However, because of its procedural approach, it's often claimed to be too difficult to learn. While this might have been true a few years back, things have changed. With more accessible licensing schemes and a complete revamp of Houdini's interface, it continues to open up to small studios, artists and enthusiasts. Coming from other packages, it's still is a very different way of thinking, though. 30 free 3D modelsIn this tutorial we will give an overview of the program. We will start off with basic modelling techniques for leaves and grass. We will cover sampling VDB volumes to distribute plant growth and eventually use VEX code and wrangle nodes to generate geometry on the fly. We're going to see if what everyone says about Houdini is true: once you go procedural, you will never look back! Download the files for this tutorial. 01. Get organised Make life easier for your future self by giving your shapes meaningful namesStart with a model of a ruin you want to cover in foliage. Make sure you name your shapes in a meaningful way. This allows easy grouping of the geometry for different purposes later. Split it up into walls, planks, bricks, windows and glass. Houdini alembic import will set a path attribute on import. You can then easily use a split or blast node to select the pieces you want. 02. Create the leaves Make your leaves single-sided with a low poly countWith the ruin in place, it's time to begin creating individual leaves to use later for instancing. Always work with reference images from nature if you want more realistic results. We need the leaves to be single-sided and of fairly low poly count. Start off by making a curve to resemble the outer leaf shape. Use a remesh node to add some surface tessellation. With a soft transform, slightly lift out the centre at the stem. Also add a colour attribute with different shades of green. 03. Grass strands Put as much variety into your grass strands as you canWe also need individual strands of grass to cover the floor. Again, simple one-sided polygonal strands with varying width are sufficient. Generally speaking, more variation is always better. But even with just five different shapes, you will achieve quite realistic results. As our setup is procedural, more can easily be added later. It's important to make sure all meshes are centred at the origin with the pivot at their foot. This way we can use them as instances straight away. 04. Natural distribution Find a rule that will make your grass grow in a natural-looking wayThere are many ways to decide where grass will grow. Find a rule that resembles a natural distribution. We will make grass grow everywhere on ground that is not covered by the building or rubble. Growth needs to be denser and longer along walls and rocks. Isolate the ground from our geometry and use a remesh node to gain a fairly high level of subdivisions. 05. AttributeTransfer Use white points for the walls and grey for the groundAdd a white point colour to the walls and a grey to the ground. Use AttributeTransfer to map the wall colour onto the ground. Tweak the blend radius on the node to fit around the base of the walls. Turn the walls into a VDB with VDBfromPolygons. In an AttributeWrangle, get the VDB value at each point with the volumesample function. Remove points with a negative value. 06. Prepare attributes With some random settings you'll quickly have some great-looking grassBefore using Copy Stamp, some attributes need preparation. In VEX use a random number to drive a ramp of a random number. This is a visual way to control scale distribution. In the same way, set the colour to a random green. To make the strands point in slightly different directions, change the normal by adding a random offset in X and Z direction. Voila, you grew grass! 07. Climbing plants You'll need to write a solver for climbing plantsFor the climbing plants, we need to write our own solver in VEX to mimic a growth mechanism. It might sound daunting, but we go step by step all the way. Don't forget to also use the Houdini Reference on VEX. To find the root points we go with the same mechanism we used on the grass. Start off with a few points on the ground, close to the wall. 08. Plant forces These are the three forces that govern the plants' growthWe have three forces at work. The first we'll call UP, pointing away from the ground against the gravitational pull. The second is a vector named WANDER, pointing in a random direction along the wall. The third force is called WALL, pointing towards the closest obstacle. This emulates the plant's desire to climb. We will use all three forces on each growth iteration. 09. Grow the seedling Grow the seedling in short segmentsNow comes the time for us to dive into VEX using a point wrangle. In a for loop we grow the seedling in short segments by adding to the variable pos, which has been initialised with the start position. For now, only grow along the UP vector. It's good practice to make use of the ch() and chv() functions, to expose parameters to the interface. You then can easily experiment with the result of the algorithm by interactively changing those values. 10. Natural effects The WANDER force gives your growth a more natural appearanceFor a more natural look, add the WANDER force. On each step calculate a random direction based on a noise function. This random vector adds to the direction the seed gets moved. For better balancing, also introduce two weighting factors to the interface, scaling our forces up or down. The result is vines growing with a lot more variation, but they now penetrate obstacles they meet. To avoid this, the third type of force comes in handy, the WALL direction. 11. Final force Finally, add the WALL forceAdd the last force to the VEX loop by sampling the value and gradient VDB of the ruin. This gives you the distance between point and wall as well as the wall's normal direction. Calculate a force that points towards the wall and add it to the grow direction. Sample the VDB a second time in the new position to check if the point is inside the wall. If so, just push it out along the normal. 12. Soften the change It's easy to fix things if your vines start looking unnaturalThe vines still don't look natural. This is because they can change direction rapidly on each step. Soft blend between the directions of the previous and the current step to smooth that out. You also want to stop growing if the position moves too far off the walls. See if the wall distance you get from the VDB sample exceeds a certain threshold. Just break out of the for loop if it does. 13. Branching behaviour Getting your vines to branch is fairly straightforwardAnother aspect of climbing plants we still have to add – branching. But this is very straightforward to achieve. Tag each growth step with a certain probability to be a branch point. Then run the growth algorithm again on each of those marked points, using the point itself as the root. It's a good idea to tweak the growth parameters on the second pass in order to be more wandering and less upwards, to fill up the areas along the walls. 14. Finish the branches It's time to turn your points into real-looking branchesWe now have created sequences of points resembling branch growth. Make use of the id attribute on the point and create an Add node to turn them into individual curves. A UV Texture set to Rows&Columns will provide UVs along the curve length, which you then ramp along their individual length to an attribute called pscale. A Polywire node turns curves into tubes where you use $PSCALE for thickness. Add a Mountain and a Facet after, to finalise the branches. 15. Instance the leaves For the leaves, follow a similar technique to the one you used for the grassInstancing leaves works a bit like the grass strands earlier. We define a distribution attribute along the curves coming out of the growth algorithm. This is zero at the start of each branch and then 1 at the tip. Use a scatter to place points along the curve based on that attribute. It looks better to vary the pscale. Use a copy stamp to instance the prepared leaves onto those points. This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 225; buy it here! Related articles: 10 top Houdini tutorials How to get started in Houdini Make realistic plants in Cinema 4D View the full article

You're reading SaaS Interface Design: Trends, & Best Practices for Designing a SaaS UI, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Designing a SaaS product for the web is no easy task. It requires not just an idea, but a clear plan of how it’ll work and which features you’ll support. This also means a lot of UX planning from the early wireframing to detailed mockups. I’ve put together some common trends I see in SaaS websites and […] View the full article

African woman laughing, by peeterv. Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting July 17 Looking for free images to use in your designs, without having to pay a single penny in royalties? Then you might be surprised to know that there’s a perfectly legal way to get free photographs, illustrations and videos from leading stock library iStock by Getty Images. iStock by Getty Images is so proud of the high quality photography, illustrations and videos on its site that it regularly gives files away for free, with absolutely no catch. Yes, that’s free photographs, free illustrations and free videos, in high resolution, for you to use whenever you like, without paying a penny. Free photos are updated weekly, and free illustrations and free videos are updated monthly. Bubble fun on the garden by Azman. Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting September 11 All you have to do is sign up for an iStock account. But don’t worry: that’s totally free, involves no commitment, and you don’t have to give any credit card details. Here’s your step-by-step guide to getting stock files for free. 01. Sign up for a free account It’s easy and free to get an iStock accountThe first step is to sign up for a free account with iStock. Head to the homepage and click on ‘Join’ in the top-right hand corner of the page. 02. Provide an email address and password Provide an email address and choose a password: that’s all the info you need to giveYou’ll be brought to a form where you have to enter an email address and choose a password: nothing more. 03. Find your freebies The links to the free stock files are near the bottom of the homepageScroll down to the part of the homepage that’s titled ‘Join iStock for free stock files every week’. Below that you’ll see three images titled ‘Free photo’, ‘Free illustration’ and ‘Free video clip’. Click on any of these and you will be taken through to the download page. 04. Check the licence There are some special circumstances in which you might need to buy an extended licence, so do check before downloadingEach free image and video comes with a standard agreement, so make sure you read this so you know where and how you can legally use it. In some limited circumstances – if you are printing more than half a million copies of your design, for example – you will need to buy an extended licence, so do check first. 05. Choose your image size You can choose to download the image in a range of sizesNow choose the size of the image you want, depending on your needs, by ticking the appropriate box above the red ‘Free download’ button. The measurements for each option appear below as you click on each box. 06. Download your image Your free image will download directly to your Mac or PCClick on the red button titled ‘Free download’ and then a second or so later, click the green button titled ‘Confirm download’. Your image will automatically download to your Mac or PC. Then check back to the homepage a week later to see the next lot of freebies. 5 freebies you might have missed Free image files from iStock are only available for a week, so if you miss them the first time around, you lose the chance to download them for free. Which means it’s worth coming back every week to grab the latest free files. To give you an idea of what’s on offer, here are five great freebies that you may have missed in the last couple of months… 01. Young scientist Young scientist working in laboratory, by gremlin Now available for purchase, this scientist image was available for free in the week starting July 31. 02. Boy asleep with his dog Boy sleeping with dog, by gollykim Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting July 24. 03. Under peonies Under peonies, by VikaValter Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting September 4. 04. Team of surgeons Team of surgeons in operating room at a hospital, by Tempura Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting August 14. 05. Female carpenter Female Carpenter In Her Workshop, by vitranc Now available for purchase, this image was available for free in the week starting September 18. Special discount for Creative Bloq readers! Along with your weekly free files, iStock also offers you the choice of millions of high-quality images at a very low cost. And to give you an added incentive, we’ve teamed up with iStock by Getty Images to offer Creative Bloq readers 10% off all iStock credits. Just use code ZNKPC46N today at the website to take advantage of this incredible offer! View the full article

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WebGL is a permanent part of internet as we know it, WebVR is settling in and WebAR is taking its first steps. Not only has the technology became more advanced, but the tools have become simpler and more accessible for developers and designers. Thinking of dipping your toe in? Here are eight amazing 3D web demos by digital artist Marpi that will inspire you to get started. 01. Mass Migrations Mass Migrations is a fully generative environmentMass Migrations on GitHub A fully generative environment, filled with heavily anime-inspired mecha-like robots/spaceships. It started as a prototype and ended up a large scale art installation, VR world and a 3D printed collection of people's creations. 02. Codeology Code from GitHub brought to lifeCodeology on GitHub Visualising any public GitHub project as a unique 3D ASCII creature, determining its combination of shapes, colours and size based on the coding languages used within. Press Alt + 1, 2, 3… for cheat codes. 03. Spider A realistic spider movement made with JavaScriptSpider on GitHub Proof of concept for making a generative spider movement that would feel real – and trigger the same feelings spiders that do. The look, bones animation and movement are generated from pure code, so you do feel afraid of JavaScript. 04. Eutow A hallucinogenic-themed artworkEutow on GitHub One sunny September day, a conversation with Indian artist Archan Nair sparked an ongoing collaboration. There's a special mix of appreciation of building 3D worlds, virtual reality and hallucinogenic-themed visual systems. 05. Black Rain Codrops' rain experiments from Lucas Bebber mixed with Archan Nair's visualsBlack Rain on GitHub A mix of melancholy and maps, refractions and reflections, a cold NY night in the rain, amazing and haunting. Mix Codrops' rain experiments from Lucas Bebber with Archan Nair's visuals, touching on Blade Runner's territory. 06. Odra An everlasting underwater music experimentOdra on GitHub What if music was generated the same way as graphics? They both have themes, systems and are built from smaller pieces that have to work together. And since it's mixed with those generative creatures, in a way, they're playing live. 07. Maratropa Twitter visualised as a universeMaratropa on GitHub Imagining the Twitter universe as a, well, universe. Each profile becomes an abstract, religious-like statue with their followers around it. You can jump between them in three dimensions, using node structure, forming sort of an artificial brain. 08. Biomes Exploring of generative landscapesBiomes on GitHub An exploration of generative landscapes, somewhere between Minecraft and Alien universes, with SSAO and Screen Space Reflections using super shiny EchartsGL engine this time. The land long before time. This article originally appeared in Web Designer issue 265. Buy it here. Related articles: 20 amazing examples of WebGL in action 9 brilliant uses of 3D in web design The VR web is here View the full article

Researchers identified a new ransomware family called Magniber that uniquely only targets users in South Korea and the Asia Pacific regions. View the full article

One highlight from Adobe Max 2017 was the event’s Sneaks session. Here, attendees have a unique opportunity to preview radical innovations from the company’s research teams that might – or might not – make it into the products. Get Adobe Creative CloudWe already showed you Project Lincoln, a new set of data-driven drawing tools that enable designers to make stunning infographics, graphs and charts without having to resort to templates or coding. Instead of using data as the starting point for an infographic, users start with the creative design and bind the data to it. The graphics automatically adjust based on the data, shaving hours potentially days off the creative process. If you haven’t seen the video of Lincoln in action, and you make graphics like this regularly, you need to watch it now. But that wasn’t all we saw at Max Sneaks. Here are seven additional highlights from the 11 previews we saw – each showcasing an incredible snapshot of creative possibilities for the future… 01. #SceneStitch Scene Stitch takes the idea of content-aware fill to the next level. Instead of searching the image you’re working in for content to fill a gap – and risking unnatural repeated patterns it uses Adobe Sensai to look through other images (like those on Adobe Stock to find content that’s a better fit. Not only does it provide a more believable graphic solution to areas you’re looking to fill, it also enables you to remix content - by replacing the entire foreground of an image with something else, for example. Remember, this isn’t a product that’s been released (yet). But if it were to make it onto an Adobe product, we would expect to see existing or new Stock licensing options integrated into the feature. 02. #ProjectQuick3D Ever struggled with 3D? This tech makes 3D modelling as easy as drawing. It converts basic sketches into 3D models for apps like Dimension CC, by using machine learning in Adobe Sensai to search Adobe Stock. It has to be seen to be believed, so hit play on the video above. 03. #ProjectCloak Project Cloak is content aware fill for video. The tech enables you to mask unwanted items and remove them from your footage, using Adobe Sensai to intelligently (and dramatically) speed up the process. As research engineer Geoffrey Oxholm explains, Project Cloak isn’t just a quick way to remove errant security lamps from a piece of footage, it can also remove stains on a shirt, graffiti and even people from a shot. Impressive. Also read: the best laptops for video editing. 04. #PlayfulPalette Playful Palette reinvents the traditional painting experience by bringing the best aspects of physical painting (namely, the ability to mix colours on a palate) into the digital sphere – while offering the best of digital painting, too. You can step back at any time and rethink colour choices, for example. The tech lets artists and designers more easily manage their colours. And unlike physical painting, you can’t destroy the palette – the Eyedropper tool will bring back any palette you’ve created in a piece. Also read: The best graphics tablets of 2017 05. #PhysicsPak If you’ve ever spent hours moving objects around in Illustrator, endlessly changing their shape and rotating them to best fit inside an awkward space, you’ll be impressed by Physics Pak. The tech places the elements in the perfect position in minutes, moving them around the space to the find the best solution as if by magic. 06. #SonicScape Project SonicScape provides 360 sound for 360 video. A big challenge with VR is how to match the audio and video in 360 film – where viewers can look in any direction they choose – in a way that enhances the experience. SonicScape provides an innovative solution, helping encourage the audience to look in the direction the director chooses. 07. #ProjectScribler This image-based generation system colours your black-and-white drawings and photos in a single click. Powered by Adobe Sensai, the technology recognises the colours by drawing on tens of thousands of photos and making colour choices based on what its learned. Aside from showing what your great grandparents might have looked like in colour, it’s also a handy tool for iterating your ideas for clients. Related articles: Adobe XD and Adobe Dimension launched Adobe announces cloud-based photography service Lightroom CC HP previews Surface rival at Adobe Max 2017 View the full article

Cole Henley is probably best known for his Freelance Rates Calculator. You may also know him as technical director for award-winning web design agency Mud, which he co-founded with Matt Powell in 2013. Although he studied archaeology at university, he'd always been interested in the possibilities of the web. “Rather than having this linear narrative, it meant the reader could explore different kinds of stories, ” he enthuses. “This really inspired me.” So he taught himself web design and worked on a number of self-initiated projects, including a social network for archaeologists called Digs Reunited. Before he found his freelance groove, Henley was stuck coding on his own in the basementIt was a few years before he decided to switch to web design full-time, and his first role wasn't quite what he'd hoped for. "I was literally the coder in the basement, coding away with no daylight." To get a bit of human contact, he’d travel to conferences such as dConstruct in Brighton. “When I was there, I’d bump into friends from Edinburgh and have drinks. But it soon started to dawn on us that this was ridiculous: why weren’t we doing this in Edinburgh?” So they formed a small group that held meetups, and later, started to host talks. Out of the basement Through the group, Henley started making contacts, and finally made the leap into the private sector, working as a senior web designer for a web agency, Net Resources Ltd. “It was really full-on, ” he recalls. “It was my first time designing for a client and I really struggled at first. I didn’t have an artistic or design background, and I struggled with the difference between critique and criticism. I took a lot of client feedback personally.” I put the word out on Twitter, Dribbble, Instagram that I was looking for work. And because of the networks I’d built up, I had six weeks of work lined up in under an hour He soon found his stride, but then just two years later, in 2011, he arrived at work only to be told the company had gone into receivership. “And I thought: shit. I had a mortgage, two kids, and I started to panic a lot. I was desperate.” Social media proved his lifeline. “I was using Twitter a lot, ” he says. “So I did a CV, put stuff out on Twitter, Dribbble, Instagram, trying to get the word out that I was looking for work. And because of the networks I’d built up, I had six weeks of work lined up in under an hour. Having built up those networks over time really saved my bacon.” And so began Henley’s freelance career. But there was one problem: not knowing what to charge. Freelance Rates Calculator “When it came to setting my rates I had no idea what was realistic, ” he says. “And I quickly discovered it was the one thing people weren’t happy to talk about.” He approached friends directly, and found that a lot of them were willing to discuss the matter privately but not publicly. “And I thought: is there a way we can pool this resource? So I put together a Google spreadsheet and said: ‘This is entirely anonymous, fill it out, and I’ll try to do something with what comes back.’ “I asked: ‘What do you do? Where are you based? What do you charge?’ And the response was fantastic. This first year about 400 people responded. Statistically, that’s not a huge amount. But it was enough to start with.” I wanted to create a very simple tool to give people confidence in what they were charging At first, all Henley did was write a blog post summarising the data. But then later, he found himself in a hotel lobby in Belfast, recovering with friends after a heavy night out at the Build conference. “I thought: I’m going to take this opportunity. I’m going to see what I can achieve in a few hours, knock together a little PHP application, put all the data in a MySQL database and just see what happens. That was the genesis of the freelance rate calculator. To take something that was interesting but not massively useful, and create a very simple tool to give people confidence in what they were charging.” The app proved a huge hit, and generated a lot of attention for Henley. “The main benefit for me is hearing people say it’s given them confidence to up their rates, ” he explains. “A number of freelancers have told me: ‘Thank you. I was really struggling to tell my clients that I wanted up from £120 a day. But your calculator gave me the ability to ask for it’.” How to charge It has, though, also attracted some criticism for being too blunt a tool. For example, some agencies have been confronted by freelancers demanding rates based on the calculator that they simply can’t afford to pay. The issue, Henley believes, is that people have used the calculator in the wrong way. “It’s a broad tool, ” he stresses. “It’s a guidance rather than a recommendation.” The calculator is intended as a guide, rather than a recommendationThere are countless factors involved in the rate you should charge a specific company for a specific job, and the figure arrived at by the calculator should be a starting point rather than the final word. “For instance, very often if you have a good relationship with an agency, you get repeat work, ” Henley points out. “So there’s a mutual interest in lowering your rates because you’re getting a regular income.” In short, you shouldn’t use the calculator as ‘evidence’ in negotiations, as this will probably just rub your contractor up the wrong way. Instead, its aim is to give you the confidence to ask for a rate that you feel is reasonable. Mental health Henley's career rapidly took off, but while his freelance job was fulfilling, he found that career success doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with happiness. It's a subject he’s since talked about openly at events. “What I found with freelancing, in hindsight, I was starting to get in a depressive cycle , ” he explains. “I was being quite self-destructive with the workload I took on. I never had to chase work, it just seemed to come to me. But I was struggling to get things finished. With freelancing, I was starting to get in a depressive cycle. I was being self-destructive with the workload I took on “I’d get 60 per cent through a project and then get excited about something new and switch attention. To be honest, I was letting a lot of people down, and in hindsight that was due to depression.” “I don’t think this is unique to our profession , ” he notes. “But I think what you can say is we’re quite open to talking about stuff. In web design, it’s all about sharing and openness, and people helping each other out. That’s gone right through my web design career.” Our name is Mud In 2012, Henley moved to Somerset and met Matt Powell through a local Dad’s Geek Club. “We were both working with ExpressionEngine, we got on personally and had similar values, ” Henley explains. “So the idea of forming a company seemed like a no-brainer.” That company is Mud, and it’s been quite the success. Henley launched Mud in 2013 with Matt Powell (left)“Now we’re eight employees, trying to get a ninth.” Their client base is an interesting one, Henley explains. “Half of our work comes from our own clients, and for the other half, we’ve developed a strong working relationship with a number of design agencies that don’t have a technical team, ” he says. “It’s been a very happy marriage, because they really value that we understand design. The ability to articulate a visual design language and in code is something we are very good at, ” he believes. “And because we have that, clients trust us.” This article was originally published in net magazine issue 296. Subscribe now. Related articles: 4 ways to cash in as a freelancer 20 top tools for freelancers Infographic reveals the state of freelancing in 2017 View the full article

There are three ways to design a great-looking chart. One: draw it from scratch using a program like Illustrator. Two: use a template tool. Three: learn how to code. A new data visualisation tool code-named Lincoln is set to change all that – if it gains approval. Previewed at Adobe Max 2017, the tool flips the typical creative process for designing a chart or infographic on its head. Rather than using data as the starting point to dictate the design, Lincoln puts the creative stage first, letting users craft their graphics and then bind the data to them. As the data populates the chart, the graphics automatically adjust to the information presented. What does that mean? Well, by automating the design and production of infographics, Lincoln lets users focus on the creative side of the process and ensure the data is visualised in the most engaging way. Get Adobe Creative Cloud“Lincoln is new set of data-driven drawing tools that sit on top of your normal drawing tools,” explained Bernard Kerr, a senior experience designer at Adobe. Kerr walked through the tool during this year’s highly anticipated ’sneaks’ session – in which new innovations are showcased – using Lincoln to quickly bring to life data from open-water swimming marathon challenge Ocean’s Seven. Watch the video below – and prepare to be amazed. (And if you like it, let Adobe know using the hashtag #ProjectLincoln. If it receives enough support, it has more chance of being incorporated into an Adobe app.) #ProjectLincoln As you can see in the video, Kerr drew a custom bar shape to represent swim time, binding it to the relevant data in a spreadsheet in one click, and using Repeat Grid – borrowed from Adobe XD – to instantly create a series of bars that represented the time of each swimmer. Kerr added text using the Text tool, binding the text box to the data column containing the swimmers’ names. He also added an icon of a swimmer from the Library Symbols panel, using “sticky anchor points” to anchor one foot to a specific location at the end of the bar – and this rule was instantly repeated throughout chart. Once he was happy with the data bindings, Kerr then showed how Lincoln can instantly apply the same rules across different data sets – in this case visualising the data for each of the seven races in the marathon – and how functionality like a radial pattern tool can visualise complex sets of data, like weather patterns over a one-year period, in seconds. Create a radial chart in one click with Project LincolnSo how much time could Lincoln save you? Kerr created 14 data visualisations in four minutes. It's impressive stuff and could revolutionise infographics – certainly it gets our vote. Taking away the drudgery Lincoln is just one of 15 ‘sneaks’ showcased this year at Adobe Max. Some will become official features built into selected software; others won’t make it past the presentation we saw today. It’s all part of Adobe’s aim to “take away the drudgery” of routine tasks, as vice president and general manager of Creative Cloud Mala Sharma explained during an earlier press briefing. The aim is to help designers work faster, freeing up more time to focus on the bigger picture of being creative. Why? Because no one wants to spend three hours doing something you can do in three minutes. This was a recurring theme at Adobe Max 2017 – the sentiment underpins all the latest announcements at this year’s conference, and we're likely to see it brought to life in increasingly impressive ways as Sensai continues to evolve Adobe's creative products. Related articles: Adobe launches new cloud-based photography service Lightroom CC HP previews Surface rival at Adobe Max 2017 8 free tools for creating infographics View the full article

Malware dubbed IOTroop that researchers say is "worse than Mirai" has already infected one million businesses worldwide. View the full article

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Researchers have spotted Locky ransomware infections emanating from the Necurs botnet via Word attachments using a DDE technique that Microsoft says is an Office feature and does not merit a security patch. View the full article

You've been working for weeks or months on a winning piece of graphic design – a great poster, logo or album cover, perhaps. You've thought it over carefully, deploying every skill you learnt while studying and working as a designer. After long consideration, the project's done and you submit it to the client. You look forward to their reaction, but then you hear the message that every professional designer dreads: "I've got a few suggestions to make..." The phrase 'design by committee', where lots of people chip in on an idea (often without any reason or authority), is a situation that no creative wants to find themselves in. It results in an original, eye-catching design losing its impact, becoming generic, and costing everyone a lot of time. Sometimes the best thing to do in situations like this is laugh, so that's exactly what the team at Graphéine did. Running with an idea originally posted on Twitter by @MarieJulien, this series of images imagines how nightmare clients could ruin iconic and effective pieces of design. Click to see how designers could ruin the student-favourite poster, Chat Noir The team looks at Tournée du Chat noir (Black Cat on tour), 1896 by Swiss painter Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen; legendary designer Saul Bass' Anatomy of a Murderer movie poster; Milton Glaser's Dylan poster; and Grapus Atelier's Louvre logo. With comments like "The font is too old-fashioned," "Add partners' logos" and "Too much white space," the scariest part is how easy it is to imagine this happening in real life. We don't want this classic film to go the way of modern movie posters Click on the images to enlarge them, making the hilarious comments such as "For your info, 'murder' is usually gore. Please add blood splatters," more readable. Nothing screams 'art' like a classy picture frame Graphéine definitely had fun with these: "This font is too square. Try something curvy like Comic Sans." Apparently Bob Dylan wasn't black. Who knew? Read more about these on the Graphéine blog Related articles: 5 logos by famous designers and why they work 4 classic movie poster designs making a comeback Have we entered the era of bad graphic design? View the full article