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Whether you want to build simple portfolio page or an online store, WordPress is a great option. Give your site the exact look and functionality it needs with professionally crafted WordPress themes from TeslaThemes. Get lifetime access for just $39 (approx. £30). TeslaThemes is well known for its high quality WordPress themes. These expert designers have crafted more than 60 incredible themes and are always adding new options. You'll be able to make use of any of these themes anytime you want with lifetime access. You'll even get full HTML documentation, step-by-step instructions, plugins, and customisable PDF themes to make them work exactly how you need. If you want a lifetime’s worth of the expert craftsmanship of TeslaThemes, you can get it now for 84% off. That means you pay just $39 (approx. £30). It's a great price for a must-have resource for any web designer, so grab it today! View the full article

Chances are, if you were on the internet at all yesterday, you probably saw the news that the new Doctor Who leading actor was revealed. Announced after a tortuously long dissection of the preceding Wimbledon final, Jodie Whittaker was officially crowned as the 13th Doctor, picking up where Peter Capaldi leaves off. It's a bit of an understatement to say that the news caused a stir online. Some fans of Doctor Who, the show that can go anywhere and do anything, were left baffled and frustrated that the programme tried something new. Others however were over the moon at the wonderful news. And because Doctor Who fans are a passionate bunch, it wasn't long until the fan art started pouring in. They might only have had a few seconds of footage of the new Time Lady to work with, but that didn't stop artistic fans whipping up some fantastic artwork. We've rounded up some of our favourite pieces which you can browse below by clicking to the left or right. Roll on the Christmas special! View the full article

Micro Machines collector Tim Smith has turned his obsession with the 80s miniature toy cars into an online showroom for the enjoyment of other fans and collectors. The labour of love, called Micro But Many, is based on Smith's own collection of some 1,000-plus Micro Machines toys, with each one lovingly photographed to show off their intricate detailing. Smith, who also heads up ustwo Auto – a digital product agency that looks at design challenges around cars – has a long history with Micro Machines toys, having collected them as a child. With Micro But Many, he's keen to see if other people share his fascination with the miniature motors. "Given most Micro Machines are modelled on real cars, I’m hoping the site will appeal to collectors, car enthusiasts and children of the 80s and 90s in general," he explains. The online showroom displays the cars at their best thanks to close-up photographs. Visitors can learn more about the different models, including their scale, rarity, toy brand and more by clicking on the photographic tiles on the homepage. Alternatively, if you're looking for a half-remembered toy from your childhood, you can search through the cars by entering unique characteristics into the search tool. Each car is photographed in exquisite detailThe nostalgia trip is bittersweet for Smith, though, who as a boy built up his collection by hook or by crook. "They were expensive for a small boy, but thanks to playground swapping and thieving, I managed to amass about a hundred of the things," he reveals. "One day my 'friend', Mark Baldwin, offered to buy them all from me for a measly 50p. He could sense my desperation to buy a stainless steel Teenage Mutant Ninja/Heroes Turtle coin I saw for sale in Woolworths. I accepted his offer. "I regret that decision to this day. Over the past few years though, I have recommenced my collecting and now have over 1,100 of the burglar prevention tool used by Macauley Culkin so effectively." Micro Machines were famous for stopping burglars in Home AloneNew cars will be added over time, but with Smith's collection falling well short of the more than 6,000 Micro Machines models, he's going to need your help. So if you've got any Micro Machines toys knocking around in an attack or under-stairs cupboard, be sure to dig them out and arrange a swap. If you've got a model Smith's after, you might even be able to make some money in the process. Related articles: Is your design retro… or just dated? 5 outrageous product placements in movies 14 great places to sell your design work online View the full article

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At Creative Bloq, we get sent a lot of infographics by PRs in the hope that our coverage will help them go viral. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in all honesty, most of them aren’t particularly well designed. And with the increasing availability of easy-to-use infographic tools we suspect some have been created by marketing folks with no actual design training. To right the balance and show the world what a great infographic actually looks like, we’ve rounded up seven brilliant examples of the discipline created by leading design agencies. 01. Flag Stories by Ferdio Most flags are based on a simple formula of colours, symbols and layouts, as this 3D visualisation highlightsCopenhagen design studio Ferdio is seriously into its flags. So it decided to let its data visualisation skills loose on a side project, and Flag Stories is the result. This mega-infographic compares the design of the world’s flags according to a variety of criteria, including colour choices (and what they symbolise), shapes (used and their complexity), age, similarities and more. These carefully considered visualisations are simple, imaginative and in places quite beautiful. After all, who wouldn’t love ‘Flag Tetris’? 02. The Evolution of Hip-hop by Sub Rosa The intricate interconnections of hip-hop’s history are set out in this lovingly created infographic Sub Rosa is an independent strategy and design practice based in New York that produces a biannual publication called La Petite Mort, which receives a small print run of 5,000 as well as appearing online. For last year’s edition, junior designer Jessi Brattengeier showcased her smarts by mapping out the 37-year history of hip-hop. The result is a striking monochrome infographic that makes perfect sense of all chaos and complexity that story entails. A great example of how to harness visual hierarchy to make complex information easier to navigate, you can view the chart in full on page 54 of the magazine, which can be downloaded for free here. 03. Call to Prayer by Corporation Pop This striking but effective infographic was created for Channel 4 [click the icon in the top right to enlarge the image] Infographics don’t have to be complex or information-heavy to be effective, and here’s a great example. With Channel 4 running a special season to mark the Muslim festival of Ramadan, it asked Manchester-based digital agency Corporation Pop to create suitable branding. This included an infographic highlighting the dos and don’ts of the festival, which is shown in its entirety above. Okay, this is certainly the simplest infographic on this lust. But it’s also an eye-catching, upbeat and strikingly original design, which makes clever use of colour and Islamic-inspired, geometric art to draw the viewer in. 04. A Month in a Design Agency by Paper Leaf Paperleaf indulged in some radical honesty about its operations for this infographic Now for an infographic by an agency, about an agency. Paperleaf is a design firm based in Edmonton, Canada who describe themselves as “big proponents of open, honest communication”. So much so that they created this revealing infographic about how they operated across a typical month in business. Stats covered include how many billable hours the team put in, what proportion of their time was spent on breaks, and the value of contracts they won and lost. And it’s all gorgeously designed, with big, bold typography and a striking red, blue and black colour scheme. You can view the infographic in full here. 05. Waste Matters by Pentagram Pentagram harnessed its infographic smarts to visualise data about water management in New York Global design studio Pentagram is known for its award-winning work for glamorous clients and big brands. So you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be the people behind an infographic about urinals and sewage. But when they were approached by the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC) to visualise guidelines for efficient water use throughout the city, they took the challenge head on. The result is Water Matters: A Design Manual for Water Conservation in Buildings. This crams a ton of information into its 289 pages, but thanks to clever use of colour coding and beautifully designed infographics, all that information is easy to find and to digest. A masterclass in rendering a dull subject engaging and enlightening. You can download the PDF for free and check it out here. 06. USAFacts by Artefacts This mega-infographic breaks down what the US government is doing It’s difficult to hold your government to account unless you’re able to effectively work out what it’s doing. That’s the thinking behind this $10 million project from Steve Ballmer and Seattle design studio Artefact. USAFacts sets out to convey big government statistics in a way that’s easy for a normal person to understand. The visualisations on the site use bright colours, highly legible typography and basic charting structures that the average person can follow, and the result is a great deal more engaging and user-friendly than most government websites we’ve experienced. Anyone planning to visualise a large amount of data online would be well advised to check it out. 07. The Happy Chart by Sagmeister Inc This oversized infographic examined the nature of happinessSo far we’ve covered infographics that appear online, in PDF form and on the printed page. But we’ll finish with one that covered the wall of an exhibition. Curated by Stefan Sagmeister, CEO of New York studio Sagmeister & Walsh, the Happy Show was held at the ICA Philadelphia, and billed as an in-depth exploration of the nature of happiness. Illustrated by Verena Michelitsch under the creative direction of Sagmeister and the art direction of Jessica Walsh, these oversized vinyl prints share facts and figures about happiness and relationships across age groups, genders and sexual orientations. The retro feel and tongue-in-cheek attitude strike the perfect tone, and help to convey a series of quite serious points in a fun and accessible way. You can see the infographic’s constituent parts in detail here. View the full article

If you've just woken up, we can only apologise for subjecting you to one of the most colourful and flamboyant fonts we've ever come across. But if you feel like putting your eyes through their paces, meet Electra. Created by Argentinian freelance designer Yai Salinas, Electra is a free-for-personal-use OpenType font that takes its inspiration from the gaudy and over-the-top 1980s. Are you up to the challenge of making this font work?That's not to say that Electra hasn't got a sense of style, and it certainly doesn't do things by halves. The all-caps font (because when your design is this balls-out why would you waste your time with lowercase wallflowers?) comes with numbers, alternates and symbols, plus it's available to download for commercial use if you sling a small donation Salinas' way. While other fonts mail it in by just relying on a unique letter shape, Electra makes clever use of colour, pattern and texture to deliver a truly individual typeset that could work as camouflage gear to help you blend into a Jackson Pollock painting. Elektra is available in three vivid styles, each with slight variations in pattern and colour. These different styles make the font more flexible to help you accommodate its bombastic aesthetic into your work. Scroll through the gallery below to explore the different versions. Read more: 50 best free fonts for designers 82 top-quality typography tutorials The 24 best free cursive fonts View the full article

http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/photos-inside-vast-abandoned-mine-set-to-be-worlds-biggest-data-center … View the full article

Siemens patches four vulnerabilities, including a critical authentication bypass flaw, in its SiPass integrated access control server. View the full article

Soft pastels are a great medium to work with, because they enable you to draw and paint at the same time. You hold the stick of pigment in your hand and apply it directly on to the surface. The results are immediate and tactile. There's no drying time to hold you back, or brushes to swap around. Brand new to pastels? Read How to get started with pastel drawing In this article I'm going to show you how to create a pastel landscape, making the best use of the varied types and grades of pastel that are available. 01. Pick the right pastels You need rich, pure pastels to create depth in your landscapeFor this painting I want to capture the feeling of distance in the landscape by varying colour and tone. I need the rich and pure pigments of quality pastels, such as Unison, to go from saturated colours in the foreground to soft hues in the distance, with lights, mediums and darks of each colour. 02. Create a tonal sketch A quick sketch helps you focus on the tones in your paintingTo focus on the tonal recession in the view, I do a sketch in charcoal and white pastel on neutral grey paper. I can see how the biggest contrast of light and dark is in the foreground, with soft grey mid-tones in the distance. This exercise helps me keep calm when I start to deal with colours. 03. Test your colour choices Experiment with your colours before going to workThinking of tonal recession, I pick the pastels from the box and test each one by making marks on a sheet, hatching to combine them. By hatching the marks and letting the integrity of each colour show, I'm able to produce lively mixes. Experimenting with colour choices first means I can paint later with confidence. 04. Start in the distance Smudge the distant hills so they're subtle and mutedUsing light blue, lilac/grey and cream, I sketch in the sky and far distant hills, using the pastels on their side, applying several layers and softening and smudging constantly with my fingers. These hills have to be subtle, soft and muted. By smudging the sky colours down into the hills I can make them appear even more distant. 05. Create atmosphere Mix your shades as you go along, so they all intermingleI introduce a soft grey/blue for the next hill, but still mixing and blending softly with the lilac and cream. I take each colour further down into the picture, so that they all intermingle and are related. I then hint at light greens and yellows for the far fields, dusting these into the blue hill to give it form. 06. Move to the mid-ground Bring in warmer tones and stronger marks for the foreground fieldsIn the foreground the colours can become warmer, with yellows and greens growing progressively richer as they get closer to the viewer. Time for some stronger marks – there's no need to smudge so much now. If a colour looks too strong, I use the cooler distance colours to knock it back. I lay down some energetic marks for the foreground base. 07. Introduce the foreground darks The foreground trees require sharper, more energetic marksSketch the foreground trees using sharper, more defined marks and darker shades of browns and greens. I use a deep brown for the foreground and a softer greyer brown for the middle distance. I also have a warmer red/brown for the very front of the picture, to emphasise the tonal recession. I use energetic marks rather than detail at this stage. 08. Create intensity Hatch the foreground details in more saturated coloursNow the fun really starts, as I introduce a collection of more vibrant, saturated colours to enrich the field in the foreground by hatching these on as long grasses, without any smudging, I create a vibrant mix of hues and tones that blend optically. Blues, yellows, orange and warm brown are a contrast to the cooler distance. 09. Add hatching and highlights Hatch in some final lights to add a bit of sparkleTo bring the piece together, I hatch lighter areas to describe the curve of the field, and detail among the trees. I add lighter patches of yellow between the trees, and shadows and lights to the trunks. The joy of using good-quality pastels is that you can apply lights over deep darks to add sparkle. This article originally appeared in Paint & Draw issue 7; buy it here! Related articles: Create a striking wildlife image with pastel How to fix your finished pastel artwork View the full article

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Cisco patched nine publicly disclosed remote code execution vulnerabilities in the SNMP subsystem running in its IOS and IOS XE software. View the full article

Fans of fantasy drama Game of Thrones (that'll be just about everyone, then) will know the show's producers don't shy away from blood and gore. Season 6 was one of the more gruesome yet – VFX studio Imagine Engine was responsible for many of the death scenes, using 3D art and VFX to hike up an impressive bodycount of 72 over the course of the season's 10 episodes. So the studio's already impressive design portfolio also now includes 22 killed by sword, 14 by slit throat, one by pike and one memorable death by dog (ouch!). But its not all doom and gloom, the team also harnessed the power of VFX to bring one character back to life. Watch the film below to find out how they did it. “Some shots were really specific, like someone getting their head smashed directly against a wall,” says compositing lead Edwin Holdsworth. “To get the look right for that we filmed real meat being smashed. We used the same technique for shots where one character has their hand pulled apart. The best way to match the level of gore needed was to pull some meat apart, and use that in the comp. It all felt more realistic that way!” Related articles: Meet the artist who designed the Iron Throne Are movie posters in a design crisis? This animator's walking reference video will make you laugh and learn View the full article

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week, including the Verizon breach, the Oracle session hijacking attack, a Telegram-based hacking tool, and a free EternalBlue scanner. View the full article

Friday inspiration: If you’re into fantasy art, you’ll likely know digital artist Ross Tran. He’s been entertaining and educating art fans through his YouTube channel, Ross Draws, since 2011. For the last four years he’s been developing an original character, Nima, and her story. Alongside his energetic brand of video art tutorials, Ross Draws fans will have noticed Nima regularly popping up as the subject of his walkthroughs. Now Tran has launched a Kickstart to bring Nima and her unique world to life in a slick art book, packed with sketches, key scenes and stunning cinematic paintings. “I want Nima’s world to excite people the way I was drawn into the world of Avatar the Last Airbender,” he explains. He’s offering a range of tiered rewards to people who pledge, from high-definition wallpapers and a PDF book of sketches through to signed posters, character postcards, a Skype session with the in-demand artist and more. Head over to his Kickstarter to find out more. Related articles: 5 Kickstarter projects worth watching 20 digital artists to follow on Behance 6 Kickstarter tips for designers View the full article

No designer should be without the assets they need to create. If you feel like your latest project is missing something, explore the bundle of new assets in the Giant Design Asset and Vector Bundle, on sale now for just $69 (approx. £54)! Each and every designer is sure to find something useful in the Giant Design Asset and Vector Bundle – there is nearly $2,500 worth of assets in the form of templates, icons, vectors, stock photos and more packed into this massive collection. No matter what your next project calls for, you’ll have the resources to make it happen. The Giant Design Asset and Vector Bundle is valued at $2,497. That means you’re in for a massive saving by grabbing this bundle on sale now for just $69 (approx. £54)! Don’t let this pass you by, grab this deal today. View the full article

Last month ImagineFX celebrated its 150th issue, but it's showing no signs of slowing down. Issue 151 is on sale now, and it's packed with all the awesome advice, interviews and insights you'd expect from the world's leading digital art magazine. Buy ImagineFX issue 151 now On the cover this month is an astral-themed portrait by Tran Nguyen. Flip to the Workshop section to find out how she combined ink, pencils and paint to pull together this mesmerising design. Read on to find out what other treats you'll find inside the issue... Find out how this English artist brought Terry Pratchett's world to lifeEnglish artist Paul Kidby’s work is synonymous with the world of Terry Pratchett. The ImagineFX team caught up with him to learn how he went from honing his illustration skills under the watchful eye of a mysterious neighbour to hashing out book cover ideas with one of the world’s finest fantasy authors. Take a closer look at this award-winning artist's portfolioAaron Miller’s work has attracted clients such as Magic: The Gather, Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons. This month, the team chatted to the award-winning artist about the importance of learning traditional techniques, and why classical religious art paved the way for the fantasy genre. Spare a second thought for your mental wellbeingArtists have a reputation as free-spirited beings, but look closer and there's a tendency towards perfectionism and the unnatural pressure of being creative to a deadline. Suddenly burnout doesn’t seems like a real risk. This month, the ImagineFX team asked leading artists about their experiences of stress, and for some advice on how they deal with it. Top tutorials How to harness the unpredictability of watercolourIf you’re looking to expand your skills (and who isn’t?), there are plenty of practical tutorials to be found in the pages of the new issue, too. Emily Hare shares the thinking behind her delicate creature illustrations, and explains how to embrace the unpredictability of working in watercolour. Improve your worldbuilding skillsCreating an effective environment can be a careful balancing act, but Anna Hollinrake has it down pat. This issue, she shares her worldbuilding tips in an in-depth guide to creating a scene filled with colour and life. And there’s a video to follow, too. Make your first strides in a new mediumIf you really want to push yourself, how about turning your hand to a new medium altogether? This issue marks the start of a four-part series exploring how to get going with gouache. Learn all about the gear you need, how to get set up, and the techniques for mixing the colours you need. Subscribe to Imagine FX and save up to 47% View the full article

Earlier this week, Google unveiled the launch of its long-teased Backup and Sync feature. The tool gives everyone the opportunity to protect a whole computer's worth of system files via its cloud storage, and all for the princely sum of absolutely nothing. Promising to be a 'simpler, speedier and more reliable way to protect the files and photos that mean the most to you,' the Backup and Sync app is sure to be a godsend for creatives with images and assets spread over a multitude of devices. The app replaces old Google uploader toolsThe tool works like a turbo-charged Google Drive in that it automatically stores files that are saved onto a computer's internal hard drive or other devices such as memory cards. If you've ever been thankful to Google Drive for saving a document all by itself, imagine that joy and relief but for your images. Backup and Sync replaces the Google Photos desktop uploader and Drive for both Windows and Mac computers, and if it delivers on its promised ease of functionality, we could see the app rivalling the likes of Dropbox. If there's one catch, it's that Backup and Sync has a 15GB cap due to the ceiling imposed by free Drive accounts. This leaves users with two options: pay for some more storage or be selective with what you backup to Drive. Related articles: Send large files: 11 free tools 20 top tools for freelancers There’s more to Sir Elton John’s new logo than meets the eye View the full article

Like any design element, we all have our favourite fonts to fall back on. But you don’t want your work to get stale. So it’s good once in a while to check out the latest new fonts to hit the market. And while we all loving getting free fonts, if that’s all you look at, you’re certainly restricting your scope. So in this post, we gather together the best new fonts (paid-for and free) to grab our attention this year so far. We're sure you'll find a font that inspires you among them. 01. Inkwell Jonathan Hoefler’s Inkwell is based on handwritten designsIf there’s one font that regularly attracts bad press from the design community, it's Comic Sans – even the artist whose work inspired it hates it. So it’s great news that type designer Jonathan Hoefler has come up with a more professional alternative, in the form of Inkwell, a font family based on handwritten designs. Suitable for both print and digital, Inkwell comes in a variety of styles: serif, sans, script, Blackletter, Tuscan and Open. It has a soft and friendly look, while retaining the character set, weight range and high technical quality of a professional typeface. It costs $399 (around £309) for the full package of 48 styles, each in six weights. 02. FS Irwin FS Irwin is inspired by New York City’s subway fontReleased in March this year by boutique font foundry Fontsmith, FS Irwin is a humanist sans-serif font that’s clean and highly legible. It was created by Fontsmith’s senior designer Fernando Mello, who says he was inspired by the cosmopolitan nature of New York, and more specifically the city’s subway font. FS Irwin is characterised by a sense of pureness and simplicity, while details in the lower case letters, such as the angled, chiselled spurs and their open terminals, add extra touches of visual interest to prevent it becoming too bland. Extensively tested and precisely drawn, this text-oriented font is extremely versatile, and Fontsmith suggests it could be used for both playful and serious designs. It's priced at £180 for the family of 12 fonts. 03. Gilbert Gilbert is a tribute to the late Gilbert Baker, creator of the rainbow flagIn March this year Gilbert Baker – the artist and activist who designed the rainbow flag, a universal symbol of gay pride – sadly passed away. To honour him, Ogilvy teamed up with type foundry Fontself and LGBTQI organisations NewFest and NYC Pride to create a cool new font in tribute. Baker designed the iconic flag in 1978, and so the font takes its palette choices from both the flag itself and the hues of that era. Its creators hope that it will be used for rally and protest banners. Currently in preview in two versions (a standard vector font and a colour font in OpenType-SVG format), Gilbert is free to download from the Type with Pride site, along with accompanying artwork. The aim is to eventually develop it into a full font family, and you can keep an eye on progress towards this goal on this blog. 04. Masqualero Masqualero is inspired by the music of Miles DavisAnother font inspired by a legendary creative, Masqualero takes its name from a classic track by Miles Davis on the 1967 Sorcerer album. Designed by Jim Ford of Monotype’s in-house studio, the serif font offers an enticing mixture of sharp and rounded shapes that nicely mirror the contradictions within the jazz great’s music. With potential uses including publishing, mastheads, headlines, logos, packaging, signage, book covers and annual reports, this colourful and evocative typeface offers a great way to add a vibrant feel to your designs for £170/$199 for 14 fonts. 05. Ricardo Created by Dutch designer Jasper de Waard, Ricardo combines the clarity and visual simplicity of geometric type design with the friendliness and readability of a humanist approach. Ricardo is provided in three subfamilies: Ricardo, Ricardo Alt, and Ricardo Ita. The first is the most conventional, and thus the most suitable for longform body copy. The second has a more geometric feel, with simplified shapes for the a, j, u, and t. The third offers a slightly more off-kilter, cursive alternative to the standard italics. This lovely font is suitable for both body type and display text, such as in branding and marketing. It comes with 812 glyphs, supports more than 100 languages, and includes arrows and case-sensitive punctuation. The complete family package costs £142.99(around $185). 06. Zilla Slab Mozilla’s new branding came with a new font, which has since been released to the community as a free downloadBack in January, Mozilla released a striking new logo and branding for 2017. And more recently, it’s made the font used in its creation a free download for everyone to use. It was designed by Typotheque, which drew on its own slab serif font, Tesla, as the basis for its development. With smooth curves and true italics, Zilla Slab provides a business-like look and feel, as well as a high level of readability at all weights. The first free font to be provided by the Mozilla Foundation, Zilla Slab is also open source so you can contribute to its development on Github. 07. Noto Serif CJK The shape of particular characters in Noto Serif CJK adjust depending whether the text is vertical or horizontalIf you’re creating designs that need to be translated into both Eastern and Western languages (or which combine different alphabets within the same design), you’ll be pleased to discover Noto Serif CJK, which was released in April. The result of a partnership between Google and Adobe, this font is designed to look consistent across Chinese, Japanese and and Korean (CJK) characters as well as the English, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets. It’s free to download from Google Fonts, Github or Adobe Typekit, where it’s titled Source Hans. Noto Serif CJK serves as a companion font to Noto Sans CJK (aka Source Han Sans), a sans serif released in 2014 that also maintains its style across CJK scripts. View the full article

Data collected from the freely available scanner called EternalBlues shows that tens of thousands of computers remain vulnerable to the SMBv1 vulnerability that spawned WannaCry and ExPetr. View the full article

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/07/13/who-gets-gold-stars-for-looking-after-your-privacy/ … View the full article

Engaging characters are at the heart of almost all 3D projects, and in issue 224 of 3D World, you’ll find out how to get the best out of them. Learn how the magazine's cover star was created step by step, take a look at how Spider-Man was made, and don’t forget to take advantage of your free Pluralsight course on Maya animation. Buy your copy of 3D World 224 As much as character creation is a big deal, working on environments and building on those core skills is vital to success as a visual effects artist, so you'll also find a packed training section. You'll learn how to composite explosions in Nuke using particle data, and there's 3D World's usual wide variety of Q&As, helping you with the task-specific problems you hit in your daily work. New Unreal Engine and other kit reviewed If you're at the point of investing in some new gear then it's worth taking a look at 3D World's reviews of the latest and greatest kit: this month, the team looks at the newly released version of Unreal Engine and a high-end workstation from MSI. Stunning new animations Finally, for those fans of short animations you can read about Eye Candy; a selection of the best from around the globe and we take a look at the beautiful Sur Ecoute. Click here to subscribe to 3D World View the full article

As a graphic designer, when a Google search tells you that you’re one in about thirty million results (calculated in 0.37 seconds), suddenly you can feel a little insignificant. Your website is your space to set out your stall and display your wares in the bizarre bazaar of the internet. But is your website helping to sell your work, or is it giving off mixed signals? To find out more, we spoke to Rik Lomas, the founder of SuperHi, a code school that he says, “shows you how to make sites you’ll actually want to make.” We spoke to Lomas about how to make a site that stands out and what pushed him to start SuperHi, and got his advice on the best ways pitch yourself online. Lomas made his first website in 2001. “It was an underground online magazine for the other students in my sixth form, which kind of took the piss out of the teachers. The idea was originally from a friend’s magazine, but we found it took forever to get it printed and distributed, so we put it on the web instead.” Lomas quickly got frustrated with the limitations of drag-and-drop web design packages like Dreamweaver, so just started playing around with the code. “I self-taught myself over a long, long period of four years with lots of getting stuck with no one to talk to – it took me way longer than it should have!” Make your website design unique New York designer Dani Balenson, who works at Vox media, built her portfolio site from scratch with help from SuperHiToday, there’s a plethora of platforms where you can quickly get a website up and running, but we asked Lomas if there’s a subtext that designers should be aware of. “Some designers talk about ‘creatively breaking the rules,’ then use a standard template that another designer has made on a generic hosting platform. Is a designer being creative if they can only use templates? Do they even know how to break the rules? They’re called templates for a reason – they’re example guides for the average person to use. You set yourself apart by knowing how to get out of those templates,” he says. Lomas started SuperHi to help users break away from templates. “We wanted to not only teach better, more practical material, but make tools for beginners to learn to code. Many of our students have tried services like Codecademy. But because they get stuck and find it really dull, they assume learning to code is dull too. "Think about your worst teacher at school and how you probably hated going to those lessons. Now think of the best teachers and how sometimes they would blow your mind with what they teach. We teach the same thing [as Codecademy], but we teach completely differently,” says Lomas. Market yourself in different places online One page of the Rik Lomas’ SuperHi website, which highlights a free email guide on how to start codingWhen you learn to make websites in a different way to most people, it stands to reason that your website will immediately start to feel distinctive, and more you. “A lot of the best designers really get their personality and their politics into their work” says Lomas. “The authenticity of it is something you can really feel. You can see it in their social media as well as their work.” Beyond the bubble of your personal site, it’s useful to be anywhere online where you can show off your work. “Sites like Ello, The Dots, and Dribbble are good places to start. Some people feel awkward about self promotion, but it’s part of the job of being a designer,” advises Lomas. But bear in mind that when you hit ‘publish’ at home in your bedroom, you’re also on view to the rest of the world. Lomas is a self-confessed internet stalker. “Not in a creepy way,” he’s quick to add. But when he was recently hiring and someone applied with a decent CV, he Googled them. “I found their Twitter, where they were being racist and offensive to pretty much everyone they were interacting with. It was shocking how different their application was to their online persona,” he states, adding that he chose not to take the application any further. Inject websites with your personality London-based childrenswear company Wonderers has a website designed by a SuperHi graduateWhenever we check out a designer’s personal site, we always make a beeline to the About page. We're less interested in what someone says, than the way they say it and what this one page reveals about them. Do they reel off a list of awards and educational achievements? Or tell a joke? Or bitch about their old workplaces? Lomas does the same, and he wants to know: “Does the person take themselves seriously or are they fun? Do they write well on top of designing well? The biggest two things I’d be looking for are willingness to learn and excitability. “Nothing is ever perfect, and there will always be things you want to change." Rik Lomas "I want to work with other people who love to learn about as many things as possible, and I want to work with people who are excited and don’t just see designing as a job. The way you do this is showing a variety of personal and collaborative projects,” he advises. If you have projects cluttering up your desktop that have never made it onto the web because you’ve been too preoccupied with tweaking the design of the site itself (or because you find uploading too laborious), Lomas has two words of advice: “Do it!” “Nothing is ever perfect, and there will always be things you want to change. There’s parts of the SuperHi website I’m not happy with; I’m not unhappy with them but they could always be better, but people compliment us on them. They say, ‘Oh I really like this part,’ and I go, ‘Thanks,’ but secretly I think, ‘Ugh, that bit sucks, it could be so much better.’ "Being closer to your work means it’s harder to let go. There’s no right or wrong time to make things public, but the sooner the better.” This article was originally published in Computer Arts magazine issue 266. Buy it here. Related articles: 10 innovative agency websites to inspire you 8 great examples of graphic design portfolios How to design websites that stand out View the full article

Studios across the country might be down to skeleton staff as the summer holidays kick in, but we’ve got a slew of handy new graphic design tools to boost your creativity this month. From Astute Graphic’s game-changing Illustrator plugin DynamicSketch v2 to the new hardback release of Elliot Jay Stocks’ stunning typography magazine, 8 Faces, there’s plenty to get stuck into this July. So if the boss is away, we give you permission to play… 01. DynamicSketch v2 Astute Graphics has updated its popular Illustrator plugin, DynamicSketch – and it’s packed with innovative new features to dramatically speed up your sketching workflow. These include Preview Stroke Widths, which lets you see the width of the sketch path while you’re drawing, and a Pulled Cursor feature, which simulates the tip of the brush, letting you create smoother curves and reducing stylus error. Imagine the very best elements of the Pencil tool, Shaper tool, Join tool, Paintbrush tool, Width tool and Blob Brush tool, all in one intuitive drawing toolbox: that’s DynamicSketch. If you’re a regular Illustrator user, we can’t recommend it enough. It's priced at £39/$50.40. 02. The Designer’s Vintage Treasure Chest Vintage fonts, textures, brushes and more!Design Cuts' latest bundle brings you one of its biggest-ever vintage collections of design goods. It includes 42 vintage fonts, rare vintage letterforms, textures, old papers, decorative elements, vintage brushes, old illustrations and some handy vintage actions, too. The team reckons it would cost you $2,663 to buy each asset individually, so at $29 it’s a steal. 03. 8 Faces: Collected 8 Faces features new and archive contentLast year, Elliot Jay Stocks launched a Kickstarter to redesign and re-edit all eight issues of slick, sold-out typography magazine 8 Faces, adding brand new content to make a huge, hardcover book. Some 64 graphic designers, web designers, illustrators and artists were interviewed over the series, which boasted beautiful type specimens, plus forewords and essays from thought-leaders across the design industry. This new, 500-page edition features new interviews and a reference of every typeface chosen by interviewees – and it’s available to pre-order, now, for £29 (around $37.50). 04. Matchbook Print Machine Matchbook Print Machine replicates the textures and inks of matchbook print effect of the 1950sCreate retro matchbook print effects with a few clicks with this high-res Smart PSD. Priced at $19, it’s easy to use, letting you adjust textures, halftone patterns and registration errors for an authentic look – plus it comes with a video guide and bonus brushes. 05. Making and Breaking the Grid, Second Edition Learn about different types of grids in this book by Timothy SamaraTimothy Samara’s comprehensive layout design workshop explains the rules of grid-based design, covering the basics from composing typographic space and format determination, to sequencing and systemisation. Various types of grids – manuscript, column, modular, hierarchical – are also covered, as is a summary of the development of both grid-based and non-grid-based layout concepts in modern design. The paperback edition is priced at £19.99/$29.99. 06. Chunky Markers – Illustrator Brushes Brushes mimic messy markers, thin markers, slanted markers and standard markersCreate convincing marker pen-mimicking artwork in Illustrator with this set of 34 vector brushes from The Artifex Forge (aka Jeremy Child). He created over 300 brushstrokes before selecting the best for this pack, which also comes with a bonus marker pattern and example files for $15. 07. Design Thinking for Visual Communication Get the popular book on Kindle for easeHow do you start a design project? How can you generate ideas and concepts in response to a design brief? How do other designers do it? Bloomsbury has released a new Kindle edition of Gavin Ambrose’s popular book Design Thinking for Visual Communication, which addresses these questions by walking through different methods and thought processes used by designers. Costing £15.59/$25.75, each stage is illustrated with case studies, providing an in-depth exploration of design thinking. 08. Corel Painter 2018 Painter 2018 blurs the line between traditional and digital art As we reported earlier, Corel Painter has dropped the latest release of its digital painting software, with a number of new tools added to its arsenal. Of particular note are its new Thick Paint brushes, which replicate real-world tools when used with thickly layered paint, enabling you to pull, push and scrape paint around your canvas. You can grab the full package for £359.99/$429, or upgrade for £179.99/$229. 09. Glossy Rave Styles for Photoshop The layer styles come in different resolutions ready for print or digital projectsEveryone needs a bit of old-school neon styling sometimes. This pack of 10 handmade Photoshop layer styles will add a rave vibe to your work in seconds. According to maker One-Click Slick (aka Tara Garmon), they work best at large sizes, and are perfect for posters, flyers and more. They cost $15 for a pack of high res 300dpi and lower res versions. 10. House Industries: The Process is the Inspiration Type foundry and design studio House explores where it finds inspirationWe showed you the preview to this back in February, but House Industries' highly anticipated title, The Process is the Inspiration, is now available in hardback on Amazon. Providing an illustrated journey through the renowned design studio’s creative process, the 400-page book features deluxe materials as well as hundreds of photographs of early work, work in progress and finished projects. Plus it offers helpful lessons, stories and case studies showing how to transform obsessive curiosity into personally satisfying and successful work. It's available to buy now for £35/$50. Related articles: Have designers become lazy? 20 fonts every graphic designer should own 14 great places to sell your design work online View the full article

When creating a web application with React – a JavaScript library for building user interfaces – component creation is a significant bonus when updating the page over something like jQuery. The ability to create self-contained, reusable components means you can keep code smaller and more organised. If components are set up well enough, they can be dropped in where necessary with no additional setup required at all. In this tutorial, we will be making a dashboard application that keeps an eye on important support metrics. The screen is split up into a grid, which can be customised to show different visuals depending on the data it needs to show. By making a generic widget component we can chop and change the display without affecting any of the underlying code. Wrapping these in a container component allows us to control the source of that data separate from its display. We will be making use of CSS Grids to display content in defined blocks. Browsers that do not support it will display in a single column, much like when using a smaller screen. Download the files for this tutorial here. Build a simple music player with React01. Download the dependencies After getting the project files, we need to pull down all the required packages we need for the project. These include files from 'create-react-app', which deals with the build process for us. We also need to run two servers – one that provides hot reloading for the page and another that provides some fake data to test with. Enter the following on the command line while inside the project directory: /* in one window */ > yarn install > yarn start /* in another window */ > yarn serve 02. Add the first widget Start off with a simple componentTo start things off, we will render a simple component on the page. With Babel set up, we can write components using ES2015 classes. All we need to do is import them when we need to and Babel with Webpack will do the rest. Open up /src/components/App.js and add the import to the top of the page. Then, inside the render function, place the component inside the container <div>. 03. Style a widget box When importing CSS with Webpack, styles can be scoped to just the component in question to avoid them leaking to other parts of the pageOn this project, Webpack is set up to pick up CSS imports. This means we can import CSS files like we did with JavaScript in the previous step, which allows us to create separate files for each component. Add the following import to the top of Widget.js. This will link up with the 'Widget' className and will scope the styles to that component. 04. Add heading and content Each widget will need a short description of what data it is showing. To keep things customisable, we will pass this in as a property – or "prop" – to the component when we use it. As for the content, React supplies a special 'children' prop, which will contain the content entered between a component's opening and closing tags. Replace the placeholder <p> in the render function with the following. The Loading component will come into play later on. 05. Let the widget span the grid With the CSS Grid specification, layout elements such as gutters will be applied regardless of any styling applied to child elements In addition to the stylesheets we import, we can also create React styles dynamically based on the props passed through. To span columns and rows with CSS Grid use the grid-column and grid-row properties. We can pass through 'colspan' and 'rowspan' props to alter this per component in a similar way to how table cells work in HTML. Apply styles in the Widget constructor and link them to the container <div>. 06. Supply default props Right now our Widget is blank as we do not supply any props as yet. In these cases, we can supply default props to use instead. Unless told otherwise, CSS Grids will default to taking up the smallest unit it can, which in this case is a 1x1 square. Just before we export the Widget, supply some default props to that effect. 07. Enforce specific props The NumberDisplay component is a 'presentational' component, as it has no internal state and relies wholly on the props passed to itComponents can provide hints as to what type of values should be sent as props. While developing an application, any incorrectly passed props will show up in the console as warnings to help avoid bugs further down the line. Just underneath the default props, define what props should or need to be passed in, and what type they should be. 08. Add props to the app By defining the 'children' prop as required, you may notice the browser complaining it's currently undefined. While this will not break the app, it will keep bugging us until it's sorted. Head back over to App.js and add a heading prop to the widget we created earlier. Instead of making the tag self-closing, open it up and add some placeholder content to show it's working. 09. Display some data We can use the @supports syntax in CSS to detect whether or not the browser supports grid layouts. If not, we default to the single-column viewThe NumberDisplay component works much like the widget we just created – it renders some text based purely on the props we pass into it. We can drop it in where we need to and have a consistent display of numerical data. Import the NumberDisplay component at the top and use it to replace the placeholder content you just added within Widget. 10. Convert to NumberWidget At the moment, there is quite a lot of code used to show something that will not change across widgets. We can make a special component to encapsulate all of it. That way we only need to import NumberWidget. Replace the Widget and NumberDisplay imports at the top of App.js with NumberWidget. Make sure to also replace them in the render method. Next page: Further steps 11. Show a progress bar Inside NumberWidget.js there are a couple of methods that help us to render things under certain conditions. We can call these in the render method and they can return what we need to output. Inside showProgress() add some code that works out if we should render a progress bar. We need a minimum, maximum and a value at the very least. 12. Add a Container component Manually adding data isn't going to be much help to us. We can add a container around NumberWidget that will supply it with fresh data from our server. Inside App.js, replace what we added in step 10 with the NumberWidgetContainer and pass it a URL to load data from. 13. Fetch data on load Over its lifetime, a React component will call many different methods depending on what point it's at. The componentDidMount method will be called when a component first renders, which makes it an ideal place to fetch data. Add the following to componentDidMount in NumberWidgetContainer.js. This will call the fetchData method now and every minute after that. We will fix the TypeError in the next step. 14. Update the state Each component can have its own internal state, which holds information about itself at any given moment. We can pass this state as props for other components to use. Make the request to the supplied 'href' prop URL using the AJAX module Axios and update the state with the values supplied. These will automatically be passed to NumberWidget, which will then update itself. 15. Add in a List widget The groundwork we have done for NumberWidget can be applied to other types of widgets, too. ListWidgetContainer can be passed the same props as NumberWidgetContainer, but will render a list of values instead. Import ListWidgetContainer alongside the rest, and place the component just above NumberWidgetContainer in the render method. 16. Display list items With the data supplied in the sortedItems variable as an array, we can iterate over the results and render a separate component for each. To do this we can use the 'map' method on the array prototype. This creates a new array of components that React will render. Inside the ListDisplay component in showWidget, add the map function to create new ListItems. 17. Sort data by value Use a sorting function to provide useful information to the userWe should avoid relying on data being sorted at the source to ensure we provide useful information to the user. We can use a sorting function to do this inside the sortListItems method. Array sorting functions take two values and compare them. Apply this to sortedItems and return it to sort its content in descending order. 18. Add a Graph widget Graph widgets can display large sets of data clearer than the number or list widgets. It uses a library called Chart.js with a React wrapper that updates as props change. Switch back to App.js, import GraphWidgetContainer and add it to the render function under the existing widgets. 19. Prepare data for display Chart.js takes data in a specific format. In this case, the 'datasets' array is a collection of points used to draw a line. We will use state to hold all the configuration data for Chart.js and update it with the datasets fetched from the URL, which arrive in a different format. Open up GraphWidget.js and loop over the props in generateDatasets to update the state. 20. Regenerate when props change The React wrapper for Chart.js will update when its props change, but as the state holds the set up, we do not update those values directly. componentWillReceiveProps is another lifecycle method that will fire when a component's props will update. Sometimes this can fire when values have not changed, but a quick check for that can protect against unnecessary updates. 21. Add remaining widgets Finally, all that is left to do is add in some more data. With the flexibility we have created from the various widgets, we can add in whichever widgets are necessary. Fill in the remaining gaps on the page. Play around with the types, row and column spans, and positions of widgets to suit the data best. This article originally appeared in Web Designer issue 262; buy it here! Related articles: 21 top examples of JavaScript 5 tips for super-fast CSS Build a simple music player with React View the full article