Articles - Page 111

Browse hundreds of articles, tips, and inspiring design collections. Find helpful design advice, or the perfect resource for your next project.

10 Web Design Trends We’re Already Over

Graphics / 29 May 2019

10 Web Design Trends We’re Already Over

Design trends have to be used cautiously. Just as quickly as many trends come into fashion; they can fall out of favor and make a design feel dated.

Don’t ignore them completely — testing out trends can stretch your creative muscles and help you create something you might not have tried otherwise. But do be aware of what’s fresh, what’s timeless, and what’s out of date!

Here are 10 design trends that are over (or should be anyway).

Core: Jump Start Your Website Design

Reviews / 27 May 2019

Core: Jump Start Your Website Design

Have you ever started building a project with a user interface kit and wished there were more to it? Core might be the fix to that common problem.

Core is a front-end feature kit packed with essential project building blocks, and you can get it free from Mason. Usability is the key feature of this kit. So many UI kits look great but fail in the actual use department. Not Core. It’s beautiful and usable.

Here’s a look at Core and what it can do for you.

10 Ways to Make Women More Welcome in Your Design Space

Business / 27 May 2019

10 Ways to Make Women More Welcome in Your Design Space

Take a look around. How many women work in your creative space? (If you are a freelancer, think about how many women are part of your referral network.) What does that ratio look like? The design industry is not known for equal numbers in the workplace.

A study late last year by Design Museum showed that only 1 in 5 designers in the UK are women. Another study by AIGA showed that women were just 36 percent of the “design leaders” to speak at the world’s biggest design conferences. (It was even tough to find stock images to represent women as designers for this article.)

These trends just aren’t acceptable. And change starts with you.

If you want to see more ideas, more creative concepts, and more diversity of design, everyone needs to be welcome in the same design space. It can be tough to be the only woman in the room (and it happens a lot).

Here are some ways you can make women more welcome in your design space.

FilmHERO: Stock Video Made Easy

Reviews / 23 May 2019

FilmHERO: Stock Video Made Easy

Do you find yourself asking where other websites find such amazing video clips?

You don’t need a monster budget to get high-quality video for your website. With the right stock video, you can create a custom website experience that uses one of the trendiest and most engaging elements out there.

FilmHERO is a good place to start. The video provider has a huge collection of video clips that you can download and use in any number of projects. Here’s how it works.

5 Design Ideas That Never Get Old

Trends / 20 May 2019

5 Design Ideas That Never Get Old

There are some design ideas and concepts that never get old, no matter how many times you see them. Today, we’re exploring these timeless design ideas that you can incorporate into your own work.

These classic concepts are often deeply rooted in design theory. They might be trending styles that cycle in and out over time. They all incorporate elements that make a website design easy to look at, interact with, read and understand.

And for that reason, these design ideas never seem to get old. In fact, you can call them timeless design styles.

IP Geolocation API: Better Understand Website Visitors

Reviews / 15 May 2019

IP Geolocation API: Better Understand Website Visitors

Where are your website users coming from? That’s a common question that many website owners don’t always know the answer to. Understanding where users come from—and information about their location—can be important to the functionality of your website.

Just think, you could push notifications at time zone appropriate times, or adjust language, design, or layout based on the location of a website visit.

Geolocation data can help you create a more valuable experience for website visitors. And the free IP Geolocation API is a tool that can help. Here’s a look at it and how it works.

20+ Best Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Posters + Flyers

Inspiration / 15 May 2019

20+ Best Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Posters + Flyers

What makes a great poster design? It’s often a mix of creativity and design elements that have a certain panache.

Poster and flyer design can be a lot of fun because you can often stretch your design muscles and try things you wouldn’t for other projects. It’s an opportunity to do something attention-grabbing and unique!

With that idea in mind, here are twenty different poster/flyer tutorials that you can try out. Plus, you’ll get a chance to try out some new design techniques along the way!

Design Trends: When to Use Them + When to Ignore Them

Trends / 13 May 2019

Design Trends: When to Use Them + When to Ignore Them

We showcase a lot of design trends here at Design Shack. Not only is it fun to look at examples of new work, groundbreaking projects, and things that are growing in popularity, but it can also serve as a bit of design inspiration.

You can use trends to determine if your projects look modern, classic or just plain dated. But design trends aren’t for everyone all the time. That trend that looks amazing for one brand or project might be a disaster for another.

So how do you know when to use design trends (and when to just ignore them altogether)? Here’s your primer!

20+ Best Free Invitation Templates

Inspiration / 10 May 2019

20+ Best Free Invitation Templates

When it comes to designing an invitation card, whether it’s for a wedding, party, or a special event, many people choose to hire a designer to make a professional invitation card design. The good news? There are dozens of stunning, free invitation templates out there!

What if you only want to print a few invitations for a family-only wedding or a small event? Of course, you wouldn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a designer to get an invitation card designed. This is where invitation templates come to help.

We handpicked a collection of modern and professional invitation card templates you can use to make your own invitation for all kinds of occasions. The best part is the templates are free to download and you can easily edit them as well.

15+ Light and Airy Lightroom Presets

Lightroom Presets / 9 May 2019

15+ Light and Airy Lightroom Presets

Lightroom is not just a tool used for enhancing and optimizing photos, it can also be used to add beautiful effects and brighten up your photos to make them look dreamy and more professional. For this collection, we handpicked a set of light and airy Lightroom presets that will help apply soft and bright effects to your photos.

All of these presets can add a vibrant look and feel without affecting an image’s natural colors.

Whether you’re working on fashion, wedding, newborn, or portrait photography, you’ll find plenty of choices in this Lightroom presets collection to improve your photos with just one click.

6 Tips for Working With Hand-Drawn Fonts

Font Collections / 8 May 2019

6 Tips for Working With Hand-Drawn Fonts

Hand drawn fonts seem to be almost everywhere. But how do you use them in a way that’s different and effective? When it comes to hand-drawn fonts, these tips can help you create something that’s readable and matches the tone of your project.

The hand-drawn font design trend can be somewhat tricky and isn’t necessarily for all projects.

If you do go down this route, make sure you’re approaching it in a way that doesn’t compromise the goals of your design project!

Data Visualization in Web Design: 12 Stunning Examples

Graphics / 1 May 2019

Data Visualization in Web Design: 12 Stunning Examples

Data, data, everywhere. But what do you do with it? Today, we’ve collected 12 stunning examples of data visualizations in website design to jump-start your thinking about how to work with data.

We live in a time where the ability to showcase data in new and interesting ways can be a huge asset as a designer.

Whether you have a massive collection of numbers or just information that you want to showcase, this design style can be a great tool in your kit.