Design Shack

Inspiration / 4 Jun 2020

20+ Business Card Mockup Templates (Free & Premium)

Designing a business card can be a truly fun and exciting experience – it’s basically the first step towards seeing your brand come to life! But as well as coming up with a unique and memorable design, it’s also important for your business card to fit in with the context of everyday reality, and appeal to those who will see it in different settings.

That’s where mockups come in. Business card mockups are the perfect way for you to see how your business card will look in real-life situations, before you commit to the design. Want to know what your card will look like when you leave it on a table at a cafe, or when you’re holding it out to a new potential client? No problem!

We’ve compiled a list of both free and professional business card mockup templates for you to choose from. Whether you want to see your card in someone’s hand, on a desk, or floating through the air, these templates will make that happen for you – just keep on reading and choose your favorites.

Inspiration / 3 Jun 2020

Upgrade Your WordPress Website With Kinsta

If you are running a website on WordPress, then you likely understand the value of managed WordPress hosting. Managed hosting helps keep your site up and running smoothly, often comes with backups, core and plugin updates, and monitoring security.

That’s a pretty expansive package that helps provide website peace of mind.

And you can get it all with Kinsta, a cutting-edge managed WordPress hosting provider with everything you need to take care of your website. (We trust it so much that we’re running this website on Kinsta.)

Inspiration / 3 Jun 2020

How to Edit a PowerPoint Template: A Quick Start Guide

Whether you’re starting from scratch and building a custom template, or have a PowerPoint template you’ve downloaded and want to customize, knowing how to edit a PowerPoint template is a great skill to have in your kit.

We’re going to walk you through editing a PowerPoint template step-by-step, explaining all the PowerPoint terminology along the way!

If you like the presentation template we are using here—Creativa—you can get it from Envato Elements. It’s a great multi-purpose template that’s great for all types of presentations.

Inspiration / 3 Jun 2020

How to Add Text to a Video Online: 7 Tips & Tricks

Everywhere you look in web design, the hero image seems to be replaced with a hero video. And many of these videos include some type of text elements to provide additional information that draws you into the design.

When done right, the result can be rather stunning. When done wrong, video and text elements fall short of conveying a proper message.

Here, we’re going to look at how to ensure your video and text combinations are understandable, readable, and functional in your next design project.

Let’s dive into our assessment of how to add text to a video online, and the rules you should aim to follow as you do so!

Inspiration / 2 Jun 2020

20+ Best Adobe Premiere Pro Intro Templates (Free & Premium)

Every video starts with an intro scene but not all video intros look great. However, you’ll never have to worry about it when using professional Premiere Pro intro templates to create your opening scenes.

The intro is arguably the most important part of a video. It’s what captivates the viewer and keeps them watching for the entire duration of the video. Whether you’re a videographer making professional films or making vlogs on YouTube, you should always pay careful attention to perfecting the intro scene. Especially if you want to grab the audience’s attention from the beginning.

In this post, we feature some of the best Premiere Pro intro templates you can use to create all kinds of intro scenes without an effort. There are templates for YouTube videos, promotional videos, sports videos, and much more. And all of them are made by professionals.

Grab a template and start customizing.

Inspiration / 2 Jun 2020

What Is a Wireframe & How to Design Them: A Beginner’s Guide

Every structure, every building, every design starts with a wireframe. It’s an important part of the design workflow that determines the success of the entire project.

Whether you’re working with digital user interface designs or banner designs, wireframes should be part of your design process. In this guide, we’ll help you understand what is a wireframe and why they’re important.

We made this guide for both beginners and advanced designers to convey the importance of wireframing. You’ll learn everything from how to design wireframes to the best tools for wireframing, tips for avoiding common mistakes, and more.

Let’s get started.

Inspiration / 1 Jun 2020

30+ Best Free Photoshop Brushes 2020

If you’re a professional designer or an illustrator who use Photoshop for design work you’ll find this collection of free Photoshop brushes quite valuable.

With the right set of brushes, you can go beyond your imagination to create unique graphic designs, illustrations, effects, backgrounds, and so much more using Photoshop. Of course, you don’t always have to pay to get the best brushes.

We scoured the web to find the best free Photoshop brushes and divided them into a few popular categories. Have a look.

Inspiration / 1 Jun 2020

Design Trend: Transparent Text With a Bold Background

Who said typography has to be boring? Designers are having a lot of fun with interesting type options, including the super trendy method of layering transparent text elements with interesting backgrounds, animations, and images.

There are plenty of ways to incorporate this website design trend into a project (or put your personal spin on it for printed projects as well).

Here are some ideas and inspiration to help you get started with using transparent text on a bold background.

Inspiration / 29 May 2020

100+ Best Modern Serif Fonts 2020

It’s time to delve into a collection of the best beautiful, modern serif fonts. Serif fonts are ideal for printed literature, detailed typography, or for creating a more formal effect. And these popular serif fonts really stand out from the crowd.

We’ve gathered more than 100 of the best modern serif fonts that you can quickly start using in your work. You’ll be amazed at what a difference they can make to your design project, compared to the more generic system fonts that get all too commonly used.

There’s nothing like a distinct serif typeface to really set your layout apart, and create something beautiful.

Many serif fonts risk feeling a little old a dated. Not these. Our pick of modern serif fonts all look fresh, innovative, and ready for creating design work that sets a trend! And our tips for choosing a modern serif font will help you pick just the right one for your project.

Inspiration / 28 May 2020

15+ Free Sticker Mockup Templates

Stickers are a fun and versatile way to promote your business, raise awareness for a cause, or simply get your brand out there. It’s not just little kids that are excited by the prospect of getting a sticker!

Regardless of what you’ll be using them for, it’s important to ensure that when your stickers have been produced, they look the part – and it can be tricky to do this before you receive them! That’s why sticker mockups are such a brilliant idea – they show you exactly what your sticker design will look like in real-life settings before you’ve even sent them to be printed.

Creating a professional and realistic mockup can be time-consuming and fiddly, which is why we’ve hunted down a selection of both free and premium sticker mockup templates, available for you to download and customize with your design. Read on to find the perfect mockup template for your stickers!

Inspiration / 28 May 2020

How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

Inspiration / 27 May 2020

How to Embed Fonts in PowerPoint

Using custom fonts in PowerPoint presentations is one of the best ways to make your slideshows look more professional and stand out from the crowd. But, what if you have to share the PowerPoint file with a team that doesn’t have those same fonts installed on their computers?

Don’t worry, there’s a quick and painless solution to this problem. In this guide, we’ll show you exactly how to embed fonts in PowerPoint so that you can share your presentations without having to worry about font issues ever again.

Keep reading to find out how it’s done.

Inspiration / 27 May 2020

Trend: Retro Serif Typography

Serif typography is having a moment. From thin lines to interesting shapes and even modern serifs, this trend is taking over new website projects. What’s great about serifs is that they can add a certain flair or mood to a design based on the style of letterforms.

This trend is using retro-style serifs in a number of ways. (Our favorite option is for display text that pairs a retro serif with a simple sans serif, to create some eye-catching contrast and variety).

Here’s how to use this trend with some examples that do it exceptionally well, covering a range of different design styles and niches.

Inspiration / 26 May 2020

15+ Best Affinity Publisher Templates & Assets 2020 (Free & Premium)

Affinity Publisher is a great, affordable alternative to Adobe InDesign. And much like InDesign, Affinity Publisher also supports pre-made templates. With Affinity Publisher templates, you can easily create professional-looking documents, brochures, flyers, and more with just a few clicks.

We handpicked some of the best Affinity Publisher templates to show you what kind of designs you can make with the software. You can download and use them for your own projects as well.

Adobe InDesign (IDML) templates are also fully compatible with Affinity Publisher. However, Affinity Publisher (AFPUB) templates offer more flexibility for customizing the design using the Serif software.

Still unsure whether Affinity Publisher is a good fit for you? Our Affinity Publisher FAQs might help!