Design Shack

Inspiration / 3 Jul 2020

40+ Clean & Minimal Landing Page Templates (Free & Pro)

You may already know about the power of landing pages. It’s one of the greatest online marketing strategies many businesses use. Instead of directing your traffic to a website homepage, sending traffic to a landing page is a great way to increase conversions.

Did you know that 48% of marketers build new landing pages for each of their marketing campaigns? Unfortunately, building and testing landing pages isn’t easy. Fortunately, we’ve collected a selection of great landing page templates, that will have you up and running within a few minutes (all for less than $20).

Mockup Templates / 3 Jul 2020

20+ Flyer Mockup Templates (Free & Premium)

Flyers are a classic marketing and advertising tool that allow you to promote your products and services to a huge audience, and raise awareness of your business or brand. But what looks good on the screen when you’re designing it may not translate perfectly into paper, so it’s a good idea to use a flyer mockup to ensure that your design has the desired effect.

Creating mockups from scratch is time-consuming and requires both time and expertise, so why not save yourself the time and effort and use one of the many flyer mockup templates available online?

We’ve even saved you all of the hard work, and rounded up some of the best free and premium mockup templates that are available for instant download, meaning you can be customizing your very own mockup in a matter of minutes.

Let’s take a look at some of the best flyer mockup templates that we’ve found.

Procreate Brushes / 2 Jul 2020

Procreate vs. Photoshop: Should You Make the Switch?

Designers are in love with Procreate. The app built for creative professionals makes designing on an iPad easier and more efficient in a completely new way. But can a $9.99 app be a realistic Photoshop competitor?

For some, the answer is a definite yes.

Here are five reasons Procreate could become your go-to design app (and five reasons why it might not). Plus, an introduction to what Procreate is, and why it might be the perfect app for you.

Font Collections / 2 Jul 2020

25+ Free Brush, Script & Hand Lettering Fonts

Type is what meaning looks like, says Max Phillips the founder of Signal type foundry. This quote alone proves the importance of using proper typography in designs. And these free brush, script, and hand-lettering fonts will get you off to a great start.

Typography is not just about improving readability but also giving an identity and meaning to your titles, headings, and paragraphs. You can’t achieve that goal without a great-looking font.

Even if you can’t afford a high-quality premium font, try to at least get a free font that gives meaning and personality to each and every design you work on. Never settle for the default fonts.

You don’t have to spend hours scouring the web to find a great free font. In fact, we did the heavy lifting for you.

In this collection, we’re featuring some of the best free brush, script, and hand-lettering fonts you can download for free. Have a look.

Features / 1 Jul 2020

PowerPoint Templates

Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) is the go-to choice for creating presentations. This series shares tips and ideas for working with PowerPoint, as well as beautiful PowerPoint templates and themes to make your presentations look stunning.

Microsoft PowerPoint is the most popular presentation software on the market. Everyone from school kids to CEOs uses it to create all kinds of presentations to share with others.

A PowerPoint template is a design tool to help you jumpstart that process and create a presentation with a more custom look and feel. While there are a handful of templates that come with the software, most designers avoid them because they are commonly used, making third-party free and premium PowerPoint templates a solid option.

Trends / 1 Jul 2020

8+ Web Design Myths Busted: Old Ideas & Modern Best Practices

There are a few ideas about website design that seem to never fade away, even though they are not so true anymore. Some concepts haven’t stood the test of time, and it’s time to revisit whether we should be adopting them anymore.

Do people love sliders? Does simplicity = minimal design? Do you really need to include every page of your site in the navigation? There’s quite a bit to unpack!

Here, we’re going to look at a few web design myths and share modern best practices so you don’t fall into any of these old-school traps.

Mockup Templates / 1 Jul 2020

20+ Beanie and Hat Mockup Templates (Free & Premium)

Beanies and hats are one of the most popular branded “swag” items out there, and are a common choice for businesses wanting to create products with their brand or logo on them – it’s both a functional item, and a marketing tool! But what if you go through all the trouble of creating a design, choosing a hat style and paying for manufacturing and shipping, only for it to arrive and look nothing like you imagined?

That’s where our list of mockup templates comes in. We’ve curated a list of the very best, professionally designed mockups out there for you to choose from – simply insert your design into the template, and you’ll instantly have a realistic idea of what your design will look like.

Plus, we’ve included both free and premium options, with a range of different hat types and aesthetics, to make sure that there’s something for every possible need.

Let’s get started!

Google Slides Themes / 30 Jun 2020

25+ Best Free Google Slides Themes & Templates 2020

Google Slides is one of the best tools for creating presentation slideshows, especially with the number of free Google Slides themes and templates available. It has quickly gone from being a free PowerPoint alternative to become the go-to app for creating professional slideshows.

Another great thing about Google Slides is templates. With a great Google Slides theme or template, you can instantly craft a beautiful presentation in just a few minutes without expert design skills.

Today we wanted to show you how amazing Google Slides templates can be. So we brought you a collection of free Google Slides themes and templates to use in your projects.

Usually, a premium Google Slide template is the best way to design a professional-looking presentation. But, there are some amazing free templates you can use with your non-commercial and personal projects. Here are a few of those templates you can download right now.

Font Collections / 29 Jun 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.

Business / 29 Jun 2020

SEO for Designers: A 101 Primer

Most designers don’t consider search when it comes to building a website. That’s a mistake. Optimizing for search is just as important as information architecture and should be part of the product design from start to finish.

This is true both for your own knowledge that the project stands the greatest chance of commercial success, and for your client too!

Whether you are starting a new project or redesigning your portfolio, working with search engine optimization in mind from the start is a smart idea.

Here, we’ll look at some of the most basic SEO tips to help you get started on the right path.

PowerPoint Templates / 26 Jun 2020

30+ Animated PowerPoint Templates (Free + Premium)

In this collection, we’re featuring some of the best, animated PowerPoint templates (both premium and free) to create stunning presentations filled with stylish object and transition animations.

Designing a PowerPoint presentation is not an easy job. It requires a lot of work and time. When crafting presentations, most people completely ignore one of the key elements of a creative slideshow: animation. Adding creative animations and effects not only makes your presentation slides interactive, but it’s also useful when emphasizing key points and data.

Of course, you don’t have to be a PowerPoint expert to design animated slideshows. You can simply use a pre-made animated PowerPoint template. We handpicked these templates just for you.

We’re also featuring a series of tips for creating animations and transitions in PowerPoint with some extra pointers and advice.

Mockup Templates / 26 Jun 2020

20+ Postcard Mockup Templates (Free & Pro)

Regardless of whether you’re designing a postcard for travel and tourism or business and marketing, there’s no denying that everyone loves receiving one of those small colored cards in the mail – as long as it looks good, of course! But how to make sure your design will look as good in someone’s mailbox as it does on your computer screen?

Mockups are the answer, and we’ve done the research for you and rounded up the very best postcard mockup templates from a range of graphic design sources.

We’ve included both free and premium options with a range of different styles and designs, to make sure there’s something for everyone – and they’re all ready to download instantly.

Features / 25 Jun 2020

Instagram Templates

Are you making the most of one of the most popular – and visual – social media channels? Instagram is one of the best social media options for designers because of the visual nature of the network.

Post photos or videos and stories to connect with other users and showcase your work or personal brand. With or without filters and special effects, Instagram can be an impactful way to interact with a large number of users on social media.

In this series, you’ll learn how to supercharge your Instagram account. Craft beautiful posts and updates, improve your branding, find templates, and use Instagram in a new, creative way!

Mockup Templates / 25 Jun 2020

20+ Stationery Mockup Templates (Free & Premium)

If you’ve recently designed a logo for your startup, or have rebranded and changed up your business aesthetic, you’ll no doubt be wanting to know how your branding will look in different contexts – on letterheads and business cards, or in email signatures, or on corporate swag such as coffee mugs and laptop stickers.

One of the key areas of merchandise that typically includes a business logo or branding element is stationery, and this can include anything from business cards and leaflets to notebooks and product labels. Trying out your logo on different stationery items is a great way to see how it looks in different settings and scenarios – and it’s also super helpful if you’re looking to get branded stationery printed for your business!

These fabulous stationery mockup templates will allow you to do just that, giving you an idea of how your branding will look on different stationery items without having to commit to printing or producing those items until you’re sure they’re perfect. Featuring a range of both free and premium options, you’re bound to find a suitable mockup for your purposes in the following list.