Design Shack - Design Articles, Inspiration & Guides

Typography / 16 May 2018

What’s the Best Font for Your Resume or CV?

It might sound a little silly at first, but the typeface you select for your resume design can speak volumes to potential employers. The font represents your design style and professionalism. It can also impact how the person looking at your resume perceives the information at hand.

The typeface you select makes a first impression with every person you might meet in the interview or hiring process. (They’ll likely see your resume before they ever meet you.) Make sure to set the right tone from the start.

Here are a few top-notch font choices that are resume-ready.

Inspiration / 16 May 2018

50+ Best CV & Resume Templates of 2018

A first impression can either make or break your chance of landing a dream job. So choosing one of the best resume templates can give you a fantastic head start. These modern CV templates for Word, Pages, and InDesign are the perfect starting point for creating your new and improved resume!

These beautifully designed resume templates will help you stand out from the crowd, help you showcase the right skills, and improve your chances of landing the job. Some of the templates are free, and others cost a few dollars. All of them are absolutely beautiful!

Having a modern, professional resume doesn’t necessarily mean you will land the job, but it’s a great way to make sure you get the interview! And once you’ve chosen one, remember to read through our guide on how to customise a CV or resume template to make your own mark.

Inspiration / 15 May 2018

20 Best Newborn Lightroom Presets for Baby Photography

Every parent wants to take beautiful photos of their newborn baby to create precious memories. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make those photos look professional with just one-click? That’s exactly what you can do with these newborn and baby Lightroom presets

Photos you take with your digital camera or your iPhone don’t always look all that professional. But there’s no need to hire a professional photographer to capture beautiful photos of your newborn baby. Using this collection of Lightroom presets, you can instantly make your photos look more adorable than ever with a few simple clicks.

In this collection, we’re sharing a set of Lightroom presets specially designed for improving baby photos. With the help of these presets, you’ll be able to capture every adorable moment of your newborn just like a professional photographer.

Business / 14 May 2018

5 Signs You Need to Fire Your Client (And How to Do It)

Nothing can make your life miserable like a bad client. From scope-creep to those that never pay on time, sometimes you just have to let a client go. It’s a tough decision and you don’t want to burn any bridges, but often it’s best to dissolve the relationship and move on.

When do you know it is time? Today, we’ll look at five situations when it’s time to fire a client with some ideas on how to do it tactfully.

Inspiration / 10 May 2018

25+ Best Monogram Fonts

Creating a monogram is a popular design practice for logos, badges, signage, insignias, and signatures (it actually dates back to the early 350BC!). If you’re working on a monogram design, this collection of monogram fonts and typography is a helpful starting point!

Many brands, products, and businesses still use monograms to craft unique logos that stand out from the crowd (like Volkswagen or Coco Chanel). And we’ve handpicked several unique monogram fonts with decorative designs that you can use for your various projects.

Best of all, you can download all of them to try them out! Envato Elements gives you unlimited access to over 500,000 design resources for a single price.

Inspiration / 9 May 2018

Top 10 Podcasts for Designers and Creatives

Ready for a good listen? A great podcast can provide inspiration as well as a mental break while you work or relax. There’s no shortage of outstanding podcasts for designers and creatives, covering web design, creative life, and much more!

Today we’ve gathered a collection of great podcasts for designers and creatives, to give you a quick start with filling up your podcast player for the next commute!

Inspiration / 8 May 2018

20+ Best Watercolor Photoshop Actions

Whether you’re designing a unique website background, a poster, sketch, or a creating an artistic photo composition, using a watercolor Photoshop action can make your design stand out from the crowd.

A watercolor effect it’s not an easy effect to master when created from scratch. It takes a lot of work, time, and skill to achieve a realistic watercolor effect in Photoshop. The good news is that using a watercolor Photoshop action can help you skip the learning curve and experiment with a watercolor effect in just a few clicks!

In this collection, we’re featuring some of the best watercolor Photoshop actions you can use to turn your photos into watercolor art, craft amazing backgrounds, and do much more.

Have a look and start downloading. You can grab all these Photoshop actions for a single price when you subscribe to Envato Elements.

Trends / 7 May 2018

Design Trend: Dark & Moody Designs

Good design can really get you in the mood. Today, we’ve got a collection of dark and moody website designs that will help inspire you to create a distinct atmosphere in your design work.

While most dark collections have a bit of a “downer” vibe, not all of these designs have that feel (although color has a lot to do with how you feel when you look at them). This showcase is more than a gallery, we hope it inspires you to create a dark, moody design of your own.

Inspiration / 3 May 2018

20+ Best Cursive & Script Fonts

If you’re looking for a different type of a font to make your design stand out, a cursive font can be a great choice. Cursive and script fonts aren’t new, but they’re a less common choice for many designers. This gives you a chance to use cursive fonts to add some originality to your next project.

Fonts play an important role in every design. Whether you’re designing a book cover, a website header, social media post, greeting card, or a poster, the typography is the main aspect that captures everyone’s attention.

In this collection, we’re featuring some of the most beautiful and modern cursive fonts you can use for your various types of designs. All the fonts come from Envato Elements and you can download them all for a single price.

Graphics / 2 May 2018

How to Customize a Website Mockup Template

A website mockup template can be a design life-saver. It makes it easy to show off a website design concept in a setting that represents actual use (on many different devices). But how can you customize a website mockup template and drop in your own design? Here’s how.

There are two ways to get started. You can either create your own website mockup template to use in projects or download one to get started quickly. The great thing is that there are so many template options out there to help clients visualize a new design in real-time.

Here’s everything you need to know about customizing a template (as well and finding a great template, to begin with).

Typography / 30 Apr 2018

10 Tips for Using Text Effects That Don’t Suck

Adding effects to typography can be a source of heartache for designers. Clients demand a drop shadow or embossing, and you’re stuck with text effects that threaten to ruin a project. What you need is an arsenal of text effects that don’t suck so you can help the client pivot to something a little more classy.

The trick to all of these effects is using them with purpose. Good typography doesn’t need “help.” If a font isn’t working alone, it’s not going to work with a bunch of techniques added either. (You’ll only make something bad even worse.)

The best text effects are nearly invisible to non-designers. Or text effects are used to add meaning to typography or lettering. Here are a few tips for using text effects that don’t suck with some pretty cool examples.

Graphics / 27 Apr 2018

10 Tips for Perfect Flyer Design

If you aren’t a print project regular, designing the perfect flyer can be somewhat nerve-wracking. But it doesn’t have to be. With a solid content plan and a great designer (that’s you), crafting the perfect flyer that will entice and engage users is simple.

There’s a wonderful feeling to designing something, then having it printed and feeling it in your hands. This is one reason flyer design can be rewarding and a lot of fun. Here’s how you do it.