Design Shack

Inspiration / 19 Feb 2019

30+ Best Watercolor Photoshop Actions

Whether you’re designing a unique website background, a poster, sketch, or 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.

Inspiration / 19 Feb 2019

20+ Best Free Lightroom Presets 2019

Adobe Lightroom is one of the most useful tools you can use to optimize your photos and graphics. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, it has features suitable for everyone.

What makes Lightroom more powerful is its ability to extend its features with third-party presets. These presets allow you to instantly apply effects, enhance photos, adjust tone and mood, and much with just a few clicks.

Finding amazing Lightroom presets is not difficult. There are plenty available on platforms like Envato Elements. But, for those of you who are on a tight budget and can’t afford premium presets, we made this list of best free Lightroom presets you can download and use to enhance all kinds of photos.

Trends / 18 Feb 2019

10 Web Design Trends to Watch in 2019

The average life of a website is three years. And design elements – such as color and typography – often get updated more frequently than that. That’s why it is so important to keep up with web design trends.

Doing this allows you to make small tweaks to your design today so that it won’t be out of date tomorrow. So which web design trends do you need to be on the look-out for this year?

This guide will help you create an on-point design plan for 2019!

Inspiration / 15 Feb 2019

30+ Best Instagram Filters for Photoshop

Filters are one of the best features of Instagram. Everyone loves the idea of prettifying their photos in an instant and sharing them with their friends and family. But have you ever wanted a set of Instagram filters for Photoshop? I know I have.

The good news is, you don’t just need the Instagram app to apply filters to your photos. You can actually create even more beautiful photos with customizable filters using Photoshop actions and upload them to not just Instagram, but any other social network you want.

We handpicked a collection of free and premium Instagram Photoshop actions for creating creative and stylish Instagram filter effects in Photoshop. With a single click, you can apply these effects to your photos and customize them to your preference.

News / 15 Feb 2019

A Year of SiteGround in 2018

Hosting Design Shack with SiteGround has been a great move for us. We’re here to share a quick update on how things are going, alongside some new developments from SiteGround in 2018!

Whether you’re looking for managed WordPress hosting, or something much more custom and complex, SiteGround has you covered.

They’ve released a host of new updates and features (many with WordPress in mind), making it a great choice for hosting a site that runs on this CMS.

Inspiration / 14 Feb 2019

20+ Best Free PowerPoint Templates

Not everyone can afford to buy premium PowerPoint templates to create their slideshows. But, that doesn’t mean you have to settle for a default template. There are dozens of incredible free PowerPoint templates to try out!

A great thing about the design community is that there are designers out there who willingly share their amazing work for free of charge, including gorgeous free PowerPoint templates.

To help you save some money, we scoured the web and handpicked a collection of the best free PowerPoint templates with modern and professional designs that you can use to make various types of presentations. Good luck with your presentation!

Trends / 13 Feb 2019

50 Best Website Color Schemes of 2019

Does it ever seem like certain website color schemes just get all the attention? As with every other aspect of web design, there are color schemes that tend to trend more than others. Bright colors, stark palettes, and even some mismatching schemes are elements of color that are trending.

Here’s a look at some of the best website color schemes of 2019 (in no particular order). For each, we’re also sharing the color codes that make up the key elements of the design, so it’s easy to play around with these color schemes yourself too!

Inspiration / 12 Feb 2019

100+ MacBook Mockup Templates (PSD & Vector)

Whether you’re looking for a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or MacBook mockup, we have you covered today. We’re featuring a mix of photo mockup templates, realistic illustrations, and flat/stylised versions of these MacBook notebooks.

Totaling over a hundred different MacBook mockups, in all shapes and sizes, these are great for dropping in your own work, applications, wallpapers or examples to give them a unique look-and-feel. Some are free, some cost a few dollars, but we really like them all!

Inspiration / 12 Feb 2019

15+ Brochure Cover Design Templates + Ideas

The cover of a brochure is the most important part of the design for grabbing attention. It needs to be crafted in a specific way to suit your target audience, and these brochure cover design templates can get you off to a great start!

To help you find inspiration for your cover design, we handpicked a collection of elegant and professional brochure cover design templates that you can use to find brochure design ideas to easily make the perfect cover for all kinds of brochures. From corporate companies to creative agencies, luxury brands, products, and much more.

If you see a design you like, you can download the template and use it with your own project as well. All of the templates below are from Envato Elements, which allows unlimited downloads for a monthly subscription.

Business / 11 Feb 2019

30 Tips to Learn Web Design in 30 Days

Is learning the basics of web design still on your “someday” list? Why haven’t you got started yet? We’ve put together 30 tips and resources to help you start learning web design this month (and maybe even find yourself a new career path!)

Graphic designers, print designers, and creatives looking to learn something new or break into website need to quit procrastinating. Every day that you don’t take that first step leaves you one day further behind everyone else!

Follow these steps to begin learning how to create your first website, industry best practices, and much more—all in 30 days!

Trends / 11 Feb 2019

8 Top Graphic Design Trends of 2019

What’s hot in graphic design? One of the things people always want to talk to me about is graphic design trends. Here’s a recap of the top graphic design trends of 2018, plus a little preview of what’s likely on the horizon for 2019.

It’s such an interesting topic because there are trends that change slowly over time – just look at the long evolution of flat design to where we are now – and others that seem to flip overnight. Should you always rush to use the latest graphic design trends in your work? Of course not. But it’s helpful to pick up new ideas, find inspiration, and see what types of techniques and styles are shaping your industry.

Inspiration / 8 Feb 2019

40+ Best Photoshop Patterns of 2019 (Free & Pro)

If you’ve been looking for a creative tileable pattern to make your designs look even more beautiful, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re sharing a collection of the best Photoshop patterns with various design styles and aesthetics (both free and premium).

When designing a background, whether it’s for a book cover, business card, or a website, using a creative pattern goes a long way to add a personal touch to the overall look of the design. Not to mention that patterns also help highlight certain types of content above the background as well.

Crafting such a pattern is not easy. So why not save the trouble by simply downloading some of the amazing premium and free Photoshop patterns that we’ve handpicked just for you.

Inspiration / 7 Feb 2019

25+ Best InDesign Brochure Templates

Creating the perfect brochure design can be a challenging task, even for a professional designer. Especially when you’re using it to showcase an entire business or product with just a few pages. These InDesign brochure templates can help save the day.

With our handpicked collection of the best InDesign brochure templates, you’ll be able to find inspiration to design all kinds of brochures from leaflets, tri-fold designs, corporate company profiles, business documentation, and much more.

We’ve included template designs of all kinds to suit different types of businesses and brands so that you can find a brochure design for all your needs.

Trends / 6 Feb 2019

Portfolio Design Trends in 2019

When was the last time you updated your design portfolio? (If you’re like me, it’s probably been a while.) Maintaining a fresh portfolio is a good way to show off your skills to potential clients and can be helpful when looking back on work for annual contest entries.

If you’ve fallen behind with your portfolio design, or just need a new portfolio in general, this is a great opportunity to create something using trendy techniques and visuals.

A modern portfolio using design trends can make a great impression. A portfolio is also a representation of your skills — so design wisely! Here’s a look at some of our favorite portfolio design trends for 2019.

Font Collections

This is our series of beautiful, inspiring collections of fonts and typefaces. These articles feature bold poster fonts, decorative scripts, and everything in-between! Find the perfect font for your next design project with one of these collections.

How to Design a Logo

Everyone wants their logo to stand out, and represent their brand perfectly. But it's no easy task! Our helpful feature will walk you through how to design a logo. From brainstorming logo ideas to practical logo design tips, you'll be in a great position to create the perfect logo for your business.

Photoshop Actions

Photoshop Actions are the perfect timesaver to save you doing the same processing on multiple images. Using other people's actions can help you tap into creative techniques, cutting edge post-processing styles, and beautiful effects. In this series, you'll learn how to use Photoshop Actions and find professional examples to use in your own design work.

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.