Design Shack

Features / 16 Jan 2020

How to Design a Logo

On average, hiring an agency to design a logo could cost you around $1,000 – $10,000 or even more. At this point, you might even consider designing the logo yourself, right? Well, let’s make that happen!

Some designers and agencies make logo design seem like a herculean task. The truth is it’s not that difficult to learn how to design a logo by yourself because there are many different tools and easy methods for crafting a logo.

In this guide, we’re going to walk you through a few of those beginner-friendly strategies to show you how easy it is to craft a logo no matter what kind of a budget you have.

We also made the guide more comprehensive and useful to business owners and entrepreneurs who don’t have any design experience. By the end of this guide, you’ll be able to design a professional logo all by yourself. That’s our guarantee. Let’s get started, shall we?

Features / 15 Jan 2020

Background Textures

Choosing the right background texture for your website or design project can be tricky. Our series teaches you how to work with and incorporate background textures, as well as where to find stunning graphics to work with.

Whether you’re looking for tips on using and incorporating background textures in your designs, inspiring new styles and trends to explore, or guidance on what looks good (and what doesn’t!), we’ve got you covered.

Inspiration / 14 Jan 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.

Inspiration / 14 Jan 2020

20+ Best Fonts for T-Shirts (With Unique Design & Style)

Do you have a great quote or a one-liner that would look great on a t-shirt? Then download a unique font from our handpicked collection and make your own t-shirt design.

Custom-made t-shirts are quite popular these days. In fact, many designers are now making a living by selling their own unique t-shirts online using platforms like Shopify. All it takes is a great font and a clever quote to make a top-selling t-shirt.

The font plays a key role in such t-shirt designs. It needs to look trendy and resonate with the audience to truly grab their attention. You need a font with a unique design to achieve that goal.

We found a few of those unique fonts you can use to craft killer t-shirt designs. These fonts are perfect for making all types of t-shirts from hipster hoodies to casual t-shirts, tank tops, and much more. Have a look.

Inspiration / 13 Jan 2020

20+ Best Business & Corporate Fonts 2020

If you’re looking for the perfect font for a logo, business card, stationery, or any kind of branding for a corporate business, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, we bring you a curated collection of the best fonts you can use with designs related to business and corporate brands.

Whether you’re making a business flyer, poster, signage, or searching for a font for your brand identity, you’ll find all kinds of fonts in our collection that can be used with various design projects and purposes.

We’re also featuring a few helpful tips for choosing a font for your business, to help you with making this important decision!

Trends / 13 Jan 2020

Brochure Design Ideas & Inspiration for 2020

Almost every designer has created a brochure at some point. And there’s a strong possibility you’ll be asked to design another! Whether it’s for a client or to promote your own business, there’s an art to designing a brochure.

And then there’s an added challenge: brochure design isn’t just for print anymore. Digital brochures are just as popular as the hard-copy versions. It’s quite common for clients to request a printed brochure with a digital shareable file of the same design.

Don’t sweat this design challenge though. We’ve put together some classic and modern tips so you can create a brochure design that looks great, and is easy to read.

Reviews / 12 Jan 2020

Geocode and Embed Maps in Minutes With Positionstack

Mapping and geocoding can be a challenge when it comes to website and app development. But if you have the right tool, it’s a lot easier. That’s just what you get with positionstack, an accurate forward and reverse batch geocoding REST API that manages these tasks for you.

Forward geocoding is searching for a plain-text address or place name, and reverse geocoding uses latitude and longitude values.

Here’s a look at positionstack and how it can be useful for your projects.

Inspiration / 10 Jan 2020

30+ Inspiring Personal Portfolio Websites in 2020

I just love digging around portfolio websites for design inspiration. You can learn so much about the personality of a designer from the way a portfolio looks, and the interactions therein.

A portfolio site is also a great playground because it gives you the creative freedom you can’t always express with a normal client project.

Here, we have a roundup of personal portfolio websites that can impart a dose of instant inspiration. Explore new ideas, design trends, and themes that you can take and use in your own projects.

Inspiration / 9 Jan 2020

20+ Wavy Backgrounds & Textures

A well-chosen background can help to highlight the key part of any design. It’s like the theatre on which your design performs. Whether you’re designing a website header, social media post, mobile app, or a greeting card, choosing the right background will go a long way towards making your design look more creative and unique.

Which is why, as designers, you should always be adding all kinds of different backgrounds to your collection of resources.

It will allow you to add variety to your designs and make each piece stand out from the rest.

Inspiration / 8 Jan 2020

20+ Best Photoshop Watercolor Brushes

Watercolor design is a popular trend, not just used in digital backgrounds, but also in greeting card and wedding invitation designs. In this post, we’re sharing the best Photoshop watercolor brushes for creating your own unique watercolor designs.

If you’ve been looking for a way to make designs look more vibrant with colors, using a watercolor-themed design is the best way to get that job done. Of course, you can’t create an authentic watercolor effect with just any Photoshop brush. You need brushes that have been handcrafted with watercolor strokes and swashes.

We’ve found a collection of watercolor-themed Photoshop brushes created by professionals, most of which include brushes based on real paintbrush strokes. Feel free to download and experiment!

Inspiration / 7 Jan 2020

30+ Best Fonts for Resume + Cover Letters

Writing the perfect resume or cover letter takes careful creative thinking. And choosing one of the best fonts for a resume or cover letter can help your words have an impact, look professional, and stand out!

Of course, the contents of these documents are the key thing. But you do need to carefully consider the design of your resume or cover letter to make it appear professional.

In addition to finding the right resume template to represent yourself, choosing the best font for your resume and cover letter is one of the most important tasks that requires attention. It might determine whether you’ll come across as a true professional or an amateur (especially for any creative position).

There are many different styles of fonts you can choose to design a resume or cover letter. To help you get a headstart, we handpicked a collection of the best fonts for resume and cover letters to help you find the right font for your design.

Best of luck with your job application!

Inspiration / 7 Jan 2020

15+ Best Photoshop Smoke Brushes

Have you ever wondered how designers create those beautiful smoke effects in posters and photo manipulations? Well, all you need is a quality Photoshop smoke brush and you can create those same effects all by yourself.

A smoke brush can be quite useful on many different occasions, whether it’s for adding a bit of artificial smoke to a cup of coffee, creating a fog-like effect, or adding a stylish fading effect for a poster.

We browsed the web and handpicked a collection of the best Photoshop smoke brushes you can use to create all kinds of smoke effects. These will be great additions to your arsenal of graphic elements.

Inspiration / 6 Jan 2020

20+ 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.

Business / 6 Jan 2020

14 Tips for Speeding Up Your Website in 2020

It’s not a trick question: is your website fast enough? Page load times can impact everything from how long users stay on your site (or if they see the content), to search rank and overall conversions.

Speed matters on two fronts – for desktop and mobile devices – with mobile speed mattering more than ever. Not only does your website have to load fast; it needs to load fast everywhere.

So how do you do it? Start by running a Google PageSpeed test to see where your site ranks (you’ll get a few suggestions for speeding up your site there as well). Then, start making these tweaks to make your website lightning fast this year.

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.