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Carrie Cousins

Carrie Cousins

Carrie is a freelance writer with years of experience in web and graphic design. Sports fanatic. Information junkie. Designer. True-believer in karma.

CF Spark: A Powerful Text to Image AI Design Tool

Reviews / 15 Nov 2022

CF Spark: A Powerful Text to Image AI Design Tool

Sometimes your design idea needs a little extra push to bring it to life. A new tool from Creative Fabrica allows you to create designs from text to image, backed by artificial intelligence.

You can design and post images for yourself or even use the tool to create design elements that you can use and monetize in projects or marketplaces. You simply enter a text-based search query, which generates four images using powerful AI technology.

Here’s a look at the tool, how it works, and how you can use it.

5 Tips for Online Security in 2024

Business / 14 Nov 2022

5 Tips for Online Security in 2024

It’s time to revisit your online security practices. Between remote workers logging into networks, to using public wi-fi or other online tools, you need to ensure that your data and information are safe.

This isn’t just a lesson for businesses either. While data integrity is vital for companies, it is just as important to keep your personal information safe.

Here are 5 tips for online security in the coming year.

And the good news is all of these things are relatively easy – and inexpensive – to do!

10+ Trends for Pairing Fonts in 2024

Font Collections / 7 Nov 2022

10+ Trends for Pairing Fonts in 2024

Trends in typography seem to evolve more quickly than many other design trends. For a long time, website designers stuck to font palettes packed with sans serif typefaces. But that feels like ancient history now!

Today’s range and variety of web fonts make for much more interesting design possibilities, font pairings, and visual themes.

We’re taking a look at trends for pairing fonts with a beautiful example of each, covering a wide range of font families and aesthetics.

25+ Portfolio Design Trends in 2024

Trends / 7 Nov 2022

25+ Portfolio Design Trends in 2024

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.

Lunacy: Breeze Through Graphic Design Projects

Reviews / 31 Oct 2022

Lunacy: Breeze Through Graphic Design Projects

Admit it, you are always looking for quicker, more efficient ways to complete projects – even graphic design tasks. Lunacy is a piece of free design software from Icons8 that can help you do just that.

It’s packed with AI-powered tools to speed up your work, giving you a new edge in your design work, plus a range of built-in graphics to help you “build design like a Lego”.

Today, we’ll take a look at this tool, highlight its key features, and explain how you can make it work for you.

Everything a Web Designer Will Need to Know in 2024

Business / 27 Oct 2022

Everything a Web Designer Will Need to Know in 2024

The job title “web designer” keeps expanding. Depending on your role and how many people are on your team, the term “web designer” can mean a number of things, and the scope that it covers seems to keep growing with every year that passes.

It can be beneficial for you to be familiar with multiple roles to help be the best, most functional, web designer you can be in 2023.

Here’s everything you need to know. From having a grasp on your job description, to the visual elements of web design, to the functional elements of how a web project needs to work and perform.

8 Regular Maintenance Considerations for Your Website

Business / 20 Oct 2022

8 Regular Maintenance Considerations for Your Website

It might not be the most fun topic when it comes to your website, but it may be one of the most important: regular maintenance.

If you launch a website and then never go back and work on it, it will eventually stop working. The user experience will deteriorate over time and you won’t be able to maximize the impact of your site. As the first impression that many customers have with you, an up-to-date and well-functioning website is a must for any business.

Here are eight crucial regular maintenance considerations to help you keep your website in top condition.

Design Feedback Is Easier With Claap

Reviews / 14 Oct 2022

Design Feedback Is Easier With Claap

What if you could get time back in your day with better and more efficient meetings and design feedback sessions? Claap is designed with this solution in mind.

Claap is an asynchronous video collaboration platform that can help design teams make better, faster decisions without endless meetings or messaging threads that you get lost in.

The tool can help you spend less time in meetings and is ideal for hybrid design teams.

Here, we’ll take a look at Claap and how it may work for you.

Design Trend: QR Codes Everywhere (Tips to Use Them Well)

Trends / 10 Oct 2022

Design Trend: QR Codes Everywhere (Tips to Use Them Well)

It looks like QR codes may be back – and here to stay. QR, which stands for quick response, is a bar code that most phone or tablet cameras read that provides a link to something online.

A tool that seemed like it had all but vanished re-emerged as a form of contactless information for things like menus or even to collect payments (such as PayPal, Cash App, or Venmo QR codes).

Using QR codes is more than a design trend; it can be a highly functional component of many design projects.

Here are some ideas for using them well (with a few examples from Envato Elements).

After Effects vs. Premiere: What’s the Difference?

Premiere Pro Templates / 7 Oct 2022

After Effects vs. Premiere: What’s the Difference?

Video has likely become an important part of your website design or marketing strategy. From video hero images to short YouTube videos that help explain a product or service, video is a growing aspect of design.

Have you been asked to edit, create or adjust video for a client yet? Chances are it will happen.

Here, we’re going to look at two popular video tools from Adobe to help you get a crash course what tool is best to use for video projects – Adobe After Effects or Premiere?

Should you choose one, the other, or both? And are they the right fit for your next project?

10 Tips for Design That Puts Customers First

Business / 6 Oct 2022

10 Tips for Design That Puts Customers First

As an online shopper or buyer, you likely notice bad customer experiences before the good ones. A design that puts customers first feels seamless and intuitive and is pretty frictionless from the point of shopping to completing a transaction.

This kind of mindset is important in every project. A solid customer experience will keep users coming back for your product or service. You created a pleasant shopping destination that helped them find what they were looking for and buy it in a manner that felt safe, secure, and easy to manage.

The design can contribute to that quite a bit. Here are some tips to help you create a design that puts customers first.

Design Trend: Creative Scroll Arrows

Trends / 3 Oct 2022

Design Trend: Creative Scroll Arrows

Scroll arrows are a common design element with many sites using a small icon to help users navigate down the page. It’s nothing new, and it’s been around as a visual indicator for decades.

What’s new is that more designers are experimenting with more creative ways to use these elements to create additional engagement and visual interest. Whether it’s the design of the scroll arrow itself, it’s placement, or animation and visual effects. There’s a lot of creativity at work!

Here’s a look at the creative scroll arrows design trend and ways to make it work in your projects.