Carrie Cousins

UX Design / 12 Jul 2021

Responsive vs. Adaptive Design: Everything You Need to Know

It’s a no-brainer for most website designers that your finished product needs to look and work on every type and size of device. Gone are the days of creating multiple designs to accomplish the same goal.

It all comes down to choosing a responsive or adaptive design model to achieve a consistent website design at any size.

But what’s the difference between responsive and adaptive? Are they really just the same thing? Let’s take a look and explain everything you need to know.

Trends / 8 Jul 2021

Design Trend: Gaussian Blur

It’s the website design trend that you see everywhere but might not have a name for: gaussian blur.

It’s present in several other named trends that have been popular this year and for some time, including the frosted glass effect, creating image depth, bokeh backgrounds, and even for various other background techniques.

Here, we’ll look at this design trend, explore different reasons for deploying it (carefully!), along with examples to help you make the most of it.

Let’s dive in!

Navigation / 7 Jul 2021

An Introduction to Horizontal Scrolling (+ Pros and Cons)

Horizontal scrolling has come a long way from hero sliders. It’s now simpler to implement, somewhat more acceptable from a UX point of view, and offers plenty of creative opportunity.

A horizontal scrolling technique can be engaging and visually interesting. Conversely, some elements can be missed by users and it can present some accessibility challenges.

Here, we’ll look at everything horizontal scrolling, including pros and cons to help you figure out if this technique is right for your website design projects.

Reviews / 24 Jun 2021

Looka: An AI-Powered Platform to Design Your Own Logo

Using artificial intelligence, Looka is an online design tool that can help you create anything from a logo to a full branding suite.

It’s designed to use keywords and a little machine-learning magic to help jumpstart your creative process when you are ready to launch a business or brand now, but don’t have the materials to get started.

Here, we’ll look at Looka and the set of tools that make it a pretty robust platform for quick brand building.

Trends / 21 Jun 2021

Design Trend: Abstract Art Compositions

When you don’t know what to use to illustrate a design, the answer might be abstract art.

It’s a growing design trend that – when done well – uses interesting shapes, colors, and combinations to create something that means almost nothing but is visually interesting.

There’s no wonder that designers are using this concept.

For startup websites without photography to designs for companies that aren’t sure how to represent an almost-post-COVID world visually and everything in between, abstract can be a workable choice.

Layouts / 17 Jun 2021

How to Design a Captivating Web Questionnaire

We’ve all run across them – web questionnaires or surveys that were so simple and delightful that they were actually fun to fill out.

Sadly, that’s the exception to the rule. More often than, surveys are clunky and cumbersome.

You can design a captivating web questionnaire with the right thought process. It’s a mix of question planning with visual elements and cues to make the process user-friendly and somewhat seamless.

Here’s how you do it.

Business / 10 Jun 2021

8 Skills Designers Need to Thrive in Today’s Market

This is not another article about how the pandemic has changed the way we work.

The reality is that plenty of creative professionals – especially freelancers – have been working from home and in remote environments for a long time. It’s probably why so many of us were quick to adapt when so many others hopped on Zoom or Slack for the first time.

But there are some skills you need to stay relevant in today’s job market in addition to that adaptability that you likely already have. If you are thinking of advancing your career (and who isn’t) as a freelancer, at your current job, or by changing jobs, keep reading.

Trends / 7 Jun 2021

8 Design Trends That Are Fading Fast

Almost every year, we kick off with a list of design trends that we think will dominate projects in the coming year. While we’ve gotten pretty good at identifying hits, there are also some misses.

These trends might fade due to a lot of different factors, but commonly they are just difficult techniques that don’t apply well across different types of projects.

It looks (and works) great in one application but is flat somewhere else.

Here’s a look at some of those trends that are fading fast. (And if you want to see our full list of web design trends for 2021 you can find it here.)

Instagram Templates / 4 Jun 2021

8 Tips for Designing Instagram Stories That Don’t Suck

Instagram stories are one of the hottest social media formats. The vertical format allows creators to share videos, photos, and mixed media content in a streaming medium, and introduces an entirely novel layout to design for.

The tricky part is creating stories that are enjoyable, shareable, and help people engage with your account, brand, or even get clicks to your website.

Here, we’re going to look at eight ways to create Instagram stories that help you meet goals, and stand out from the crowd.

Bonus: You can apply these design tips to Facebook stories as well.

Reviews / 3 Jun 2021

Userwell: Better Understand What Your Users Want Online

Insights into the user journey are a valuable tool for any website designer, developer, or business owner (regardless of industry). The right tool can help you make the right product decisions from real user feedback.

That’s just what you get from Userwell. It is product feedback management software to help you create and build products that users will want and love to use.

Here’s a look at the tool and how you can make it work for you.

Trends / 3 Jun 2021

2021 Mid-Year Design Trend Report: What’s Still Hot

At the beginning of each year, Design Shack does a roundup of trends that will likely influence the design landscape for the coming year.

Now that we are halfway through 2021 (can you believe it?) it’s time to look at which of those trends are thriving and which ones you can pass by.

Here, we’ll look at some fresh examples of the trends that are still hot for inspiration in your projects.

Graphics / 31 May 2021

How to Create a Disruptive Design (So It Will Get Seen)

If you really want to create a design that will make people look, it has to be disruptive.

While “disruptive” can be a bit of a hackneyed catchphrase, it is also at the core of what you do when you create something new. The goal is to get people to stop, look, and interact.

Disruption works because it is different from the norm. This can include anything from being at the forefront of a new trend to designing with an interesting font, color palette, or design pattern.

This description from Layla Acaroglu explains it perfectly: “Design is about creating something that adds to or iterates on the existing, and disruption is about creating a disturbance with the intent of changing a system. When combined, the practice of Disruptive Design is to create intentional interventions into a pre-existing system with the specific objective to leverage a different outcome, and more importantly, an outcome that is likely to create positive social change.”

Now how can you do it? We have a few ideas (and examples) for you.