Carrie Cousins

Mobile / 15 Oct 2020

Design Trend: Modern Tappable Targets (And How to Do It)

A solid tap target can make or break your mobile website or app. The size, shape, location, and overall design of the button or link determines whether a user successfully completes an action or not. It might seem like a small thing, but can be one of the most important elements of a design.

Modern tappable targets are easy to recognize, work in an expected manner, and encourage engagement.

Today we’re looking at how to design them, ways to craft effective call-to-action items, and considerations around color and font choices.

Typography / 12 Oct 2020

9 Reasons Why You Should Use Open-Source Fonts

This is a love letter of sorts to an underrated design tool: open source fonts. Open source fonts are licensed in such a way that anyone can use them for any project at no cost.

Many open source fonts come with the standard Open Font License (you can find it here), and it gives you huge flexibility in how you can use them, the types of projects they are suitable for, and how they can be distributed.

There are plenty of reasons to try open source fonts for projects online and in print. And every typeface featured in this post is open source!

Reviews / 12 Oct 2020

Mediastack: Add News and Headlines to Your Website or App

Today we’re looking at how you can generate a news feed for your website with sources from around the globe with mediastack. The free and simple REST API can help you deliver news in real-time, adding relevance and credibility to your website or app.

Here, we’re going to take a look at mediastack and how you can make this tool work for you, pulling in news from sources such as CNN, The New York Times, Euro News, and ESPN, into a simple and reliable API.

Reviews / 9 Oct 2020

Design Bundles: The Ultimate SVGs Site

If you are looking for images and templates – who isn’t these days – Design Bundles is a one-stop-shop for deals on all kinds of design resources.

From free design resources to premium elements, you will find an extensive collection of tools that will make your design life that much easier. (And who doesn’t love a deal on highly usable design tools?)

Here, we’re going to take a look at Design Bundles and the extensive collection of SVGs available from the site. It’s a great place to grab a fantastic deal on your next pack of design resources.

PowerPoint Templates / 30 Sep 2020

How Many Slides to Use in a Presentation? 5 Tips

There’s nothing worse than a presentation that goes over time or poorly-designed slides that cram too much information onto the screen at once.

While there are a lot of things that can dictate how many slides to use in a presentation, key factors include how long you have to speak, what content you are presenting, and the visual nature of the content. (Some speakers don’t need slides at all to keep audiences engaged!)

Here, we’re breaking down common presentation times with a guide for how not to overload slides, and use them well—no matter what type of talk you are giving.

Sketch Templates / 29 Sep 2020

15+ Best Sketch Tutorials (Sketch App for Beginners)

If you have been waiting to experiment with Sketch, there’s never a better time to dive in than right now. The Mac-based vector graphics editing tool for user interface and experience design has become a go-to tool for many designers and developers.

If you haven’t started using it yet, or already downloaded the software and are feeling a little overwhelmed, then you are in the right place.

Here, we’re going to look at some of the best Sketch tutorials to help you jumpstart your familiarity and skill level with the software, whether you’re completely new, or looking to level up your skillset.

Email Templates / 15 Sep 2020

15+ Best Responsive & HTML Email Design Tutorials

How do you design an email that will result in plenty of opens and strong click-through rates? There’s a little art – and luck – that goes into email design.

Whether you’re looking at the graphic and visual design, or the responsive HTML development side, email design can be a tricky business.

Here, we’re going to look at some tutorials to help you learn everything you need to know about email design, from some basics to more advanced techniques to help you make this most of this digital marketing tool.

Instagram Templates / 8 Sep 2020

15+ Best Instagram Design Tutorials

Get ready to up your digital marketing – or just personal profile – game with stellar design tips and tricks for Instagram.

We all know that the photo-based social media platform is so much more than images. It’s also a collection of videos, sound, and plenty of design elements to help bring your stories and information to life.

Here, we’ve gathered a collection of tutorials that will help you create amazing Instagram designs that you can use and share.

Reviews / 8 Sep 2020

Find Just the Right Free Photo With Freerange Stock

Using stock photography can be a tricky business. You have to find the right photo in collections with thousands or even millions of choices, and then you need to know that the photo is actually safe (and legal) to use for your projects.

That’s where Freerange Stock comes in. The stock photo service recently passed 750,000 members and specializes in delivering modern, high-quality stock images. The best part for you is that images are free to use.

Here, we’re going to take a look at Freerange Stock and the perks of membership.

Lightroom Presets / 2 Sep 2020

How to Create & Save a Preset in Lightroom

If you’re an Adobe Lightroom user, learning how to save a preset can make your workflow much smoother. Today we’re going to teach you how to create your own Lightroom presets in a few quick steps.

A Lightroom preset is a “package” of settings that can speed up the photo-editing process. Presets can be reused to create the same effects over and over again. Using them can take a lot of time out of the editing process for repetitive actions.

We have a full guide to Lightroom Presets if you want to learn more, or find presets that you can download and use right away.

Layouts / 1 Sep 2020

Rethinking Table Design for Mobile

There might be a problem with that table on your website. It doesn’t look or function well on my phone. It sounds like a simple problem (that should have a simple solution), but might not be quite as simple as you’d think.

There are a variety of reasons that could contribute to this issue – lack of responsiveness, creating tables as images, odd data formatting that makes a mess – but there are also viable design solutions.

Let’s walk through ways to rethink table design so that your data and information looks just as amazing on a phone as it does on any other larger device.

Photoshop Actions / 31 Aug 2020

15+ Best Photoshop Action Tutorials

Photoshop actions are a great tool if you are a fan of Adobe’s photo editing software.

Actions allow you to complete a series of tasks all at once, and on multiple files, after creating the initial action. Actions can help you perform routine edits quickly with one click or include modal controls that let you enter values in a dialog box while playing an action.

Here, we’re going to look at some of the best Photoshop action tutorials, guides, and explain and how to use them.