Carrie Cousins

PowerPoint Templates / 11 Apr 2018

7 Tips for Finding the Perfect PowerPoint Presentation Template

A great PowerPoint presentation template can wow audiences, and help you to build a slideshow quickly and easily. While you can create your own custom template, there’s a whole market of affordable PowerPoint templates that you can customize. But what should you be considering when deciding which one to choose?

PowerPoint templates are a great option for designers – or practically anyone – who wants to create a polished, professional-looking presentation that doesn’t take a lot of time to put together. Here’s what to look for to ensure that you are getting the perfect PowerPoint template for each specific presentation.

Software / 4 Apr 2018

8 Best iPad Apps for Design & Illustration

When you want to work on the go, being able to keep a project moving along on an iPad can be a great solution. The device is more portable and a lot easier to travel with than a more bulky laptop. The challenge is finding the right apps and tools that help you make the most of your skills.

Thankfully, there are some great options out there that compare to and even exceed the usefulness of some desktop software. While all of these apps work on different iPad models, there’s increased functionality for most if you have an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil. These are eight of our favorites (in no particular order).

Wedding Design / 2 Apr 2018

10 Design Tips for Wedding Cards & Invitations

Wedding season is here. Whether you’re planning to design invitations and cards for your own wedding, or for a client or a friend, there are several wedding card design tips that you’ll want to consider!

Wedding invitations present an opportunity to work with some beautiful elements and printing techniques to create a piece of art that isn’t part of the usual workflow. From scripts with long tails to foiling and amazing paper stocks, designing wedding cards and invitations can be a lot of fun (and a bit of a design challenge).

The big thing to keep in mind is that the invitation should evoke an emotional connection to the couple. It should reflect their personality and style.

Layouts / 30 Mar 2018

7 Tips for Creating a Time-Saving Design for Users

Users have short—very short—attention spans. That’s probably evident just looking through your website analytics. This makes it more important than ever to deploy design techniques that help users scan and get the most information from your website in the shortest time possible.

It is your job to understand what users need to glean from the design at a glance and help them get that information, so maybe they’ll stick around and explore your website. Here are a few ways to do it!

Inspiration / 28 Mar 2018

6 Unique Notebooks for Designers

Some of the best ideas start with a pencil and paper. That’s why it’s a good idea to always have a sketchpad or notebook nearby to record those ideas when inspiration strikes.

How you use those concepts and sketches can determine what kind of notebook is best for you. (I actually have several go-to notebook styles – one for my desk and a small one that’s always with me in my bag.)

Here, we’re showcasing six unique notebooks for designers that can help you capture ideas and even facilitate projects.

Layouts / 21 Mar 2018

10 Web Design Commandments for Every Project

Do you have a rulebook when it comes to website design? There are some rules that apply to pretty much every web design project—let’s call them the “web design commandments”.

No matter how large or small the website, these rules are the foundation for good design. If you follow along with these basic guidelines, and make them part of your thinking for every project you start, you’ll avoid many of the pitfalls that designers can stumble into!

Layouts / 15 Mar 2018

10 Tips for Designing Landing Pages That Don’t Suck

A landing page is the first experience your customer (or potential customer) will have with your brand. It has to convey information, encourage a call-to-action, and reflect your personality. It’s difficult! Today we’re sharing ten landing page design tips to help.

If you just stick your logo and product image on a template, it’ll be obvious. The page won’t provide the experience or information your customer expected when getting there. Whether it is hard to navigate, difficult to read, or a mess of visuals, designing a landing page that doesn’t suck takes planning and precision. Let’s take a look at ten tips on how to do it better.

Software / 12 Mar 2018

10 Best Safari Extensions for Web Designers & Developers

Apple’s Safari web browser is beloved by many Apple and Mac enthusiasts. It’s a solid alternative to Chrome (and often does a great job on the privacy and security front). There are some great Safari extensions that can help designers increase their productivity, and create a better browsing experience.

You can find all of these extensions in Apple’s extensions gallery, but we’ve curated some of our favorites below. Whether you’re wanting to improve your typeface recognition, understand what’s powering a website behind the scenes, or better check your grammar—we’ve got you covered!

Typography / 5 Mar 2018

Serif, Sans, Script & Slab: 4 Font Types Explained

Always wanted to know the difference between serif, sans, script, and slab fonts? Look no further. Take your typography game to the next level, and quit guessing if certain typefaces or font pairs work together. Back your logic with a little design theory!

Having a better knowledge of fonts and typography can make explaining your choices to clients easier (always a bonus), and will give you more confidence when selecting font pairs. Here’s a primer (or refresher) on four common font types and how to use them in your design projects.

Business / 28 Feb 2018

6 Finance Apps for Your Freelance Business

A great set of financial apps and tools can make it easier to manage your freelance business. From tracking receipts and invoices for clients, to making sure you’re ready for tax season and have all your expenses accounted for. There are plenty of great apps to help you manage your freelance business.

Characteristics of great finance apps are that they are secure, cloud-based, include automation tools to help you work more efficiently, are affordable, come with financial accounting and reporting that you can understand and customer support when you need it. All of the apps on this list fit the bill.

CSS / 26 Feb 2018

13 Best Ways to Learn CSS Grid

CSS Grid an increasingly popular method for creating complex responsive web design layouts that render more consistently across browsers. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with CSS Grid, so we’ve collected 13 of the best ways to get started learning today.

Rather than old-school methods such as tables or the box model, CSS Grid allows you to create more asymmetrical layouts and more standardized code that is cross-browser compatible. Most major website browsers already support CSS Grid and it is a W3C Candidate Recommendation, which would formalize it as a standard practice. It’s widely believed that CSS Grid will be the future of website layouts.

Mobile / 21 Feb 2018

5 Fun Augmented Reality Apps for Design Inspiration

Augmented reality is a growing trend in application design and development. Apple has invested in the technology with recent updates (ARKit), and plans to include even more AR features. So how do you start planning to design for augmented reality?

It starts with playing with apps already on the market to see how they work. What do you like (or dislike)? Here are five AR apps to help jumpstart your design inspiration and hopefully get you thinking about this next generation technology. (And how to make it look great and function well.)