Graphics

Inspiring advice, tips, and suggestions for improving your graphic design skills, logo design, working with templates, and more.

AI in Logo Design: Should Designers Be Worried?

How to Design a Logo / 14 Feb 2025

AI in Logo Design: Should Designers Be Worried?

AI-powered design tools are making it easier than ever for businesses and individuals to create logos with just a few clicks.

This has sparked a debate: Does AI enhance human creativity, or does it pose a threat to professional designers?

Even though it’s now easier than ever to “generate” a logo using AI-powered tools, they don’t even come close to logos created by human designers.

So no, you don’t have to worry about AI replacing you as a logo designer. However, you shouldn’t completely overlook the capabilities of AI either.

In this article, we’ll explore how AI is being used in logo design, the benefits and limitations of AI-generated logos, and how you can leverage AI tools to your advantage.

Email Templates That Convert: Design Tips for Stronger CTAs

Graphics / 3 Feb 2025

Email Templates That Convert: Design Tips for Stronger CTAs

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for driving engagement and sales, but let’s be honest—not all emails get the results we hope for. Sometimes, they get ignored. Other times, people open them but never click through.

The secret to a high-performing email isn’t just great content—it’s a well-designed Call-to-Action (CTA). According to Campaign Monitor, a well-designed and optimized button-based call to action can increase conversions by up to 28%!

Your CTA is the bridge between interest and action. Whether you want subscribers to shop a sale, sign up for an event, or download a freebie, your CTA button needs to be clear, enticing, and impossible to ignore.

In this guide, we’ll cover how to design email CTAs that actually convert, plus some expert tips to take your email game to the next level.

Border Design: 8 Tips & Modern Examples

Graphics / 27 Jan 2025

Border Design: 8 Tips & Modern Examples

Graphic designers have been using borders for as long as they have been designing things. And they’re a fun element to play with. We’re taking a look at eight border design concepts (most of them you can actually download as project starters), along with tips for usage and some examples that you can try in projects.

Sometimes a great border can help separate your design for other elements, such as around the perimeter of an ad. Other times, a border can serve as an element to help break up different parts of a design, or frame messaging or content.

While borders are most frequently thought about in terms of print design, they can be a valuable digital design tool as well. A good border defines a space so that users know where a design begins and ends. (Pretty simple, right?)

10 Poster Design Ideas & Inspiration

Poster Design / 20 Jan 2025

10 Poster Design Ideas & Inspiration

Creating a poster can be one of the most fun – or frustrating – design projects that you ever take on. Posters are a highly visible, public design project that can lead people to attend an event or generate buzz about something.

These designs are often large in scale and there’s nothing like seeing something you create in a physical form.

Here, we’ve rounded up some great poster design ideas and inspiration to get you excited about your next poster design project.

How to Install & Apply a Lightroom Preset

Lightroom Presets / 3 Jan 2025

How to Install & Apply a Lightroom Preset

Whether you are a photographer or designer with a need to edit photos, Adobe Lightroom can be a great tool. Designed for photo editing, it allows batch work that can be cumbersome in programs such as Photoshop.

One of the most popular elements of Lightroom are the number of presets available. These tools within the tool are super filters that allow you to enhance photos, add creative effects and add functionality to your design workflow. If you’ve used any Adobe product, the feel of Lightroom is familiar and easy to learn. Get started by installing and using a few cool presets. Here’s how to do it.

Design Resolutions: 10 Skills to Master in 2025

Business / 31 Dec 2024

Design Resolutions: 10 Skills to Master in 2025

Staying relevant in the ever-changing world of design is always an uphill battle for designers. But it’s a good kind of challenge that makes you better each year.

There will be new design trends, technologies, and concepts to follow and learn about every year. The key to surviving and staying relevant is to always improve your design skills and nurture creative growth.

If you’re looking for inspiration to level up your skills this year, we have a few great suggestions for you. These skills will play an important role this year in helping you land more clients and grow as a designer. Make sure to add a few of these to your new year goals.

How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint Templates / 27 Dec 2024

How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

Blending Photography With Graphics: A Designer’s Guide to Mixed Media

Graphics / 18 Dec 2024

Blending Photography With Graphics: A Designer’s Guide to Mixed Media

Mixed media design is one of the most popular trends in graphic design that combines reality with creativity to birth visuals that not only stand out but also tell captivating stories.

There are many forms of mixed media that allow you to create visuals in different styles. Today, we are talking about creating hybrid visuals by blending photography in design.

If you ever felt inspired to try mixed media after seeing a cool poster or album cover art, then having an understanding of the basics is crucial to achieving the best results. So let’s dive in and figure out how, why, and when you should use mixed media art in graphic design.

How to Design an Awesome Flyer (Even if You’re Not a Designer)

Flyer Templates / 13 Dec 2024

How to Design an Awesome Flyer (Even if You’re Not a Designer)

This article will walk you through the process and logic of designing a basic but attractive flyer. We’ll look at how you can plan your content, find and implement some quality images and handle the alignment of a significant amount of content while not sacrificing too much of the visual appeal.

Design Shack reader Abigail submitted a Design Dilemma to ask about flyer design. After reading through our tips on designing presentations, she wanted to know how she could apply similar advice to flyer design. In our presentation article, we advised designers to keep their slides painfully simple, but flyers understandably must contain more information than a simple headline.

We’re going to answer Abigail’s question with a full-on flyer design project that you can either browse through for general design advice or follow along with for some solid experience.

Procreate vs. Photoshop: Should You Make the Switch?

Procreate Brushes / 6 Dec 2024

Procreate vs. Photoshop: Should You Make the Switch?

Designers are in love with Procreate. The app built for creative professionals makes designing on an iPad easier and more efficient in a completely new way. But can a $9.99 app be a realistic Photoshop competitor?

For some, the answer is a definite yes.

Here are five reasons Procreate could become your go-to design app (and five reasons why it might not). Plus, an introduction to what Procreate is, and why it might be the perfect app for you.

Texture in Digital Design: Adding Tangible Appeal to the Virtual World

Graphics / 27 Nov 2024

Texture in Digital Design: Adding Tangible Appeal to the Virtual World

Textures are an incredibly useful tool that can completely transform the look and feel of a design.

With a single layer of texture or a few brush strokes, you can give a vintage look to a modern illustration or instantly add depth to a shallow design.

Even though it often goes unnoticed, textures play a pivotal role in almost all kinds of digital designs. Even some of the most popular logos, websites, and app interfaces use textures to create more interesting and memorable designs.

Today, we take a closer look at the many uses of texture in digital design and how you can use it to transform your projects with a sense of realism and character.

Christmas Graphic Design: 5 Tips for Classy Festive Design

Christmas Templates / 25 Nov 2024

Christmas Graphic Design: 5 Tips for Classy Festive Design

From holiday cards to party invitations, to sales promotions, to baubles on a website design. It’s time to start thinking about ways to spruce up your graphic designs for the Christmas season!

The trick is creating something that looks classy and festive, not gaudy and overdone.

You want Christmas to be threaded through your design, not being garishly overwhelming!

Here are five tips to get you on your way with ideas to get you thinking about Christmas graphic design projects with some downloadable elements you can make your own.