Articles - Page 116

Reviews / 24 Nov 2020

Best Data Recovery Software for 2025: 7 Top Picks

It’s inevitable: At some point you will lose a project due to a crash, virus, or by accident.

But you can be ready to recover information and data quickly with the right data recovery software. There are a plethora of tools on the market – some paid, some free – that can help you bet lost files back.

Here, we’re going to look at 7 of the best options so you have one of these tools at the ready when you need it. Perfect for designers, developers, or anyone who wants to have a magic tool up their sleeve when the worst happens!

Before we go ahead and look at the best data recovery software, here’s a staggering stat shared by Remo Software, one of the leading data recovery software companies: 0.93% of hard drives failed in 2020. That’s a serious number of data loss scenarios. We recommend you take necessary precautions while working from home on your devices and always choose a good piece of data recovery software.

Business / 23 Nov 2020

7 Effective Personal Branding Tips for Designers (+ Examples)

Branding is an important aspect of every business. Not just for big companies and startups, but it’s also true for freelancers and professionals. Especially for designers.

The way you create your personal brand will play a key role in your success as a professional. Because your brand is how your clients perceive your work and your business.

How do you create a successful personal brand? As the brand futurist Simon Mainwaring said, you should first “define what your brand stands for, its core values and tone of voice, and then communicate consistently in those terms.”

That’s exactly what this article is all about. To help you define your core values and the tone of voice to create a successful personal brand as a designer.

Whether you’re starting out in the design industry or looking to refresh your existing branding style, follow these tips to make sure you build a winning personal brand for your business.

Inspiration / 16 Nov 2020

20+ Best Twitch Banner Templates in 2025 (Free & Premium)

Branding is an important part of finding success on Twitch. The way you design your channel, the emotes you use, and the way you present your streams becomes your brand. And that’s what helps you to stand out among hundreds of thousands of other streamers.

If you look at any successful Twitch streamer, you’ll notice that they all have personalized setups with creative Twitch stream overlays, custom emotes, and banners. Of course, they can afford to hire designers to get everything custom-made. But what if you’re just starting out and have a tight budget?

Thankfully, you can now easily design custom Twitch banners for your stream using pre-made templates. In this post, we highlight some of the best Twitch banner templates that you can use to create a unique banner for your stream without an effort.

Graphics / 13 Nov 2020

5 Ways Designers Can Master Digital Drawing

To draw or not to draw — that is the question, and it’s a controversial one among designers. Some say it isn’t mandatory for designers to know how to draw nowadays, but others maintain that it’s a must-have skill for every artist. Famous concept artist Bryant Koshu shares these views:

I once heard my colleague say: “I’m a designer but I can’t draw.” In his opinion, his job was about designing and searching for optimal solutions rather than creating art. But after a while, he enrolled in a drawing course to learn the basics and didn’t regret it.

Accessibility / 9 Nov 2020

Accessibility Compliance: What It Means & Why It Matters

Having access to the Internet is a basic human right. The same applies to being able to access and use a website as well, especially for a person with a disability.

Designing a website to be accessible to disabled people is now more important than ever. In fact, it’s now required by law. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) law and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were established to ensure that all websites are properly designed for accessibility.

As a result, many brands and businesses are just now discovering the importance of accessibility compliance. Even Beyonce and her company had no idea about accessibility guidelines until her company was served with a lawsuit.

Whether you’re a web designer or a corporation, it’s important to be aware of the accessibility guidelines to make sure your designs are compliant with the law.

In this post, we introduce to you the basics of web accessibility compliance and why it matters. We’ll also show you how to make a website compliant with ADA and WCAG.

Reviews / 6 Nov 2020

Prototype Faster & Easier With Justinmind 9

Justinmind 9 is revamped and ready to help you create website and app prototypes faster. The new release is packed with features that will make work life easier. (And that’s something we could all use right now.)

Here’s a look at Justinmind 9 and all the features you’ll find with this tool.

Whether you’re looking to take your UX design to the next level, save time with the array of tools you use, or start building fully interactive prototypes, Justinmind is a tool very much worth considering.

Logo Templates / 5 Nov 2020

25+ Best Gaming & eSports Logo Templates for 2025

Gaming has turned into a billion-dollar industry. Now it’s even bigger than Hollywood itself. If you’re thinking about starting a career or business in gaming, now is the best time.

Whether you’re starting a gaming magazine, a YouTube gaming channel, or your own eSports team, one thing you must have is a killer logo to represent your branding and identity. We’re here to help you with that.

We handpicked some amazing gaming logo templates and eSports logo templates to help you craft the perfect logo for your gaming business. A great thing about these templates is that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to use them. You can easily edit and customize them using Photoshop or Illustrator all by yourself.

Have a look and see if you can find a gaming logo that matches your brand identity.

Reviews / 27 Oct 2020

accessiBe: Optimize for Accessibility Using AI Technology

Improving a website for accessibility is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. It’s not only required by law but also, as a web designer, it’s your job to make sure websites are accessible to everyone, including for people with disabilities.

For many years most designers and agencies avoided the topic of website accessibility for believing that it costs way too much to make a website accessible. The truth is it’s an effortless process that you can now entirely automate using AI-based software at a very affordable cost.

accessiBe is a tool to do just that. It uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimize websites for accessibility. In this review, we take a closer look at how useful this software really is.

We’ve even installed accessiBe on our own site to see how it works. Keep reading to see it in action!

Logo Templates / 21 Oct 2020

20+ Best Free Logo Templates

Are you looking for inspiration to design a unique logo for a new brand or a business? Then you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re featuring some of the best free logo templates you can use with your personal and commercial projects.

Logo design is one of the biggest industries in graphic design. There are various ways to design a logo. You can design it yourself, hire a freelancer, or use online tools. It could cost you as little as $5 or over $10,000 to get a proper logo designed.

But, why spend any money at all when you can design a logo all by yourself. All you need to do is download a free template from this list, open it in Photoshop or Illustrator, and start editing. It’s that simple. (We’ve included a couple of premium ones too, for a more expansive set if you need it!)

Accessibility / 19 Oct 2020

9 Website Design Tips for Different Generations (Yes, It Matters!)

It’s a no-brainer for most designers that you plan a project based on a certain target audience. It might be for people who like soda or buy video games or have an affinity for athletic shoes.

But another consideration can often be overlooked – designing for different generational segments. Age can impact how people use websites, apps, and mobile devices. Generational differences can affect your design scheme, accessibility plan, and even the language and colors in the design.

If you haven’t thought about these differences, now is the time to start. With wider website audiences all the time, designing for different generations can help your project be more successful for more people.

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!