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Is your design project lacking that special pop? It’s likely what you are missing is enough contrast. Contrast provides differentiation between elements, making each one look more individual, prominent and special.
Design contrast is created in a number of ways, and using all different types of elements. From typography to color to space, creating contrast can take a design from bleh to wow. Here are five ways to do it.
Is there a connection between happy, sad, or funny and getting users to complete an action on a website? You bet there is!
Users connect to websites through branding and personas. This emotional bond happens visually at first but can have deeper linkages when it comes to long-term brand relationships. And elements of the design impact exactly how (or if) these conversions happen. Today we’re going to look a bit more closely at this connection between conversions and emotion, and consider how you can make the most of instilling a positive emotion in your audience.
When you think of space, the first thing that might come to mind as a designer is “white space.” Today though, we are going to look at outer space and how to design elements that live in the outer realms.
The trick to designing “in space,” as we’ll call it, is to avoid common traps and clichés. But an overall dark and starry aesthetic can be a fun way to do something a little bit different with a project. Join us as we take a look at a few examples, and tips for figuring out how this type of design can work well.
We’ve spent some time scouring the web for collections of brilliant handmade, vintage, script and sans serif font bundles that are on exclusive sale with impressive discounts. These font bundles are a great way to get the best value for money when buying fonts and typefaces.
These fonts range from wide variety of sans, sans serif to vintage and handmade script fonts. All of these fonts are premium quality, highly regarded in reviews, and would be a fantastic addition to your design library.
Working alone can come with a lot of perks, but there are some things that always seem easier when you are in a more structured group environment. One of these things is gathering feedback for your work.
With practice, you can learn to step back and provide a pretty good critique of your own design projects. It will take a little practice to get comfortable with the idea, but plenty of freelancers are quite good at evaluating their own work. If it’s not something you feel good about, this guide can help you learn to better critique your own work as a freelance designer.
The smallest parts of a design project can be the most important. It’s something we all know conceptually, right?
But do you ever get caught just filling in these details at the last minute? Does your micro-content suffer because you are ready to be finished with a project? Don’t let that happen. Plan out micro-content from the start to create better, more usable pieces that will help make the design better than you had hoped.
One screen divided in two. This might be one of the bigger design trends emerging right now. More and more websites are using design patterns that include two vertical or square panels placed side by side.
And it’s a nice aesthetic. The look is user friendly, can be adapted for a variety of needs, and helps guide navigation. It’s a trend that we are likely to see more of – and design – in the coming months. Today we are looking at a few great examples of split screen design with mini case studies and finding out how you can make the most of this design trend.
When you hear grid, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For most designers, it is often a horizontal based concept with columns across the canvas. This is especially true when thinking about web and digital design projects.
But what about vertical grids? It is just as important to create flow up and down the page as well. And there are a number of ways to do this with grid systems.
Trust. How often do you think about this concept when working through a design project? Probably very often if you are associated with e-commerce, but what about other types of design?
Trust is a key component of user loyalty, and a reason why people come to your company or brand. While a lot of trust comes from past performance and a brand’s track-record, it also comes from the design. How a website, poster or package looks can impact how users feel about it and whether they take the leap from casual looker to brand loyalist.
Today, we’re taking flat design to the next level. Not every project works with some of the bold, bright color choices that are commonly connected to flat design.
So don’t get stuck using them. Kick up your flat design scheme a notch with a more muted color palette. The subtle change can help give your site a trendy overhaul and help it stand out in the flat design crowd. Here we’re going to pick apart a few websites that are using this style exceptionally well to help you create a site using flat design and a muted color palette.
There’s long been a theory that serif typefaces are for printed projects and sans serifs are for website design. But with more high definition screens and great type options available, that rule just isn’t so much a rule anymore.
Whether you prefer serifs or sans serifs (or a combination of the two), the main objectives when choosing typefaces for digital design projects should be readability and legibility. Simple, you need to pick fonts that are sharp and easy to read on the screen. Part of this is related to usage, such as size and placement of text, and then to the style of typeface you choose.
The dreaded project kickoff meeting. It’s on your calendar. You can’t avoid it. But you can make it a more memorable event that helps generate creativity among the members of your team.
The start of every project should be marked with excitement and anticipation. It’s the time when you and your team get to learn about a new client or idea and really get to go back to the basics of brainstorming and idea generation. It can, and should, be one of the most important parts of a design project and it needs to be anything but boring.