Articles - Page 161

Browse hundreds of articles, tips, and inspiring design collections. Find helpful design advice, or the perfect resource for your next project.

Learn UX Basics: What, Why, and How?

Reviews / 11 Feb 2016

Learn UX Basics: What, Why, and How?

Before you can become a User Experience (UX) designer, you need to understand the importance of UX, the reason it exists, what the goal of the UX designer is and how they think.

Today we’re featuring a course in which you’ll learn all about UX Design, what it is, what UX designers do, how UX designers think, what tools UX designers use, and how to move forward in the field of UX.

5 Tips for Perfect Forms in WordPress

Reviews / 10 Feb 2016

5 Tips for Perfect Forms in WordPress

Do you ever find yourself filling out an online form and then rolling your eyes? It happens way too often. But it doesn’t have to.

You can create great forms that are easy to use, include security features and that look great with ease right within your WordPress website. Great forms can help users sign up for important features on your website and help you collect valuable user data in a safe and manageable way. Today we’re looking at how to create one, using the popular CaptainForm plugin for WordPress.

How to Create a Design That Lives in Space

Graphics / 8 Feb 2016

How to Create a Design That Lives in Space

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.

30 Premium Font Bundles

Inspiration / 2 Feb 2016

30 Premium Font Bundles

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.

How to Critique Your Own Work as a Freelance Designer

Freelancing / 1 Feb 2016

How to Critique Your Own Work as a Freelance Designer

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.

How to Design Killer Micro-Content

Graphics / 25 Jan 2016

How to Design Killer Micro-Content

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.

3 Typography Trends for 2016 (With Examples)

Typography / 20 Jan 2016

3 Typography Trends for 2016 (With Examples)

Design trends. You can hardly do anything without seeing them, they pop up everywhere, and they can give your design feel “current” when used well.

Today, we’re going to take a look specifically at three typography trends and why we hate to love them. While these three styles – retro, watercolor and all caps – are everywhere, designers just can’t help but love them (even if they don’t want to). Here’s why, paired with some excellent examples of the trends in use.

Learn a New Skill in 2016 With Treehouse

Business / 19 Jan 2016

Learn a New Skill in 2016 With Treehouse

Are you ready to learn a few new tricks? Make this the year that you expand your knowledgebase and take greater control of your career.

You can do it with Treehouse. The online learning tool can help you learn a skill that you don’t have, help you get familiar with the latest tools and trends, or take the first step toward learning to code. Here’s a look at how it works!

7 Tips for Better Brainstorming

Business / 18 Jan 2016

7 Tips for Better Brainstorming

Just because you work alone most of the time doesn’t mean you can’t have an awesome brainstorming session. While brainstorming is often considered a group activity, you can have a successful session in your home office as well.

Not sure where to start? We can help you with that today as well. Grab a pen, paper, tablet, or whatever your tool of choice is, and join us as we take a look at how to improve your brainstorming and idea generation techniques!

DIY and Web Design: What We Can Learn From Home Renovation

Business / 11 Jan 2016

DIY and Web Design: What We Can Learn From Home Renovation

If you’re anything like me, you see design everywhere. It’s not just on websites, posters, or business cards. All the same concepts you use for work also get used in other aspects of your life.

So, what about the other way around? Have you ever thought about how projects around the house inspire you to become a better designer? What tricks and techniques carry over from do-it-yourself projects to design work? Let’s dive in and take a peek at a few things you can be on the look-out for!

7 Ways to Design a Killer ‘First Screen’ for Your Website

Graphics / 6 Jan 2016

7 Ways to Design a Killer ‘First Screen’ for Your Website

It’s time to talk about first screen design. The first screen is that initial glimpse that a user gets into your website. It’s everything above the scroll, whether the user accesses a website from a desktop, tablet or mobile device.

The information you include on this “first screen” is the key to website success. The design can entice and keep users clicking, or force them to navigate away from the page. What needs to be on the screen before users start scrolling? Let’s take a look.

Designing With Constraints: Thinking Inside the Box

Graphics / 4 Jan 2016

Designing With Constraints: Thinking Inside the Box

It’s one of those fundamental parts of design we don’t talk about much: Designing within the rules. We talk a lot about creativity and innovation, but sometimes leave out one of the ideas that pushes most projects along, and that’s actually creating something with a lot of rules attached. It’s thinking “inside the box.”

Design constraints are those little keys to consistency that help brands establish visual identity and guide voice. These restrictions can come in a number of forms, and like them or not, it’s something you are going to have to deal with.

And here’s the good news: Constraints can actually help you become a better designer.