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Happy holidays! It almost seems too early to think about holiday shopping, but the season is already upon us. It pays to plan ahead with your holiday gifts, and make sure you’re not part of that last-minute rush! Have you made your list yet?
We’ve gathered some of our favorite new tools and toys to give – and get. So grab a pen and starting making your list, and checking it off with items from our 2015 Designer Gift Guide.
Creative Market is a community of over a million creatives who buy and sell amazing design assets. You’ll find over 350,000 resources like fonts, graphics, templates, add-ons, stock photos and themes to improve your creativity and productivity. This month, Creative Market wants to present an amazing Big Bundle of their best products to Design Shack readers.
For November, they’ve rounded up 91 items worth over $1,100 — yours for just $39. Read on to see what’s included or jump straight to the bundle page for more information!
Bad habits can break your freelance career before it even really gets off the ground. You’ve heard the saying that it takes 90 days to create a habit? It’ll take you at least that long to break a bad one.
So don’t let any of these career-killers sneak into your work (and if you are dealing with one of these bad habits, make a point to break it now). Today we’re delving into a collection of hang-ups and habits that you’re definitely best off leaving behind!
We have a sort of chicken and egg dilemma today: What comes first? The copy, or the typeface? There is a fine line between designing with or without the words.
Typography and design can alter what you think about when you read words. Think back to the process. Do you pick a typeface first or wait for the copy? (Without giving too much away, the secret is collaboration. If you don’t work together, you’ll only end up with a blank canvas.) Here are a few different scenarios and suggestions.
As a designer, you likely have a closet of finished projects and another equally massive digital file. What do you keep? And what do you do with all that stuff?
The answer is not easy but there are plenty of available tools that can help you manage your design files. Good work practices, multiple filing options and a little bit of keep and toss mentality can go a long way. Here, we are looking at a handful of tools that can help you collect, manage and store your design files.
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.
Is your design starting to look old? Old and out-of-date user interface elements can make a site feel much more dated than it actually is.
Here, we look at eight UI elements that you should eliminate from your design plan. But that’s not all; each “don’t” comes with a suggestion for modernizing your website. We’ll get that design looking up-to-date in no time!
Great photography can be the visual that makes a good design project a great one. And it is up to you to ensure that your images are practical, usable and captivating.
As a designer, it is your job to provide art direction before, during and after the photo taking and editing process so that you get a collection of images that work for your brand and your projects. Today, we’ll look at 12 ways to help you make the most of those images for any project type. (You might want to bookmark this guide so you can refer to it next time you are ready to think about getting new images.)
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.
Stripes are a fun addition that can add visual interest and depth to design projects in a variety of ways. But stripes are more than just the blue and white nautical patterns that you might be envisioning.
Stripes can take on a number of forms. Vertical or horizontal and from classic patterns to grid-based lined to backgrounds and image components, stripes are a great design option. Here are some ways to use them that you might not have thought about.
Although the format is not particularly new, SVG images are increasingly popular in the design of websites. All major web browsers support the format and SVG is changing the way we think about and render images for the web.
Why at they so popular? And what exactly is different about an SVG file? Today, we have the answers and everything else you need to know to get started with this file type. (As a little bonus, all of the images in this post are available in SVG from Creative Market.)
Lately you have decided that your brand – and look – has gotten rather stale. It happens. But you are already on the right path by knowing you need a brand refresh. Brands, small and large, are rebranding all the time. (You can peek at some of those changes on the Brand New blog.)
While this can be a daunting task, it can be easier than you think with a little planning and forethought. Today, we’ll look at five ways you can start down the path to a fresher, more visual brand identity. (And with these tips you can do it on almost any budget!)