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.
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.
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!)
If you’ve ever found yourself in a design rut, wondering how to come up with some fresh ideas, then you’ve no doubt experienced how refreshing it can be to experiment with a new design style that’s completely outside of what you typically produce.
Today we’re going to do exactly that. I’ve been fascinated with a particular style lately and just itching to give it a test drive. We’ll start by analyzing this style’s characteristics through the work of others and then proceed to building something on our own using what we learn. Read on to see the step by step process.
Colors, pictures, creativity; designers are quite obviously a group of people that tend to gravitate towards using the right sides of their brains… right? Or is this simply a stereotype that doesn’t necessarily ring true?
Is design exclusively artistic talent put to productive use or is it possible that the industry is equally full of analytical problem solvers? Let’s take a look at how designers think, whether you’re a right brainer or a left brainer, and how I’ve struggled through being a left brainer in an industry of right brainers.
There’s been a lot of recent chatter about banner ads. Are they fading? Are users actually clicking them? Are they dead? Are there better options available?
While it is true that banner ad clicks are in decline, that’s not the end of the popular online advertising format. While you can’t measure it, just seeing an ad helps create a user preference for that item, product or service. (Remember, ads have appeared on TV and in printed materials for decades without clicks to prove their success rates.) Today, we’ll look at 15 ways you can create banner ads that simply don’t suck. Take a look at the examples as well. They are 2015 winner of The Webby Awards for ad and website design. You can click through the images to learn more about each one.
Designers, by nature, are problem-solvers. Every project is a problem or challenge that involves helping other people understand something. Designers have to see through all the fog and clutter to create a solution.
This creative type of problem solving comes naturally in part, but some of the actions are learned. Have you ever stopped to think about how you work to solve problems? Here we will examine 10 ways that designers do just that with a collection of abstract images to inspire some of that problem-solving thinking.
It’s an undeniable fact: using blurred images is a trending web design technique in 2015. It seems like everywhere you look there’s some element of blur.
But this is not a solution to some of your photo problems. It’s a distinct technique that takes practice to perfect and attention to detail to get it right. So before you jump on the trend, think about the options for using blurred images to decide if it is right for you and how you can make the best use of this technique in your projects.
Kinetic typography seems to be everywhere these days. From television commercials to website landing pages, movable type is a popular visual tool. This popularity could come from a number of reasons but one obvious factor is that it catches your attention. People tend to be drawn to words and want to read them.
Kinetic typography puts this together with some simple animations to create words that move on the screen, grabbing your attention and engaging the senses. So let’s take a look at kinetic typography and how you can integrate it into some of your design projects. (Note: The examples in this article include animation; click the images for links to the original sources to see them in action.)
It’s an hour before deadline and your boss just handed you a design project to finish up. And it’s bad. Very bad. It has problems ranging from poor images to crazy color, typography choices to general sloppiness. What should you do? Can it be fixed?
There are a few things you can do to help salvage a bad design with the understanding that it won’t be perfect. But making it passable as a design project for your company might well still be an option. Here’s how!
Everywhere you turn, another designer is releasing a project featuring a minimalist design style. This focus on space, simplicity and beautiful typography is refreshing. And it’s a great option for a number of design projects. That might be one of the reasons minimalist design is so popular.
But the trend is not brand new. Minimalism has been around almost as long as design itself. It’s a technique that ebbs and flows, but always remains as one of the classic styles, making it a design choice that almost always works.