Search Results For: tone

UX Design / 16 Feb 2016

How Emotion Can Impact Your Website Conversions

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.

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.

Graphics / 18 Nov 2015

The Evolution of Flat Design: Muted Colors

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.

Business / 16 Oct 2015

How to Hold a Meeting That Gets Everyone Excited About Design

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.

Business / 7 Oct 2015

Reinventing Your Brand: 5 Ways to Get Started

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!)

Inspiration / 19 Aug 2015

Monochromatic Color: How to Use It Effectively

While the thought of completing a design project with only one color might be intimidating, it can actually result in a pretty awesome aesthetic. Monochromatic color options are also a hot concept and can work for a lot of project types.

Monochromatic color is rooted in color theory and takes more than just picking a color and designing everything with it. You’ll want to consider the meaning and associations of the color you choose and how to make that hue work with other components in the page. Here, we’ll explore ways to help you better understand and effectively use monochromatic color in any of your design projects.

CV & Resume Templates / 17 Aug 2015

Designing Your Resume: Create the Perfect First Impression

Resume design is as much about content design as aesthetics. It’s great to have a resume that stands out and makes a potential employer say “wow,” but that wow factor has to keep flowing as they read through the contents of your work history.

It’s a delicate balance between design and content. Treat developing your resume as you would any other design project. Start with the content first. Develop all the things that need to be on your resume and then let that drive the look of the words on the page. (And we all know resume design can be a challenge because there is so much text.)

Graphics / 10 Aug 2015

Blurred Images in Web Design: How to Make Them Work

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.

Typography / 5 Aug 2015

Kinetic Typography: An Introductory Guide

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.)

Graphics / 15 Jul 2015

How to Create a Twitter Header Photo: Examples and Best Practices

With more than 302 million monthly users and 500 million tweets per day, chances are you are using Twitter to promote yourself, brand or business. (And if you aren’t using the 140-character platform, what are you waiting for?)

Twitter customization is a big part of your social media strategy. As a designer, creating a great header photo is an important part of the puzzle. Here we’ll take a look at ways to create a header photo and overall profile that stand out among the millions of other Twitter personalities out there and showcase a few pages for design inspiration.

Layouts / 3 Jun 2015

Asymmetrical Design: Creating Beautiful, Balanced Layouts

How do you feel about asymmetrical design? That simple question can sometimes spark a lot of debate among designers. Asymmetrical design can be one of the more complicated techniques to pull off, but when done well results in beautiful and eye-catching designs.

While the definition of asymmetry is the lack of symmetry or equality between two halves; it is not a lack of balance as some wrongly assume. Designers can use asymmetry to create balance and harmony even though two sides of the design do not mirror one another. Here’s how to get started.

Layouts / 12 May 2015

The (Sometimes Hidden) Meaning of Shapes

The shapes of objects in your design may be sending a message to users that you aren’t even aware of. Whether you put an image inside a square or circle or triangle can have an impact on what people think about that image.

Sometimes a shape is more than just a group of connected lines. The use of shapes can be obvious or subtle and appear within images or as elements in a design. Here, we will look at common shapes used in design projects and the signals they may convey.