Shutterstock has released their 2019 Creative Trends Report, based on billions of image, video, and music searches and downloads from more than 1.9 million creatives. The report comprises of three sections - major trends, rising trends, and global trends in 20 countries around the world. The major trends include Zine Culture, 80s Opulence, and Yesterday's Tomorrow. The … [Read more...]
How Good Is Your Eye For UI Design Details? Take This Quiz And Find Out
Seattle-based UX designer Alex Kotliarskyi has come up with an interesting visual quiz that tests your UI knowledge and attention to details. Titled Can't Unsee, the web-based game presents two choices of iOS interface designs, and asks you to pick which one is correct. You earn coins for every correct answer. The game is divided into three rounds (easy, medium, hard) of … [Read more...]
28 Epic Memes For Graphic Designers
Are you in the middle of a tough project with a stiff deadline? Is your boss or client being a d*ck? Are you tired of creating "Buy Two, Get One Free" flyers and banners? If yes, then indulge in some meme-therapy and brighten up your day. Scientific research has proven that memes help reduce work-related stress by stimulating the release of endorphins that trigger a sense of … [Read more...]
300 Beautiful Color Gradients For All Your Design Needs
Vibrant colors and gradients are one of the major trends in graphic, web, and UI design nowadays. To make life easier for designers everywhere, Paris-based graphic designer Leo Simon has compiled a set of 300 beautiful gradients into a Photoshop gradient file (GRD), available for free. We've shortlisted some of our favourites from Leo's collection and shared them below with … [Read more...]
Top 15 Graphic Design Trends Of 2019
Trends are movements in design that have gained mass enough usage that they become recognizable as a trend. They might have started off slow and been coming on for a number of years before they gained enough momentum to be considered a trend. Very few things in design have never been done before so some of these trends feel like they're referential of earlier movements of … [Read more...]
Shit Clients Say – 13 Most Unforgettable Quotes
How many times have you had a client send a list of "final" changes AFTER they've approved the design? What about when they ask you to find an image from Google, or copy someone else's logo, or when they tell you to deliver designs by Monday after briefing on Friday? We all come across unreasonable client demands on a daily basis, but the folks at BeeWits have a dedicated … [Read more...]
Top 10 Web Design Trends Of 2019
Previously, we featured the top graphic design and logo design trends for 2019. Today, we focus on emerging trends in web design with the help of this handy infographic by 99designs. The infographic features the top 10 web design trends to look out for in 2019, with relevant examples of each trend. These include black-and-white palettes, serif typography, organic shapes, … [Read more...]
7 Biggest Graphic Design Trends For 2019
Design trends are an important aspect of marketing for businesses and entrepreneurs. Using the latest design styles, imagery, and typography makes your brand appear contemporary to your customers, market, and competition. For designers and creatives, staying updated with the latest visual trends is even more important because you should be able to provide them to your … [Read more...]
This Brilliant Free Tool Can Remove The Background From Your Photo In Five Seconds
AI photo filter maker Kaleido has come up with a powerful online tool called Remove.bg that erases the background from any image in five seconds or less, and gives you a transparent PNG of the person/people in the image. It works 100% automatically, you don't have to mark the person or select the background and foreground layers manually. Just upload your image or enter its … [Read more...]
Simple, Useful Design Tips For UI/UX Designers
'Sparklin Design Tips' is a series of short, useful UI/UX tips by New Delhi-based digital agency Sparklin, shared every Tuesday on their social media channels. Using before-and-after mockup images, the team at Sparklin explains good UI/UX practices with visual examples, making them easy to understand and comprehend. Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned designer, these tips … [Read more...]
Top Graphic Design Trends Of 2019
With each passing year, we see new trends emerging in the world of design and old ones fading out. 2019 is all about finding a sense of order and beauty amidst all the chaos. Complex gradients and abstract geometry will remain prominent across design mediums. Expect to see more implementation of evolved patterns, broken grid layouts, brutalist design, isometric and … [Read more...]
2019 Color Trends: The World’s Most Popular Colors
Shutterstock has released its 2019 Color Trends report based on data from billions of image searches on their platform. By collapsing pixel data and hex codes, the team at Shutterstock was able to see what hues their users are downloading most frequently. Using this information they've compiled a visual report of the top three universally popular colors, as well as local … [Read more...]
How To Stretch Images With Complex Backgrounds Like Trees And Buildings In Photoshop
When you're designing a website or managing a social media page, sometimes you need a wide format image for your Facebook cover, Instagram post, or website hero image. But what if the image you like has a portrait orientation or isn't as wide as you want? A couple of posts ago, we featured a handy tutorial that showed you how to trick the Content-Aware Scale tool and extend … [Read more...]
8 Biggest Graphic Design Trends Of 2019
2018 was all about big, bright, and bold graphic design. Brands vied for attention with the use of vibrant colors and powerful typography. These trends will continue to dominate in 2019, with more and more brands implementing vivid colors, complex gradients, duotones, bold fonts, and geometric shapes in their designs. Expect to see more vibrant hues, futuristic color … [Read more...]
Top 20 New Features In Photoshop CC 2019
Adobe has released the newest version of Photoshop CC (version 20.0) that comes with exciting new features for designers, photographers, and illustrators. The new Frame Tool lets you easily mask images into placeholders. There's a new Content-Aware Fill workspace that provides you an interactive editing experience with plenty of customizations. There's a Color Wheel that … [Read more...]
Funny 30-Second Animation Shows What Every Website Looks Like Nowadays
A seamless user experience (UX) is one of the most important factors for website success, but most websites nowadays display annoying pop-ups that ask you to enable notifications, accept cookies, follow them on social media, subscribe to their newsletter, etc. Most of these pop-ups just end up diverting the user's attention for a few seconds before they hit the close button. … [Read more...]
10 Great Fonts You Should Use, And 9 Awful Fonts You Should Avoid
"Typography is an art. Good typography is art." - Paul Rand. Font and typography choices can make or break your design. But with so many fonts to choose from nowadays, which ones should you use, and which ones should you avoid? Tom Cargill from Satori Graphics has come up with an excellent video that features ten prominent fonts used by professional designers, along with … [Read more...]
20 Memes That Designers And Agencies Will Relate To
Are you in the middle of a tough project with a stiff deadline? Is your client or boss being a prick? Are you tired of creating "Buy One, Get One" ads and banners? If yes, then indulge in some meme-therapy and brighten up your day. Memes have been scientifically proven to help reduce work stress by stimulating the release of endorphins that trigger a sense of well-being … [Read more...]
Incredible Video Shows Artificial Intelligence Creating A Website Just By Looking At The Wireframe
Artificial Intelligence is now being used to create front-end designs from wireframe to HTML code. TeleportHQ, a platform of open-source tools for UI professionals, has released a video demonstrating real-time code generation using TensorFlow machine learning and computer vision image recognition. … [Read more...]
When You’re President Of The United States, But Also A Graphic Designer
Every designer has a list of design software that they prefer, and a list of software that they absolutely detest, but are compelled to use sometimes. Based on common likes and dislikes for popular design software, Gombo Digital has come up with an epic video meme that shows what President Obama's preferences would be, if he were a graphic/web/UI designer. Which programs and … [Read more...]
This Handy New Tool Shows You Color Palettes Of Artworks From Different Eras
Kentucky-based graphic designer Brandon Shepherd has released a handy online tool called Color Leap that showcases a collection of color palettes used in paintings and artworks throughout different eras in history - from ancient Egypt to the 1960s. The tool consists of 180 palettes spread over 12 different time periods. You can select any time period, browse through … [Read more...]
This Brilliant Free Tool Is Like Google Search For Colors
Swedish digital studio Future Memories has launched an excellent tool called Picular that lets you search for colors by keyword and displays a range of colors based on the top 20 Google Image search results for that keyword. For example, if you search for ‘ocean’, Picular analyzes the top 20 Google Images for ‘ocean’ and displays the most prominent color in each image and … [Read more...]
19 Graphic Design Mistakes That Novice Designers Make
After a few years in the graphic design business, you realize how important it is to get the basics right. Like using proper font and color combinations, implementing visual hierarchy, using grids, alignment, white space, and so on. The team at Visme, an online tool for creating infographics and presentations, has come up with an excellent visual list of 19 graphic design … [Read more...]
Top Web Design Trends In 2018
Previously, we featured the top trends in 2018 for graphic design, logo design, typography, and images. In today’s post, we focus on the latest web design trends with the help of this handy infographic by Template Monster. 2018 is all about an immersive user experience. AI and machine learning continue to be big this year. Progressive web apps are a must-have tool. Other … [Read more...]
8 Beautiful Flat Color Palettes For Your Next Design Project
UI/UX designer Ebtihaj Khan has created a series of minimalist flat color palettes for graphic, web, and UI projects. Each palette consists of five colors with their hex codes mentioned alongside. Khan has included both linear and contrasting color schemes. The beautiful presentation of these palettes, with the blurred vignette effect in the background, was inspired by … [Read more...]
How To Pair Fonts That Complement Each Other (With Examples)
Good font pairing is one of the key differentiators between amateur and professional design. Rookie designers often use more fonts than required and there is lack of typographical contrast in their design. It's tricky because there are no fixed rules as to what kind of fonts work well together, but there are certain guidelines that can help you pick fonts that complement each … [Read more...]
Designer Fixes Ugly Interfaces, Shares Valuable UI Tips In The Process
Previously, we featured designer Steve Schoger's Little UI Details project in which he shares short, useful design tips for UI/UX designers. Steve has now come up with another excellent project titled 'Refactoring UI' in which he uses Sketch to fix websites and interfaces submitted by developers, and teaches you valuable UI design concepts in the process. The series is just … [Read more...]
How Companies Use Deceptive UI Design To Trick You Online
A 'dark pattern' is a user interface that has been craftily designed to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, in order to benefit the business in question. The term was coined by UK-based UI designer Harry Brignull, who runs DarkPatterns.org - a website dedicated to "naming and shaming websites that use deceptive user interfaces". For example, have you … [Read more...]
20 Important Design Principles Explained With Simple Illustrations
There are no fixed rules or formulas for good design, but there are a few basic principles that will help you create design that is effective, functional, and aesthetically pleasing. Technical jargon can sometimes get confusing or overwhelming, which is why Canva has come up with a fantastic infographic that uses simple illustrations to explain the 20 most important design … [Read more...]
27 Beautiful Color Gradients For Your Next Design Project
Looking for beautiful gradients for your graphic, web, or UI design? UVdesk has created a useful online tool called coolHue – a free collection of over 60 gradients that you can use for design and code. You can browse through the swatches, copy their CSS codes and even download a .PNG version of each one. Here are some of our favourites from the collection. … [Read more...]
Graphic Designer’s Interesting Experiment Shows How The Placement Of An Element Affects Its Meaning
Brazilian designer Nei Valente has come up with an intriguing design experiment titled 'Thoughts on Position' that studies the relationship between the placement of an element and its meaning. The objective was to find out if the same element can communicate different messages when placed in different positions. In this experiment, Valente surveyed 288 participants with a … [Read more...]
33 Beautiful Color Schemes For Your Next Design Project
Looking for color combinations for your graphic, web or UI design? CoSchedule has come up with a handy infographic that shares 33 beautiful palettes organized by primary and secondary colors. They've also compiled two additional infographics on color + word associations and color psychology. Check them all out below. … [Read more...]
Top 15 Graphic Design Trends For 2018
Visual trends are an important aspect of marketing for entrepreneurs and businesses. Using the latest design, imagery, and typography styles makes your brand appear contemporary to your customers, the marketplace, and to your competition. For designers and creative professionals, understanding and being able to recognize visual trends is even more important because you have … [Read more...]
Learn In One Minute How To Kern Properly Between Different Types Of Letters
The difference between good type and great type is the kerning. In this short video by The Futur, typography and lettering instructor Nils Lindstrom shows you how to kern effectively between different kinds of letters - curved, straight, and diagonal. Nils explains how different letterforms create different kinds of optical spacing between characters, and how proper kerning … [Read more...]
5 Trendy Google Font Combinations For Your Next Design Project
In our previous posts, we've shared some great Google Font combinations and free font collections that you can use in your designs. If you're looking for some more trendy and modern pairings of Google Fonts, have a look at this compilation from digital product company Great Simple Studio. They've also created a series of mockups to offer previews of what the fonts look like in … [Read more...]
