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How to Make Your Website Stand Out From The Crowd

Post pobrano z: How to Make Your Website Stand Out From The Crowd

When you are creating a website, it’s no secret that you want it to stand out. An outstanding site gains points over the competition and is impressive to potential customers.

A unique and attractive website gives designers a competitive edge. Developers add original and successful websites to their portfolios in order to attract new clients.

The following tips will assist you to make your website stand out:

Layout and structure

A unique site structure or impressive layout will make your site memorable. However, this is no easy feat. Creating a unique website provides a visual challenge and the opportunity to stretch your developmental skills.

Remember to keep information well organized and accessible while working on a unique site. When offering a unique site, development time may be increased as you encounter new problems.

When designing a new site, use programs which are easily accessible to users. Many complex sites rely heavily on JavaScript, but this is not always accessible to users.

Branding

If your client has an excellent brand, this will assist your site to stand out. Branding aims to transcend a product, creating an emotional resonance with the user. Stick with your client’s branding guidelines, embrace them, and use the client’s logo on your site.

If your client does not have original branding or logos and only has a choice of font, this makes it harder. Work with the message, color and font you would like your client to create.

Use text effectively

Using text to set your site apart is both complex and very effective. The content of a site reflects the client’s personality or corporate culture. Use text, video, subheadings and easy reading or legibility to set the site apart.

Ask your client for copy that is well written and effective, showing a sense of warmth which connects with the reader. You want any copy which reaches your site to go beyond the obvious sell tactics and to engage the reader. This can sometimes be tricky.

Work with your audience

When you construct your website around user needs, you create a site which is both engaging and easy to navigate.

Many designers don’t do this. Take time to research who your users are, what interests them, and how you can incorporate their needs to create a niche site which is easy to navigate.

Keep it simple

Although branding and logo set the stage, assuring users they have come to the right place, it is the site’s design which will keep the reader engaged. A well laid out site is clear and easy to read, has plenty of white space, and uses color effectively. Navigation is simple and easy to use. Keep content arranged according to hierarchy.

When creating your site, keep it simple. Arrange content so that you don’t overwhelm your audience, but they are easily able to find the information they need.

Use white space effectively

Background space keeps your design clear and simple. Website organization is an important aspect of your design.

Design each area of your page so that it is aesthetic and adds value. Use white space to keep your design looking clean and fresh.

Typography

When you browse the web and come across some of your favourite brands or designs, how often do you recognize the font or typeface immediately? A brand is often immediately recognizable by the font chosen. Using a clearly defined font will link viewers to your brand.

When creating a header font, use a font which will stand out, and tie your viewers back to your brand. Google Fonts has plenty of options which are free to use.

Play with text

Great websites use large font sizes to keep text legible. This helps to create an easy flow. It also assists the designer with narrowing down language so that it is clear and precise. A large text has no space to become superfluous, confusing readers.

Clear, legible text which is easy to read will make your message easier for viewers. Along with headings and subheadings, large fonts will also enable you to scan articles or web pages to find the information they need.

Dramatic Headlines

Headlines make a statement, showing users what your site is about. They are often the most important aspect of a site and grab user attention because of their information content.

As a result, large, attractive headlines are used amongst many modern designers.

Color

The goal of a website is not just to create site visitors, but to encourage those visitors to buy a product, commit to a service or access new knowledge. In other words, the success of a website is determined by its ability to convert viewers into clients or customers.

In order for a website to have a high conversion rate, there is a need to make it accessible, efficient, and to use prompts which encourage users to take action. Color is often used as a means of highlighting aspects such as ‘sign up’ or ‘get started’ buttons.

Instead of looking at which single color is most effective, focus on how color stands out against the background of your website. This way, you can use color to create a hierarchy, drawing user attention to the most important buttons on a site.

Use contrast

Web designers rely on color to give an emotional or intuitive message to viewers. This helps to portray the atmosphere or culture of a company.

Color does not only create a mood, however. By contrasting colors, a designer is able to highlight different areas of a page. This assists viewers with establishing a hierarchy.

Be willing to experiment

Have you ever thought about designing using a watercolor theme? There are many approaches to watercolor.

It was a popular trend not too long ago, and it’s making a comeback. You can use various watercolor elements in your header, sidebar or footer, depending on the site you’re designing.

Even if you don’t already have watercolor illustrations, you can create them yourself with watercolor brushes for Photoshop.

Whatever you do when using watercolor, have fun!

Using a grid

Using a grid is a popular website design method for modern websites. This effective way of designing enables you to add effective imagery to your site while presenting options to site visitors.

When using a grid, keep it simple. Too many options can be overwhelming for visitors. Keep your imagery simple and your navigation panel concise and easy to use.

Minimalism

Minimalism sounds simple, with its use of white space, attractive imagery, and sleek typography, and believes that less is more. However, there is a lot going on beneath the clean surface.

In minimalism, negative space is used to draw attention to specific elements, so that the viewer does not get overwhelmed by too much information. The focus is on content, and the bare background is a means of achieving this goal.

When creating minimalist designs, focus on large images which give a sense of drama to your page, providing an emotional connection for viewers. Image quality is vital, as it will provide the emotional or atmospheric element to your page.

Social proof

When you have an expert review a product, make a statement on a service or carry out research, you create a sense of trust or reliability for your readers. Likewise, customer reviews or testimonials show how clients have experienced a product or service.

When using reviews, do so after you’ve made an argument for how your product will fit, providing a similar service or content. This will enable the review to offer a persuasive element to your site.

Go fast

Users are quick to abandon slow websites. Therefore, if you want to ensure that viewers turn into clients, it is important that your site downloads quickly.

Online viewers are impatient, and if your site takes more than a few seconds to download, they will often abandon the page.

Search engines give a higher ranking to pages which load quickly. In order to ensure rapid download, use only essential elements in your design, and go for premium hosting to ensure your downloading speed gives you what you need.

Summary

Developing a stellar website is all about embracing customer need, thinking through your design so that it works intuitively while being aesthetically appealing.

If you are able to work with client needs, your site will set you apart from the competition. Follow these tips and get started, and remember, never settle for second best!

WordPress User Survey Data for 2015-2017

Post pobrano z: WordPress User Survey Data for 2015-2017

A grand total of 77,609 responses from WordPress users and professionals collected by Automattic between 2015 and 2017. The stats for 2015 and 2016 have been shared at the annual State of the Word address and 2017 marks the first time they have been published on WordPress News.

A few items that caught my attention at first glance:

  • Between 66% and 75% of WordPress users installed WordPress on their own. In other words, they were savvy enough to do it without the help of a developer. Hosting providers were next up and clocked in at 13-14% of installs.
  • WordPress professionals described their clients as large and enterprise companies only 6-7% of the time. I guess this makes sense if those companies are relying on in-house resourcing, but I still would have pegged this higher.
  • What do users love most about WordPress? It’s simple and user-friendly (49-52%). What frustrates them most about it? Plugins and themes (19-28%). Seems like those two would go hand-in-hand to some degree.

I’m not a statistician and have no idea how much the results of these surveys accurately reflect the 26% of all sites on the internet that are powered by WordPress, but it sure is interesting.

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WordPress User Survey Data for 2015-2017 is a post from CSS-Tricks

Careful Now

Post pobrano z: Careful Now

Tom Warren’s „Chrome is turning into the new Internet Explorer 6” for The Verge has a title that, to us front-end web developers, suggests that Chrome is turning into a browser far behind in technology and replete with tricky bugs. Aside from the occasional offhand generic, „Chrome is getting so bad lately,” comments you hear, we know that’s not true. Chrome often leads the pack for good web tech.

Instead, it’s about another equally concerning danger: developers building sites specifically for Chrome. In theory, that’s not really a thing, because if you build a website with web standards (of which there isn’t really much of an alternative) it’ll work in Chrome like any other modern web browser. But it is a thing if you build the site to somehow block other browsers and only allow Chrome. Warren:

Google has been at the center of a lot of “works best with Chrome” messages we’re starting to see appear on the web. Google Meet, Allo, YouTube TV, Google Earth, and YouTube Studio Beta all block Windows 10’s default browser, Microsoft Edge, from accessing them and they all point users to download Chrome instead. Google Meet, Google Earth, and YouTube TV are also not supported on Firefox with messages to download Chrome.

I wouldn’t call it an epidemic but it’s not a good trend. Best I can tell, it’s server-side UA sniffing that entirely blocks the sites:

Sheesh.

If anything, I’d think you’d just let people use the site and display a warning if you’re really worried some particular feature might not work. Or even better, fix it. I have no behind-the-scenes knowledge of why they made the choice to block certain browsers, but it’s hard to imagine a technical limitation that would force it. And if it is, I’d suggest letting it be very publicly known to incentivize the other browsers to support what is needed, assuming it’s an established standard.

Even more concerning than browser-specific websites is seeing browsers ship non-standardized features just because they want them, not behind any vendor prefix or flag. There was a time when web developers would have got out the pitchforks if a browser was doing this, but I sense some complacency seeping in.

These days, the vibe is more centered around complaining about other browsers lack of support for things. For example, one browser ships something, we see one green dot in caniuse, and we lambast the other browsers to catch up. Instead, we might ask, was it a good idea to ship that feature yet?

No modern browser is shipping vendor prefixes anymore since we all ultimately decided that was a bad idea. A side effect of that is that shipping a new feature in CSS or JavaScript is all the riskier. I would think shipping an unprefixed feature to a stable version of the browser would mean the feature is standardized and not going to significantly change. Yet, it’s been happening.

In CSS, Chrome shipped motion-* properties, but then that all changed to offset-*, and the old motion-* properties just stopped working. That’s more than just annoying, that kind of thing helps developers justify saying, „I just build this site for Chrome, if you wanna use it, use Chrome.” Fine for a demo, perhaps, but bad for the web industry as a whole. Again, I have no special insight into why this happens, I’m just a developer looking in from the outside.

Here’s another CSS one I just saw the other day. People are excited about text-decoration-skip: ink; because it looks great and helps people. They are using it a lot. But apparently, that’s not the correct name for it? It’s been changed to text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; and so Chrome 64 is canning text-decoration-skip: ink;. This stuff is hard to keep up with even while actively trying.

Chris Krycho had a take on it recently as well:

Over the past few years, I’ve increasingly seen articles with headlines that run something like, “New Feature Coming To the Web” — followed by content which described how Chrome had implemented an experimental new feature. “You’ll be able to use this soon!” has been the promise.

The reality is a bit more complicated. Sometimes, ideas the Chrome team pioneers make their way out to the rest of the browsers and become tools we can all use. Sometimes… they get shelved because none of the other browsers decide to implement them.

Many times, when this latter tack happens, developers grouse about the other browser makers who are “holding the web back.” But there is a fundamental problem in this way of looking at things: Chrome isn’t the standard. The fact that Chrome proposes something, and even the fact that a bunch of developers like it, does not a standard make. Nor does it impose an obligation to other browsers to prioritize it, or even to ship it.

This isn’t all to throw Chrome under the bus. I’m a Chrome fan. I’m sure there are examples from all the major vendors in the same vein. I’d just like my two cents to be careful now. The web is the best platform to build for and generally heading in a direction that makes that even truer. The easiest way to screw that up is not being careful with standards.


Careful Now is a post from CSS-Tricks

Tales of a Non-Unicorn: A Story About the Roller Coaster of Job Searching

Post pobrano z: Tales of a Non-Unicorn: A Story About the Roller Coaster of Job Searching

Hey there! It’s Lara, author of the infamous„Tales of a Non-Unicorn: A Story About the Trouble with Job Titles and Descriptions” from a couple years back. If you haven’t read that original article, I recommend skimming it to give you some context for this one, but I think you’ll still find value here even if you don’t.

A lot has happened since I wrote that article in 2015, and this follow-up has been in the works for a good six months. I ended up, not with a solution for the job titles conundrum or a manifesto about the importance of HTML and CSS, rather a simple, honest story about my roller coaster ride.

Okay, enough dilly-dally. Let’s go!

<story>

In the aftermath of the FizzBuzz drama in 2015, I doubled down on my freelance business and did really well. I got a great contract gig with startup in New York refactoring a Haml/Bootstrap situation that paid the bills and then some. I hired an assistant and started the Tackle Box, an online school sort-of-thing where I taught web development and WordPress. I made a little money off that one, too. I spoke at a handful of conferences and meetups, taught a bunch of classes, and generally had the pedal to the metal.

Then I got really, really tired.

I was sick of writing emails, sick of sending invoices, and sick of being on the computer all the damn time. I wanted to go to work and then leave work at work; something that is very hard to do in our industry, and extra difficult when you are your own boss. I enjoyed coding sometimes, but it was all about the billable hour. Why should I write code or be on the computer at all if I’m not being paid for it? This was burnout, that thing that’s become a weird, convoluted rite of passage in our industry.

I wanted to shut down Lara Schenck, LLC and be a ski bum. And you know what? I did. It was time for a break, and I took one for about six months.

Ski Bum Sabbatical

I left New York City in August of 2016 and moved back to my family’s farm near Pittsburgh. I got a job cleaning horse stalls for $7/hr at the stable where I used to ride when I was a kid. My plan was to gradually ramp down business while I lived rent-free and prepared myself for the simple life. That December, I would be starting work as a bartender at Goldminer’s Daughter Lodge in Alta, Utah, a tiny ski town outside of Salt Lake City. Room and board were included in the job; I’d make enough pocket money for booze, and my life would consist of skiing, sleeping, and socializing. No emails.

Image of a sign for the Town of Alta, population 370, elevation 8,460
Just down the winding road from Alta Ski Area.

The simple life was okay for a little bit, but bartending at a 3:2 beer bar and skiing every day wasn’t as fulfilling as I’d hoped. I cut the season short and moved to Los Angeles in March with my partner at the time. We had a mutual friend with an open room in Hollywood, and I was starved for city-living. (I have since learned that LA is not the city-living I expected, at all, but that’s another conversation.)

Time to Get a Job (for real this time)

I formally announced I was back on the scene, reached out to old clients and people from my New York network, and was even on a podcast out of the gate. None of that translated into much paying work. Luckily, I had a cushion of savings to float me for a few months (Freelancing Rule #1: You must have savings), but my heart just wasn’t in the freelance hustle this time. The prospect of negotiating contracts and engaging new leads was nauseating rather than exciting, and the small business website work I did was no longer the challenging and invigorating experience it had been before.

I decided to get a full-time job, for real this time. Once again, I wanted to work on a team and on bigger projects. I was tired of doing everything myself, and I wanted to learn from and share my experience with others. And, you know, a regular paycheck.

I set to work applying for jobs, putting long hours into carefully crafted cover letters. I had several promising interviews, got my hopes way up a couple of times, and received zero job offers. For one particular role, I’d gotten as far as discussing salary requirements and start dates, and was expecting an offer letter within the week. Then, the next week they were all of a sudden no longer hiring. I didn’t run into any FizzBuzz, for better or for worse.

I started to question why my designer/developer skillset appeared to hold so little value now when I’d felt so in demand just a year ago. I stubbornly refused to learn React just so I could have it on my resume—I’m great at other important things, why can’t people see that?! I wondered whether the five years of self-employment was a hindrance, or was there something fundamentally wrong with how I interviewed? Did I shoot myself in the foot with this whole „non-unicorn” thing in the first place?

These months were a major ego-check. It turns out, full-time jobs aren’t something you can just „get.” It’s just not that easy, for me at least.

The Value of HTML and CSS

Responding to job posts with those carefully crafted cover letters had a very low return on investment so I decided to change my approach. Instead of putting my time into writing said cover letters, I would focus on writing about real things and becoming a better developer, and the jobs would come to me. I launched a well-thought-out redesign of my website, published a Reverse Job Post, and buckled down on my JavaScript studies.

This was right around the time Mandy Michael wrote „Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript?” which hit the nail on the head. I wrote a question into ShopTalk show about this phenomenon and mentioned to Chris that I’d love to come on the show and talk about it if they’d like. The next day, Chris invited both Mandy and me to come on the show and hash it out:

HTML and CSS are valuable, but intimate knowledge of them has become more of a specialist role. Perhaps, one can position their skills as HTML, CSS, plus something else (e.g. UI design or WordPress). The nature of products and rapid feature releases deem quality HTML and CSS an afterthought at many companies so at the moment, maybe the demand just isn’t there. Perhaps the rise in accessibility awareness, design systems, and time lost debugging bad CSS will change the tide?

The episode was well received; I was obviously not the only one struggling with this issue. I made a Github repository called Front-end Discourse with the intention of gathering and synthesizing opinions and coming up with a plan of action on the job titles front. Chris even wrote about the job titles conundrum here on CSS-Tricks. The momentum was there; this could be my thing!

But then…I let it die.

An Unexpected Twist

A few days after the ShopTalk episode came out, I received this tweet:

Image of tweet asking Lara if she is still looking for a job, with a link to job post at careers.google.com/jobs

Umm…that’s a link to a Google job post.

I thought it was a joke at first, but nope, the tweet author sent me an email later that day, and it was the real deal! They’d been referred to me by a benevolent figure in the web industry whom I’d never met. I had a call with them and another member of their team, and it was magical. They told me all about a new team starting within Developer Relations at Google that would be working to improve the „Web Content Ecosystem.” Web Content Ecosystem? That’s WordPress! And they were recruiting me! Holy sh#t, this actually happens!

This was my dream job, not a front-end designer/developer role. I didn’t even know this was a job! I had already been doing this work on my own time for several years: teaching and speaking about WordPress, writing informational blog posts, recording videos, and helping people use WordPress more responsibly. And they would move me to San Francisco! I was not a huge fan of Los Angeles.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t just „give” people jobs…you have to interview.

Computer Science Bootcamp

Now we have me, the designer who applied for a JS job and failed FizzBuzz, preparing for the Google interview otherwise known as the grandparent of all technical white-boarding interviews. It was time to swallow any feelings I had toward this interviewing style and get to work.

I had three weeks until a „coaching call” that would unofficially determine whether or not I could skip the technical phone screening and jump straight to the day of on-site interviews because, duh, this was meant to be. Luckily, this coincided with a lull in freelance work, which had also been picking up, so for about a week and a half, I put myself through a self-directed computer science bootcamp. On the way, I wrote a bunch of blog posts about what I learned.

Oh, how I longed to write that Tales of a Non-Unicorn: I GOT A JOB AT GOOGLE, F@#KERS!!! follow-up for all those Reddit haters after it was said and done!

The day of the coaching call arrived, and it was fantastic! I was a little slow on the coding question, but it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought, I aced the role-related questions, and the interviewer was excellent. I heard back from the recruiter who was coordinating with me, and he said I could go straight to the on-site interviews.

In the meantime, I went to WordCamp US in Nashville where this particular team at Google was a sponsor. I got to meet a few of the folks I’d be working with, and it seemed like such a great fit. This Google interest and being at WordCamp made me question why, at the beginning of my job search, I had seen my knowledge of WordPress as such a secondary skillset. WordPress is everywhere! And its awesome! I mean, sure, it’s not that „cool” yet, but mark my words, it will be in the „cool” ranks soon enough.

The Non-Unicorn Interviews at Google

In the week leading up to the interview, I focused on researching the role and beefing up my passion for improving WordPress and helping those who work with it. This was not a software engineering role, after all; in Developer Relations, passion for and knowledge of your subject is more important than knowing binary tree traversal, right?

Google flew me to San Francisco and put me up in a nice hotel. I had a full day of four interviews—usually, it’s five, one was canceled—and a long, enjoyable lunch with the folks I’d been in touch with from the get-go. I didn’t feel great about my performance in the technical parts of the interviews, but I did my best and my strategy was to come off as a great coworker who knows when to ask for help. When in doubt, I remembered the strong correlation between „hard interview” and „received offer” on Google’s Glassdoor profile.

Back in LA, freelance work kept me busy while I waited for a verdict, which wasn’t long. I felt relatively zen about the whole thing. Yes, I had my hopes up, but if it didn’t work out, I at least had work to pay the bills, and it wasn’t going half-bad. I’d been contracting with an agency and learning a lot; it wasn’t the small business WordPress sites I’d been building all by myself previously.

The Thursday after my Monday interview, I got a call from my recruiter contact. They were not going to proceed with the approval process at this time. He said I showed some very promising „Google-y” qualities, but my performance in the coding portion of the interviews wasn’t strong enough. He said he had it in his calendar to reconnect with me in six months, and that he would keep an eye out for less technical roles that might be a better fit.

…oof.

Incredibly, I was able to fend off the majority of the anger and the „I’m a failure and I suck at everything” thoughts that go hand-in-hand with rejection, maybe in part because I received such a nice email from one of the people I’d been in touch with throughout the process. He had applied three times before he got a job there—which apparently is not uncommon—and this simply meant I’d be taking a slightly different path. They were all bummed I didn’t make it.

This brings us back to the present. I don’t feel sour about algorithms or white-boarding interviews…I have another one to get ready for in six months! Unless, of course, another really awesome opportunity comes my way in the meantime. Who knows.

This whole job search has been such a ridiculous roller coaster of hopes slowly going up then crashing down. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I still don’t know where I’ll end up, but I’m doing my best and I’ll keep doing it until the right thing comes along.

Silhouette of a car on a roller coaster about to go down a large hill

</story>

Whew, that was a lot! Thanks for making it this far. A+ for you, reader!

Post-Mortem

Before I wrap this thing up, I want to make a few observations about this whole job searching process that I hope can help others on their roller coaster ride.

  1. Algorithms and white-boarding interviews aren’t necessarily bad. I think they can be implemented badly. The Big Tech Companies are fully aware that they miss out on great candidates because of algorithm questions, but this interviewing strategy is so good at filtering out bad candidates that they keep it around. It sucks for us, but I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Plus, I learned a hell of a lot of stuff preparing for it, and it’s made me a better developer and better human being.
  2. Write a „Reverse Job Post.” I don’t recall where I learned about it, but here’s mine for reference. Even if no one reads it, it’s a great way to figure out what type of job and company you are looking for, and you could totally paste a link to it in the cover letter field for an application and call it a day.
  3. Learn computer science fundamentals. I know we are already inundated with things to learn, so it’s hard to preach this, but having context for what the tools we use actually are has helped me a lot. For example, two months ago I would have had a hard time wrapping my mind around GraphQL, but in my interview preparation I learned about graphs and tree data structures, so I was able to understand the concept relatively easily. Cracking the Coding Interview is not a good place to start, BaseCS and the Impostor’s Handbook are. Also, stay tuned for some relevant articles here on CSS-Tricks, from yours truly!
  4. Don’t spend all of your time on job boards. It’s a crapshoot. I think there are great job boards, but in general, no matter how quality the listing, whether or not the position is actually available or accurately represented in the post is a toss-up.
  5. Be vocal. I doubt any of this Google stuff would have happened if I hadn’t written into ShopTalk show and asked Chris to have me on the episode. If you have an impulse to write something or have a question or feel the urge to tweet at someone you don’t know, do it (but be a good person about it, obviously). The more web people that know you exist, the more likely it is that something will come your way.

Those are some things that helped me, but I still don’t have a job, so maybe don’t listen to what I say. I don’t know. It’s an incredibly difficult and demeaning process, and there’s no secret sauce that works for everyone. Our industry is a young one, and as far as I’m aware, there is no such thing as a surefire career path in web development.

I hope I don’t write another „Tales of a Non-Unicorn” installment. The whole idea of a „unicorn” is bogus, anyway. We are all just people, with different levels of knowledge in different areas, and if you can honestly say you’re doing your best then I think that’s all you can do.

What I will be writing, however, are some „Computer Science Study Guides” for the self-taught developer, here on CSS-Tricks, and maybe some stuff about how cool WordPress is nowadays. At the very least, „Intro To Algorithms” will be coming at you, soon!

How about you, reader?

Have you been on this roller coaster ride, too? Where did you end up? What advice can you offer to those of us who are still in the midst of our journey?


Tales of a Non-Unicorn: A Story About the Roller Coaster of Job Searching is a post from CSS-Tricks

10 Top Tips for Designing Music Festival Posters

Post pobrano z: 10 Top Tips for Designing Music Festival Posters

With more music events launching each year, the festival market is booming… and fiercely competitive. Thoughtfully designed posters and flyers will make a huge difference to ticket sales, and will help set the mood for the event.

So whether you’re planning to host your own festival event or looking for inspiration to help with a design project, these top design tips will help you create posters that are memorable and beautiful. 

If time is of the essence, you can always adapt an existing poster template to create a unique design. On GraphicRiver and Envato Elements, you’ll find plenty of festival templates to get you started.

Read on to get inspired and start creating something special…

indie flyer
Music flyer template by enamdua.

1. Consider Prioritising Typography on Your Poster Layout

It can be difficult to know where to get started with creating a poster design. For festivals, it’s likely that the publicity would be displayed in places where people are quickly viewing them as they pass by, such as metro stations, at bus stops, or on street walls. 

For this reason, it’s best to prioritise one main element on the layout. Whether that’s an image (see Tip 2, below) or text really depends on the type of festival being advertised and which design approach you’d like to take. 

If your festival has an established history, it may be best to make typography the key focus of your design. Blow up the name of the festival to large scale, and choose a typeface to really make the type stand out. Look for display fonts or slab serifs (you can find a wide range of display fonts here), and set the type in uppercase letters and a contrasting font color. 

indie flyer
This indie flyer template could be easily adapted to any style of festival, and would make the most of a well-known festival name.

If your festival is lucky enough to have bagged a few well-known artists, make the most of it. Set the names of the best-known bands towards the top of the design, creating a hierarchy that catches the attention of existing fans. 

2. Illustration or Photo?

Festival posters tend to fall into three main camps of design—with a typographic (see above), illustrative, or photographic focus. 

Certain music genres and styles of event tend to suit either an illustrated or photographic approach. While photos work best for pop or rock events, illustrations and abstract designs make a perfect match for jazz festivals, food festivals, or alternative music events. 

jazz dance
Illustrator Indrė Vaiciukaitė references 1920s illustration styles in this poster for international jazz dance and music festival „HARLEM”, based in Lithuania. Image via Behance.

If your festival falls into the more alternative side of the festival spectrum, an illustrated approach, like in these designs for the Jazz in June music festival by Brock Wynn, will inject a dose of creativity and uniqueness into your poster. 

jazz in june
jazz in june
Poster designs for the Jazz in June music festival by Brock Wynn. Image via Behance.

If you’re short on time, look out for vector elements you can adapt for your poster design, like these jazz-themed logo illustrations

jazz illustrations
Music festival logo vectors by danjazzia.

3. Use Color to Create Ambience and Mood

Although most designers begin conceptualising their poster designs in terms of typography or graphics, color is actually the single most transformative element you can apply to your layout. 

More so than perhaps any other poster subject, a festival poster has to entice potential attendees by communicating a vivid sense of atmosphere. Festival-goers attend these events to share a particular vibe and experience an ambience which is unique to that festival. It’s your job as the poster designer to convey what it would feel like to attend the event as evocatively as possible. 

Switching up your color palette is the quickest way to evoke a sense of time and place. Using a sunset-inspired palette of oranges and yellows would make a great fit for summertime, hot-weather events. 

These neon illustrations, when placed against a dark background, evoke a sense of night-time glamor.

neon
Music festival illustrations by danjazzia.

4. Create an Immersive Experience With 3D Layering

As well as using color, you can increase the immersive potential of your poster design by playing with layering, creating a 3D effect that helps the viewer to become completely absorbed in the design. 

As well as building a flat, grid-based hierarchy on your layout, think about which elements will sit in the background and foreground of your design. 

This flyer design is an example of how simple layering can create an absorbing design that helps you to feel you are actually at the event. 

Placing the singer in the background of the image, and allowing the atmospheric smoke to mingle with the headline in the foreground, creates a sense of depth and makes the image feel as if it expands beyond the edges of the page. 

flyer design
Music flyer template by enamdua.

5. Don’t Neglect Texture and Light

Graphics, type, and color might be the building blocks of your poster design, but it’s the extra details that will really make it look incredible. 

Texture overlays are a quick and easy way of adding grungy, vintage-inspired textures to your designs. They have the ability to de-formalise any layout, which makes them perfect for rock or indie festivals. You can track down some grunge overlay textures here

indie rock fest
Indie Rock Fest flyer template by Shelby67.

Adding light effects to your artwork also adds an extra dimension to the poster and fits beautifully with festival-themed designs. Try creating a lit-up effect for typography (look at how to add glow effects or screen filters in your design software), or frame a design with a border of flashbulbs to create a starry, stage-like effect. 

classic
Classic Fever flyer template by isoarts.

6. Look to the Past for Authentic Inspiration

Everybody seems to have a relative who attended the very first Glastonbury festival, and yep, they all say how festivals now just aren’t the same. 

You can channel the authentic, carefree vibes of the original music festivals in your own designs by looking to vintage styles for inspiration. 

Choose retro-style typefaces and muted color palettes, and build papery textures into the background of your design. Look to retro styling ideas, like the exaggerated drop-shadow used in this flyer template, to make a stylish nod to the past.

indie flyer
Retro-inspired flyer template by BlueMonkeyLab

Vintage-inspired festival posters will always look cool, and they suit indie, rock, and folk events particularly well. 

vintage flyer
Vintage flyer template by BlueMonkeyLab.

7. Go Minimal for Electronica and Dance

If you’re designing a poster for an electronic music event or a dance festival, digital-inspired designs always look slick and ultra-contemporary. 

These designs blend club-night style with pared-back layouts, creating designs which are really atmospheric.

Try using Photoshop to create abstract effects in neon shades, like in this flyer template. Set your designs against a dark background for a night-time effect. 

minimal template
Minimal poster template by BlueMonkeyLab.

Even the most minimal of designs can create a strong sense of atmosphere. This ultra-simple design by Luca Izzo contrasts a deep black circle with a clean, white background, creating an intriguing, abstract design.

minimal poster
Sottotempo poster design by Luca Izzo. Image via Behance.

8. Create a Series of Poster Designs

Once you’ve designed your poster, it might be tempting to sit back and relax. But take a tip from some of the most successful festivals, and expand your design into a series. 

Why make the effort? A series of related designs transforms a single poster into an advertising campaign, allowing you to place different designs in different locations, making them more memorable and intriguing for passing viewers. 

Try keeping some of the core elements of your design consistent across the posters, to build a brand look for your series. This music flyer template keeps all elements except color consistent across the series. 

music flyer
Music flyer template by BlueMonkeyLab.

9. Develop a Brand for Your Posters

Beyond creating a series of related posters, you can take a leaf out of the book of established festivals and work on creating a complete brand identity for your festival posters. This will really impress clients who are looking for something special, and is really fun to do. 

For the Helsinki-based Spotlight Festival, design agency Manitou developed a versatile logo design, which could be used across their posters. The logo and colors can be split and used in different ways, creating a complete brand look for the event using just a few simple design elements. 

spotlight
spotlight
spotlight
Logo and poster designs for Spotlight Festival by Manitou. Images via Behance.

When some festivals become established, they often come back to a particular brand look for their posters each year, to help reinforce the event as a brand and attract previous attendees. 

These poster designs for Printemps de Pérouges (« Spring of Pérouges »), a music festival in France, come back to the same formula year after year, as it works so well for the event. The consistent typography, punchy colors, and 3D-style graphics make the designs instantly recognisable. 

spring festival
Spring Festival poster series by Graphéine. Image via grapheine.com.

10. Go a Step Further and Create a Complete Brand Identity for the Festival

Festivals are no longer the casual affairs they were in eras past. Now, festival organisers can reach huge audiences over social media and TV, and the financial potential of these events has skyrocketed. 

As a result, many festivals are looking to go a step further with their branding, and are looking to develop complete brand identities which go beyond the posters. 

Once you’ve created core elements for your posters, such as a logo-like headline, graphics, and a color palette, you can lift some of these and adapt them to use across other festival media, like merchandise, social media images and animations, tickets, signage, and stationery. 

This complete brand identity for Move Phnom Penh, a music festival in Cambodia, by Sonich Touch, shows how you can adapt simple design elements for a wide range of media. 

move festival
Move Phnom Penh festival brand identity by Sonich Touch. Image via Behance. Check out more of Sonich Touch’s work on Instagram here.

Conclusion

Music festivals are really fun events to design posters for. Most festival organisers will be looking for something exceptionally creative and unique, so dive in and start creating something fantastic!

If you’re short on time, it can be easier and quicker to adapt an existing poster or flyer template, tweaking fonts and colors to create a unique design. You can find a huge range of easy-to-edit templates over on GraphicRiver and Envato Elements. 

indie flyer
Indie flyer template by enamdua on GraphicRiver.

Design Deals for the Week

Post pobrano z: Design Deals for the Week

Every week, we’ll give you an overview of the best deals for designers, make sure you don’t miss any by subscribing to our deals feed. You can also follow the recently launched website Type Deals if you are looking for free fonts or font deals.

5 Fabulous Handmade Script Fonts

Fonts make all the difference in your designs. Sure, what you say is important, but how you say it is just as powerful! Be sure to hurry and grab this Mini-Font collection sporting 5 fantastic handmade script fonts! Whether you’re working on invitations or mugs, these professional typefaces can be molded to suit your style thanks to the many OpenType Features they include.

$9 instead of $75 – Get it now!

The Two Font Ladies Bundle

Missy Meyer and On The Spot Studio have teamed up for a brand new font bundle with 93% off!

$15 instead of $203 – Get it now!

20+ Fineliner Brushes & Patterns

Looking for a quick and easy way to draw up some basic doodles on your computer? Then this Mighty Deal from The Artifex Forge shapes up perfectly for you. You’ll get a real authentic hand-drawn feel on your projects with this collection of Fineliner Brushes and Patterns. You’ll get 17 anti-stretch brushes in a variety of styles from dots to hatches to dashes, as well as a set of patterns to fill up large areas in one fell swoop.

$8 instead of $16 – Get it now!

Fantastic Font Bundle of 30 Unique Typefaces

It’s time for another font-astic deal! This one from the mighty Polem, you’ll get yourself a collection of 30 unique hand-drawn, script and serif fonts. Gorgeous, elegant and flowing, these fonts are packed with oodles of OpenType features, and are just the thing you’re looking for in terms of your next project whether it’s greeting cards, invitations or even T-shirts.

$12 instead of $312 – Get it now!

How fitness wear designs are incorporating style and functionality

Post pobrano z: How fitness wear designs are incorporating style and functionality

Many folks who tell you they want to get fit also say they don’t like going to the gym. Often you’ll hear the opinion that it’s because they can’t stand to be around all those Lycra-clad people who appear to be in fabulous shape and have no need to work out at all.

Well, times have moved on and designs for fitness wear nowadays go well beyond the basic elastane fabric, also known as Lycra or Spandex, which originated in the 1950s. Fashion designers have taken fitness wear to their hearts, while manufacturers have worked hard to develop new synthetic products; so much so that the range and variety of clothing and shoes as well as support garments is more extensive and more stylish than ever before. Here are a few of the ideas that are trending among the connoisseurs of fitness fashion.

Style or functionality?

You will already know that architects often debate whether, when designing a building, form follows function or the other way round. So it is that designers have just the same argument about the importance of style versus functionality. In truth, it has to be said that the best garment designs are those that combine both, and as a result create clothing that performs well for the people, including athletes, who wear it for utility as well as looking great in the process.

The rise of athleisure

The designs that are gaining most attention and applause have been categorized as ‘athleisure’ – a hybrid style deriving from business casual clothing and sportswear. Deirdre Clemente, professor of history at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, believes this new form of styling is attractive to consumers because business casual clothing is very versatile, and sportswear is very durable.

She has examined trends in fashion over more than a century and feels the introduction of synthetic fibers to sportswear has resulted in these comfortable clothes edging towards the mainstream of the casual clothing market. An increased interest in health and fitness has helped swing opinion on the acceptability of sportswear-led designs in business and casual settings, all of which adds up to increased sales in the athleisure sector.

More than a trend?

Athleisure may be a fashion buzzword, however, designers and retailers currently are obsessed with clothes that fit this broad category of being appropriate for leisure pursuits, sports activities or both.

Think designer leggings, yoga pants, cashmere sweats and layers of various pricey and fancy gym clothes. Underneath the hype, however, there are some seriously good products emerging from the top designers. The interesting thing is that just as many of these quality items are hidden beneath outer clothes as are showing off their designer labels.

Functionality that’s stylish

If you like support garments to wear next to your skin, you really need these to perform for you, particularly if you’re recovering from injury or aiming to prevent pain, for example, from repetitive strain injury (RSI).

An advanced fabric using copper technology is used in the manufacture of copper socks, which provide additional support and relief to your legs and feet. This innovative material allows your skin to stay cool and dry while eliminating odors, and is just as comfortable in an overheated office building as it is on the sports field.

Other attractive options include lightweight undershirts and boxer briefs, both ideal for a long-haul business flight as well as a hockey game or a session at the gym. Women’s wear includes elegant compression tops with great wicking qualities and stylish designs. These can be worn under other clothing or alone.

Ethical footwear

Besides clothing, sports and casual footwear is undergoing something of a revolution. We are hearing more and more about plastic waste choking the oceans of the world, and scientists have been actively seeking solutions for decades. It’s only a couple of years since manufacturers adidas announced a partnership with Parley to create trainers printed in 3D from waste plastic. Parley for the Oceans is continuing its innovative work and the shoes are now a powerful symbol of the exciting collaborative relationship between the eminent sports shoe manufacturer and the environmentalists working to rebalance the eco-system.

The first product collaboration with adidas Originals introduced the EQT Support ADV sneaker, made using materials created from upcycled plastic waste, and more have followed. The shoes are available in at least two color ways and are becoming increasingly popular, especially with young people, among worldwide concerns about the damage being caused by climate change.

Making CSS Animations Feel More Natural

Post pobrano z: Making CSS Animations Feel More Natural

It used to be that designers designed and coders coded. There was no crossover, and that’s the way it was. But with the advent of CSS transitions and animations, those lines are blurring a bit. It’s no longer as simple as the designer dictating the design and the coder transcribing—designers must now know something about code, and coders must know something about design in order to effectively collaborate.

As an example, let’s say a designer asks a developer to make a box bounce. That’s it—no additional instruction. Without some cross-knowledge and a common vocabulary, both sides are a little lost in this communication: the developer doesn’t have enough information to fully realize the designer’s vision, but the designer doesn’t really know what the options are and how to communicate them. With a very basic interpretation, you might end up with something that looks like this:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 1 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

Not very exciting. Although, to be fair, this does meet all of the criteria given. We can definitely do better than this, though.

The first thing to look at is the timing function. In the above example, we’re using a linear timing function, which means that the box is constantly moving at the same speed. In some cases, this is desirable; however, in the real world, motion usually doesn’t work like that.

An easy fix is to simply change the timing function to ease. This makes the beginning and ending of each animation a little slower than the middle part, which adds a more natural look to some animations. Here’s the box with the easing function turned on:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 2 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

This is a slight improvement, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. The box still looks mechanical and stiff, with the same animation occurring in the same timeframe over and over. Adding a slight delay between bounces adds some visual contrast that seems a little more natural:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 3 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

The box now looks like it’s jumping rather than simply moving up and down. There’s a little wind-up and cool-down between jumps that mimics what a live creature might do if given the same instruction. Even though we have no reference for what a jumping box would look like, we all have a pretty good idea of what a jumping creature would look like. Because we know what would happen in nature, by mimicking that, the animation feels more natural. But we can do more to make that wind-up feel a little more weighty.

If you watch cartoons, you’ll notice that natural movements are often exaggerated, creating a caricature of real life. When done well, this can feel just as natural as something in the real world, with the added bonus of infusing a little charm and character into the animation.

At this stage, collaboration between the designer and developer is crucial — but many designers may not even be aware that these options exist. It may be up to the developer to pitch this possibility to the designer.

By adding some subtle distortion to the scale of the box, we can add a lot to the animation:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 4 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

Now, the box has character. It feels alive. There are many things to tweak, but this is already moving much farther than the original instruction — in a very good way!

We’re going to go a step further and add a little rebound at the end of the jump:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 5 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

The second bounce is making this feel more alive, but something still seems off. The bounce looks stiff compared to the rest of the animation. We need to add another bit of distortion like we did for the wind-up:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 6 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

That subtle distortion at the end makes the rebound seem much more natural. Overall, a huge improvement from our basic linear bounce in the first example.

That right there may be exactly what we’re looking for, but further tweaks to the rate of movement can be made with a custom cubic Bézier curve:

See the Pen Bouncing Box 7 by Brandon Gregory (@pulpexploder) on CodePen.

Without both the designer and the developer aware of basic animation principles and controls, this level of customization is impossible. Really, this article just scratches the surface of both fields. If you’re a web designer or a web developer who works with designers, I’d strongly urge you to read up on both.

For animation principles, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas is a great primer on how to make that caricature of real life seem alive and real. With that common language in place, communication and collaboration between designers and developers becomes much easier.

For the technical controls and variations of CSS animation, the possibilities are nearly endless. Delay and timing are simple to adjust. As mentioned, if you don’t like the out-of-the-box ease timing function, it’s very possible to create your own using a cubic-bezier(). You can also adjust the level of distortion you want to bring the animation closer to or further from reality. The important thing is that both the designer and developer are thinking about these variations rather than blindly taking everything without customization. Shared knowledge and collaboration can make even simple animations into great ones.

More Resources


Making CSS Animations Feel More Natural is a post from CSS-Tricks