Post pobrano z: Tips and Tricks for the Best Online Animation

It doesn’t seem so long ago that all it took to have a stand out web presence was some great content with the right keywords and a good logo. How times have changed. These days, if you can’t catch your audience in the first couple of seconds with some eye catching animation, you have lost them forever.

Of course, the principle of animation is as old as the hills, and despite constantly changing technology, some practices have stood the test of time and are as relevant today as they were years ago. Here are our top four tips and tricks to get the best out of online animation:

1. Turn the sound down

The first tip is one of those that has stood the test of time. If you want to check how effective your animation really looks, click the mute button and just watch it. There is nowhere to hide, and if something is not right, it will be far easier to spot it without the distraction of the soundtrack. In fact, it will stick out like a sore thumb.

2. Try SVG Animation

If the first tip dates back 50 years or more, the second is cutting edge. In case you have not heard of it before, SVG stands for scalable vector graphics, and SVG animation is set to become the next big thing in online animation. SVGs are essentially similar to GIFs, but have the advantage of being far less heavy when it comes to file size. This means they load faster and run smoother. SVGator is a quick and easy way to animate SVG. It offers a user-friendly interface and automatically generated code.

3. Small is beautiful

Don’t try to create War and Peace. The best way to get better faster is to work on short animations and get them out the door. You will find your skill base grows, as well as your confidence. As Woody Allen almost said, if it takes longer than ten seconds, you’re doing it wrong.

4. There’s more to expression than expression

One of the biggest challenges animators face is getting facial expressions right. When you really look properly, however, you will see that it is less about the poses and more about the motion. For example, eyes darting in confusion or lips trembling in sadness. Focus on the movement as much as the pose, and the desired effect will come far more naturally.

Post pobrano z: 5 Steps to Choosing an E-Commerce Theme Your Clients Will Love

Your client doesn’t know what he wants in terms of design, so you have a blank screen to work on. The whole point of an e-commerce site is to sell, so all your design decisions must focus on what works for the final customer. You know what works, but you have to explain your choice to the client who is only interested in sales figures.

1. Understand the Target Profile

This is the one area where your client knows more than you. Listen and listen hard. Ask questions about the age, gender, education, and motivations of the target customer. Then go away and do your own research. This will include mobile use and color/font preferences. Look at other sites that are competing with your client’s and see what works for them.

The font you choose and layout also play a large part in any decision to stay or click the ‘back’ button. First impressions count, and you have only a fraction of a second to convince a website user that the site is reputable and aimed at them. A Stamford study showed that people’s decisions regarding a site’s trustworthiness depend on visual cues like the header, rather than logical ones such as a good privacy policy or generous returns conditions.

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People read emotional meanings into fonts, and these are linked to the common usage types of each font. The image above from Graphic Design School by David Dabner illustrates this.

2. Understand What the Client Wants

Expand the brief to include the client’s expectations and preferences regarding layout, color, number of products to a page, product categories and total number of items. Failure to set down in black and white what the client expects can lead to your design being rejected and you not being paid for your time.

3. Choose a Theme

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Just looking at Shopify themes, there are 59 themes to choose from. You can narrow your selection using the filters on the left of the screen, but you still have too many to choose from.

Start with this great guide on choosing an e-commerce store theme that will help you to narrow your choice down to one or two.

4. Choose a Layout

Most themes can be customized and come with two to four style options that allow you to change the layout. Use your brief to decide on the best option for the client’s customers, but be prepared to change the layout if the client demands you do so.

Mobile First Design Principles

Most users will be on small phone screens, so your design needs to work for them. Buy Now, and Navigation links should use large buttons, rather than text links.

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The screen shot above from Varvy illustrates a few mobile-first design principles, but the page itself is a prime example of how this design philosophy makes desktop users’ lives easier, too. There is lots of white space, fonts are large, and contrast is good, all of which benefit everyone, no matter what device they are using.

5. Choose a Color Scheme

This Designer Daily article explains the psychology of color in detail.

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Color plays a large part in customers’ decisions to stay on a site, as this chart from HotDesign.com shows. It gives a clue as to why most websites use a blue design. Your color choices will be guided by the preferences of the target profile. Female users have a preference for more subtle shades as shown in the diagram below from Entrepreneur.com.

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Build a unique color palette to suit your client’s customers using a tool such as the one from Paletton.com shown below.

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The Paletton tool allows you to choose different numbers and different color wheel relationships of colors.

In Brief

Avoid giving the client more than two options in your presentation. It is for you as the designer to decide on colors, layouts, and fonts, and to explain your choices to your client so he is happy enough to pay you. You have to justify your design decisions and relate them to your brief. Your final theme design may well differ from what the client was expecting, and he or she must be happy with that before you are paid.

Ultimately, it is your client who pays you, so you might have to compromise between what you think is the best design and what your client wants.

Post pobrano z: Top 20 A’ Design Award Winners

A’ Design Awards have now become a classic competition and event for designers. This year’s edition was a blast, with tons of great designers taking part from all over the world. The awards team have announced the winners recently, and there is lots of inspiration to be found there. If you are a designer or a design studio, don’t forget that you can already register in the 2017-2018 edition.

20 amazing designs selected by the jury

The awards international jury had the tremendous task to select the best designs among the many work submissions. Right after this, you can discover a selection of 20 awesome examples of designs that have been selected as winners of the competition. You can check this page for all the winners.

1. The Brocoli Chair

A splendid vegetable inspired design by Jie Luo.

2. Calculock Clock

A clever concept clock by Metanat Karami.

3. Picglaze Sample Book Catalogue of materials

Good concept and execution of concept by Estudio Maba.

4. Polycom RealPresence Trio Smart Conference Phone

A must-have at the work place, with a gorgeous design by Pip Tompkin Design.

5. Show Me Portable Learning Projector

A projector you can take anywhere, thanks to Dan Liao and Jiong Young.

6. Prism Desktop Gaming Computer

A futuristic design by Han Xin.

7. IBDC-2014 Promotional Images Visual Identity

Colorful vector illustrations by U Visual Communication.

8. 27th Macao International Music Festival Promotion

Innovative branding design by Chiii Design.

9. Be Like To communicate

A nice lettering project by Jenifer Blanco Monzon.

10. Shallows Vase

Beautiful vase design by Kazunaga Sakashita.

11. Suning.com branding

Images of Suning.com by Dongdao Creative Branding Group.

12. Ephemeral Eternal Gallery Show

An innovative show design by Elizabeth Yerin Shim.

13. National Essence

Environmental Poster by Lin Ding-SAMSUNG (CHINA) R&D CENTRE.

14. J.C.Disi 2013/14 Biennial

Book design by Leo P. H. Chan & Michelle Leung

15. Lynko Freestanding Modular System

Nomadic modular freestanding system by Natalia Geci.

16. Bambi chair

Chair by kamina&C Takeshi Sawada.

17. XX Multifunctional Stool

A creative and portable multifunctional seating system by Emre Kayganacı.

18. Balance

Coffee Table by Mehmet Lutfi Hidayetoglu.

19. ShelfPack

Luggage packing system by Ken McKaba.

20. Moor Wheelchair

A wheelchair suiteable for interiors by Ertunc Vatanperver.

Post pobrano z: Daniela Forti Creates Incredible Glass Jellyfish Tables

If your house or appartment is small and you have children, then you probably don’t want to get one of Daniela Forti’s tables. Obviously, these are not the most practical tables you’ll find, but they are truly work of beauty.

Created using a glass-fusion technique, Forti’s tables litteraly look like jellyfish, dripping with glass tentacles. With the shiny colors and beautiful transparency, these tables create an ethereal athmosphere anywhere you put them. To learn more about it, check Daniela Forti’s portfolio site.

Post pobrano z: Typography and lettering inspiration collection

A round-up of inspiring typographic designs by various designers.

Above: an ambigram with the word USA, designed by Sergey Yakovenko.

A stunning illustrated poster for the Wizard of Oz, a project by Kyle Letendre.

SevenSeven, a gorgeous typographic logo by Miklos Kiss.

A nice digital sketch by Jordan Metcalf.

Wahoo’s Fish Taco, mosaic typography by Sean O’Connor.

Misery Loves Company.

Zaha Hadid, a cool typographic paper cutout by Patrick Cabral.

A Cage of Roots, a book cover with deep rooted typography by Matt Griffin.

Typographic poster by Kingdom Industry.

Trust your Gut, a typographic layout with roads for a magazine, design by Lorena G.

Post pobrano z: The Role of Web Hosting in a Visitor’s Experience with your Website

Each website element has a specific role to create a good user experience. It is important that you give equal dedication to each. However, most articles will talk about design, SEO, user experience that leaves readers feeling these are somewhat technical. As a result, businesses continue to focus on design and underestimate the role of the backend.

Perhaps, the only eye opener was when Google announced that it would take speed as one of the bases for search ranking. This might have happened way back in 2009 but as relevant as ever. In independent researches by Google, Bing, AOL, and Shopzilla:

• A 2-second slowdown changed queries by -1.8% and revenue/user by -4.3% – Bing
• A 400-millisecond delay resulted in -0.59% change in searches/user – Google
• Even after the delay was rectified, these users still had a -0.21% fewer searches, indicating that their slow experience affects long term behaviour.
• A year-long performance redesign resulted in 5 second speed up, which eventually led to a 25% in page views, 7-12% increase in revenue, and a 50% reduction in hardware costs.

The key takeaway here is that a faster website loading experience results in a significant positive experience, both for users/prospects and website owners or businesses.

Speed and the User’s Experience

There are quite a few reasons why your site is slow, some of which can be rectified quick, such as resizing images & utilizing a CDN, rechecking your codes, text graphics, unnecessary plugins, and the lot. However, a good web design plan always considers the backend, such as your servers.

When a browser pings your website for all the information and data, your site should be able to respond fast. In a user’s experience, the expectation is 2 seconds or less. Some pressure this is! This might be troublesome back in 2009, when web hosting providers had the opportunity to jack up prices and cheap means less in quality. But nowadays, you can find competent and yet still, affordable web hosting. The upsurge in the number of hosting providers, has caused a drop off in prices. LCN for example, offers a cheap web hosting package with just $3.33 a month for a 5GB webspace setup, including a £75 Adwords voucher to boot.

Source: LCN.com

Platform specific hosting, such as WordPress-centric hosting services, have also seen a certain price reduction, with lots of widely available coupons for many WordPress hosting providers. Picking out a hosting service shouldn’t be a split second decision, and yet it shouldn’t take much work to find a reasonable priced hosting solution for your site/brand.

Given the percentages in drop-offs, user expectations, and industry standards, these can all be met as long as you give ample attention to your backend as well. In addition, future-proofing your website by following some webhosting advice on security and performance is also a wise move.

More often than not, visitors go to your website because they think you can help them accomplish their goals. This might be a query about your products/services, research for information, buy a product, and many more. All in all, think about what you want your users/prospects/customers to experience when they are on your website. This does not necessarily mean just the aesthetics. The most important experience is when you help them accomplish their goals, their reason for going to your website. The faster you help them complete their goals, the better the experience. And with luck (and proper design and web performance), they will be back to your site in no time!

Web Hosting and its Crucial Role

While some would downplay the role of web hosting, it’s one of the most crucial factors of an exceptional website. Other than load time, security, caching, and email are just some of the important factors that affect user experience, overall website performance, and business results.

In an age where online presence is a non-negotiable part of a business, it is even more imperative that your website represents your business in the best way possible by aiming to help users, prospects and customers. Your brand should aim not just to create a good first impression, but more importantly, a lasting one.

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.

30+ Professional Font Families

Here’s a chance to instantly beef up your typeface toolbox. With this Mighty Deal, you’ll get more than 30 professional full font families at one crazy low price. That’s a wide variety of styles to work with, meaning you can deliver pure success to any of your clients, as well as attract plenty of new ones.

$18 instead of $90 – Get it now!

250+ Smoke Effects Including Shapes, Brushes, Patterns and More

There’s nothing like a misty, smoky effect to set the mood. With this Smoke Toolkit from Cruzine, you’ll get everything you could possibly need to set the tone! Smoke shapes, brushes, patterns, effects, backgrounds and more, are all at your fingertips. That’s more than 250 smoky tools, provided in fully customizable, layered PSD files. Remember, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s fire… there’s a red hot deal!

$14 instead of $59 – Get it now!

109 in 1 Best Font Bundle

A value of $1800+ Now get 109 fonts with super low price for $18 only. Do not miss, get today! Also includes many alternative characters.Is coded with PUA Unicode, which allows full access to all the extra characters without having special designing software. Mac users can use Font Book. Windows users can use Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favourite text editor. For folks who have opentype capable software : The alternates are accessible by turning on “Stylistic Alternates” and “Ligatures” buttons on in Photoshop’s Character panel, or via any software with a glyphs panel, e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop CC, Inkscape.

$18 – Get it now!

The Mila Script Pro Font Family: Script, Sans & Ornaments

It’s time to meet the Mila Script Pro Font Family! This amazing collection of handmade script and sans typefaces includes a handmade brush script with round and soft letterforms, as well as a sans style for easy reading. Besides a slew of helpful OpenType features to really create flexibility in your work, you’ll get an Ornaments style of more than 50 useful swashes and symbols to tie it all together.

$9 instead of $89 – Get it now!

Post pobrano z: Solar Powered Lights For The Yard

When you are lighting your patio the exact opposite thing you need to do is to be stumbling over electrical lines and attempting to put lights close to an outlet to connect them to. Assuming, notwithstanding, you ran with solar lights you wouldn’t have this issue.

Solar lights take their power from the sun, store it in inside batteries and afterward sparkle splendidly all through the dull night. With such a large number of choices, you can have solar lights for security and to decorate your home, all in the meantime and all with bring down power costs while being ecologically inviting. It’s a win.

On the off chance that you have ventures in the yard you might need to utilize lights that will enlighten those means when its dull. This will wipe out searching for the means and lessen mischances. They are pretty accents to your means as well and obviously arrive in an assortment of shapes and hues.

Similarly for a pathway. Enlightening it during the evening removes the mystery from the condition and takes into consideration a beautiful sparkle other than. Way lights can be low to the ground or can be on sticks to make a lovely emphasize to the sides of the way itself. They too arrive in an assortment of shapes and hues to be the ideal expansion to your arranging.

Did you realize that the banner code proposes that you light your banner around evening time? Never fear, there is a solar light only for that reason and now the banner will never look better against the dull sky.

You invest a great deal of energy and cash on your finishing so why not indicate it off around evening time too? There are a wide range of solar spotlights available that will consequently sparkle on your ideal arranging or delightful tree around evening time. You can likewise actualize arranging lights into the finishing itself for complements consistently, day or night.

Decks look so happy and summery when they have lights on them. Presently you can get solar string lights to give your deck that awesome light and comfortable feel, and they likewise come in all the prominent shapes and hues.

Post pobrano z: Sono Motors Introduces The SION Solar Powered Car

The fantasy of having the capacity to drive to work in a solar-powered car is at last turning into a reality. Sono Motors simply uncovered the SION solar-powered electric car gives you the ability to travel up to 18 miles utilizing only energy from the sun. Best of all, the SION isn’t only for the whealthy, since it just costs 16,000 Euros (around $18,600) in addition to the cost of the battery, and it is pressed with unbelievable components like built-in moss filtration, bi-directional charging and integrated solar panels.

A year ago, Sono Motors, a German startup raised over $200,000 create the SION. Utilizing 300 photovoltaic panels, the SION can store enough energy from the sun to give you the ability to travel up to 18 miles, however in the event that you have to travel further, the SION can likewise be energized utilizing a standard outlet, similar to a regular electric auto. Depending on the amount you want to spend, you can rent the battery month to month, or buy outright.

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.

The Summer Time Font Bundle

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere Summer has arrived. For everybody in the Southern Hemisphere…. Here are some fonts to warm you through the winter months. Packed with 27 Summer Style Fonts from 19 Different Font Families, you can save a HUGE 92% off the RRP.

$19 instead of $226 – Get it now!

Trenda Font Family

Based on the uppercase of the popular typeface Trend, from 2013, Trenda is a geometric sans-serif typeface that sports a wider character set and complete family of uppercase and lowercase letters available in different weights. This versatile and easy-to-use functional font is perfect for both display and text sizes.

$17 instead of $199 – Get it now!

The Splendid Design Bundle

Take a look at the wonderful graphics packs, mock ups, illustrations, textures, fonts and more available below. This bundle is perfect for Designers and Crafters alike with something for everybody included!

$21 instead of $359 – Get it now!

3,000 Artistic Vectors, Watercolors, Flower Decorations & More

This amazing mega-packed Artistic Bundle is overstuffed with more than 3,000 beautiful designer assets. You’ll find loads of hand-drawn vector illustrations, seamless patterns, watercolors, brushes, symbols, layer styles and so much more. Your latest projects won’t know what hit ’em!

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