Archive for year: 2018

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/RSrDuYiYsnk/10-graphic-designers-follow-vero

Move over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there's a hot new social media platform on the block and it's called Vero. The platform, which is currently topping the App Store, is being picked up by creatives from all sorts of industries who are looking to ditch other social media sites that have become cluttered with ads.

Is it time for designers to leave Twitter?

According to Vero, what sets it apart from its rivals is that there are no ads and no algorithms. Vero is being presented as the next logical step for people who want to connect and share online. 

However usability issues, such as an inability for users to delete their accounts immediately, have already dogged the platform's image. 

Every platform goes through teething troubles, though, so could Vero be the go-to social media site of the future? If the current influx of designers and artists are anything to go by, the answer's yes. 

To help you get acquainted with the platform, we've rounded up 10 designers and artists who have already made the move to Vero. 

(Vero is currently experiencing high demand, so for now we've linked to their portfolio websites. We'll update this article with Vero handles as soon as we can.) 

01. Tom Muller

Tom Muller has a diverse range of design talents under his belt

Tom Muller is a creative director who splits his time between running his own design practice, helloMuller, and working as the creative director at Possible. Specialising in creative direction, graphic design, branding design and more, Muller will be one to follow on Vero for choice insights on a broad range of design principles.

02. Thom Simpson

Thom Simpson’s illustrations are an intricate marvel

It's easy to lose hours looking at the detailed wonders that are Thom Simpson's illustrations. By following the talented artist on Vero you'll be able to do exactly that, and you won't be distracted by ads.

03. Siggi Eggertsson

6 followers… for now

Siggi Eggertsson's beautiful creations pack all the charm of pixel art, but with their rounded elements they're a bit easier on the eyes. Be sure to follow him for visual treats straight into your timeline (or whatever the Vero version is.)

04. James Boast

James Boast has created illustrations for the New York Times, Volvo, Easy Jet and many more

What could be nicer than logging into a social media platform and seeing the delightful artwork of freelance illustrator James Boast? It beats endless holiday snaps in our books.

05. Ben the Illustrator

You might remember Ben the Illustrator from his Illustrator’s survey

If you're an illustrator knocking about online, chances are you have heard of Ben the Illustrator thanks to his annual illustrator's survey. To keep up to date with all of his latest works and thoughts, why not give him a follow on Vero?

06. Velvet Spectrum

Velvet Spectrum is sure to take off on Vero

The Los Angeles-based creative studio of Australian graphic artist Luke Choice already has a strong following on other social media platforms, so be sure to get in on the ground floor as he sets up shop on Vero. Expect posts that explore his portfolio of surreal and unexpected art.

07. James Jean

James Jean designed the poster for The Shape of Water

Artist James Jean already has over 60,000 followers on Twitter, but in comparison his Vero profile is looking a little lonely. Why not join him on the new site and give him a larger audience for his stunning work?

08. Thomas Fenton

Thomas Fenton’s posts are sure to inspire 3D artists

There are a lot of traditional and digital illustrators on this list, so to shake up your tastes we recommend following 3D artist Thomas Fenton. And thanks to Vero's lack of data mining algorithms, you won't get spammed by Vero with recommendations for pretenders to his throne.

09. Bobby Chiu

Learn something new with Bobby Chiu (heh, that rhymes)

On Twitter Bobby Chiu describes himself as an artist/teacher/creator, but now he can add Vero user to that list. With work for clients including Disney, Warner Bros and Star Wars, you're sure to pick up useful industry insights by giving him a follow.

10. TNMZ Design

Posters and lettering are the order of the day for TNMZ Design

Type fans are in for a treat with TNMZ Design. Set up by 21 year-old self taught graphic designer known as Hendry, TNMZ specialises in logo design, poster design, and professional hand lettering. If those are your bag, give TNMZ Design a follow on Vero and prepare to be bombarded by design goodness.

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Devx Experiments

As part of the Digital Design Days, the Devx Experiments showcase some great WebGL work.

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This project management app takes away the pain of planning, scheduling, task management, time tracking, and invoicing.

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30 Seconds of CSS

A curated collection of useful CSS snippets you can understand in 30 seconds or less.

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Jelly Mario

Stefan Hedman puts Mario into a gelatinous Mushroom Kingdom. So much more fun!

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Webpack 4

Read all about the new webpack 4 (Legato) version in this article by Sean T. Larkin.

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Neural Arpeggiator

Tero Parviainen’s amazing deep learning experiment: Let a deep neural network play an arpeggiated pattern around your chord.

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This SVG always shows today’s date

Terence Eden created this SVG that dynamically shows the current date.

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PhotoMosh

An image glitching app with tons of options to create unique effects.

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Free Font: BlackChurch

A great display font designed by Yann Conan.

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On AMP for Email

Jason Rodriguez shares his thoughts on Google’s announcement about adding dynamic content and interactivity to Gmail with AMP for email.

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The Truth About Design Titles

Tobias Van Schneider humorously translates all the fancy design titles for us.

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Pure CSS Halftone Effect

A brilliant experiment with CSS filters, gradients and blend modes. By Marco Buono.

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7 Practical Tips for Cheating at Design

Some really useful advice for better UI design by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger.

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How to think in graphs: An illustrative introduction to Graph Theory and its applications

Vardan Grigoryan explains Graph Theory in an easy to understand way in this brilliant guide.

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Frontend Case Studies

A curated list of technical talks and articles about real-world enterprise frontend development. By Andrew Romanov.

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Custom properties for breakpoint debugging

Emil Björklund’s smart CSS debugging trick combined from various solutions.

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Want to learn CSS Variables? Here’s my free 8-part course!

Per Harald Borgen has created a free course on CSS Variables at Scrimba to help you get started.

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Requests-HTML: HTML Parsing for Humans

A library that intends to make parsing HTML when scraping web content as simple and intuitive as possible.

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Gifski

Gifski is a macOS app for the gifski encoder, which converts videos to GIF animations.

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Would you like fries with that?

Tiffany Choong’s demo where you can build your own SVG burger 🙂

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Free Font: Arber Vintage

A distressed vintage font designed by Krisjanis Mezulis.

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AMP: the missing controversy

From earlier this month but quite an interesting read: Ferdy Christant explains how Google cheats with performance.

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From Our Blog
Animated Fragment Slideshow

A tutorial on how to create an experimental slideshow that animates in fragments. The slider is powered by the “Pieces” library, which was created for achieving interesting effects like these easily.

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Collective #393 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/02/5-ways-to-design-like-a-dungeon-master/

Storytelling is great for design, so long as you aren’t trying to sell a fairy tale…

Do you tell your users a story about how you’ll save them from their troubles? It’s not very realistic, and users generally know this. You might try a different approach.

Once upon a time in the videogame industry, some game developers got tired of writing stories and quests into their games. So they made a bunch of sandbox-style games where the player could do almost anything they wanted. They just had to want to do it. The “story” would be formed in the player’s own mind, as they took actions and saw consequences in the game.

This was called “emergent storytelling”, and the game developers were very proud of themselves. But they didn’t invent it. Not at all. Emergent narratives have a long history, but were perhaps perfected by the “Game Masters” and “Dungeon Masters” of the tabletop roleplaying games, like Dungeons & Dragons.

There’s a lot we designers can learn from the experiences of Dungeon Masters.

The crash course: Remember when you were a kid playing pretend with others, and then one kid suddenly had a pretend gun, another had a pretend bazooka, and another a nuke? Roleplaying games are basically codified sets of rules that allow people to play pretend without that sort of instant escalation.

The Dungeon Master is a person who referees the game, enforces the rules, tells the story, and doles out consequences for actions. They’ve been telling stories for a long time, often with main characters who are stubborn, ignorant, and determined to break everything the DM might create.

Does that sound familiar to you? There’s a lot we designers can learn from the experiences of Dungeon Masters. They’re experts in both telling pre-planned stories with input from the players, and letting players tell their own stories altogether, and we need to learn both, too.

1. Make Your User the Main Character

Whether a DM has a specific story he wants to tell, or intends to let the player write their own, one thing remains mostly-constant. The player is the protagonist. They are not necessarily the hero, or the “chosen one”, but the protagonist. It is this perspective that allows players to quickly get invested in their character, and the world.

So much of the storytelling I see in web design would have you believe that the product they’re selling is the main character. Worse, sometimes they try to tell you that the website itself is somehow the protagonist of the story. To the Pit with that idea!

Your product is just a tool in their inventory, like a handy rope, or a +4 Vorpal Longsword. They’re the ones making things happen. Remember that, and do your best to play that role. Fight against your role, and they might see you as more of a cursed weapon, to be discarded and dismantled at their earliest convenience.

2. Players May Not Do What You Want

Writers have it easy-ish. They can make their characters do whatever they want, even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense for the character. (Sure, that’s bad writing, but whatever.) Dungeon Masters have to deal with real people playing characters who will do what they want, when they want. Yes, they can punish players for undesired behavior, but that’s a fast way to drive players to another game.

Users are pretty much the same. Learn to adapt to the way your users want to do things. Remember that even if you have a greater narrative going on, it’s still their story in the end. They won’t always be content to go from the Home page, to the Features page, to the Buy Now page every time, in that order. They will find their own path somehow, but it will be easier on both of you if you give them more than one.

3. Players Will Abuse Every System They Can

D&D players and users alike will eventually find the most efficient way to get something done…

A corollary for the point above is that D&D players and users alike will eventually find the most efficient way to get something done, and you may not like it. This is called “meta-gaming” and in D&D, it involves combining classes, special gear, and abilities to create characters that are far more powerful than they should be.

In using web sites or apps, it means that if users find a way to get what they want without jumping through any hoops you have set up, they’ll do it. And they’ll get annoyed if you take their shortcuts away.

4. Have a Big Plan Anyway

Good Dungeon Masters have stuff going on in their world. The players themselves may or may not decide to interact with all of the people and events around them, but “life” will go on. Usually, players will eventually come face to face with the big boss in any case, if only because that boss is bent on dominating the whole world anyway.

Unless your users leave your site altogether, they’re at least going to look at your prices and a big “Buy Me” button eventually. Just because some people won’t follow the plan doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. Most users are less obstinate than your average D&D player, and will be glad to have a quick and easy route to their goal.

5. Have Another Plan for When Things Really Break

In D&D, player’s characters can die, and they have to make new ones. In one campaign, a mistake the DM made allowed us to blow up an entire (alternate) plane of existence with most of us in it. Long story. Anyway, he was able to continue the story with new characters, and some fast adjustments to the main story between sessions. Long-time DMs learn to account for catastrophic turns of events like that one.

In web design, we don’t have the option to fix things between sessions, though. The story has to keep going, even if your players are on, say, an error page. If you’re going to use storytelling as a metaphor for your user experience design, then you need to use it everywhere. The story shouldn’t end just because a link went missing.

And with that, have fun. And happy adventuring!

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/MsZ7GBblMd0/websites-10121096

The web is full of endless resources and tutorials on the subject of photography, but sometimes too much choice can be confusing. Here, we've picked the top photography websites that will really help you take your photography skills to the next level.

If you're a designer or creative after stock photography, check out our Best websites to download stock art post. And if you're looking to upgrade your camera, don't miss our guide to the best cameras for creatives.

But if you'd like to learn more about taking stunning photographs, gain inspiration from expert photographers and develop your camera craft, check out these great photo websites.

01. Digital Camera World

Visit Digital Camera World for daily news, tip, tutorials, reviews and much more

Digital Camera World is the world's fastest-growing photography website, covering every aspect of image-making, from DSLRs and photo editing to mobile photography and drones.

Through informative tutorials, no-nonsense reviews and in-depth buying guides, DCW helps photographers find the best gear, and shows them how to use it. Full disclosure: it's one of our sister titles, also made by Future Publishing.

02. Camera Jabber

Camera Jabber is a goldmine of news, reviews and tips for photographers

Built by photographers for photographers, Camera Jabber offers up an enticing mix of news, reviews and buyers' guides, on everything from phone cameras and DSLRs up to the latest action and 360 cameras. 

You'll also find a wealth of how-to material that'll take you through the photographic basics and on to more specific guides on things like editing your shots and building a portfolio. It's updated daily, and always worth checking in to see what's new.

03. British Journal of Photography

The British Journal Photography has been supporting photographers since 1854

The British Journal of Photography has been around since 1854, and it's kept up with the times since then. Its website is a great accompaniment to the venerable magazine, serving up thought-provoking photography and fresh perspectives every day. 

And its student and professional awards are a great way to discover new talent – or, indeed, to get your own photography skills recognised.

04. DIY Photography

DIY Photography has been running for over 10 years and is rammed with useful advice

Started in 2006 as a place for gear-lusting photographers, DIY Photography is a great place to pick up expert advice and read about the latest kit. 

Again written by photographers for photographers, it's heavy on the tutorials with hundreds of useful how-to articles online, plus a whole load of DIY articles that'll help you build your own gear rather than splashing out on expensive kit.

05. iPhone Photography School

Don’t have a DSLR? You can still take excellent photos with your phone

Just because you don't have a heavyweight camera, it doesn't mean that you can't take beautiful photos. iPhone Photography School has one simple aim: to help you take better photos with your iPhone than most people can with a DSLR. It does this with plenty of in-depth tutorials covering photography techniques and photo editing, as well as inspiring articles and regular competitions so you can pit your newfound skills against others.

06. Digital Photography Review

Digital Photography Review is bursting at the virtual seams with all the sector’s latest news and product reviews

Touted as the number one destination for everything digital photography-related, Digital Photography Review is bursting at the virtual seams with all the sector's latest news and product reviews. 

Complete with video tutorials, buying guides and forums, there's plenty on this photography website to keep you hooked and clicking back for more.

07. The Spruce: Photography

The Spruce: Photography is both an advice centre and repository of extensive further reading

Written by a host of photography experts, The Spruce: Photography is both an advice centre and a repository of extensive further reading. Once you're on this website's photography channel, you'll be clicking from one useful video to another before veering off down a rabbit hole of enlightening articles. There's plenty to enjoy – just make sure that you don't get lost.

08. Digital Photography School

Digital Photographers School aims to help photographers get the most out of their cameras

Digital photography enthusiast Darren Rowse is the man behind Digital Photography School, a site that aims to help photographers get the most out of their cameras. With sections including photo tips, gear and post-processing, all the essentials are well covered.

09. Strobist

Strobist is a must for anyone just starting out with light

Strobist is about one thing: Learning how to use off-camera flash with your DSLR to take your photos to the next level. Or the next 10 levels. If you’re a complete beginner at lighting, no worries. The free Lighting 101 course starts from the very beginning, and can get you up and running fast.

10. 500px

Connect with like-minded people at online photography community 500px

If it's inspirational images you're after then look no further than 500px. Founded by Oleg Gutsol and Evgeny Tchebotarev, this online photography community is a place to gain exposure, find inspiration and connect with other photographers. The site has had a recent redesign, and with a library of over six million photos you'll never run out of pretty pictures to look at and feel inspired by.

11. The Photo Argus

Find helpful tips, tricks and techniques on photography blog The Photo Argus

The Photo Argus is an online resource for photographers – from novice users to advanced pros. The site provides useful information, inspiration, techniques, photographer showcases and more. Find what you're looking for using the organised topic sections or browse through the Popular Posts and the most up-to-date articles on the homepage.

12. PetaPixel

Tutorials cover a range of topics

PetaPixel is a website offering tutorials, news and kit. The tutorials are imaginative and practical, offering videos and screen grabs to guide you through each step. 

Equipment covers new camera, lens and other photography kit announcements, but doesn't include reviews (you'll need to look elsewhere for those). News covers all sorts of interesting developments in the photography world – both hilarious and informative.

13. Photography Week

Photography Week is a digital magazine

While not technically a website, Photography Week is a digital magazine, so we're including it here. Packed with beautiful photography, it offers heaps of fresh inspiration every week. 

Full disclosure: It's another of our sister titles, also made by Future Publishing. Get it on iPad and iPhone, Android devices or through Zinio for multiple devices, including computers.

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