Archive for month: July, 2020

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/rW52E2pMBCA/wd-my-passport-deals

WD (or Western Digital) My Passport portable storage devices are a must-have for creatives. These unassuming products might look small, but they're mighty when it comes to storing image, video and audio files. In this guide, you'll find a selection of Western Digital's best external hard drives – from the smaller, lower-priced WD My Passport SSD, to the larger WD My Passport 4TB hard drive.

One thing that all of the external hard drives below have in common is that they all have super-fast data transfer speeds and are easy to use. And the best bit? Our clever price comparison tool has found the best deals on each model. Not sure which one is right for you? Jump to the what model should you buy section. And if you can't find what you're looking for here, don't miss our guide to the best external hard drives available right now.

See WD's weekly sales here!
The best WD My Passport deals in 2020

The 4TB iteration of the Western Digital My Passport is a top choice. In fact, we rate it so highly, it takes the top spot in our round up of the best external hard drives (mentioned above). You can also get it in 1TB, 2TB and 5TB iterations, but for value for money, this is our choice. It's got a huge capacity to store all your favourite media – perfect for creatives that deal in massive digital files. 

With the 4TB version, you'll get cloud storage and 256-AES encryption, plus Western Digital's own backup software. Best of all is its great data transfer speeds and, though this hard disc drive (HDD) doesn't offer the speed of a solid state drive (SSD) device (see WD My Passport SSD below), the Western Digital My Passport offers a great balance of quick transfer speeds and massive storage without a huge price tag.

The difference between HDD and SSD

As detailed below on this page, there are some key differences between a solid state drive (SSD) like this one, and a hard disc drive (HHD). In short, the SSD version of WD's My Passport is far faster at transferring data, and it comes in a smaller shell. You'll have to pay a little more to get the storage up to 1TB or 2TBs,  but if you value speed and portability over all else, it'll be worth it. 

Built for both PC and Mac, the My Passport SSD is compatible with a range of ports – both the USB Type-A and Type-C ports, with the latter able to reach speeds of up to 540MB a second. It's also a sturdy model, made to stand a drop of up to two metres. And it's as compact and portable as they come, proving that great things really can come in small packages. 

The WD My Passport Ultra 4TB stands out from the My Passport crowd by offering a three-year warranty – a nice addition if you aim to get a lot of use out of it and want peace of mind – and also having a Mac-specific version of the hard drive available (all the models on this page can be reformatted to work with Macs, but this version is ready out of the box).

Ever so slightly wider than the WD My Passport 4TB, but a little shallower, the Ultra comes with a metal cover and WD Discovery software for WD Backup, WD Security and WD Drive Utilities. It is USB-C ready, and USB 3.0 compatible with an adapter provided, and there are a range of storage sizes, including the huge 5TB option. 

Can't find a portable storage device to suit above? Here are some more great WD My Passport deals available now.

WD My Passport: Which model should you buy?

When choosing the right one for you, foremost on your mind should be its storage capability. Even though many come in massive multi-terabyte iterations, 500GB is plenty to get you started. But if you want to store lots of large video and/or RAW files, or you want to use your external hard drive for housing  games, investing in few more terabytes is a good idea. 

Other important information to consider before making a purchase is the hard drive's connectivity. The rectangular USB-A ports are slowly being replaced by the newer, smaller reversible USB-C ports, found in all newer generation Macs and PCs. 

The difference between HDD and SSD

There are two types of external hard drive: hard disk drives (HDD, also known as mechanical or traditional hard drives) or solid state drives (SSD). An SSD is faster, lighter and less power-hungry, whereas an HDD drive will be cheaper and slower than an SSD. HDDs are also good for storing lots of data as they often have a high capacity. 

So, if you want to store huge amounts of data while keeping prices low, a HDD is the way to go. But if speed is your top priority – for example, if you move a lot of large files, or want to run programs off the drive – then choose an SSD. Or, you can always use a smaller SSD for files that you need to access or move around often, and then store the other data that you use less often on a higher capacity HDD.

Related articles:

The best graphics cardsThe best usb-c monitorsThe best 4K monitors

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/07/methods-performance-react-apps/

Methods Of Improving And Optimizing Performance In React Apps

Methods Of Improving And Optimizing Performance In React Apps

Shedrack Akintayo

2020-07-16T11:00:00+00:00
2020-07-16T20:34:27+00:00

React enables web applications to update their user interfaces (UIs) quickly, but that does not mean your medium or large React application will perform efficiently. Its performance will depend on how you use React when building it, and on your understanding of how React operates and the process through which components live through the various phases of their lifecycle. React offers a lot of performance improvements to a web app, and you can achieve these improvements through various techniques, features, and tools.

In this tutorial, we will discuss various methods of optimizing performance in React applications, and also the features of React that we can use to improve performance.

Where To Start Optimizing Performance In A React Application?

We can’t begin to optimize an app without knowing exactly when and where to optimize. You might be asking, “Where do we start?”

During the initial rendering process, React builds a DOM tree of components. So, when data changes in the DOM tree, we want React to re-render only those components that were affected by the change, skipping the other components in the tree that were not affected.

However, React could end up re-rendering all components in the DOM tree, even though not all are affected. This will result in longer loading time, wasted time, and even wasted CPU resources. We need to prevent this from happening. So, this is where we will focus our optimization effort.

In this situation, we could configure every component to only render or diff when necessary, to avoid wasting resources and time.

Measuring Performance

Never start the optimization process of your React application based on what you feel. Instead, use the measurement tools available to analyze the performance of your React app and get a detailed report of what might be slowing it down.

Analyzing React Components With Chrome’s Performance Tab

According to React’s documentation,, while you’re still in development mode, you can use the “Performance” tab in the Chrome browser to visualize how React components mount, update, and unmount.
For example, the image below shows Chrome’s “Performance” tab profiling and analyzing my blog in development mode.

Performance profiler summary (Large preview)

To do this, follow these steps:

Disable all extensions temporarily, especially React Developer Tools, because they can mess with the result of the analysis. You can easily disable extensions by running your browser in incognito mode.
Make sure the application is running in development mode. That is, the application should be running on your localhost.
Open Chrome’s Developer Tools, click on the “Performance” tab, and then click the “Record” button.
Perform the actions you want to profile. Don’t record more than 20 seconds, or else Chrome might hang.
Stop the recording.
React events will be grouped under the “User Timing” label.

The numbers from the profiler are relative. Most times and components will render more quickly in production. Nevertheless, this should help you to figure out when the UI is updated by mistake, as well as how deep and how often the UI updates occur.

React Developer Tools Profiler

According to React’s documentation, in react-dom 16.5+ and react-native 0.57+, enhanced profiling capabilities are available in developer mode using React Developer Tools Profiler. The profiler uses React’s experimental Profiler API to collate timing information about each component that’s rendered, in order to identify performance bottlenecks in a React application.

Just download React Developer Tools for your browser, and then you can use the profiler tool that ships with it. The profiler can only be used either in development mode or in the production-profiling build of React v16.5+. The image below is the profiler summary of my blog in development mode using React Developer Tools Profiler:

React Developer Tools Profiler flamegraph (Large preview)

To achieve this, follow these steps:

Download React Developer Tools.
Make sure your React application is either in development mode or in the production-profiling build of React v16.5+.
Open Chrome’s “Developer Tools” tab. A new tab named “Profiler” will be available, provided by React Developer Tools.
Click the “Record” button, and perform the actions you want to profile. Ideally, stop recording after you have performed the actions you want to profile.
A graph (known as a flamegraph) will appear with all of the event handlers and components of your React app.

Note: See the documentation for more information.

Memoization With React.memo()

React v16 was released with an additional API, a higher-order component called React.memo(). According to the documentation, this exists only as a performance optimization.

Its name, “memo” comes from memoization, which is basically a form of optimization used mainly to speed up code by storing the results of expensive function calls and returning the stored result whenever the same expensive function is called again.

Memoization is a technique for executing a function once, usually a pure function, and then saving the result in memory. If we try to execute that function again, with the same arguments as before, it will just return the previously saved result from the first function’s execution, without executing the function again.

Mapping the description above to the React ecosystem, the functions mentioned are React components and the arguments are props.

The default behavior of a component declared using React.memo() is that it renders only if the props in the component have changed. It does a shallow comparison of the props to check this, but an option is available to override this.

React.memo() boosts the performance of a React app by avoiding re-rendering components whose props haven’t changed or when re-rendering is not needed.

The code below is the basic syntax of React.memo():

const MemoizedComponent = React.memeo((props) => {
// Component code goes in here
})

When To Use React.memo()

Pure functional component
You can use React.memo() if your component is functional, is given the same props, and always renders the same output. You can also use React.memo() on non-pure-functional components with React hooks.
The component renders often
You can use React.memo() to wrap a component that renders often.
The component re-renders with same props
Use React.memo() to wrap a component that is usually provided with the same props during re-rendering.
Medium to high elements
Use it for a component that contains a medium to high number of UI elements to check props for equality.

Note: Be careful when memoizing components that make use of props as callbacks. Be sure to use the same callback function instance between renderings. This is because the parent component could provide different instances of the callback function on every render, which will cause the memoization process to break. To fix this, make sure that the memoized component always receives the same callback instance.

Let’s see how we can use memoization in a real-world situation. The functional component below, called “Photo”, uses React.memo() to prevent re-rendering.

export function Photo({ title, views }) {
return (
<div>
<div>Photo title: {title}</div>
<div>Location: {location}</div>
</div>
);
}
// memoize the component
export const MemoizedPhoto = React.memo(Photo);

The code above consists of a functional component that displays a div containing a photo title and the location of the subject in the photo. We are also memoizing the component by creating a new function and calling it MemoizedPhoto. Memoizing the photo component will prevent the component from re-rendering as long as the props, title, and location are the same on subsequent renderings.

// On first render, React calls MemoizedPhoto function.
<MemoizedPhoto
title=”Effiel Tower”
location=”Paris”
/>

// On next render, React does not call MemoizedPhoto function,
// preventing rendering
<MemoizedPhoto
title=”Effiel Tower”
location=”Paris”
/>

Here, React calls the memoized function only once. It won’t render the component in the next call as long as the props remain the same.

Bundling And Minification

In React single-page applications, we can bundle and minify all our JavaScript code into a single file. This is OK, as long as our application is relatively small.

As our React application grows, bundling and minifying all of our JavaScript code into a single file becomes problematic, difficult to understand, and tedious. It will also affect the performance and loading time of our React app because we are sending a large JavaScript file to the browser. So, we need some process to help us split the code base into various files and deliver them to the browser in intervals as needed.

In a situation like this, we can use some form of asset bundler like Webpack, and then leverage its code-splitting functionality to split our application into multiple files.

Code-splitting is suggested in Webpack’s documentation as a means to improve the loading time of an application. It is also suggested in React’s documentation for lazy-loading (serving only the things currently needed by the user), which can dramatically improve performance.

Webpack suggests three general approaches to code-splitting:

Entry points
Manually split code using entry configuration.
Duplication prevention
Use SplitChunksPlugin to de-duplicate and split chunks.
Dynamic imports
Split code via inline function calls within modules.

Benefits Of Code Splitting

Splitting code assists with the browser’s cache resources and with code that doesn’t change often.
It also helps the browser to download resources in parallel, which reduces the overall loading time of the application.
It enables us to split code into chunks that will be loaded on demand or as needed by the application.
It keeps the initial downloading of resources on first render relatively small, thereby reducing the loading time of the app.

Bundling and minification process (Large preview)

Immutable Data Structures

React’s documentation talks of the power of not mutating data. Any data that cannot be changed is immutable. Immutability is a concept that React programmers should understand.

An immutable value or object cannot be changed. So, when there is an update, a new value is created in memory, leaving the old one untouched.

We can use immutable data structures and React.PureComponent to automatically check for a complex state change. For example, if the state in your application is immutable, you can actually save all state objects in a single store with a state-management library like Redux, enabling you to easily implement undo and redo functionality.

Don’t forget that we cannot change immutable data once it’s created.

Benefits Of Immutable Data Structures

They have no side effects.
Immutable data objects are easy to create, test, and use.
They help us to write logic that can be used to quickly check for updates in state, without having to check the data over and over again.
They help to prevent temporal coupling (a type of coupling in which code depends on the order of execution).

The following libraries help to provide a set of immutable data structures:

immutability-helper
Mutate a copy of data without changing the source.
Immutable.js
Immutable persistent data collections for JavaScript increase efficiency and simplicity.
seamless-immutable
Immutable data structures for JavaScript become backwards-compatible with normal JavaScript arrays and objects.
React-copy-write
This gives immutable state with a mutable API.

Other Methods Of Improving Performance

Use A Production Build Before Deployment

React’s documentation suggests using the minified production build when deploying your app.

React Developer Tools’ “production build” warning (Large preview)

Avoid Anonymous Functions

Because anonymous functions aren’t assigned an identifier (via const/let/var), they aren’t persistent whenever a component inevitably gets rendered again. This causes JavaScript to allocate new memory each time this component is re-rendered, instead of allocating a single piece of memory only once, like when named functions are being used.

import React from ‘react’;

// Don’t do this.
class Dont extends Component {
render() {
return (
<button onClick={() => console.log(‘Do not do this’)}>
Don’t
</button>
);
}
}

// The better way
class Do extends Component {
handleClick = () => {
console.log(‘This is OK’);
}
render() {
return (
<button onClick={this.handleClick}>
Do
</button>
);
}
}

The code above shows two different ways to make a button perform an action on click. The first code block uses an anonymous function in the onClick() prop, and this would affect performance. The second code block uses a named function in the onClick() function, which is the correct way in this scenario.

Mounting And Unmounting Components Often Is Expensive

Using conditionals or tenaries to make a component disappear (i.e. to unmount it) is not advisable, because the component made to disappear will cause the browser to repaint and reflow. This is an expensive process because the positions and geometries of HTML elements in the document will have to be recalculated. Instead, we can use CSS’ opacity and visibility properties to hide the component. This way, the component will still be in the DOM but invisible, without any performance cost.

Virtualize Long Lists

The documentation suggests that if you are rendering a list with a large amount of data, you should render a small portion of the data in the list at a time within the visible viewport. Then, you can render more data as the list is being scrolled; hence, the data is displayed only when it is in the viewport. This process is called “windowing”. In windowing, a small subset of rows are rendered at any given time. There are popular libraries for doing this, two of which are maintained by Brian Vaughn:

react-window
react-virtualized

Conclusion

There are several other methods of improving the performance of your React application. This article has discussed the most important and effective methods of performance optimization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through this tutorial. You can learn more via the resources listed below. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section below. I’ll be happy to answer every one of them.

References And Related Resources

“Optimizing Performance”, React Docs
“Use React.memo Wisely”, Dmitri Pavlutin
“Performance Optimization Techniques in React”, Niteesh Yadav
“Immutability in React: There’s Nothing Wrong With Mutating Objects”, Esteban Herrera
“10 Ways to Optimize Your React App’s Performance”, Chidume Nnamdi
“5 Tips to Improve the Performance of Your React Apps”, William Le

(ks, ra, al, il)

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/FBnASHTr8BI/

In this tutorial you will learn how to create blog post cards that flip on hover revealing the post excerpt on the back of the card. We will achieve this effect using CSS. The end result is responsive, making the card flip on click, on mobile devices. This GIF shows what you will be able to create by the end of this tutorial.

You need to have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS to begin with. We will explore a few advanced CSS topics such as perspective and transform towards the end. Let’s dive in.

Setting up

Create a blank HTML document and name it index.html. Add the basic HTML skeleton. If you use Visual Studio Code, all you need to do is type “!” and hit enter. You will end up with this.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

I have used the font ‘Lato’ – with font weights 300 and 700. So add the following line below the title tag to embed this font using Google fonts.

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Lato:wght@400;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Create your stylesheet and name it style.css. Link the stylesheet to your HTML document below the Google fonts CDN link using

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">

I have used these three blog post images from Pexels – post1.jpg, post2.jpg and post3.jpg. You can download the same or choose to include your own. But don’t forget to name them post1.jpg, post2.jpg and post3.jpg.

A single flip card

Once the setup is done, let’s first create a single card that flips – with a front face and a back face. The card flip effect shown in the above GIF happens when the element is rotated 180 degrees along the Y-axis. To create the 3D effect, we need a 3D space for that element by adding perspective to its parent. Look at the difference between 2D effect and 3D effect.

2D Effect

 

3D Effect

 

Do you see that the card actually moves out of its space to give you depth effect in 3D? The CSS property perspective helps us do just that. Let’s say we add perspective:20px to the parent. This gives a depth of 20px to that element. This means, a 3D space is created – so the child elements can be moved near or far or can be rotated to give the 3D effect. Let’s create the markup first.

HTML

We need a parent div to add perspective. And then a child element that contains both the front face and back face absolutely positioned. So add this markup in your index.html within the body tag.

<div class="post-wrap"> <!– The parent element –>
<div class="post"> <!– Child element that flips –>
<div class="post-front">
Front face
</div>
<div class="post-back">
Back face
</div>
</div>
</div>

CSS

In style.css, begin with some common styles for all elements:

* {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
box-sizing: border-box;
}

Add the following styles to html and body:

html, body {
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
body{
background-color: #f7fafc;
font-family: ‘Lato’,sans-serif;
font-size: 1rem;
color: #444444;
}

To the post-wrap element, add width, height and perspective.

.post-wrap {
width: 320px;
height: 420px;
perspective: 1000px;
}

Imagine this as a box where perspective is the depth of that box. Next, style the .post div to occupy the full space of its parent.

.post {
position: relative; /* Required to absolutely position the child faces */
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}

Let’s add styles to the two faces.

.post-front, .post-back {
position: absolute;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
background-color: white;
}

You will see both of them placed one on top of the other. (You cannot actually see them both. Only the back face is visible. On using the browser inspector tool, you can see that they are positioned on top of each other). But we need the back face to be facing backwards – which means, it needs to be rotated 180 degrees on the Y axis. So add this:

.post-back {
transform: rotateY(180deg);
}

This is what you will see in your browser now.

 

So the element has turned backwards but the text still appears – as if it’s a glass. We don’t want the back of the element to appear. For that, we use backface-visibility: hidden;. In Safari browser, this works with a -webkit- prefix. Add these now:

.post-front, .post-back {
/* Existing styles here */
-webkit-backface-visibility: hidden;
backface-visibility: hidden;
}

Now you can only see the front face – just the way we want. Next, we need to rotate the post div when the parent is hovered.

.post-wrap:hover .post {
transform: rotateY(180deg);
}

If you check your output now, you will see that the card does rotate but we don’t see any animation or 3D effect. That’s because we haven’t added the most important properties required for these – the transition and transform-style properties.

.post {
/* Existing styles here */
transition: transform 1s;
transform-style: preserve-3d;
}

It’s perfect. We have our flip card ready. It’s time to add our blog post’s content in the markup.

HTML

Add the background image, date and title in the front face.

<div class="post-front">
<div class="post-img" style="background-image: url(‘post1.jpg’);"></div>
<div class="post-info">
<span>June 25, 2020</span>
<h2>Productivity: Expectations vs Reality</h2>
</div>
</div>

The title, excerpt and “Read more” button on the back face.

<div class="post-back">
<div class="post-except">
<h2>Productivity: Expectations vs Reality</h2>
<p>
Et hinc magna voluptatum usu, cum veniam graece et. Ius ea scripserit temporibus, pri cu harum tacimates neglegentur. At adipisci incorrupte nam. Cu qui sumo appareat constituto, possit phaedrum inciderint ex usu, quis ignota cotidieque nam ea. Cum deserunt periculis ocurreret.
</p>
</div>
<a href="#">Read More</a>
</div>

Let’s style this single card.

CSS

Add rounded corners and shadow.

.post-front, .post-back {
/* Existing styles here */
border-radius: 10px;
box-shadow: 0 4px 6px -1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
}

Front face styles.

.post-img {
background-size: cover;
background-position: center;
height: 300px;
border-top-left-radius: 10px;
border-top-right-radius: 10px;
}
.post-info {
padding: 20px 30px 30px;
}
.post-info span {
font-size: 0.8rem;
color: #808080;
}
.post-info h2{
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.2rem;
padding-top: 5px;
}

Back face styles.

.post-back {
background-color: #ffffff;
padding: 30px;
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
justify-content: space-between; /* To push the read more button to bottom */
align-items: flex-start; /* To position the read more button at the left */
}
.post-back h2{
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 1.2rem;
padding-top: 5px;
}
.post-back p {
margin-top: 10px;
line-height: 1.6;
}
.post-back a{
text-decoration: none;
color: #ffffff;
background-color: #5678ba;
padding: 10px 14px;
text-transform: uppercase;
letter-spacing: 0.05em;
font-size: 0.8em;
font-weight: bold;
border-radius: 5px;
}

This does it. We have our single card perfected. Add two more cards in the markup, wrap all the cards within a flex container and add styles to center them. Below is the markup and CSS for the same.

HTML

<div class="container">
<div class="post-wrap"> <!– The parent element –>
<div class="post"> <!– Child element that flips –>
<div class="post-front">
<div class="post-img" style="background-image: url(‘post1.jpg’);"></div>
<div class="post-info">
<span>June 25, 2020</span>
<h2>Productivity: Expectations vs Reality</h2>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-back">
<div class="post-except">
<h2>Productivity: Expectations vs Reality</h2>
<p>
Et hinc magna voluptatum usu, cum veniam graece et. Ius ea scripserit temporibus, pri cu harum tacimates neglegentur. At adipisci incorrupte nam. Cu qui sumo appareat constituto, possit phaedrum inciderint ex usu, quis ignota cotidieque nam ea. Cum deserunt periculis ocurreret.
</p>
</div>
<a href="#">Read More</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-wrap">
<div class="post">
<div class="post-front">
<div class="post-img" style="background-image: url(‘post2.jpg’);"></div>
<div class="post-info">
<span>May 19, 2020</span>
<h2>Will Artificial Intelligence Rule the World?</h2>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-back">
<div class="post-excerpt">
<h2>Will Artificial Intelligence Rule the World?</h2>
<p>
Habemus principes eos id, eu sonet patrioque nam. Eu his mazim insolens, et vim saperet laboramus. Enim gubergren temporibus vix ei. Dicunt iuvaret sadipscing te nam, legere assueverit sed in, at everti labores.
</p>
<p>
Dico facilis dissentias mea cu. Nam assum eripuit an.
</p>
</div>
<a href="#">Read More</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-wrap">
<div class="post">
<div class="post-front">
<div class="post-img" style="background-image: url(‘post3.jpg’);"></div>
<div class="post-info">
<span>July 11, 2020</span>
<h2>This Week’s Top Stories in Web Design</h2>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-back">
<div class="post-except">
<h2>This Week’s Top Stories in Web Design</h2>
<p>
Scaevola definitiones eum et. Assum postulant periculis per ei. Doming scribentur sea an. Eum verear docendi tincidunt in.
</p>
<p>
Ne duo posse deserunt, at eam euismod torquatos, est velit essent in. Et diam meliore cotidieque vim. Dicit ignota repudiandae ei pri.
</p>
</div>
<a href="#">Read More</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

CSS

.container {
max-width: 1200px;
margin: auto;
padding: 60px;
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
flex-wrap: wrap; /* Required to position the posts one below the other on smaller devices */
}
.post-wrap {
/* Existing styles here */
flex: 1;
margin: 0 15px 30px;
}

Now the only pending part is to make this responsive. Just change the fixed width of .post-wrap to min-width and max-width instead.

.post-wrap {
/* Existing styles here */
min-width: 300px;
max-width: 380px;
}

And we did it! Resize your browser to see how the posts position themselves on different screen sizes.

 

In this tutorial, we used the flip card effect for blog posts. You can get creative and use this to display team profiles, portfolio items or anything really. Just in case you didn’t get the expected output, here is the complete source code for you.

 

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/ePOM97yYZE4/choose-the-right-typeface-for-a-brand

Brand typography is key to the message being delivered. From a distinctive approach to using type, right through to a fully bespoke typeface, brands are exploiting the wide-ranging potential of typography to express themselves. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but every brand should be aware of typography's power as a differentiator, and have a strategy for using it in the most appropriate way.

Typography in branding so important that it's recently been added as one of three new craft categories in our annual awards scheme, the Brand Impact Awards. Enter your best typography in branding by 26 June, and learn more about using type in visual identities below.

For this article, we talked to professionals who gave us five approaches to creating brand expression through typography – related to actual case studies. Then, (on page 2) we share five expert tips to help you to choose the perfect typeface for your brand. If it's resources you need, check out our list of top free fonts and italic fonts. Or, for tips on creating your own font, see our guide to font design.

Type is crucial to brand expression

"No matter the medium or the audience, type is everywhere that a written message needs to be conveyed," says Lukas Paltram, creative director at leading type design studio Dalton Maag. "Creating a unique expression at that essential level of communication is extremely powerful. It can be a big asset for brands to stand out, and it enables them to use a unique voice in their visual communication."

Creating bespoke typefaces is expensive and time-consuming, and may not always be worth the investment. However, the one-off cost for a truly ownable asset may be more attractive than buying multiple licenses to an existing typeface that others can use. For more on this, see our guide to font licensing.

How is personality conveyed through type?

When it comes to conveying personality through type, certain details within letterforms offer particularly rich opportunities. "Characters with more curvature are always easier to build a sense of personality into," says multi-disciplinary designer Caterina Bianchini, who has created many custom fonts for her clients. "For instance, a G, C or O lends itself nicely to having a more charismatic aesthetic," she continues. "Crossbars are also interesting: they can be manipulated even just a small amount to give a different feeling: perhaps they sit lower or higher, or have a curve added."

"Virtually anything is possible, as long as it looks good," agrees Pentagram partner Paula Scher. "Small customisations can make fonts more recognisable, such as filling in the inside of a lower case o, g, d or b, stencilling it in a creative way, or slicing parts of letterforms."

However, Paltram cautions that while certain characters have greater potential for personalisation – he adds the capital Q and ampersand to the list above – a typeface needs to be balanced across the entire character set. "It's not about individual letters that stand out, it's the entire system that needs to be convincing," he argues.

Read on to discover how to create brand expression through typography…

01. Put typography at the heart of brand expression: The Public

Much Ado About Nothing/King Lear (2014)

Typography has defined The Public Theatre's brand identity since 1994, when Scher crafted its logotype using original wood-block letters that had not yet been digitised. Fourteen years later, in 2008, Scher updated the logotype, setting it in six different weights of the Knockout typeface.

"I selected the wood fonts, and later Knockout, because they were used in newspapers in the late 1800s, and then in boxing posters in the 30s, 40s and 50s," she explains. "The type is populistic, so it was perfect for this not-for-profit, inclusive, and often groundbreaking theatre."

Each season, Scher collaborates with artistic director Oskar Eustis to agree a summer headline that captures the spirit of those productions – past examples have included Free Love and War and Love.

The Tempest/Cymbeline (2015)

Working primarily with different weights and colours of Knockout, with some creative tweaks to the typeface where necessary, Scher and her team at Pentagram design a distinctive look and feel for Shakespeare in the Park every season. This then serves as a creative framework for a range of other promotional material rolled out by The Public's in-house team.

"Generally, I try to design each season as a counter-balance to the one that came before it," says Scher. "The 2018-19 season used a gradated background and heavy black typography, where the left-hand side of a straight letterform, like an F or an L, might be extended by as much as an inch, giving the typography a rather heavy black appearance."

The Taming of the Shrew/Troilus & Cressida (2016)

The most recent 2019-20 season, meanwhile, is a riot of colour by contrast. "It has type at tangents using underlining bars," she continues. "The blue, red, and yellow is upbeat, influenced by the colours of Wonder Bread packaging and Bazooka gum."

Scher admits that each season some trial and error is required to achieve a suitably eclectic range of brand expression using the same typeface. "I'm trying to find the right eccentricity to build into the typography," she says. "Typefaces have spirit, and can be highly recognisable. If the typographic style used by an organisation has enough specific eccentricity, it can be recognised by the typeface alone – without a logo."

02. Build type on a versatile grid-based system: SKP Beijing

SKP wanted the font to have an edge

Designer and art director Bianchini worked with luxury Chinese department store SKP on a bespoke typeface that pushed the boundaries of convention. "A brand's typeface is usually one of the first things a consumer interacts with, and it's a very simple way to showcase a sense of feeling or character," Bianchini says. "SKP is streetwear focused, so it wanted the font to have an edge to it. "The overarching concept was a five-sided shape, which we named Wu. This became a visual metaphor to represent different parts of the store and SKP's brand, as well as touching on Chinese culture."

SKP Beijing’s typeface uses a grid based on a five-sided shape called Wu

This simple shape was the foundation of a grid, which in turn became the basis for the entire graphic system. Once the grid was established, it became a tool for building SKP's iconography and wayfinding systems.

"The result is something that feels quite multi-dimensional and multi-faceted," says Bianchini. "We developed three different weights: light, medium and finally faceted. The font is blocky and black, which gives it a distinct and instantly recognisable aesthetic."

Each character is built from shapes defined by this grid, and the concept translates to iconography and signage

Bianchini adds that this multi-faceted approach helps establish a unique identity for the department store. "A lot of the time people try to create something more functional, with the idea that less is more," she says. "With this type we wanted to create more. We wanted it to feel like the pioneer, the one doing things differently. We also always try to build a sense of something being a little 'off' into our work, and I think the unbalanced feeling of the shape pieces when they come together gives the typeface that exact feeling."

Conscious of not creating something that felt too 'over-designed', Bianchini had to strike the right balance between intriguingly esoteric, and overly confusing. "The font is heavily rooted in the grid formation, which usually simplifies things, but in our case it created a complicated system that could have been pushed too far in the wrong direction," she says. "We pushed it just enough."

03. Provide ownable typographic personality: City of Vienna

Vienna’s coat of arms was a key inspiration for its bespoke typeface: the curves of the t and W echo the shape of the shield. The typeface brings warmth and personality to the city’s marketing materials

Working alongside Saffron Brand Consultants, Dalton Maag put together a bespoke typeface for the City of Vienna entirely from scratch. The brief was for a contemporary sans-serif font family, with three weights, that could convey a uniquely 'Viennese' feeling across all media.

"We started by gathering inspiration from the city itself – its architecture, culture and history – and used these references to directly inspire the typeface's design language," explains creative director Paltram.

"It's this unique process that makes the typeface distinctive and ownable. The typeface is clean and mature enough to support the efficiency of the government, but it also embodies the diversity and humanity of Vienna and its residents."

The typeface needed to be expressive – friendly yet confident

When Dalton Maag came on board, Saffron had already established the foundations of the visual identity, but the typeface remained a critical component. It needed to be expressive, giving the city a friendly yet confident tone of voice without compromising functionality or readability.

"Next to historic and cultural references, we used the long-established shape of the shield, the coat of arms of the city, as an inspiration," says Paltram, giving the example of the diagonal glyphs on the W and V.

"There's a specific tension in the curvature which is repeated across multiple characters, together with other unique elements such as the e with an inclined middle bar, and the simplified u shape," Paltram continues. "The softened diagonal strokes of the letters, round shapes and open counters give the typeface an approachable and warm expression throughout, but also deliver excellent legibility – even at smaller sizes."

Vienna’s citizens are the ultimate end clients

As Paltram points out, the ultimate end clients are the citizens of Vienna. "In my opinion, Vienna is a modern and cosmopolitan place, but you can feel the history and tradition in the city," he says.

"Merging these elements and understanding the right level of influence to the typographic expression was key," continues Paltram. "Together with the working group of agencies, and the client's team, I'm confident we achieved something that doesn't just follow a fashion, but will last and find the right place in our time."

04. Create a cohesive design system driven by type: Top Gear

DixonBaxi collaborated with Fort Foundry to create the bold, dynamic brand typeface, TG Industry

To help drive brand recognition for BBC Top Gear, DixonBaxi developed TG Industry: a distinctive typeface designed to give the global motoring brand a consistent, ownable presence across its many platforms.

According to co-founder and creative director Dixon, an extensive range of weights was essential to create enough nuances to work with across print, broadcast and digital applications. "At times sleek and reductive with a cinematic quality, yet bold and expressive in other moments, it packs a punch for eye-catching headlines and iconic title sequences," says Dixon. "It's a digital-first typeface, crafted to remain highly legible on the smallest of screens."

Its distinctive angular cuts are inspired by the teeth in Top Gear’s cog-based logo

Created in close collaboration with Mattox Shuler from Fort Foundry, the typeface is at the heart of a cohesive and creative design system for Top Gear – and clear visual signifiers emphasise its relationship to the main brand. "TG Industry is inspired by the angular cuts of the Top Gear cog, a core part of the logo," continues Dixon. "The blunt end of the uppercase A is a good example, or where the curved part of the lowercase b meets the upright stroke – this has been given an aggressive angular edge that is inspired by the shape of the teeth on the cog icon."

As Dixon points out, great branding tends to be in the detail. "It's the specifics that make the experience more relatable and ownable," he adds. "The tracking and kerning. The legibility and different sizes. The satisfying feel of a font that feels right in many applications."

Dixon's advice is to be clear from the outset why you're choosing to design a bespoke font. "It needs a clear rationale," he insists. "See the typeface as part of a larger design eco-system. The typeface is delivering the brand's voice. Look at the details: it's easy to skim through the finer points, so diligence pays off. It can't be rushed."

05. Evolve a full typeface from a logo design: Duolingo

Duolingo’s feathery mascot Duo was the starting point for the brand’s own typeface, Feather Bold

Sometimes the development of a typeface evolves as part of the creative process, even if it wasn't originally part of the brief. That was the case with Johnson Banks' recent rebrand of language-learning platform Duolingo.

"The first type conversations stemmed from a desire to improve its logotype," reveals creative director Michael Johnson. "It was based on a typeface called Chalet, which we all felt wasn't fit for purpose."

Although discussions initially turned down the 'neutral' sans-serif route, Johnson pointed out the ubiquity of the style in the tech space. "We were keen that they had something more unique," he adds.

"As we experimented with juxtaposing the mascot with their name, a 'What if?' unlocked the solution," continues Johnson. "We redrew the logotype, drawing inspiration from Duo's feathery form to reflect the company's quirky personality."

This included wing-inspired ascenders and descenders, and a flicked g that echoes the shape of Duo’s eyebrows

While he admits the first few attempts looked "very odd", as the concept was refined the potential emerged for a bespoke typeface – developed in partnership with Fontsmith. "A lot of the initial decisions stem from the logotype, where you have round characters (the d and two o's), a repeated character (the u and n) and the relatively neutral l and capital i," says Johnson. "Then you have the mnemonic character: the g. Little quirks, such as the flick of the lowercase g were used sparingly, beta versions were crash-tested, and eventually 'Feather Bold' was ready."

The Feather Bold typeface was reverse-engineered from the shapes used to draw Duolingo's mascot, Duo the owl. Johnson reveals that, "It finally let us put the word 'duolingo' next to their mascot without it looking like an unhappy marriage."

“We look for something that can encapsulate the unique feelings we’re trying to convey with the brand,” says Johnson

For Johnson, a brand's use of typography is interlinked with its tone of voice. "It's rare for us to use the same typeface from project to project," he says. "We're always looking for something that can encapsulate the unique feelings that we're trying to convey with the brand. Using 'generics' like Helvetica strikes me as a cop-out, unless there's a good reason to look and sound the same as others."

Next page: How to choose the right typeface for your brand

Make the right choice

Why do certain types of brands adopt certain types of fonts and font pairings? Partly, at least, this can be attributed to a ‘trend effect’. This is a collective interpretation of design, absorbed through our familiarity with – and understanding of – the culture we happen to be part of.

But there’s also the way brands from different industry sectors choose to position themselves. Trends within specific sectors don’t follow a strict rulebook, but certain styles of fonts represent specific emotional attributes.

For instance, geometric fonts with homogenised proportions tend to represent design purity, cleanliness and simplicity – values that many technology brands are currently keen to express.

Many fashion brands, on the other hand, have an ongoing love affair with high contrast modern designs with their elegant hairline strokes, bracketed serifs and smooth arching curves, expressing a timeless style.

AT&T’s extensive brand font comes in a number of styles all built around the same humanist structure

Consumer banking also offers an interesting example, as these brands have been progressively moving away from authoritarian serif designs in favour of softer expressions, perhaps to appear more human and friendly as they aim to rebuild trust following the financial crisis.

In 1923, when Poffenberger & Franken conducted research into how readers perceive different typefaces used to advertise products, they discovered that people responded almost uniformly to typeface and product combinations, and mostly used similar adjectives to describe what they felt about the different fonts they were asked to comment on.

Subliminal messages 

Slab Serifs are typographically strong and distinctive and usually stand up well individually

Through a lifetime of exposure we learn, or are prepared to be seduced by, the subliminal messages presented to us through branding and communication. Fonts, and typography in general, contain layers of subliminal communication, and carry a wealth of meaning, even for viewers who are not well-versed in typography.

The contrast and modulation of the strokes, how a stroke termination is shaped, and height to width proportions determine whether a design is perceived as warm and friendly, or cold and mechanical.

This is why picking the right font is key to a brand’s successful communication. Just like a logo or colour palette, the right font can help consumers identify the key characteristics behind a brand’s attitude and encourage them to make positive associations with its products and services.

Developing an ownable brand font

Typographic consistency across different communication channels establishes a sense of empathy and loyalty between the brand and its audience over time, and is an unquestionable asset in a brand’s toolkit. So how do we choose, or develop an ownable brand font? This is a question that we’re asked every day.

A multitude of parameters and features affect the stylistic and functional properties of a typeface: some are global, affecting all glyphs within a font family; some are specific to style variants, such as Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic; others apply to shared elements within each style variant; while a few relate to just individual letters.

With the democratisation of type design tools and the boom of available designs you can pick from, there are a number of criteria to take into account if you choose to license a font family for a brand. Being aware of the conventions at play behind our interpretation of the emotional qualities conveyed by a typeface will always be helpful.

Use this handy reference guide as a reminder of the 12 main styles of typeface (click the top-right arrows icon to expand the image)

First off, you could start by considering whether a serif or sans serif design is suitable. Serifs originate from carved inscriptions, mostly from the Roman Imperial period, and while lowercase letters have since evolved into a variety of other letter shapes, capitals and their associated serifs have survived with very few fundamental changes. 

This deep-rooted history brings with it an inescapable association between serifs and their antique origins, making serif fonts more suited to cultivated, academic and more thoughtful communication. 

The advantage of serifed letters has been understood for hundreds of years of print-based typography: they help to combine or ‘glue’ letterforms together into word elements. The internal density that serifs provide also creates more clearly defined horizontal rows of text, making the process of switching from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next more efficient.

The boom of screen-based technology over the last decade or so has brought a resurgence in the popularity of the sans serif.

Sans serifs, for their part, made their first appearance in the 19th century and were used initially for commercial headlines and advertisements. In the age of print, their low contrast and absence of serifs made most sans typefaces harder to follow for general reading and so they were not a suitable choice for the text of a book, magazine or newspaper. 

But the boom of screen-based technology over the last decade or so has brought a resurgence in the popularity of the sans serif. 

The complex texture and density of the serifed fonts did not always perform well in digital form, and screen resolutions were not sufficient to render as accurately the reading sizes we normally find comfortable in print media. 

In this context, the monolinear stroke weight and functionality of the sans serif made it an appropriate choice for their association with a more rational and industrial ideology and their functionality in digital environments.

02. Consider the font contrast

Next, you should consider which contrast in a font will be more appropriate for your brand. Despite the passing of many generations, the same calligraphy inspired stroke modulation between thick and thin strokes that was incorporated into those earliest forms of movable type is still recognised today, informing the construction of digital type.

High contrast fonts generally are more effective when used at display sizes, where their elegance can be appreciated. However, their use for text can prove problematic due to the delicacy of their thin strokes, which have a fracturing effect at small sizes, reducing visual definition. 

Low contrast fonts can also present limitations, but for different reasons. In display and larger text sizes they perform well, but for text use in general, their reduced internal space also reduces visual definition. Both extremes have an important role to play in display typography: high contrast designs can provide an impression of classical dignity and grace, while lower contrast designs can contribute a sense of robust solidity, confidence 
and permanence.

03. Think about font stress

You should consider the stress or axis of the font, which refers to the angle at which contrast occurs in a letterform, usually ranging from vertical to a somewhat back-slanted diagonal. This can best be noted by looking at the letter ‘O’ and noting if the bottom left is thicker than the top left, and if the top right 
is thicker than the bottom right. 

If this difference exists, the letter has diagonal stress. The reason for this angled stress is due to calligraphic construction and principles applied to traditional Roman type styles we use for text copy. These ‘old style’ designs are generally considered warm and friendly with their angled stress providing a slightly coarse, organic texture on the page. 

The flowing rhythm of the text, enhanced by naturally occurring oblique ascender and x-height serifs, serve to combine individual letters more readily into clearly defined word elements. The irregularity and down-to-earth familiarity of these designs seems to invite the reader to enter the text and read.

04. Don't forget vertical stress

Letterform anatomy (click the top-right arrows icon to expand the image)

If the two halves of the ‘O’ are horizontal mirror images of each other, with the sides thicker than the top and bottom, then the letter has vertical stress. Unlike the Roman typefaces, which developed naturally over time, a more rational approach to verticality emerged in the 18th century with the development of typefaces we now call ‘modern’. 

Aside from their functional properties, vertically stressed moderns have a more refined, austere elegance about them, qualities that are best appreciated when used at display sizes for magazines and posters. At text sizes, however, they seem to convey a sense of cool clinical detachment, inviting the reader to look at the text rather than read.

A tall high x-height will help maintain clarity of the characters, but this may come at the expense of word and line definition.

Another element that should influence your font choice is a font’s vertical parameters (ascender, x-height and descender). If we are familiar with most words we encounter, when our eyes scan the page we look for clues based around the context of the passage we are reading. This makes us able to guess collections of words within a phrase or sentence based on their length, architecture and context as our eye moves forward and backward in saccades.

A tall high x-height will help maintain clarity of the characters, but this may come at the expense of word and line definition. A short x-height will restrict definition within the x-height portion of a font, particularly in bolder weights, but will define more clearly the silhouette or shape of words within a text. 

The ideal x-height for your brand font will allow sufficient space to build lowercase letters, including the more complex ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘s’ and ‘x,’ without compromising their definition at whatever range of sizes the font is designed to cover, as well as taking into account its relationship with the ascender height.

05. Counter balance

The architecture of the letters is also heavily influenced by whether the designer opted for open or closed counters. This is particularly relevant for corporate branding needs, where fonts are required to perform effectively over a wide range of media and sizes with an economy of space. 

Since these fonts are often monolinear, the designer is required to ensure that there is sufficient internal space within the letterforms and 
to consider restrictions to their width proportions. To overcome these constraints, designers will often resort to humanist designs, where the construction and architecture of the letters helps provide more internal space.

There is no overarching formula as to which designs are right or wrong.

Closed counter styles are available in the form of grotesque (grotesk) designs in which the outer loops of ‘a’, ‘c’, ‘e’ and ‘s’ are hooked in towards the middle of each letter. To maintain their flexibility and legibility at small sizes, these fonts are generally made with an enlarged x-height and with the widths of the enclosed characters increased but, as discussed earlier, there is a corresponding reduction in legibility at text sizes.

These are just a sample of the criteria that should be considered in your choice of a brand font and there are many features which will influence a decision that should be articulated around a solid understanding of the brand’s identity. 

There is no overarching formula as to which designs are right or wrong and the most important thing is to thoroughly map the requirements and context in which the typeface will be used. This will very much be determined by how expressive or functional it should be, what it should look like, and in which digital environments, operating systems and screen resolutions it will be used.

The nature of a script font requires several variants of each character if it is to reach its full potential, as with Dalton Maag’s brand font for the Rio Olympics

Considering which required writing systems will be needed at an early stage is also paramount. After all, it would be a shame to pick a font family that looks good, but doesn’t cover all the script systems that the brand will need to communicate in its other markets. It’s possible to pair or match a Latin font in another script system, but this is at the risk of diluting the brand’s expression.

In a nutshell, picking the right brand font should come from discussing emotional features, visual language, technical, linguistic and logistic requirements with the brand. 

If possible, you should also liaise not only with the client’s design and marketing departments, but also with IT and legal, as each team often has different or additional needs. Ultimately, the sweet spot where brand expression and functionality meets is where you’ll find the right typeface for your brand.

This content originally appeared in Computer Arts magazine. 

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