Archive for month: May, 2024

Original Source: https://abduzeedo.com/crisol-empanadas-vibrant-branding-and-visual-identity-unveiled

Crisol Empanadas’ Vibrant Branding and Visual Identity Unveiled

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Uncover the vibrant branding and visual identity of Crisol Empanadas, crafted by Un Barco. Explore the cultural authenticity and design elements that bring Argentina’s culinary heritage to life.

Un Barco has brilliantly crafted the visual identity for Crisol, an Argentinian empanadas project located in Bussum, Netherlands. This design project stands out by seamlessly integrating Argentina’s rich cultural and culinary heritage into its brand.

Crisol’s branding journey begins with a unique typeface inspired by the undulations of the repulgue, the traditional crimping of empanadas. This bespoke typeface not only adds a distinctive visual flair but also pays homage to the artisanal quality of the product. The typography exudes a sense of authenticity, mirroring the handmade nature of the empanadas.

The color palette is another noteworthy aspect, featuring deep, inviting tones that evoke the richness of Argentina. This choice of colors, combined with organic shapes and patterns, creates a visually engaging experience that draws customers in. The brand’s visual elements are cohesive, reinforcing Crisol’s commitment to authenticity and quality.

Un Barco’s approach to Crisol’s visual identity goes beyond mere aesthetics. The design effectively communicates the brand’s story and values. Each element, from the logo to the packaging, is meticulously designed to reflect Argentina’s melting pot society. This thoughtful design process ensures that every interaction with the brand feels like a journey through Argentina’s diverse regions and culinary traditions.

The branding extends to the packaging, which is both functional and visually appealing. The use of traditional Argentine motifs and contemporary design elements bridges the old and the new, making the brand appealing to a broad audience. This blend of tradition and modernity is a testament to Un Barco’s design prowess.

Overall, Crisol’s branding and visual identity are a masterclass in how design can enhance a brand’s narrative and customer experience. By focusing on cultural authenticity and visual coherence, Un Barco has created a compelling and engaging brand that resonates with customers and celebrates Argentina’s rich culinary heritage.

Branding and visual identity artifacts

For more information make sure to check out Un Barco at unbarco.com

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/design-trends-june-2024/

Summer is off to a fun start with some highly dramatic website design trends showing up in projects. Let’s dive in!

Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2024/05/naming-best-practices/

Naming is hard. As designers and developers, we often struggle finding the right name — for a design token, colors, UI components, HTML classes, and variables. Sometimes, the names we choose are too generic, so it’s difficult to understand what exactly is meant. And sometimes they are too specific, leaving little room for flexibility and re-use.

In this post, we want to get to the bottom of this and explore how we can make naming more straightforward. How do we choose the right names? And which naming conventions work best? Let’s take a closer look.

Inspiration For Naming

If you’re looking for some inspiration for naming HTML classes, CSS properties, or JavaScript functions, Classnames is a wonderful resource jam-packed with ideas that get you thinking outside the box.

The site provides thematically grouped lists of words perfect for naming. You’ll find terms to describe different kinds of behavior, likeness between things, order, grouping, and association, but also themed collections of words that wouldn’t instantly come to one’s mind when it comes to code, among them words from nature, art, theater, music, architecture, fashion, and publishing.

Naming Conventions

What makes a good name? Javier Cuello summarized a set of naming best practices that help you name your layers, groups and components in a consistent and scalable way.

As Javier points out, a good name has a logical structure, is short, meaningful, and known by everyone, and not related to visual properties. He shares do’s and don’ts to illustrate how to achieve that and also takes a closer look at all the fine little details you need to consider when naming sizes, colors, groups, layers, and components.

Design Tokens Naming Playbook

How do you name and manage design tokens? To enhance your design tokens naming skills, Romina Kavcic created an interactive Design Tokens Naming Playbook. It covers everything from different approaches to naming structure to creating searchable databases, running naming workshops, and automation.

The playbook also features a naming playground where you can play with names simply by dragging and dropping. For more visual examples, also be sure to check out the Figma template. It includes components for all categories, allowing you to experiment with different naming structures.

Flexible Design Token Taxonomy

How to build a flexible design token taxonomy that works across different products? That was the challenge that the team at Intuit faced. The parent company of products such as Mailchimp, Quickbooks, TurboTax, and Mint developed a flexible token system that goes beyond the brand theme to serve as the foundational system for a wide array of products.

Nate Baldwin wrote a case study in which he shares valuable insights into the making of Intuit’s design token taxonomy. It dives deeper into the pain points of the old taxonomy system, the criteria they defined for the new system, and how it was created. Lots of takeaways for building your own robust and flexible token taxonomy are guaranteed.

Naming Colors

When you’re creating a color system, you need names for all its facets and uses. Names that everyone on the team can make sense of. But how to achieve that? How do you bring logic to a subjective topic like color? Jess Satell, Staff Content Designer for Adobe’s Spectrum Design System, shares how they master the challenge.

As Jess explains, the Spectrum color nomenclature uses a combination of color family classifier (e.g., blue or gray) paired with an incremental brightness value scale (50–900) to name colors in a way that is not only logical for everyone involved but also scalable and flexible as the system grows.

Another handy little helper when it comes to naming colors is Color Parrot. The Twitter bot is capable of naming and identifying the colors in any given image. Just mention the bot in a reply, and it will respond with a color palette.

Common Names For UI Components

Looking at what other people call similar things is a great way to start when you’re struggling with naming. And what better source could there be than other design systems? Before you end up in the design system rabbit hole, Iain Bean did the research for you and created the Component Gallery.

The Component Gallery is a collection of interface components from real-world design systems. It includes plenty of examples for more than 50 UI components — from accordion to visually hidden — and also lists other names that the UI components go by. A fantastic resource — not only with regards to naming.

Variables Taxonomy Map

A wonderful example of naming guidelines for a complex multi-brand, multi-themed design system comes from the Vodafone UK Design System team. Their Variables Taxonomy Map breaks down the anatomy and categorization of a design token into a well-orchestrated system of collections.

The map illustrates four collections required to support the system and connections between tokens — from brand and primitives to semantics and pages. It builds on top of Nathan Curtis’ work on naming design tokens and enables everyone to gather insight about where a token is used and what it represents, just from its name.

If you want to explore more approaches to naming design tokens, Vitaly compiled a list of useful Figma kits and resources that are worth checking out.

Design Token Names Inventory

Romina Kavcic created a handy little resource that is bound to give your design token naming workflow a power boost. The Design Token Names Inventory spreadsheet not only makes it easy to ensure consistent naming but also syncs directly to Figma.

The spreadsheet has a simple structure with four levels to give you a bird’s-eye view of all your design tokens. You can easily add rows, themes, and modes without losing track and filter your tokens. And while the spreadsheet itself is already a great solution to keep everyone involved on the same page, it plays out its real strength in combination with the Google Spreadsheets plugin or the Kernel plugin. Once installed, the changes you make in the spreadsheet are reflected in Figma. A real timesaver!

Want To Dive Deeper?

We hope these resources will come in handy as you tackle naming. If you’d like to dive deeper into design tokens, components, and design systems, we have a few friendly online workshops and SmashingConfs coming up:

Design Token and UI Component Architecture with Nathan Curtis, June 6–14
Creating and Maintaining Successful Design Systems with Brad Frost, Aug 27 — Sept 10
Figma Workflow Masterclass
with Christina Vallaure, Nov 14–22
SmashingConf Freiburg 2024 🇩🇪 — The Web, Sep 9–11
SmashingConf New York 2024 🇺🇸 — Front-End & UX, Oct 7–10
SmashingConf Antwerp 2024 🇧🇪 — Design & UX, Oct 28–31

We’d be absolutely delighted to welcome you to one of our special Smashing experiences — be it online or in person!

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/prevent-chargebacks/

We all know the financial challenges freelancers face when finding new clients, preserving existing income sources, maintaining cash flow during slow times, handling income taxes, and more. Unfortunately, there is another financial hurdle you could face as a freelancer: chargebacks.

A chargeback is a forced credit card refund. Chargebacks are a form of consumer protection, originally created to protect people from fraud and unauthorized transactions. The merchant bears the burden of proof. All the cardholder (freelance client) has to do is contact the bank and ask for their money back.

If you accept credit card as a form of payment, even if you are freelancing, credit card companies will deem you a merchant, which means that a freelance client can dispute a payment they’ve made to you. The money will be removed from your bank account, without warning or your consent, and you will be left with an extra chargeback fee you’ll have to pay.

As you can see, chargebacks open the door for fraudsters, which may include clients of questionable character looking to cheat the system. So here are some financial tips for freelancers to prevent chargebacks.

10 Tips to Invoice Your Clients Professionally

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10 Tips to Invoice Your Clients Professionally

Let’s face it – getting paid is great, but invoicing can be a real headache for freelancers, especially… Read more

Accepting Credit Cards As Payment

The first solution that might come to mind is to avoid accepting credit cards as payment altogether. However, other forms of payment come with risks too: check fraud, counterfeit checks, and bouncing checks are some unpleasant side effects of accepting checks as payment.

Bitcoin and other virtual currencies aren’t widely accepted yet, and wiring money or providing direct deposits are risks many clients aren’t usually willing to take. In the end, credit card payments are usually the lesser evil. Chargebacks are unpleasant but with proper management, they are preventable. Taking manageable risks is the only way to ensure growth and success.

Best Ways To Prevent Chargebacks

A determined fraudster or a lazy client is bound to slip through the cracks on occasion, but there are plenty of ways to reduce the risk of these unnecessary profit losses.

1. Consider Using A Moderator

Technically, you can find freelance jobs anywhere. It should also be noted that anyone can post these jobs. Unless there is a screening process of some sort, you could end up working with some real sketchy characters. Consider using freelance job coordinators like oDesk, Upwork, or Guru.

In addition to facilitating work opportunities through the job board, these companies act as a payment moderator between the client and freelancer. There are checks and balances in place to help make the payment process as safe as possible. Some even go so far as to guarantee payment. Chargebacks are much less likely to occur in these “safe” environments.

2. Meticulously Research The Potential Client

Even if you do use one of these freelancing agencies – and especially if you don’t – it is important to do your own research. An honest client who has every intention of paying for quality work will have a better online reputation than a scammer who is determined to get something for free.

Go online and learn everything you can about a new or potential client.

Check out their website (the design can tell you a lot about the company’s legitimacy).
See if there are any reviews on the client’s Google+ account.
Be sure to check out scam websites like Ripoff Report.
If the company has brick-and-mortar presences, you can see how they stand with the Better Business Bureau.
In addition to your online research, conduct a phone or Skype interview.
Also, if the client does business in the “real world,” stop in during business hours (if they are local).

3. Take Extra Precautions

Many chargebacks are filed because of unauthorized transactions. A fraudster could get hold of credit card information and buy a design on someone else’s dollar. Make sure you really are working for the person who will be footing the bill.

If possible, ask for a photocopy (or scan) of both the face of the credit card and the client’s photo ID. Make sure the names match. A thief probably wouldn’t have access to both the credit card and ID. In fact, if the credit card account number has been hacked from somewhere, they might not even have access to the actual card. You can also compare the signature on the ID to the signature on the contract.

4. Address Payment Details In Writing

Your contract might be your best chargeback prevention tool. Disputing a chargeback is difficult – and rarely successful. The only way to prove your case (and get your money back) is to have written documentation supporting your claims.

Since a contract would act as this dispute proof, it also acts as a deterrent for anyone who might be looking for ways to cheat the system. So make sure you plug any holes from the get-go. This article on freelance contract clauses can help you draft a fail-proof contract; pay careful attention to the tips regarding rates, invoicing, kill fees, and deadlines. These will be most helpful in preventing chargebacks.

Designers: Know Your Rights! 4 Must-Have Clauses In A Contract

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Designers: Know Your Rights! 4 Must-Have Clauses In A Contract

Freelancers, you have learned to never start work without a written contract, but it’s hard to like contracts…. Read more

5. Clearly Outline Copyright Ownership

Another important tip to note is copyright issues. Copyright laws are another valuable chargeback prevention tool. Imagine the following situation. You design a killer website for a client. He accepts the design. He pays you via credit card. Life goes on.

Later, you receive notice of a chargeback, but your design is still on the client’s site. If you worded your contract right, you can go after the thieving client. How? Put the following phrase in your contract: copyright transfers to the client only upon payment in full. If the client filed a chargeback, he hasn’t paid you, and therefore is in violation of copyright laws by continuing to use your design.

If you threaten the client with a DMCA takedown, he is likely to cancel the chargeback quickly. If he doesn’t pay, follow through with the takedown. This action won’t get you your money back, but it will give you a little satisfaction!

Understanding and Reviving Unused Designs

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Understanding and Reviving Unused Designs

In the past, wars were won through smart strategies and skilled soldiers. Just like in those battles, the… Read more

6. Comply With All Deadlines

Not all chargebacks come from scammers. There is a real possibility the chargeback filed against you is valid and brought about by your own actions. There are many acceptable reasons why a cardholder would file a chargeback. For example, one chargeback reason code that could influence your freelance income is “services not provided.”

If you don’t adhere to deadlines, it is understandable that a client might consider a chargeback. The client shouldn’t have to pay for something he didn’t receive. If there is a chance you’ll miss a deadline, let the client know as soon as possible and offer an alternate submission schedule.

Additionally, make sure you provide excellent customer service. Answer your client’s phone calls and emails promptly and professionally. If there is a lag in communication, the client might think you went MIA and pull the plug on payments that have already been rendered.

10 Things Your Clients Hate Hearing

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10 Things Your Clients Hate Hearing

With a quick search on Google, you will discover that the Internet is filled with the rage of… Read more

7. Do The Work, And Do It Well!

Chargebacks filed when services are “not as described or defective” is also a legitimate grievance. If your client hired you to do X and you delivered Y, isn’t it understandable that a chargeback could be in your near future?

One way to ensure the quality of your work is to limit the number of projects you accept at a given time. If you are stretched too thin, it will show in the quality of your work. Take pride in your work. Deliver completed projects that represent your very best effort.

Juggling Deadlines and Priorities 101 for Freelancers

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Juggling Deadlines and Priorities 101 for Freelancers

Deadlines can be a nasty thorn for many freelancers. I feel that deadlines make me more concerned with… Read more

And there you have it. There is nothing to fear about chargebacks once you understand how to prevent or at least minimize the possibility of it happening on your watch. Don’t threaten the success of your design career by failing to take a few preventative steps before work begins.

The post How Freelancers Can Prevent Chargebacks (7 Effective Strategies) appeared first on Hongkiat.