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Original Source: http://justcreative.com/2017/10/22/logo-design-tips-mistakes/

This article was contributed by Krzysztof Gilowski.

Although the recipe for a perfect logo does not exist, the knowledge of the features that distinguish legendary designs from the average ones, will allow you to get closer to greatness.

In this article you will get to know the rules that underlie the designs of some of the most valuable brands in the world.

Recognizability is everything

The best logo designs communicate the whole brand image in no time. Lego embodies the joy of children playing with toys. The Mercedes’ logo expresses luxury with an elegant typeface and a geometric abstract symbol.

The most famous logos have a story to tell and that makes them unique.

Simplicity is the key to success

What do the  world’s most recognizable logos have in common? The McDonald’s “M”, Nike’s swoosh, or the Apple’s apple with a bite (or byte) taken out of it? They are all extremely simple.

“The only mandate in logo design is that they be distinctive, memorable and clear.”

-Paul Rand

A good logo is original, but it is not exaggerated. An extremely complex logotype will not make your brand look sophisticated. It will only mean that the designer did not understand the meaning of simplicity.

Versatility – saving your nerves and money

A logo should present itself well in every possible format: small and large; in black and white (positive / negative); vertically and horizontally. It must be equally effective displayed on a variety of media – smartphones, tablets, computer screens and printed advertising.

Make sure the logo is recognizable after reversing the colors and decreasing the size. Check out how it looks on a stamp and on a truck. Don’t be afraid to make different versions of your logo (aka responsive logos).

A good logo must be timeless

The most beautiful and effective logo is not based on the current trends in the market. These are timeless pieces of work. Their authors, thanks to their experience in design, can predict whether the logo will still be valid in 10, 20 or 50 years.

The BMW’s logo is an example of such a graphic sign. The original logo was designed in 1916 and has changed very little ever since. The style keeps being altered according to the era but the concept remains the same. See more logo evolutions here.

6 rules followed by logo designers

Start with black and white

In the early stages of the design the colors are of secondary importance. Moreover, they can draw people’s attention away from the logo itself. Most of the recognizable logos start with black and white drawings and sketches.

Use three colors at most

Examples of valuable logos that would break this rule are rare. Do not try to make an exception here – reality shows that it does not pay off. Paradoxically, a timeless logo that would be memorable is very simple and minimal colors.

Use the right colors depending on the mood you want to create. Learn color psychology.

Use one or two fonts

To keep your logo clear and transparent, you may want to limit your design to one or two types of fonts. Depending on the nature of your business, use fonts with sharp or soft lines. See here for great font combinations.

Choose practicality over originality

Your logo has to be easily remembered. Accept the principle that a graphic design should be easy to describe on the phone.

A good logo should be easy to describe on the phone.

Something that will stay in someone’s memory should not be very complicated. Always choose practicality over originality.

Below you can see a case study of 1500 people attempting to draw logos from memory. It’s difficult!

Avoid unnecessary details

Remove anything that is unnecessary from your design. The ideal logo is not the one that cannot have anything added to it. The best one is the one that cannot have a single element removed from it.

Do not use ready-made graphics

Under no circumstances, create a logo with ready-made items (stock graphics, cliparts, pre-made designs). Creating your logo from ready-made templates and pictures makes your logo non-unique and replicable. Not to mention that a part of your logo may be legally used in your competitors’ graphics.

4 major characteristics of projects that lack professionalism

If you are looking for a logo design, the following tips will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your designer’s work.

Materials full of defects

The files with logo designs that you receive from your designer should not contain any technical imperfections. The curves should not overlap and should be as smooth as possible and the nodal points should be minimized. If the logo is symmetrical, then the symmetry should be perfect such as below.

Remember that the presentation of a logotype in a different scale, such as zooming and placing it on a truck, will expose all of its possible errors and defects.

Below is a logo by that has been designed by Jeroen van Eerden with a grid system to avoid these defects.

Monogram as a starting point

An inexperienced designer often cannot resist the temptation to create a logo based on the company’s initials (for example, the name “Great Company” would create the logo form ‘G’ and ‘C’).

While this seems like a good idea, it’s hard to build company’s credibility or convey branding information with that kind of logo. It’s quite common in the fashion industry although they have huge marketing budgets. Monograms do not work for all industries.

Shortening the name to acronym

It is often a mistake to try to shorten the name of a new company to acronym size. Yes, this is an effective strategy, as demonstrated by the IBM’s, KFC’s, or AOL’s logos. However, the names of these companies became acronyms only after many years of market presence and costly exposure.

Using graphics programs does not guarantee quality

A logo created in Photoshop or Gimp may not be usable when you want to engrave it or significantly enlarge it. A professional logo should look just as good on different devices, but a raster logo (presenting the image with a pixel grid) does not assure that effect.

A vector logo (which defines points mathematically) created in software such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw will provide appropriate image reproduction on any scale – without the loss of quality.

Do you have any further logo design tips or mistakes to avoid?

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About the author: Krzysztof Gilowski is CEO at Juicy – a company that creates memorable brands for small companies. Check out their guide on designing a restaurant logo on their blog.

Original Source: http://justcreative.com/2017/11/28/graphic-design-trends-2018/

Every year, some design trends fade away while others burst onto the scene. This will be as true as ever in 2018, when visual contrast dominates the digital landscape and designers seek clarity and distinction, both subtle and bold.

What are the top graphic design trends of 2018?

Intersecting Elements
Duotone & Double Exposure
Retro-modern illustrations
Creative Background Patterns
Bright Gradients
Thoughtful Animations
Isometric Design
Split Page Design
Responsive Logos (see our responsive logo guide & logo design trends)
Gradients
Extra Depth (with semi-flat design)
Dazzling duotones
80s & 90s color paletes & patterns
Animated Logos
Cinemagraphs & GIFs
Bold typography & more serifs
Custom graphics & illustration
Authentic photography
Detailed vintage

Read on for a more detailed description of 2018’s design trends forecast.

2018 Graphic Design Trends Infographic

A huge thank you to Coastal Creative for the above design trends infographic.

Intersecting Elements

Categorize this under a version of bold typography, we’ve seen a huge upswing in typography that intersects with shapes and graphics. It’s a strong visual that plays with perspective and shows confidence.

Duotone & Double Exposure

The duotone look has been a recent favorite across many design mediums, but it reached mass exposure via Spotify and their playlist images. Since duotone has risen to prominence, we’ve been seeing further iterations that layer the effect with double exposure. We expect to be seeing a lot more of this trend in 2018.

Retro-modern illustrations

Can something be both retro and modern? Yes, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing with this trend that combines the sleek lines of modern vectors with throw-back color palettes. Modern illustrations with retro-respect: the best of both worlds.

Creative Background Patterns

Like wallpaper going in and out of fashion in home design, we’re seeing a resurgence of patterned backgrounds. Think of it like the grown-up version of the tiled backgrounds you may have used to trick out your very first online profile. These are often whimsical icons or custom illustrations that take the design to a personal level.

Bright Gradients

This may have been continuing for a little while, but we’re seeing this trend diversifying and holding strong since it made a strong comeback in 2017. Designers are having fun experimenting with gradient innovations using bright colors and a variety of textures.

Thoughtful Animations

Online animations have come a long way since banner ads circa 1999 that aggressively flashed “Click Me!”. These are thoughtful movements built with intention, created to delight and signal interaction. We’re big fans and hope they won’t become overdone.

Isometric Design

Perhaps as a reaction to flat design taking over the design world in past years, isometric design is making a strong comeback. Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions.

Split Page Design

As an evolution of the now-stale hero image concept, split design juxtaposes contrasting elements for a striking effect that shows multiplicity. We embrace this fresh change for its great design and usefulness.

—

The below trends were outlined in 99Design’s inspirational 2018 graphic design trends post.

—

Responsive Logos

See here for a detailed guide to responsive logos.

Gradients

By Anton Avilov

by Yueyuan design.

80s & 90s color pallets & patterns

By Daria Kwon.

Movement: animations, GIFs, cinemagraphs

By Kit8.

Dazzling duotones

By Spotify.

Extra Depth (with semi-flat design)

Bold typography & more serifs

By Nuture Digital.

By Vasjen Katro.

Custom graphics & illustration

By Willie H

By Alexandr Alexandrov

Authentic photography

YOKO by Tom Arends for Bert

By Yeti.

Detailed Modern Vintage

By DekoRatio and Szani Mészáros.

By Oscar Bastidas

Do you have any further graphic design trends to add?

—

Artist names have been supplied where known. Top hammer image by Steve Bullock.

Original Source: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/coding-with-dyspraxia

Coding with Dyspraxia

As I start writing this blog, I’ve just spent the last hour on a cold November afternoon getting to grips with Saving Instance state in Android.

It was a lot of fun, challenging but fun. After watching the video a couple of times, I’m beginning to get more of a handle on what’s involved. And after testing the result,  I’ve seen that the Android Lifecycle saves the “state” of the app when I rotate the screen so even though Android creates a new instance of the app it appears to the user that nothing has changed at all.

After this, I feel empowered. This is why I spend so much time learning about new tech. The feeling of learning and understanding something new is very exciting and I’m at the top of my game.

Then, I move on to something new and I don’t know where the knowledge goes. It’s not that its “gone”, exactly, more like it’s just parked somewhere in my brain that can’t retrieve the information and I feel like I’m back to square one.

I’m Jonathan and I’ve been a Treehouse student and Community Moderator for over 3 years. You may recognize my name from a previous post on the Treehouse blog in which I shared my experience with Dyspraxia. Today, I want to talk to you about the difficulties of learning tech for neurodiverse people like me and a few techniques I use to get over those barriers.

I live in England where 5% – 10% of the UK population are estimated to have Dyspraxia. That’s 3 children in every class of 30. It’s a lifelong brain-based condition that basically means messages in the brain are “muddled” when they try to get to where they need to be. It’s a minor form of brain damage but described as an “immaturity of the way the brain transmits information”. This causes a number of challenges such as problems with movements, tasks, speech, and language and the main problem for me, perception and thought.

Coding with Dyspraxia is a difficult thing indeed. The conundrum I described above with Android is common for me and may well be for others but I feel and live with these issues every day.

Overcoming barriers

Now, I would like to explain what this means for me in terms of coding, the techniques I use to get past my problems and hopefully inspire others who have a similar condition to me.

Dyspraxia is like fog in my mind. I don’t really sit down and type code on the fly in the way I perceive (perhaps wrongly) other coders do. I think methodically, use frameworks where possible and break down projects into stages. In my life, I have always taken each day as it comes.

I need to see code to write it and I spend as much time thinking as I do coding. It doesn’t seem to matter how experienced I become with programming concepts. For example, I have worked with WordPress long enough and have coded the WordPress Loop countless times, but I still don’t remember it from scratch. However, I recognize it when I see it and I know how to implement it.

It’s not about not understanding what I’ve been taught; it’s about what my brain does with the understanding.

Now I do this a lot. I look at a problem before me or a project that I’m about to begin and it seems like the goal is at the top of a massive mountain, followed by the unshakeable thought that I’m not good enough for the job.

When this happens it is because I’m making comparisons to others; Treehouse teachers, students, my peers who are in similar jobs to me. This is a folly and a folly I’m still trying to teach myself to get around. I recently read a tweet from @CodePenHull about a talk by Treehouse alumni Andrew Chalkey and thought: could I learn to do that someday to0? How can I learn to do these things and retain the knowledge do to another similar project? How do people retain their programming knowledge?

Visual thinker

I’m very much a visual thinker in this respect. When I’m developing with Sass for example, I like to write out CSS and then convert to Sass rather than go straight into writing Sass. So I’ll prepare a Sass configuration file and break up the code into partial files.

Doing it this way means I can quickly use my CSS knowledge to put something visual into the browser and then I can visualize how the Sass is going to work in my mind. It allows me to take away the blank canvas issue and build the code from lines and lines of CSS to a more professional project.

I also spend a lot of time inspecting elements behind the scenes and even testing new styles via the browsers development tools (my favorite being Chrome DevTools). I would encourage others to do the same.

I try and take the same approach when I’m learning programming.

Some encouragement for you all

Lastly, I want to encourage the rest of you – especially if you have a learning difficulty like Dyslexia or Dyspraxia – who are struggling with your confidence. This post of mine in the Treehouse Community received a lot of positive feedback. In it, I describe the 5 things I remind myself when studying to make myself better at coding: learn to code from memory, keep code snippets, remember concepts, ask for help and take time to practice.

I know I get down at times when I’m trying to learn code and sometimes even wonder why I’m putting myself through it, and I’ll probably go through that cycle again… But if I can keep up my resolve and determination and if I can learn to code, I’m pretty sure you all can too.

I hope this post has been helpful and encouraging. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

If you would like to see some of Jonnie’s projects and follow his progress, check out his awesome portfolio here. Or if you’d like to learn about Dyspraxia, you can also read more here. 

The post Coding with Dyspraxia: If I Can Do It, so Can You appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Original Source: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/how-to-tackle-the-5-big-challenges-of-working-remotely

People tend to have an idealistic view of what it’s like to work remotely – especially when it comes to working from home. But, with the unique freedom and flexibility of working remotely, there are also some unique challenges. The majority of the Treehouse team are remote, and over the past 7 years, we’ve collectively gained a lot of experience for how to successfully work remotely. Whether you’re working from home, a co-working space, coffee shops or the limitless other locations you may choose, there are a few common challenges that you’ll likely encounter at one time or another. Here’s our list of the 5 most common challenges of working remotely, and more importantly how to overcome them.

Start learning to code today with your free trial on Treehouse.

1. Keep your motivation

Whether you work remotely as a freelancer or for a company, ultimately you’re the manager of your own time. Not having someone overseeing your daily work can be an empowering perk of working outside of a traditional office, but at the same time, that level of trust comes with the added pressure to keep yourself productive and efficient. Finding ways to self-motivate can be very challenging, especially if you’re new to working remotely. But, I can assure you that with time, you’ll establish routines and ways of keeping yourself on track.

Maintaining motivation can be one of the greatest challenges of working remotely, but the good news is that most of the tips shared in this post will help feed into your motivation. However, there’s one particularly valuable piece of advice that I find helps, and that’s to think carefully about your working environment. By establishing an ideal workspace for yourself, you’ll find yourself working comfortably, but productivity. For me, that’s a spacious and uncluttered desk space and a window view, which is something I’ve created in my home office, but I can also replicate in a coffee shop or at my co-working space.

2. Fend off distractions

One of the benefits of working remotely is you don’t have the challenge of dealing with office distractions. But, working in other places can present an entirely new set of distractions. For example, just because you’re working from home, it doesn’t mean you should catch up on house chores. Treat working hours as exactly that, working hours. Keeping that strict division is something you should establish at the start as it sets the right precedent to keep you focused on your work.

Similarly, working in a coffee shop or co-working space may come with the distractions of a loud, busy environment. If you’re anything like me and can find that very distracting, so invest in a good set of noise-canceling headphones and rely on a few go-to playlists that help you focus. When you aren’t in an office setting, also remember that trust from your employer and team plays a big factor. Be self-disciplined and accountable for your time. Make the most of the awesome flexibility you’ve been given by working as effectively as possible.

3. Avoid working in isolation

Working remotely – especially from home – can sometimes lead to working in your own “silo”. It can be easy to fall into the pattern of starting work in the morning and powering through the day on your computer, which can take a toll mentally. While this might feel like you’re being productive, it’s important that you also take short breaks through the day to give your mind and your eyes a chance to refresh (and no, that doesn’t mean scrolling through your social feeds). When working from home, I find the best way to do that is to get out the house first thing in the morning or at lunchtime for a walk. It helps me reconnect with the world around me and once I’m back at my keyboard I feel refreshed.

Joining a co-working, even if it only means working there a day or two a week, is another great way of ensuring you don’t work in too much isolation. Today you have countless options to choose from, so be patient while you search and find a space that’s right for you: Look for somewhere that feels like the right working environment, speak to other members to get a feel for what the culture is like, and ask about events at the space.

Another related challenge of working remotely is that you’ll likely miss company culture and human interaction. Co-working spaces can help remedy that. But in addition, most remote-friendly companies today are aware of that and put extra measures in place to ensure their culture reaches all of their remote team. For example, at  Treehouse we rely heavily on tools like Slack and Zoom to keep our team connected, encourage individuals to join co-working spaces and even bring our team together in-person for company-wide Meetups. But there are also things you can do for yourself to help with the challenge. Make the effort to get to know other people working in your co-working space, or attend local Meetups and networking events. I guarantee you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many other people work remotely, and it’s great to connect with others to share advice, experiences, and to socialize!

4. Maintain a healthy lifestyle

Aside from the mental challenges of working in isolation, parking yourself at a desk all day is also bad for your health. You may not notice it at first, but trust me, over time it will have an impact. So instead, keep yourself moving through the day. One great and practical recommendation is to invest in an adjustable high desk (we use GeekDesks at Treehouse), so you can stand and work for part of your day. I also rely on my FitBit to remind me to keep moving through the day. It’s also important you try to commit to a healthy daily routine. Given you’ll likely be saving time not having to commute, why not use that time to exercise in the morning before work or after you wrap up in the evenings? Working from home also means you’re not restricted to having to grab lunch on the go. Instead, whip up something healthy for yourself, there’s really no excuse with your own kitchen at your disposal!

5. Know when to disconnect

One of the hardest parts of working remotely (especially from home) is “switching off” from work. Instead of an office structure with 9-5 hours, you can access your virtual office at any time of the day or night. That can make it hard to justify ending your workday when there’s still more to be done. The temptation might even be to head offline in the evening, only to return later to complete a quick task… fast forward to 11.30pm and you may find yourself still working. Of course, there will be times when that is necessary, but really try not to make a habit of working late as ultimately it will burn you out. One of the most effective ways to avoid this is to ensure you keep your work environment at home (and your computer) separate from where you spend your free time. That way, when you come to the end of the working day, you can close the door on that space, disconnect and switch off until tomorrow.

We hope you’ve found these tips helpful. If you work remotely, we’d love to hear about your experience. Are there additional challenges you’ve faced? How have you overcome them?

7 Compelling Reasons to Work Remotely

The post How to Tackle The 5 Big Challenges of Working Remotely appeared first on Treehouse Blog.