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

There is no denying that people are visual by nature. They love simplicity and familiarity. So it should come as no surprise that people will form an impression of your website within seconds of landing on it.

As a result, websites today are in high competition with one another, no matter the niche.

Storytelling through web design, one of the most compelling ways to grab a site visitor’s attention without overwhelming them, has recently emerged as one of the biggest design trends to hit the market.

It is not easy to master the art of storytelling using web design. It takes a keen eye, an understanding of your target audience, and a well thought-out storyline that will resonate with visitors. However, when done right, people will remember your brand, your website and your beautiful story.

In this article, we are going to share with you some of the best examples of storytelling in web design.

Analysing London 2012

With the 2018 Winter Olympic Games underway, it seems fitting to showcase this beautiful celebration of the 2012 London Games. Using smooth parallax scrolling, which makes following the timeline easy, fascinating facts to give the story continuity, and clear, simple imagery to complement the story, GoSquared Analytics does an incredible job of bringing the site visitor into this piece of history.

Patagonia

Patagonia’s marketing efforts are geared towards a very specific audience, and they do this well with their visual appeal. Their imagery focuses on everyday people, rather than high end fashion models, which makes their products more relatable.

Not to mention the visual story they tell on their site supports their core values and dedication to finding solutions to the current environmental crisis. It’s powerful enough to convince anyone to get involved.

Internet Live Stats

Internet Live Stats takes a unique approach to storytelling on their site. Using startling statistics, such as the fact that 7,927 Tweets go out every second, paired with just as startling imagery to complement their statistics, this is undeniably more effective than a simple sentence stating the facts.

And, to make matters even more interesting, there is a timer on the page adding up how many Tweets have been Tweeted since opening the page x seconds ago. Talk about putting things into perspective.

Twoodie

Twoodie draws on the heartstrings of parents from all over, while focusing on the fact that they, as a company, put families first and want health to take precedence. They show that imagination, creativity and minimalism lay at the heart of their brand.

And when it comes to imagery, Twoodie takes an effective approach. Using beautiful black and white photos of children playing with their toys (that are showcased in color) gives the reader a sense of nostalgia and warmth – which not many toy shops can say they do for their customers. In addition, this non-traditional approach of highlighting toys in such calming colors only adds to their brand message and solidifies their promise to simplify your life.

The Wild Unknown

When it comes to storytelling in web design, brand promotion is not limited to websites. In fact, visual platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram can have powerful effects on people’s desire to take action and buy or subscribe based on the images they see in their social media feed.

The Wild Unknown has a visually stunning Instagram feed that not only promotes their products, but relates images to the current time, how people feel, and what may drive people to want to do better things with their lives. This is much more effective than simply saying “Buy me because I’m great.” Instead, they make the visitor feel great – and that is enough to encourage them to take action.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/vRnc3r-Dn_A/professional-fonts-31619557

There's no shortage of paid-for and free fonts available for designers to choose from these days. But what if you want a typeface that's really special and stands out? 

Whatever the project, these professional fonts are certain to give your designs an air of sophistication.

01. FF Din

FF Din is a popular choice among designers

Price: From $65/£51.99 per fontFormat: OTF

Added to MOMA's digital typefaces for its Architecture and Design collection back in 2011, FF Din is a popular choice among designers. Created by Dutch type designer Albert-Jan Pool between 1995 and 2009, this sans serif is ideally suited to advertising and packaging, logos and branding.

02. Oswald

We’re big fans of professional font Oswald here at Creative Bloq
Price: FreeFormat: Google web font

Oswald has become a popular choice of font for designers, especially for those working in the world of of the web. A reworking of the classic style historically represented by the 'Alternate Gothic' sans serif typefaces, this professional font has been re-drawn and reformed to better fit the pixel grid of standard digital screens. 

03. Brandon Grotesque

Brandon Grotesque won the Type Directors Club Award in 2011
Price: $40/£27.99 per fontFormat: OTF

Designed by Hannes von Dohren in 2009, Brandon Grotesque was influenced by the popular geometric-style, sans serif typefaces of the 1920s and 30s. Equipped for complex, professional photography, Brandon Grotesque won the Type Directors Club Award in 2011.

04. Aviano

Aviano typeface is inspired by the power and timeless beauty of classic letterforms
Price: $24.99/£15.99 per fontFormat: OTF

Named after a small town at the base of the Alps in Northern Italy, Aviano typeface is inspired by the power and timeless beauty of classic letterforms. A gorgeous design, Aviano was created by type designer Jeremy Dooley, owner of one-man foundry Insigne.

05. Proxima Nova

Proxima Nova is used by over 25,000 websites, including Buzzfeed, Wired and Mashable
Price: $29/£19.99 per fontFormat: OTF/TTF

Used by over 25,000 websites, including Buzzfeed, Wired and Mashable, Mark Simonson's professional font Proxima Nova is an extremely popular choice amongst designers. The extensive family is available in seven weights (thin, light, regular, semi-bold, bold, extra-bold and black), with matching italics, small caps and condensed and extra-condensed widths. 

06. Rockwell

An updated Rockwell was published in 1934 by Monotype
Price: $35/£22.99 per fontFormat: OTF/TTF

Geometric slab serif Rockwell was inspired by a 1910 font titled Litho Antique. Designer Morris Fuller Benton revived Rockwell in the 1920s before it was redesigned and published in 1934 by Monotype, in a project headed by Frank Hinman Pierpont.

07. Trojan

Trojan’s design is based on classic Roman structures
Price: $25.80/£20 for 1 fontFormat: OTF

Trojan is one of many stand-out designs by creative genius Alex Trochut. Created back in 2012, professional font Trojan was used extensively throughout Wallpaper after its initial release. Based on classic Roman structures, Trojan has a very sophisticated set of glyphs, which, in turn, gives this font a classic contemporary appearance.

08. Le Havre

Le Havre lends itself to all manner of creative projects
Price: $24.99/£15.99 per fontFormat: OTF

Art deco-inspired typeface Le Havre was named after the port where many a famous luxury cruise liner was launched in the 1930s. Compressed capitals, a low x-height and geometric construction give this beautiful typeface a retro look and feel, with the new contemporary update in 2009 lending itself to all manner of creative projects.

09. Mallory

Mallory is the work of s type designer and teacher Tobias Frere-Jones
Price: $50 per fontFormat: OTF

The product of type designer and teacher Tobias Frere-Jones, Mallory is a beautiful professional font, which began as an experiment in mixing typographic traditions, building a new design with British and American traits.

Frere-Jones has a number of best-selling type designs under his belt, but Mallory was the first font he created after splitting with long-time creative partner Jonathan Hoefler.

He comments on his website: "Mallory was built to be a reliable tool, readily pairing with other typefaces to organise complex data and fine-tune visual identities. Each style contains over 1250 glyphs, to anticipate a wide range of content: small caps and old-style figures for running text, lining figures and uppercase punctuation for headlines, tabular figures and over a dozen currency symbols for financial data."

10. FF Meta

FF Meta was designed by Erik Spiekermann

Price: $59/£45 per fontFormat: OTF

Created by outspoken type designer Erik Spiekermann, FF Meta was first called PT55, a typeface made for easy reading at small sizes for West German Post Office in 1985. Spiekermann continued work on his design to include more weights and styles, later releasing it as FF Meta, one of the first and truly foundational members of the early FontFont library.

With a clean, cheery and distinctive aesthetic, professional font FF Meta flourished in the early 1990s and has been a firm favourite ever since. In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art in New York added FF Meta to its permanent collection, one of only 23 fonts selected to represent typography of the digital era.

11. Soho

Soho is a beefy slab-serif by Seb Lester
Price: $65 per fontFormat: OTF

Beefy slab serif Soho is the product of renowned type designer Seb Lester. The super-family has over 40,000 glyphs and represents three years' worth of work. 

"As a type designer I'm preoccupied with finding ways in which I can address modern problems like good legibility in modern media, and create fonts that work precisely and efficiently in the most technically demanding of corporate and publishing environments," he comments on the Monotype website.

12. Davison Spencerian

Davison Spencerian is a remains a benchmark of the ornamental script genre
Price: $75Format: OTF/web font

American letter designer Meyer 'Dave' Davison was arguably one of the most distinguished lettering artists of the 20th century. With a library of Spencerian designs, Davison Spencerian typeface made its first appearance in Photo-Lettering’s 1946 catalogue and remains a benchmark of the ornamental script genre.

Tireless hours have been spent by Mitja Miklavčič and House Industries designers Ben Barber and Ken Kiel to preserve the poise and precision of Davison’s masterwork in this faithfully-rendered digital incarnation.

The House Industries website states: 'From automotive exhaust accessories and pirate-themed wedding invites to New Orleans sissy bounce hip-hop CD covers and upmarket bivalve ambrosia packaging, Davison Spencerian offers sober sophistication and unparalleled flexibility'.

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/7aREFXdcf7Y/consume-time-social-media

The most important drawback in working with social media is that it seems to take up a great deal time. Due to time constraints, businesses are usually not utilizing the benefits that social media can provide. You will discover three factors concerning why social media takes up so much time on the part of the designers:  There are so many […]

The post How to Consume Less Time on Social Media appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/02/20-best-new-portfolio-sites-february-2018/

Hey everyone! It’s February, and you know what that means: Hallmark executives get bonuses! Also, people make a special effort to show love and affection to those they care about, which is cool too.

The theme this month is minimalism and motion designer portfolios, pretty much. Enjoy.

Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea (TM), kids. If you find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to implement it responsibly.

Christopher Kirk-Nielsen

Christopher Kirk-Nielsen is a WDD reader who sent in his own site for review, and oh my God I think he’s been listening! You see, he is a front-end dev / motion designer. Typically, sites built by motion designers tend to suffer in the usability and accessibility department.

In this case, however, the site looks good. It looks original. It appeals to the love of the ’80s aesthetic. And so far, I can’t get the thing to break without going back to much older browsers. Even without JavaScript, everything has a fallback.

Less+More

Next up, Less+More is perhaps the very embodiment of the “white space and thick heading type” school of design. It has big type. It has big images. It has… a lightly-animated Venn diagram? Okay, I like that.

No prizes for originality, but it looks good.

Marina Rachello

Every time I see a site so brazenly colorful as Marina Rachello’s portfolio, I always wonder if my tendency toward monochromatic palettes is wrong somehow. While some of the bolder tones don’t contrast too well with the black text, it must feel freeing to just go nuts with the colors and shapes.

The only change I’d make (besides fixing the potential contrast issue) would be to make the background an SVG rather than a PNG.

Antoni

Antoni brings us another videographer’s portfolio that goes all in on the motion design. It’s got a visually pleasing combination of background video, and simple, solid minimalism that would just scream “professional” if it weren’t so darned professional.

Nikos Pandazaras

Nikos Pandazaras’ portfolio is as artsy as his photography, which is par for photographers’ websites these days. You have the minimalism, the somewhat unconventional layout, and even rather artsy animation. The whole thing really fits the theme.

Dow Smith

Dow Smith adheres to the trend of ever-more-minimalist sites, with the big, thin text, and the love of literal white space. Tons of it.

There’s also a fair bit of distracting animation, but I actually rather like the way it’s been used. Each portfolio piece is presented as a short video (embedded with HTML5) that shows how a user is expected to interact with the site. It shows how they work, not just how they look.

Prollective

Prollective’s website is minimalist and professional, but isn’t afraid to preen a bit. Gradients and bright colors haven’t looked this good since people kept mistaking Web 2.0 for an aesthetic trend. Despite relying far more on type than it does on imagery, this site still feels vibrant.

Blue Productions

Blue Productions properly commits to their theme by, well, using a whole lot of blue. Video is what they’re all about, so expect a fair bit of background video, and stills from their work. I particularly appreciate the cinematic presentation for all of their work.

galgo.studio

galgo.studio’s style of minimalism is bound to remind you at least a little bit of Google. They’ve worked with Google on at least one project, so that sounds about right. It’s clean, it’s smooth, it has that thin text you see on pretty much every Google site now. Some small usability issues on the home page aside, it’s a pleasure to browse.

Julie Bonnemoy

Julie Bonnemoy’s portfolio hits you with some rather chaotic lava lamp effects before revealing a classy layout that revels in its asymmetry and imagery in equal measure. I feel like this is one of those sites that is perhaps a bit over-animated. Even so, when it calms down a bit, it’s just plain beautiful to look at.

Dinner for Five

Mitsugu Takahashi’s portfolio is elegant. I don’t mean that it uses fancy type (well, it does), or that it uses imagery to project a high-class brand (it does that, too). Those are just surface level indications of a deeper understanding of the way something elegant is supposed to feel.

Page loader aside, the site feels graceful, pleasant, and stylish as you could wish for. It’s almost a miracle that only one of the featured projects has anything to do with fancy weddings. It just hits all of the right notes.

Jermaine Craig

Jermaine Craig makes a bold and risky move by hitting users right in the eye-sockets with a wall of text. The site as a whole seems to be a bit of a work in progress, but it’s already eye-catching enough for this list.

Paper Tiger

Paper Tiger is your classic minimalism that’s had few paint-filled balloons thrown at it. The people at Paper Tiger are apparently good at throwing things, though, as the use of color doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the design at all. It just takes an already-solid design and makes it stand out a bit more.

James Merrell Architects

I’m not sure why architects love the PowerPoint-style site so much, but James Merrell Architects is a fine example of the form. Even their blog is part presentation, and part print publication. The cool thing is that CSS (and JS) has come far enough to make sites like this reasonably usable, and even pretty.

Even though building sites this way goes against my personal preferences — and even though there’s no point in hiding the navigation behind a hamburger menu on the desktop — I have to admit that it just looks good.

Kickpush

It’s one heck of a power move for a company that makes mobile apps (and occasionally websites) to state that they don’t even like the Internet. And yet, Kickpush has done just that. Of course, they also call London “sunny” which is exactly how you know they’re kidding. That brashness permeates the site’s entire aesthetic and experience.

MoreSleep

MoreSleep is not just a good idea, it’s also a design studio. This one has gone for that holy grail of alternative aesthetics: the horizontal layout. Well, on their home page anyway.

Nathan Young

Nathan Young has brought us a multiple-slideshow portfolio for our enjoyment. This sort of portfolio is actually growing on me a bit, though I’d personally try for pure CSS slideshows.

Jack Davidson

Jack Davidson’s portfolio makes absolutely sure that you will read the title of every project by replacing your cursor with said title. Don’t worry, it goes back to the regular pointer as soon as you mouse over the navigation, so it remains useful.

The site is interesting, but I want to dock it a few points for using a “screen saver”. I’m getting a bit annoyed with those. At least this one is a slideshow of his work, so it’s still kind of useful.

Amateur.rocks

Okay, a thousand websites have done the “it’s all text until you hover on a project name” thing. I’d just like to point at amateur.rocks to say, “They did it right.”

See how the images are kept from overlapping the title of the project you’re previewing? See how they don’t have to worry about text contrast like that? That’s the right way to do it.

Giovanna Silva

Giovanna Silva has taken the unconventional route of allowing people to make their own collages (sort of) with her portfolio. Click on a country/location, then start clicking away to see every picture in the project.

After you’ve exhausted the stack of photos, you can see them all again in a more conventional layout. The rest of the site is a bit more conventional, too, but looks good.

Art Text App for Mac Turns Text into a Masterpiece – only $17!

Source

p img {display:inline-block; margin-right:10px;}
.alignleft {float:left;}
p.showcase {clear:both;}
body#browserfriendly p, body#podcast p, div#emailbody p{margin:0;}

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/tumblr-themes/

Tumblr is one of the most interesting social media platforms and home to creative individuals who like to share their thoughts and ideas with people of same interest. However, to attract more…

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