Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/bxBggxbNrs8/5-apps-that-are-shaking-up-the-art-market

It’s always been tough to make money from art. But for big-city artists and curators, the cost of real estate for galleries and studio space has made it even tougher to build a sustainable practice.

The growing popularity of art fairs has also had an effect, by creating destination experiences that might be great for bringing people in, but not necessarily for actually selling art.

But artists willing to embrace digital technology and take charge of their own destinies have never had it so good. Social media, online platforms, transactional ecommerce platforms and mobile apps have made it possible to reach global audiences, build personal brands, and sell art on more favourable terms than ever before. In this article, we take a look at the art apps that are shaking things up for creatives. 

Selling art online

The artist’s digital journey often starts on social media, with artists using tools like Instagram to promote work and build an audience. Now there are also digital platforms to monetise creativity, and a new breed of digital-first players are building unique connections between artists and collectors, creating markets that simply didn’t exist in the pre-digital age.

16 great places to sell your design work online

Alongside this is an explosion of new channels to reach art lovers, whether it’s using Snapchat to provide behind-the-scenes looks into the creative process, or engaging with storytellers on podcasts to help spread the word (check out this playlist of great art podcasts).

With the global online art market worth around $4.22 billion in 2017, up 12 per cent from the previous year, these new digital tools and platforms are already revolutionising the world of fine art for artists and art-lovers. Here are five apps and platforms that are leading that revolution, creating new ways to make fine art profitable.

01. Artsy

The art on sale on Artsy ranges from design items such as ceramics to sculpture to photography

Artsy has a vision to transform the art world through technology, and it’s executed on that vision from day one, delivering an online platform that connects art lovers to galleries and artists in a global community. Its library encompasses a dizzying breadth of art, from Old Masters to contemporary artists. 

Under the hood, Artsy has built relationships with galleries and art fairs, combining their understanding of art markets with its deep technological expertise to provide gallerists and curators with tools and data to promote the artists they represent.

02. Patreon

Get direct support for your work using Patreon

Patreon is rethinking how artists and creators can finance their work, by enabling direct funding appeals to patrons and supporters. A digital spin on an age-old model, the San Francisco-based platform gives emerging artists control over their careers, without them being beholden to the existing gatekeepers of the art world.

Patreon enables artists to garner financial support for their work directly from the people who love it the most. The platform enables both the discovery of new artists and support for established artists, while leveraging learnings from ecommerce and crowdfunding to help artists make direct appeals to support their creative efforts.

03. Artfare

Artfare connects potential patrons to artists

Launched in February 2019, Artfare puts a new spin on the art fair model, using a mobile app, in-house curators and local pop-up shows and fairs to create connections between artists and collectors in local art scenes, starting with New York. 

Artfare promotes vibrant local art scenes by bringing artists and collectors together through messaging, studio visits and sales of art works. Using Artfare’s listings, artists can promote works for sale on social platforms such as Instagram (where they’ve often built big followings). In addition they can monetise them through online sales using the Artfare app – it gives them more control and effectively tilts the economics of art-buying in their favour. 

04. Paddle 8

Paddle 8 is a bit like eBay for art

Paddle 8 is a curated auction platform that enables a global community of buyers to discover and bid for art in real time. By digitally enabling the auction mechanic, it helps to promote artists’ work and drive sales, creating a global, digital spin on a market dynamic that was previously often limited to those with privilege and access.

05. Uprise Art

You can talk to one of Uprise Art’s personal art advisors if you’re not sure what you’re looking for

This one isn't an app, but a platform. The team at Uprise Art are driven by a mission to enable a new generation of digitally savvy collectors to discover and buy art from emerging artists. Uprise Art is effectively a digital gallery, working online and via pop-ups, collaborations and booths at art fairs to showcase the work of a roster of talented artists. 

By creating a digital-first gallery experience and constantly innovating the model – connecting with high-flying tech start-ups to provide art for their offices or working directly with interior designers – Uprise Art gives emerging artists new opportunities to have their work discovered and purchased.

Read more:

The 10 best drawing booksHow to succeed as a designer-makerThe best online art classes

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/9CFO2Asaoes/98-off-get-the-essential-coding-for-beginners-bundle-for-only-19

Coding remains to be one of the most in-demand skills across the tech industry. It is considered as one of the most important job skill of the future. It is the key to so many careers these days. It’s not yet too late to learn how to code. The Essential Coding for Beginners Bundle is […]

The post 98% Off: Get the Essential Coding for Beginners Bundle for Only $19 appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/QFlBsk1tk_0/

Microsoft’s VS (Visual Studio) Code is a free, open source code editor that is gaining in popularity. It’s very lightweight, flexible and yet still packs some powerful features. Plus, it supports just about every major programming language, including PHP, JavaScript, C++ and a whole lot more.

You might even be surprised to learn that VS Code is also cross-platform. Not only does it work on Windows, but versions for both Linux and Mac are also available for download.

But perhaps the coolest feature of all is the massive extension marketplace. There are free extensions available to support new languages, debug your code or add a variety of other custom functionality. This enables you to customize the editing experience to better meet your needs.

Today, we’ll introduce you to some of the very best VS Code extensions out there. Let’s get started!

GitLens

While Git functionality is already built into VS Code, GitLens aims to “supercharge” the editor with even more version control goodies. It offers deeper insight into code, showing you when it was changed and who changed it. You can even compare different branches, tags and commits. Overall, this extension will make version control a more visual experience.

Beautify

Are you very particular about syntax highlighting? If so, Beautify is just the extension you need. It takes advantage of VS Code’s already existing use of Online JavaScript Beautifier, but allows you to easily make changes to its styles. This means you can set elements like indenting, line wrap and other minutiae to your heart’s content.

ESLint

JavaScript can be quite difficult to debug. But the ESLint extension for VS Code can make the process much easier. It helps by pointing out potential problems in your code before you even execute it. Better still, the extension lets you create your own linting rules.

Debugger for Chrome

For developers who’d rather troubleshoot code during runtime, Debugger for Chrome will help you get the job done. There are a number of handy features, including the ability to set breakpoints in your code, watches and a console. Plus, you can choose to run an instance of Chrome within VS Code or attach the debugger to a seperately running instance of the browser.

React Native Tools

React is among the most buzzworthy JS libraries out there – so much so that the new WordPress block editor (aka Gutenberg) is built on it. If you’re among the many who have jumped on the bandwagon, React Native Tools is a must-have extension. It adds the ability to run react-native commands and will help you debug code.

One Dark Pro

When dealing with code, it helps to have an editor that is both visually appealing and comfortable. After all, coding sessions can last for hours on end. One Dark Pro brings the popular “One Dark” theme from the Atom editor to VS Code. You get the familiarity of this iconic look with the other conveniences of Microsoft’s open source app.

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 is a simple extension, but one that can make code much easier to digest. It color codes matching brackets, allowing you to visually determine where functions begin and end. You can even pick which colors to use.

vscode-icons

Perhaps one of the most effective visual tweaks for VS Code comes from vscode-icons. It takes a rather bland file listing and adds colorful, language-specific icons to the mix. This makes it easy to tell your PHP files from HTML, for example. Plus, the added personality is a welcome addition to any workspace.

Write Code Your Way

The incredible number of available extensions for VS Code makes it a compelling choice for everyday use. You have the freedom to set things up to match the languages you use and the type of visual space you prefer.

Plus, it offers an interesting mix of both corporate and open source culture. Being backed by Microsoft would seem to ensure that VS Code will be actively developed in the future. And the open source community has created a thriving ecosystem around the software. The result for developers is getting the best of both worlds.

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/3d-design-sketch-mobile-apps/

3D modeling tools and software enable you to turn your ideas into beautiful 3D models and prototypes. Widely used in industries like 3D printing, animation, gaming, architecture, and industrial…

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Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/02/interview-jorn-and-koen-of-framer-x/

The holy grail of web design used to be a three-column layout where every column had equal height. Now, the holy grail is making it so anyone can design a website or app. Visual design apps abound, one of the big names in the Mac community right now is Framer X.

Framer X isn’t staying on only the Mac platform, though. The team has big plans, and it involves more than making it easier to push pixels. They reached out to WDD to see if we wanted to get a sneak peek of what’s coming next, and since I am one of the resident app nerds, I had the pleasure of interviewing them.

WDD: Tell us about yourselves.

Framer: So Jorn and I (Koen) worked at our first company, Sofa, together in 2009. Things really took off after we won a few Apple Design Awards, when we got a call from Mark Zuckerberg. The rest is history, as they say — our company and team were acquired by Facebook in 2011, where we ended up doubling their product design team.

We spent two years there helping launch some major product features but eventually moved back to Amsterdam and co-founded Framer in 2013. It’s been both challenging and extremely rewarding to stick to our guns and build this company in the Netherlands, even raising our Series B last year.

WDD: I’m a Windows user, so I have to ask: when is Framer X coming to Windows?

Framer: It’s in the works! We have a team working hard on this and it’s part of our plan to open up Framer X to a wider audience. I can’t give you definitive dates but you can expect something in 2019. And until then, you can sign up for the waitlist here.

WDD: What inspired you to build Framer? What’s the origin story?

Framer: When we were working at Facebook, we found ourselves pitching these innovative product ideas using traditional presentation slides. It was really frustrating to try and convey responsive, interactive design ideas to board members through static imagery – it’s just counter-intuitive.

As design has evolved, so has our thinking around tooling

Unfortunately, that’s just how things were done at the time, as interactive design was still relatively new and static images were the norm. Which is why, shortly after leaving Facebook, we co-founded Framer to focus on helping everyone better express digital product ideas.

As design has evolved, so has our thinking around tooling. While Framer Classic captured a large share of the very best designers in the world, it was only accessible to a small subset of all designers, as it used code to express ideas.

So we launched a whole new product, Framer X, which opens up interactive design to everyone, regardless of coding ability and offers interfaces for everyday design tasks like wireframing, visual design and interactive work.

WDD: What other design apps most inspired your feature choices and design?

Framer: I’ve always been very inspired by Unity – especially how accessible it is. In a sense, we are building an interactive IDE for product design that anyone can use, much like Unity has done for the gaming industry.

WDD: Your software is big on sharing and centralizing libraries of design assets, and by extension, design systems. How do you, as designers, balance the benefits of design systems (consistency and speed) with the desire for experimentation most designers feel at some point?

Framer: It is definitely a tricky balance. As a company, we have a big maker culture, with a huge emphasis on shipping. A lot of of this is because we genuinely love solving hard product problems, but just as much because our community has come to expect this of us.

As we’ve grown, we’ve come to see the value of adding some structure to this process, including creating our own React-based design system, Fraction. Everyone is still very much empowered to try and test — we even have an R&D team and leave time on Fridays for more experimental projects.

WDD: Out of all the features currently on Framer X, which are you most proud of?

Framer: We’re most proud of the features that make our app so collaborative. For example, Framer X contains a built-in store where users can publish components that can do practically anything, from media players to advanced interactive controls to entire design systems.

This means that new users can instantly leverage the work of advanced users, which provides immediate value to all users and offers incredible network effects. Our community has always been at the core of our product, and the store allows us to bring that into our product in a meaningful way.

WDD: Which feature do you most wish you’d done better with on the first try?

Framer: Interactive design is always evolving, so of course our platform is as well. Framer X’s Interactive tools — Link, Page, and Scroll — have undergone the most changes, thanks in part to the feedback we got from our beta users.

Everything that used to require lines of code in Framer Classic can now be created using the canvas tools we have. I’m not sure we would do anything differently, but hindsight being 20/20, perhaps we could have done some things sooner.

WDD: You can export elements as CSS and SVG code in Framer X. Any plans to support CSS Grid for layout?

Framer: We are planning to launch a grid tool in 2019! Stay tuned.

WDD: Where do you see Framer going in 2019?

Framer: We’re going to bring Framer X to Windows and the Web to give more people access to our interactive design tool. We’ll still be focused on making it the best tool for interactive design and with that, the best place for your team to build out your design systems.

My belief is that people are way more creative than they think and with the right platform, anyone can design. So I’d love to head toward a direction where Framer X becomes accessible enough to appeal even to people who use Powerpoint.

Thanks to Jorn and Koen for taking the time to answer our questions.

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