Turn Your Website Into a Money-Making Machine Using These Tips

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/OIOiWMJyMGI/turn-your-website-into-a-money-making-machine-using-these-tips

Having a money-making website is the bomb! Not only will you be able to generate truckloads of money while you’re off somewhere sipping margaritas, but you’ll also be able to create strategic partnerships that can bring you even more cash. If that’s what you’ve been trying to accomplish these past few years — yet you’re […]

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Webfonts And Performance: SmashingConf Videos

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/07/smashingconf-videos-web-fonts-performance/

Webfonts And Performance: SmashingConf Videos

Webfonts And Performance: SmashingConf Videos

The Smashing Editorial

2018-07-20T14:35:35+02:00
2018-07-20T15:29:44+00:00

Webfonts are difficult to get right. An often overlooked and disruptive piece of web performance, webfonts can slow down your site and leave your visitors confused and agitated. No one wants agitated visitors.

Webfonts Are ▢▢▢ Rocket Science

Recorded at our special web performance themed SmashingConf in London, Zach Leatherman demystifies webfonts in order that we can avoid font-related performance issues. He takes us through a detailed guide to best practices when using webfonts, so you can use beautiful fonts without sacrificing performance. If you have ever asked, “What is the best way to load webfonts?” then you need to hear this talk. Zach breaks down the various approaches in a straightforward way, so you should feel able to make the best decisions for your own use of webfonts.

In addition to this video, you can take a look at Zach’s “Comprehensive Guide To Font Loading Strategies,” and subscribe to his newsletter fontspeed.io.

Fontastic Web Performance

Another great introduction to font loading was made by Monica Dinculescu at SmashingConf Barcelona. She spoke about which new platform features are here to help us deliver pretty (but also!) fast experiences to everyone.

In her talk, Monica also mentions the following resources — in addition to Zach’s work:

“Type is Your Right,” by Helen Holmes
“Minimising Font Downloads,” by Jake Archibald
Type With Pride
Axis Praxis
Fontastic

We also find Monca’s Font Style Matcher tool really useful, helping you find a font that matches your webfont closely to prevent a jarring shift between the sizes.

Enjoyed listening to these talks? There are many more SmashingConf videos on Vimeo, and we’re getting ready for the upcoming SmashingConf in New York — see you there? 😉

With so much happening on the web, what should we really pay attention to? At SmashingConf New York 2018 ?? we’ll explore everything from PWAs, font loading best practices, web performance and eCommerce UX optimization, to refactoring CSS, design workflows and convincing your clients. With Sarah Drasner, Dan Mall, Sara Soueidan, Jason Grigsby, and many other speakers. Oct 23–24.

Check the speakers →

SmashingConf New York 2018, with Dan Mall, Sara Soueidan, Sarah Drasner and many others.

Smashing Editorial
(ra, il)

Adobe shares Pantone's summer trending colours

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/7XgLkLMtibs/adobe-shares-pantones-summer-trending-colours

Adobe has teamed up with the Pantone Colour Institute to reveal which colours are trending this summer. Compiling its findings into the Pantone Colour Me Social gallery, Adobe suggests bold, saturated tones are big at the moment. And while this won't change colour theory, colour trends do affect the decisions of designers and brands.

The colours in question include Lime Green, Hawaiian Ocean, Flame Orange, Fuchsia Purple, Cherry Tomato, Blazing Yellow and Dazzling Blue. According to Laurie Pressman, the Institute's vice president, these tones mark a sea change in colour trends.

"Following years of essentialist and pared-down aesthetics, the thirst for vivid, rich colour is taking centre stage as people want to spark a new kind of joy and create playful paradises," she explains.

Get 15% off Adobe Creative Cloud with our exclusive deal

One of the key drivers behind this change is social media. Pressman reasons that these online platforms give users the freedom to experiment with colours and intense experiences, which in turn leads to people gravitating towards richer hues.

Given that social media is a relentlessly noisy world, it makes sense that brighter, bolder images have been on the rise as users attempt to stand out from the crowd. With colour seen as a form of self-expression on social media, vibrant colours lead to more interaction.

You can explore these vibrant colours below; use the left and right arrows to click through the gallery.

Despite this trend having its roots in social media, saturated colours have spilled over into the worlds of retail and fashion. This is an interesting inversion of traditional design, which usually saw fashion industries shaping the colour trends for everyone else to follow.

"While all of the shades highlighted are being seen on the street and the catwalk," says Pressman, "we are seeing these colours show up in other areas as well, from travel to food. Some of the newest sources for colour inspiration are home furnishings, lifestyle and beauty."

Brands, museums and exhibitions can all take advantage from these trending colours to connect with audiences. Pressman goes on to add that even if saturated colours don't immediately appear suitable for your brand or company, "even a small accent or a bright shade in the background could do the trick."

And with the Institute predicting the current colour trend to continue right the way through until the summer of 2020, there's plenty of time to get on board with this eye-popping palette.

Related articles:

Pantone launches super-sized colour chipsIf celebrities were Pantone coloursPrince gets his own Pantone colour – what could it be?

Brizy Review: Visual Page Building Reinforced

Original Source: https://inspiredm.com/brizy-review-visual-page-building-reinforced/

Meta: This Brizy Page Builder review covers everything you need to know about the WordPress plugin, with focus on how it would potentially impact your business.

Well, of course, we love WordPress for its usability, and most importantly, its wide array of third-party plugins optimized for pretty much everything to do with websites.

Come to think of it, we could spend a fortnight comparing different plugin categories, debating about the most essential one. However, if you’re honest, you’d acknowledge that nothing comes close to web design plugins especially when it comes to ecommerce sites.

Consider this. The first impression visitors have of your website is 94% related to its overall design. That’s according to a study conducted by Northumbria and Sheffield Universities. The University of Surrey, on the other hand, released a separate report revealing that users’ assessment of your business’ credibility is 75% based on the website design.

And that explains why a well-designed web interface is capable of boosting your standard conversion rate by 200 to 400%.Design comes first before other supplementary site elements pick up from there to optimize the conversion process.

That’s why I’ve always been crazy about web building plugins. Leveraging good ones is one way to lay a solid foundation for a seamless experience with other plugins and site elements.

That said, I’ll admit that I’ve used quite a couple of extremely effective plugins in this space. But, as expected, I’ve also seen my fair share of poor ones.

Above everything, I’ve always found it exciting to try out the newest entrants. Mostly because some of them come out with all guns blazing. They are seemingly never shy to challenge even established competitors with trendy, exciting features at comparatively cheap rates.

And that’s how I was quick to notice Brizy Page Builder. A new kid on the block, but certainly one of the most notable entrants.

So, what exactly does it come with? And is it any different from its predecessors?

Well, let’s find out. This Brizy Page Builder review covers everything you need to know about the WordPress plugin, with focus on how it would potentially impact your business.

Brizy Page Builder Overview

Barely two months ago, in May, was Brizy launched as a page builder for WordPress-based sites. It was essentially developed to eliminate all the coding mumbo-jumbo, and consequently help users design and set up web pages without hiring developers.

Now, let me take a wild guess here. I assume you’ve heard that same description numerous times by now. So many that it has almost grown into a cliché.

Of course, it’s understandable that you might be thinking “another page builder?” What does Brizy gain from a space that’s already seeing a steady influx of tools on a regular basis?

Well, according to the team behind Brizy, it turns out that it’s not just a standard page builder. They acknowledge that indeed there are tons of page builders out there, but claim that Brizy will change your entire perception of visual page editors.

Top on the list of things its creators boast is a new revolutionary approach, which simplifies the whole editing process by availing only the tools that matter. Through Brizy, they also attempted to do away with what they call restrictive design elements.  Instead, the tool now supports extensive customization to empower site owners to do exactly what they want.

Now that only scratches the surface. There are loads of other features its developers say you’ll not see in other page builders.

Sounds impressive, right? Well, to be fair, this could possibly be marketing fluff to set the ball rolling. But then again, get this. Over the past couple of weeks, Brizy has grown to well over 100,000 downloads with a corresponding active user base of more than 20,000.

To top it off, the company is right on the verge of launching a whole new version of the tool- Brizy Pro.

Now that’s not a bad run. Quite remarkable as a matter of fact.

But are its features worth the hype?

Let’s take a closer look…

Brizy Page Builder Reviews: Features
Premium Themes

A bland outlook is one way to approach your page design, especially if you believe that graphics could be distracting.

But, let’s look at facts here. Going by research conducted by Adobe, 38% of your traffic will bounce off immediately your store’s website loads without appealing imagery or layout.

To help you entice your users, Brizy has outsourced theme designing to the real experts- Themefuse. This renowned group of professionals has designed a wide range of attractive and elegant premium themes, which are principally available on Brizy Pro.

Brizy themes

And to avoid distracting users, the templates come with simple, clutter-free layouts. They are sleek, with minimalistic arrangements to help site visitors navigate around without any problems.

Clean Interface

While it might be exciting to see a wide range of editing tools when you’re working on a web page, let’s face it. Even for extremely complex pages with dynamic elements, you’ll only be able to use a limited number of tools at a time. Consequently making the rest redundant and bothersome.

Brizy addresses this problem by eliminating the crowd of editing tools we’ve seen with the bulk of other page builders.

However, make no mistake about it. The tools are not abolished completely.  Instead, Brizy avails only what you need for the specific task at hand, and hides the redundant options.

Brizy interface

The result? Well, apart from a well-streamlined editing process, you get to enjoy a smart, clean interface.

Extensive Design Elements

Availing only the necessary editing options is quite commendable. But, admittedly, the subsequent clean editing interface could get you worried that Brizy might have very limited design elements.

Well, could that be the case with this WordPress plugin?

To comprehensively assess Brizy’s capabilities, I went beyond the standard options. I tried creating a web page with multiple elements, all dynamically linked within a single interface.

Thankfully, Brizy systematically provided a wide range of elements to design just the right page. In addition to maps, Brizy supports videos, icons, images, buttons, text, and many more.

Brizy design elements

Among its provisions is over 4,000 different icons, available in both Glyph and Outline versions. It also offers more than 150 pre-made page design blocks, which can be conveniently added to your web page to set its structure.

Recently, its creators further introduced entrance animations to the whole editing package.  You can now take advantage of more than 40 animation types to create an intuitive scrolling experience.

That said, here’s the kicker. While Brizy has covered all the fundamental design elements, it’s fairly limited when it comes to advanced elements. But the silver lining is the fact that the team behind it continues to improve the editing environment with additional web page design elements.

Global Customization

Embedding all those elements with their default parameters would ideally shorten the page building procedure. But, it would also result in a boring, unappealing web page. Different pages would possibly share more or less the same outlook.

Since every site is unique in its own way, Brizy found it critical to expand its editing options to facilitate extensive customization. That way, you can comfortably adopt your entire website to the specific business branding strategy.

But, how does this work exactly?

Brizy essentially allows you to adjust multiple aspects and parameters of the individual page elements. When you need to set positions within the page, for instance, you could capitalize on the intuitive drag and drop feature. It helps you conveniently move the elements to their desired position by simply choosing, clicking, dragging and dropping them anywhere within the page.

If the columns seem to be disproportionate, you could resize them by moving a mid-handle. You might especially find the corresponding percentage values displayed up top quite handy in ensuring accuracy.

And guess what? Customizing the columns doesn’t affect the content. Everything simply readjusts to adapt to the new dimensions.

And speaking of content, Brizy also comes with a smart text editor, which is optimized for changing text alignments, fonts, and colors. You can also extend the color scheme to the rest of the page layout with a single click to edit template properties.

Brizy customization

And you know what? You’re free to be creative and experiment with multiple design options. You can always click to undo or redo any edit.

Mobile Optimization

A typical internet user today is pretty versatile. A report by Adobe revealed that 83% of customers worldwide, on average, surf on multiple screens using 2.23 devices at the same time.

Yes, you’re dead right. This includes smartphones and mobile tablets.

As a matter of fact, users love their mobile devices so much, that 74% of them say that they may never attempt to revisit a site if they found it to be poorly optimized for mobile surfing. I guess our addiction to surfing on-the-go might have everything to do with this widespread preference.

Now, one thing’s for sure. Such entitlement by internet users is not going anywhere. Quite simply adapt your site or go home.

Fortunately, Brizy provides a Mobile View mode with just the right tools to optimize your web page for mobile devices. Shifting to this window allows you to design all the elements for smaller screens.

Brizy mobile

Brizy Page Builder Reviews: Pricing

You’ll love this.

At the moment, all these features are available for free. You’re not going to pay even a dime to leverage them.

Developers are working now on an extended version (Brizy Pro) that will offer much more features aimed at web professionals and marketers.

What you are buying now is a pre sale for the Pro version, but the catch is that this is a one time payment only, lifetime deal. Once the Pro is out, the lifetime will be gone and you’ll pay yearly.

Brizy Pro

Brizy Pro is basically standard Brizy on steroids. According to the developing team, some of the additional features it will introduce include:

A/B Testing- You’ll be able to review and compare two distinct versions of the same web page with varying parameters.
Advance Forms-While the free version supports standard forms, Brizy Pro supports advanced forms with additional design options.
Role Manager-This allows you to set access and editing privileges for different parties you’ll be collaborating with.
Pop-up Builder- To boost your conversion rate, the pop-up builder facilitates the design and setup of call-to-action windows, pop-up banners, and more.
Third-Party Integration- Brizy Pro will support the following third-party services; Drip, SendGrid, AutoPilot, Mailer (Lite), HubSpot, Zapier, Unsplash, Salesforce, AWeber, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, TypeKit, plus more.

Brizy Pro features

Who Should Consider Using Brizy Page Builder?

To recap, here are the crucial takeaways:

Top on the list of things Brizy’s creators boast is a new revolutionary approach, which simplifies the whole editing process by availing only the tools that matter.
Over the past couple of weeks, Brizy has grown to well over 100,000 downloads with a corresponding active user base of more than 20,000.
Developers are working on a parallel version, Brizy Pro, which will offer much more features at a price. If you’re interested, you could pay $247 for a lifetime package of Brizy Pro once it launches.

Going by the current provisions, Brizy is quite decent for personal projects and basic websites. It can also suffice for small businesses and startups, but only for non-sales web pages.

Heavier users with high business ambitions have no choice, but to hang on until Brizy Pro is ultimately launched. And from the few features that have been leaked, I have to say that we expect it to make a substantial impact in the WordPress page building space.

For now, paying for the lifetime package seems like a pretty safe bet. Especially considering the fact that Brizy’s developers have already proven what they are capable of over the long haul.

Otherwise, let’s wait and see how it pans out. And maybe, I might hit you with a comprehensive Brizy Pro review in the near future.

The post Brizy Review: Visual Page Building Reinforced appeared first on Inspired Magazine.

20 Freshest Web Designs, July 2018

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/07/20-freshest-web-designs-july-2018/

Welcome to our roundup of the best websites launched (or significantly updated) this month. July is a strange time to launch a site with the Summer slowdown in full effect, but these intrepid entrepreneurs have done so. We’ve got examples of great ecommerce, a couple of agency sites that we couldn’t resist, and lots of incredible art direction.

This month sees a big trend in compass navigation (a link in every corner of the page), and parallax is definitely still a big deal. Whether it’s inspired by the World Cup, or Le Tour, there’s a subtle gallic feel to a lot of sites this month…savourer!

Drift

Drift is a creative agency with some chops. Rejecting the minimalism that seemingly every other agency opts for, they’ve put together a charmingly animated, hand-made site. Not too functional, unless your aim is to communicate creative courage—they stand out.

Unspoken Agreement

Unspoken Agreement is a creative agency that believes in beauty. Its landing page is a schooling in art direction, and the simple bold copy is persuasive. I’m not sold on the compass navigation, but you can’t have everything.

2018 Foosball World Cup

As the final whistle is blown on the Fifa World Cup 2018, this awesome site gives you the chance to relive this Summer’s big sporting event from the comfort of your desktop. Pick a team, and click and scroll your way to victory. No spinning those bars!

Pittori di Cinema

The site designed to promote a book about film artists, Pittori di Cinema, is a suitably bold site with masses of color and strong lettering. Simple to use, it features that compass navigation again. But the graphics are something to behold.

Blackbird

Blackbird is an beautifully minimal Shopify site selling perfume. The site is a great example of how effective parallax can still be, if used effectively. I have no idea what that weird frog video is for, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

Copenhagen Bike Company

If Le Tour is making you feel like cycling, but you don’t quite have the energy to make it up the Pyrenees, wander north to discover a cooler, more laid back approach to cycling. The site for the Copenhagen Bike Company features on-brand art direction, smooth UI details, and high-end minimalism.

Care Cards

We all get a little stressed from time to time, it’s OK to admit it. Care Cards is a progressive web app with over 80 kind tips to help you cope with the rigors of modern life. Just open it up on your phone (or notebook) and swipe through the gems of wisdom. I love this site.

CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation

Promoting fundraising for Canada’s premier hospital for the pre- and post-natal care of mothers and children. The strong grid layout, coupled with smart brand choices and subtle animation is a winning combination for this important cause.

Apostrophe

It’s always hard to design a site for copywriters, but this site does so beautifully. Hooking up the leading animation to the scroll of the page is an excellent device for driving home exactly what this minimal site is promoting.

Contemple

Another design agency showing us something special, this time it’s an amazing ripple effect on their slideshow as you scroll through the featured projects on their landing page. Click through to the case studies and there’s some awesome work on display.

License IV Wine

This simple one-page site sells a wine brand perfectly, by capturing the spirit of community around a good bottle of French wine. The License IV wine label is bringing French savoir faire to wine drinkers in the USA with this charming site.

In Caso di Mag: Kitzbühel

Kitzbühel is the latest in an ongoing series of craftily designed travelogues around the world’s best ski resorts. Each location gets its own page, with custom art direction capturing the spirit of each place. I love the attention to detail.

Carpe Diem Santorini

If there’s one place I’d love to spend some time, it’s among the cycladic minimalism of Santorini. The tiny Greek island is world famous for the beauty of its sunsets, and this enchanting site sells the romance of the destination perfectly.

La Gent

Who doesn’t love quality, independent brands that put timelessness ahead of fashion. La Gent’s site is designed for browsing. I love the fact that their slider has just two items, enough for variety but not so much that you get lost.

Fortnum&Fox

Another design agency with a flair for art direction, the site for Fortnum&Fox features an exceptional split screen design showing off an impressive back-catalogue of work. I particularly like how cohesive and simple the whole experience feels.

Maman Corp

Maman Corp is a construction company and their site reflects this with a grid-based layout and animation that feels like the site is being constructed before your eyes. I love the full-screen video and beautiful typography.

Twill

Twill is an open-source CMS kit for Laravel, offering increased productivity and more control. It’s promoting itself to developers, and that’s never an easy task, but breaking down the benefits in this one-page site it’s clearly worth checking out.

Knight Associates

You don’t get more minimal than this site for a New Zealand-based interior design firm. A simple list of projects click through to case studies. It’s a exercise in restraint from the design team than fans of simplicity will love.

Bang & Olufsen SS18

Bang & Olufsen’s spring and summer collection features aloe, teal, and steel blue hues inspired by the ocean. The whole microsite feels like its floating in water, and there’s a great liquid hover effect on the images.

Harris Farm

If you’ve had your fill of minimalism for this month, then browse over to Harris Farm. The positive feeling site is packed with illustrations and lettering that capture the spirit of this healthy, food-loving Australian company.

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Popular Design News of the Week: July 16, 2018 – July 22, 2018

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/07/popular-design-news-of-the-week-july-16-2018-july-22-2018/

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

Google Material Design: Updates, Improvements, and New Tools

 

CSS: A New Kind of JavaScript

 

The Importance of Brand Consistency

 

A Look at Chrome’s New Tab Design

 

Wheel

 

Dark UX Patterns In Advertising

 

Peoplzz – A Collaborative Hub for Company Culture Builders

 

New Netflix TV Interface

 

Listify – A Minimal Space for your To-dos, Tasks & Reminders

 

Handlescout – Get Notified When a Twitter Username Becomes Available

 

Tungsten: A Modern, Industrious Font

 

Cinematography in User Experience Design

 

12 Reasons Why You Need a Design Mentor

 

BuzzFeed Unveils a Sophisticated New Look

 

My UX Resource List

 

Twitter’s Bottom Navigation Bar is Official, Rolling Out to Everyone

 

Is Coding Becoming Obsolete?

 

ColorSpark for Sketch – Discover Unique Colors and Gradients Directly in Sketch

 

Teutonic CSS — a Modern CSS Framework with Style

 

SlickMap CSS: A Visual Sitemapping Tool for Web Developers

 

Font Playground

 

How One Typeface Took Over Movie Posters



 

Building the Google Photos Web UI

 

10 Do’s and Dont’s to Get the Most Out of your UX Design Portfolio

 

Why Bad Technology Dominates Our Lives, According to Don Norman

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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The Ten Best Examples of Minimalist Business Cards to Make a Lasting Impression

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/faRTiMgMWRg/minimalist-business-cards

How you present yourself to the world has always been important. You learned this at an early age from your parents, your family, and the kids on the school bus. They all made it very apparent that life is about appearances and presentation. Throughout school, the right impression could win you popularity, friends, and a […]

The post The Ten Best Examples of Minimalist Business Cards to Make a Lasting Impression appeared first on designrfix.com.

SmartPhoto.js – Simple Responsive Image Viewer Designed for Mobile

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/smartphotojs-mobile-slideshow-plugin/

Responsive image gallery designed specifically to display your website on mobile devices.

The post SmartPhoto.js – Simple Responsive Image Viewer Designed for Mobile appeared first on Hongkiat.

Visit hongkiat.com for full content.

10 ace design magazines to add to your reading list

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/jpYun4xTn2s/10-ace-design-magazines-to-add-to-your-reading-list

Design magazines have a number of functions: they let you know what's going on in the industry, inspire you, offer advice you can apply to your own design portfolio, provide you with insights from design superstars, go behind the scenes on the biggest and most experimental design projects – all that stuff. But design magazines are also obliged to look dead cool while artfully stacked up on your coffee table.

We've picked out a selection of design magazines from around the world; titles with the best writing and photography, the coolest designs, and the top production values. We looked at big-selling design magazines that have been around for decades, and smaller, independent titles that dare to be different.

Wallpaper*

Wallpaper* magazine covers

For interiors inspo, Wallpaper* can’t be beaten

The first of our heavyweight titles is Wallpaper*: 'the world's most important design and lifestyle magazine brand’. The monthly mag has readers in 100 countries, the majority employed in the creative industries, so it covers design from around the world in all its forms. You might see a story about Frida Kahlo next to one about Paris Fashion Week, something on wearable football kits beside a piece about a new bar in Buenos Aires. It's no good for Photoshop tips, but can't be beaten for #apartmentgoals. 

Computer Arts

For practical advice, you can’t beat Computer Arts

Whatever stage of your career you're at – student or studio boss – Computer Arts is a cornerstone magazine. The monthly title champions graphic design, branding and illustration. It interviews the world's best studios and individual designers, but also regularly celebrates fresh new talent. The magazine goes behind the scenes on big projects to see how they're put together.

It's one of our sister magazines, so we're a little biased, but where Computer Arts really comes into own is with career tips and advice: how to upgrade your skills, tips for making it as a freelancer, and what to do if you decide to quit your job. 

The covers always look super-smart too. A particular highlight is Computer Arts' annual cover design competition, run in association with D&AD New Blood. It's a chance for fledgling designers to show off their skills, and for industry pros to take a look at the best upcoming talent. You can see 2018's winning entry on the issue on sale now. Pick up a copy to check out the full shortlist, or check out last year's winners.

Creative Review

Creative Review magazine

CR has been running since 1980

Our final big title is Creative Review: 'We celebrate the work that matters. And we dig into how and why it gets made. We challenge and champion the industry we love.' Since 1980, the title has been covering all quarters of the creative industries – not just art and design but advertising, film and TV, too. It interviews big-name creatives and analyses high-profile projects, looks at how things are made and why, inspires you to go and make your own stuff, and offers practical advice on how to run your own studio. 

Eye

Eye magazine

Eye has great coffee table appeal

Eye calls itself 'the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal' – and it might just be. Aside from always having a killer front cover (this is definitely one to leave artfully stacked on the coffee table), the quarterly magazine offers some of the best writing around on design and 'visual culture' in general. For a taste of what to expect, a recent issue includes stories on Estonian design, the anatomy of a magazine, and an interview with the design director at the New York Times. Eye also does some pretty good student subscription deals. 

99U

99U magazines

99U is made by Adobe, so you know you’re in safe hands

Another one of the best-looking magazines around is 99U. It’s aimed at everyone from designers and engineers to educators, marketers, artists and CEOs: ‘If you approach your work creatively, 99U’s goal is to help you find the inspiration to build an incredible career'. It's made by Adobe so you know you're in safe hands. The current quarterly issue covers Pentagram's Natasha Jen, an insider's tour of Berlin, and 10 designers sharing how they upset the status quo – firing their best client, good stuff like that.

Communication Arts

communication arts magazine

This US-focused mag is aimed at creative professionals

Communication Arts covers design, illustration, typography and photography, as well as advertising and interactive fields. It's US-focused and is for people in the industry more than general hobbyists. The bimonthly magazine is at its best when interviewing designers and design studios – the Surrealist photographer from Portland; the experimental marketing agency in San Francisco – about the work they make. 

The Great Discontent

The Great Discontent magazine

TGD specialises in longform, in-depth interviews

The Great Discontent started out online but it's definitely even better in print. The title specialises in big, proper, longform interviews – in the tradition of literary magazine the Paris Review – with artists, writers, graphic designers, photographers… people from all corners of the arts. You even get the odd musician. It attracts big names like Michael Bierut and Stefan Sagmeister, but the detailed mix of biography and practical advice makes every interview worth your time. The magazine itself is quality, too – and is available in hardcover, as a magazine, or as a travel-sized version.

B magazine 

B magazine

Each issue of B focuses entirely on one specific company

Strictly speaking, B isn't a design magazine. Instead, each bimonthly issue focuses on one specific company, and the 'untold stories behind a brand … its sentiment and culture.' It's a good mix too: there are companies like Netflix, Airbnb and Google, alongside notebook-maker Moleskine, footwear specialist Danner, and outdoor clothing brand Patagonia. 

Patagonia, for example, based in California, lets its people to go surfing when the waves are up, and make up the time later. The system apparently increases productivity. It's this level of detail that makes the magazine a good read for studio bosses or anyone interested in brand marketing and management. 

FORM

form magazine

Each biannual issue of FORM has a particular theme 

Leading design writer Steven Heller called FORM the best design magazine in the world, 'for its holistic coverage of industrial, product, graphic, and hybrid designs.' The magazine prides itself on being a print title first and foremost, so it does all the things that print titles do best: in-depth, long-form articles alongside quality photographs and illustrations. The covers are always exceptional, and it’s bilingual too: German and English. Each biannual issue has a theme. It could be a country (Mexico, South Korea), a topic (sport, designing protest), or something more abstract (danger, failure). 

Printed Pages

Printed Pages magazine

Printed Pages is exceptionally well put-together

Printed Pages is a biannual magazine that covers all areas of art and design, and presents a 'curated view of the best creative work we’ve seen in the past six months’ as well as ‘a host of feature interviews with a list of names who are currently making their mark on the creative world’.  

The current issue's recurring theme is activism and using creativity as a voice for positive change. It includes interviews with designers Sagmeister & Walsh, artists Gilbert and George, and street photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Exceptionally put-together, this one also passes the coffee table test with flying colours.

Read more:

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Exclusive Freebie: 12 Instagram Story Templates

Original Source: https://inspiredm.com/exclusive-freebie-12-instagram-story-templates/

Created by Nice, Very Nice! the Instagram story template pack “Napali” contains 12 high-quality templates. The bundle is a useful tool for influencers, bloggers, marketers, brands, and storytellers aims to help promote e-commerce products, share deals and announcements or attract the attention of the followers. These templates are fully customizable and compatible with Adobe Photoshop and Sketch App.

See the templates live on Instagram here.

Product features

12 Templates for Photoshop and Sketch App.
Document size: 1600×2844px.
High resolution/retina proof.
Download links to the free fonts.
Well ordered layers.
All shapes are vector based.
Pixel perfect shapes.
Easy image placement via smart objects.

How to use the product

Open a file with any template.
Drag&drop new photos, replace the texts.
Save the file.
Upload to your Instagram story.

Download Napali for free from here.

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