Graphic Design: 8 Practices That Will Be in Vogue Next Year

Here are some of the graphic design trends that are expected to dominate in 2019.

Pops of Intense Colors

Hues of electric yellows, vivid corals and bright blues are taking the place of the reserved colors of the past. More designers and brands are adding intense colors to their palettes for the coming year and beyond.

It is believed that this transformation towards extra intense colors is a continuation of the refusal of tasteless minimalism from earlier in this century. Also, as brands proceed to fight for the consumer’s attention, they must opt for greater risks regarding designs.

Strong Typographic Focal Points

When you use this bold font, it makes it easier to read the text on social media posts and mobile gadgets. Apart from that, it projects individuality, innovation, and strength.

Futuristic Influences Are Typical

We are technically living in the future-the kind that a lot of 80’s movies predicted-it is time for our designs to be portraying that. This translated to a lot of futuristic colors, patterns, and thoughts are about to lead the design world for the coming years.

Dark and Light Color Schemes

When you use dual color patterns, it transforms your poster into a lot more flexible piece of art. It does not matter if you hang it up on a dark or a light wall, the white colored poster is perfect for all sorts of backgrounds.

Complex Duotones and Gradients

Gradients are some of the favorite things to be complemented to any design project to provide it with considerable depth. Additionally, like a lot of the other expanding graphic design trends, they take an amazing form on mobile gadgets.

Colorful Minimalism

Minimalism is essentially referred to paring down design to only the compulsory gears. It is seen as the rejection of cluttered and complicated ideas.
Complicated and Dynamic Hand-Drawn Artworks

Hand-drawn or custom illustrations are an exceptional way to let your visual content stand apart from the rest, standing above all the other competitors that like to settle for things less than the best. That is because no other brand would be able to imitate these visuals completely. Opponents can imitate your social media strategy, your color scheme and the stock photos in use.

Genuine and Authentic Stock Photos

This is referred to the photos that honestly look like they were taken by a bunch of friends hanging out, not by a professional. Each of these free stock photos has the color scheme that makes the colors look real and not like they were overly edited.

Dec 5,2018 / By admin / No Comment

Social Media

Instagram Update: Users Can Now Shop From Video Posts

Instagram has reportedly broadcasted three new updates regarding their products that are related to shopping. Shortly, the users will get access to shop for videos and save products to a shopping assortment in a lot of their saved posts. Instagram intends to make the whole process of shopping of business profiles extremely feasible. With the announcement of these aspects, Instagram is on edge to deliver its users with the greatest practices while shopping through the platform of Instagram.

Instagram has reportedly quoted in a press release:

“The idea is that when someone comes across an item, they regard as a must-have, they can save it to their Shopping collection thus reviewing it later. For people who like to treat themselves for shopping or like to shop for their loved ones, these updates serve as a source for unlocking new ways to explore and connect with the products and brands that move them.”

The new shopping collection features can be safely compared to an arena of an online store and all the posts you go through and save, are organized in rows so you can feasibly look for the products you are searching for. The bookmark tool comes in handy for that.

Only the saves that are related to the business pages will be marked as shopping posts on your history of Instagram. In light of recent events, Instagram permitted business owners for their products to be tagged in their stories through their business profiles. However, after the latest update, as discussed above, one will be able to employ the same for their video postings too. So, now users will be able to go through any item they need to explore more about or buy it on their feed as well as stories.

Instagram has also put in much effort for the redesigning of the business profiles so they will be able to combine all their shoppable post under a newly updated button for a shop in an ordered manner. This means that users will be able to navigate their way through these business profiles just like they do at a site for e-Commerce.

Tagging within these promotional videos, then becomes an obvious thing. This revolutionary step would be the one that can attract increased engagement as the tagged users relaunch the app ensuring their notifications.

Dec 5,2018 / By admin / No Comment

Social Media

LinkedIn: Taking A Similar Approach Of Traditional Social Media?

If there is one constant fact about social media, it is that it keeps on changing. No matter what, people always find a new way to document every part of their lives, but what if you have all these needs but as a business?

There is an abundance of social media sites out there and considerably more pop up each day. So the question lies in, where to begin? Should we start with a Facebook account or should we hop on the newest Pinterest trend today?

Making use of social media in your business management strategy is a few of the greatest ways to make people feel your presence. It is a potentially rewarding way to sell your products, services, and help uplift your brand. However, the benefits don’t stop there; it gives you the chance to connect with customers, fans, and prospective consumers on a more human, personal level.

Below, we have broken down the platform of LinkedIn and helped you gain insight into how to make the most out of it for your business

LinkedIn is referred to as the most celebrated social media sites among business and sales specialists. It bears a more specific emphasis as compared to the rest of social media in that it is fixated more on stuff like helping business enthusiasts establish a professional network that would let them get hired at some point of the way. However, what LinkedIn has always failed to address is the traditional touch of social media. It was never actually conceived as a network which you could use to connect with the people you love, and it generally inclined to stay away from the more perky features of social media.

The most important utilization of LinkedIn for people is to showcase their professional thoughts and job experience and, making it one of the vital platforms to be used for those in business.

With features like InMail, Company Pages, LinkedIn Pulse, Groups, and “Get Introduced” and the option to see viewers that went through your profile, LinkedIn is an appreciated tool for not only gaining traffic but prospecting, building thought leadership, as well as employing.

Having said that, it has lately been found that LinkedIn has begun to branch out into reactions, a lot like the ones implemented on Facebook. However, following a similar format, the reactions apparently were different from the ones offered by Facebook. Another feature worth ‏observing was of the stories, much like the one encountered at Instagram and in fact, the progenitor of this feature-Snapchat.

LinkedIn is taking a test drive with these features to see how effective they would be, but are not ready yet to present them to all consumers yet.

Dec 5,2018 / By admin / No Comment

Logo Design

10 Best Tablets for Graphic Design, Drawing & Art 2018

The tablets for drawing have come a long way in the past few years. There are options to suit people with all kinds of budget needs and includes the ones from powerful, pen displays that are packed with features with bright screens that are high-resolution to the ones that are midrange and have fewer premium features (but are still very good) drawing tablets which compensate the power for the price.

Here is the List of Best drawing Tablets from 2018:

Wacom Cintiq 22HD touch pen display

This is the most desirable drawing tablet on the market probably. Wacom Cintiq 22HD enables its user to draw directly on its screen. People who like to go large with their stroke can benefit from its large size, and your most subtle expressions can be captured by the stylus since it is sensitive enough to cope.

XP-Pen Artist 15.6 pen display

This device best covers all the basics you could want from a pen display. It has a comfortable pen with plenty of sensitivity level, a drawing area that is reasonably sized and a good screen. This is the best option for your digital creativity without breaking the bank.

Wacom Intuos Pro (large)

Giving you purest of the drawing experiences, this pen provides you with over 8000 levels of pressure sensitivity while playing area offered compares that to the size of a magazine.

Wacom Intuos Pro (Medium)

The range of movement required by the designers and illustrators is different, so this smaller edition becomes a perfect candidate for the designers that require a lesser range of movement. It also offers eight shortcut keys and a Touch Ring so don’t have to flip between your tablet and keyboard.

Huion H430P

This device is for people who are not sure if they will use the device frequently enough to justify its costs. It has all the basics including a sensitive pen truly giving you creative benefits.

Huion H640P

Comfortable drawing experience with a convenient size for travel, this is ideal for people on the move because it packs away handily. It is thicker than a smartphone measuring 10.2×5.8 inches.

Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13

From solid-state drive storage to a choice of Intel Core Processor, although expensive, this device offers everything you want in a drawing tablet. It can even be tethered to powerful MAC or Pc in your studio.

Microsoft Surface Book 2

Giving true versatility for a designer, this can be used as a regular laptop, or the screen could be twisted into a flat table. Optional Surface Pen adds further 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Apple iPad Pro 12.9

There are more colours on display, and this deluxe edition has a higher refresh rate. With an optional keyboard and an Apple pencil, it can function as a laptop while being a delight to draw with.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S3

This device comes with a high-quality OLED display along with a stylus that does not cost you extra and a capable digital drawing platform.

Oct 12,2018 / By admin / No Comment

Branding

8 Benefits of Branding: Reasons you need a Stronger Brand

As quoted by the industry experts, it is 6 to 7 times harder to secure a new client than it is to retain an existing one.

Company leaders are realizing little by little that their brand is their most valuable asset. However, this was regarded as a novel idea not long ago. In 90’s, the organization’s priorities had a major shift in favour of brand development. So, the question lies why do companies focus on brand management through their valuable resources instead of using the same to boost their profits tangibly? Here are a few benefits of branding:

Gaining Customer Loyalty

As quoted by the industry experts, it is 6 to 7 times harder to secure a new client than it is to retain an existing one. When a brand is backed-up by the evidence of performance and is consistently communicated to its consumers, this fosters loyalty.

Becoming a Market Leader

iPhone has become a market leader because of a well-planned and well-executed Brand message which resonates with its customers: “challenge the status quo.”

Standing Beyond the Competition

When you communicate your brand effectively, it marks a clear difference between you and your competitors. Marketing is not about making unrealistic, gimmicky claims neither about being best at everything. This means if you have a grocery store, having an unparalleled seafood section might do the job.

Delivering Value

Branding means all your marketing strategies are focused on your unique value proposition rather than on trying to convince customers to use your brand. Customers appreciate when you maintain focus out of necessity.

Building a Unified Stronger Team

This means that you should hire only those people that believe in the same values as your brand. And, in turns, when you possess a visibly strong brand, it gets easier to attract talent that is highly-qualified.

Setting Guardrails

When everyone at a company plays by the same rule, everything is made simpler in an organization. It is easier to keep everyone on the same page through the Brand Lens and to steer all aspects of the company smoothly in the right direction.

Protection against Economic Variations and Price Undercutting

When your brand exists within a poor economy, then competing simply by price gives your brand lesser flexibility. The economic change is less likely to affect you if your brand has a strong presence.

Price Knowing Your Worth

When you have a brand-driven business, it is easier to introduce products with higher prices since you can effectively communicate with the consumers its value through your image.

Oct 12,2018 / By admin / No Comment

News

The 5 Major Cryptocurrency Heists

With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, the number of hackers targeting commerce is also high. By 2017, authorities of crypto exchanges indicated that they had lost about $266 million as a result of heists and security breaches. However, the first half of 2018 reported that three times that amount had already been stolen during the crypto exchanges.

In early July 2018, the block-chain security agency CipherTrace told that the $731 million was stolen during crypto exchanges this year alone.

In this publication, we’ll look at some of the most common crypto heists in the history.

The Coin-check heist

In January 2018, hackers discovered a loophole in the coin-check that allowed them to steal more than 500 million NEM (worth about $530 million at the time). While the NEM was only breached and other funds remained secure, the NEM Foundation pointed out that penetration had nothing to do with the safety of XEM’s cryptocurrency.

They insisted that the blame goes entirely on Coin-check, saying it was the result of “weak security measures.” Given that such a large proportion of XEM was compromised, many people immediately assumed that the NEM would implement a difficult time to recover money. However, this did not happen. Coin-check is currently having the reputation of being the victim of the largest crypto exchange heist in the history.

The Mt. Gox hack

Until the last Coin-check hack, the Mt. Gox Hack was the biggest crypto theft ever. It is still considered to be the biggest theft that has occurred.

Mt. Gox was a crypto exchange in Tokyo, Japan. Between 2013 and 2014, it processed more than 70% of all Bitcoin transactions worldwide. Unfortunately, in February 2014, the stock market declared bankruptcy.

Hackers stole about 850,000 Bitcoins – about $450 million at the time. Also, this accounted for about 6% of all bitcoins at the time. Hence, at the time of the theft, this represented a significant proportion of the total crypto market cap. In this sense, it was superior to the Coin-check hack. The agencies managed to recover 200,000 stolen Bitcoins although, roughly 650,000 are still missing.

The DAO hack that led to the creation of Ethereum Classic (ETC)

On June 12, 2016, Stephen Tual, one of the creators of DAO, announced that a “Recursive Call” error had been noticed in the code. However, at the end of his term, he stressed that “it is not a problem that exposes DAO funds to a risk today”. Unluckily, Tual turned out to be very wrong. By the time the team identified the error and started repairing it, one of the hackers was already exploiting it and draining DAO of the ether collected during its token sales.

On 18^th June, less than a week after the announcement, the hacker had already managed to drain more than 3.6 million ethers (about $70 million) into a “child DAO.” That alone drastically reduced the price of the ether from $20 to $13.

The Bitfinex exchange heist

Bitfinex is currently the second largest crypto exchange regarding daily volumes of trading. However, in August 2016, the exchange was the victim of a hacking theft that resulted in the loss of more than 120,000 Bitcoins, worth about $66 million. Hours after the attack, Bitcoin’s value went down from $600 to $540. Also, users received no compensation for lost Bitcoins. Instead, the exchange insisted the users get BFX tokens for their losses and promised to buy these tokens later.

The Bit-Floor exchange heist

Although relatively unknown, Bit-Floor heist remains one of the largest Bitcoin heists in the history. It resulted in more than 24,000 Bitcoins. At that time, it was considered relatively small. However, under current conditions, the difference would be $141 million.

In 2012, Bit-Floor was one of biggest competitors of Mt. GOX. However, it had to be closed abruptly when hackers had access to private user keys. It was made possible by hackers successfully accessing private user keys, which were stored in a very insecure and unencrypted manner online.

Fortunately, the stock market has been able to repay users’ money for their losses. However, finally forced to close.

Oct 4,2018 / By admin / No Comment

Logo Design

Some Deadly Graphic Design Sins That Can Make Your Business Look Unprofessional

One of the key factors of establishing a business or a company is defining the logo. And though many people believe logo designing to be a simple task, any professional graphic designer who you consult with, will tell you that designing a logo that is both functional and unique is not as easy as many of us think. And when it comes to creating a custom logo design, things become even more challenging. That being said, we have discussed below 7 “deadly sins” or mistakes that graphic and web designers should be careful about when creating logos and websites:

Chaotic typography

As any professional in the graphic designing industry can tell you, typography makes or breaks a logo. It must be kept simple without committing any compromise on the intended message, therefore, make sure that you: do not apply too many weights or fonts, do not use odd or ultra-thin fonts, and do not space the letters too far apart or too close together.

Poor font

For various graphics experts, picking up a font for a logo takes as long as creating a logo itself – as defined above, it makes or breaks your design. Every font has its own ‘personality’, so you need to make sure that you choose the right one which can gel in with the intended message of your business. Select a font which is simple and clear.

Too complex or too abstract

It is a common fact in the industry of graphic design that a simple design is always more memorable (as people can recognise it quickly). The smartest way to ensure that your logo isn’t too abstract or complex is by confirming the different platforms where it will be placed.

Using web graphics on printed material

With various immature designers coming from a pre-dominantly web design background, the transfer over from web designing to traditional designing for print can bring with it a mass of design sins. Images provided at 72dpi and munched down to load fast on a website are going to redevelop very badly in print. Although you can get away with small thumbnails, however, enhancing things up to any substantial size is going to be trying your luck. There are various online websites which offer free or low-quality resolution images that are the best source for suitable imagery.

Unclear Navigation

One of the common design mistakes that people make while designing a web-page is that they don’t consider that each page has to stand alone and must be connected to the rest of the website. A visitor may land on your home page which might have smooth navigation through a sales process but search engines will send them into your website from another page as well. Each page of the site needs to have clear navigation so that visitors can find out how to surf the site deeper, how to reach ‘about us’ or ‘contact’ page, or how to reach to the ‘buy now’ page.

Not Capturing Visitor’s Info

Visitors who land on your website may not be ready to purchase today. Your site should be able to capture their information so you can contact them in the future. You won’t be able to do it without their permission so your elements of design should include an offer to sign-up. If you succeed to get someone to opt-in, you will have more chances of turning more prospects into customers – even if it won’t happen immediately.

Leaving it Static

Another big mistake that website owners do is that they hire a graphic designer to create their website design and develop the site. And after that, they leave the site as is. It can work, but if you want to get a steady stream of traffic from search engines, there’ll be a huge chance of that happening with the help of content creation and publication on a regular basis. You should discuss with your web designer to create a blog, newsletter and other elements which continually add to your website. It will help significantly in getting sufficient traffic and building a relationship with people who subscribe to your site.

Oct 4,2018 / By admin / No Comment

News

5 Psychological Triggers That Will Have The Money Rolling In

Ever wondered how some businesses tend to have products selling like “crazy” while there are others that are selling the same products but don’t get the same response in terms of sales?

Jun 16,2017 / By Karen Morris / No Comment

Logo Design

Logo Designers and 5 Brilliant Resources They Need To Check Out Now

An essential part of branding, logo design is key towards the establishing an identity for a brand. So it’s safe to say that with so many businesses around the world and similar businesses operating in an industry

Jun 12,2017 / By Betty Wilson / No Comment

News

15 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently

If you have seen artists and other creative heads at work, right away you will notice that they stand out from the rest due to their different way of doing things and are often characterized to be “quirky”.

Jun 9,2017 / By Betty Wilson / No Comment