Understanding how to use similarity and proximity to affect the relationships between elements in your work will help you create designs that enable easier organization and improve the usability of your work. In this first article, Jon Hensley will take a look at how the principles of similarity and proximity work, and look at real-world examples to illustrate them in use so that you can begin to use similarity and proximity to create both relationships and differences between elements in your designs.
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We are in urgent need of inspiration.Some people simply have the magic touch for digging up design goodness. Today, we are proud to present the brilliant gems that Veerle Pieters has dug out, letting us explore a fresh breeze of photography, art, type, print as well as web design projects. Sit back, relax, and feed your appetite. Here’s your monthly dose!
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Deviating from the traditional infographic form means that you tread into more complex media territory, but such experimentation with technology and narrative will be key in shaping the future of infographic design. In compiling this list, Babar Suleman received some great recommendations from friends and peers in the design world, and picking just 23 was not easy. Check out the list below to see if your favorite infographic made the list, and let us know about any others that should have been included!
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Creative folks like yourself know how important our daily dose of hot and steaming coffee is. Many of us even choose to work from a coffee house because the cozy atmosphere, the smell of freshly ground coffee beans and the carefully created art on the glossy foam fuels our creativity.
Designed by Oliver Pitsch, Barista is an icon set dedicated to all baristas and coffee lovers. It consists of 50 carefully crafted vector icons. A big thank you to Oliver Pitsch for designing this wonderful icon set — we sincerely appreciate your time and efforts!
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As Veerle Pieters explores print and web design, photography, art and type, she uncovers a lot of brilliant design gems. She has compiled a selection of inspirational examples for you in this showcase, and the plan is to bring out a new one every month, so let us know in the comments if you like what you see. But for now, please lean back and enjoy!
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To celebrate all the little moments of inspiration that comes from the colors of your favorite music album, or the typography on a book cover, we have compiled some resources for you which honor the beauty of graphic design and the ideas behind it. Perfect to squeeze into a short coffee break. Enjoy! The variety is endless, and sometimes you’re lucky and find a little piece of art shining through the sheer mass. It’s inspiring to see how designers boil the idea behind a book down to the limited canvas space of one rectangle. What will it inspire you to? Perhaps something extraordinary, like your own series of book covers made with HTML and CSS?
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As digital technologies are implanted deeper in the world, making more and more aspects of life intangible, it’s hard to imagine the world without any kind of banknotes, or paper money. In the dramatic history of our world, money became not just generic objects of payment, but also symbols of societies. And as with any complex task, currency design holds some valuable lessons for us, web designers. In this article, Julia May will try to formulate some of these lessons and, therefore, draw your attention to the inspirational nature of paper money.
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Balancing a composition involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum. An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions. However, design principles aren’t hard and fast rules. They’re guidelines. There’s no one right way to communicate that two elements are similar or different, for example. You don’t need to follow any of these principles, although you should understand them and have a reason for breaking them.
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Jeremy Girard loves being a web designer and he’s incredibly thankful that he decided to join this industry many years ago. Still, there have been a number of times during his career when his passion has waned. This scenario is called burnout. Do you find passion for your work an important part of your career? If so, what have you found to be helpful in keeping that passion for your job intact? In this article, Jeremy shares his moments of burnout in his career and what you can do to avoid them.
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Compositional flow determines how the eye is led through a design: where it looks first, where it looks next, where the eye pauses, and how long it stays. You have a lot of control over where people look when they’re viewing a webpage you’ve designed. On a text-heavy and graphic-light page, a visitor’s eye likely follows something like a Z-pattern or F-pattern across and down the page. However, as soon as you design page elements and add graphics, those patterns no longer apply. Your visitor’s eye will follow the flow, movement and rhythm you create.
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