One of the great things about looking at trends each month is catching a glimpse of what designers are experimenting with. In particular, you start to see a distinct crossover of elements that you might have missed at first glance.

That exact thing happened with this month’s collection. Note all the yellow and gold tones. Even in picking out examples of great work for other trends, websites with these hues kept creeping in.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month:

1. Yellow and gold tones

Color trends are fun to watch. Sometimes colors tend to coincide with seasonal elements or simply reflect branding, but sometimes the use of color shows the mood and feelings of the designer.

Yellow and gold tones are popping up everywhere. From full screen color wash effects, such as Gold Hill Winery, to accents or bright lettering, yellow and gold are popular options right now.

Yellow tones are a good way to set the right emotional connection to a project. The color is commonly associated with joy and happiness. It’s linked to intellect and energy. More golden tones feel special, elaborate and regal. More importantly in the context of design, the right shade of yellow can be a showstopper, grabbing user attention and providing a visual point of reference for every element on the screen.

Using this type of color palette though takes a great deal of thought. Pale yellows can get lost if they aren’t paired with another color in a way that establishes distinct contrast. (Whites and yellows often don’t mix.) Too much yellow – think Big Bird-style coloring – can have an overwhelming feel and might be too distracting for users.

That’s where the deeper yellows with more reddish undertones and golden hues come in. These yellow tones are easier to work with because they aren’t so over-stimulating. For maximum impact, pair yellow tones with a darker overall palette to create maximum contrast and impact. Consider pairing gold tones against lighter backgrounds for the same reason. Opt for a yellow tone that creates the right feeling for your design – brighter yellows are more energetic and happy, while golden tones might feel more classic or one-of-a-kind.

2. Vintage everything

The hipster lifestyle isn’t just a fashion trend; it’s connected to website design as well. One way this is manifesting itself is in the use of vintage styles for almost everything. “Vintage” design elements are having a moment right now.

This extends to multiple elements—typography, color options, backgrounds and imagery. The vintage look might be artificially created using old-style looking elements—vintage typography styles are incredibly popular—or by incorporating elements that are actually old into the design. Look at the image of the man in the bottom corner of the Chamberlin’s Leather Milk website; he looks as if he could have been pulled right out of an old photo. The same old-style effect applies to the Barrel and Crow design with the old wood background and stark black logo style that feels like it could have been picked out of a design from 70 years ago.

Vintage typography styles are a little more difficult to classify, but you’ll likely know them when you see them. They are often characterized by simple lettering with small, but elaborate divots. Note the small flourishes on the characters for Sweet Magnolia Gelato. The primary lettering also includes a colored offset shadow for greater impact. Other things you will commonly see with vintage typography styles are letters with light texture, such as Chamberlin’s Leather Milk, and a mix of two typefaces, one more simple and one with the more elaborate look, such as the combination for Sweet Magnolia Gelato Co. But note the imperfection in the sans serif typeface here, that small element contributes to the overall feeling of “oldness” in the design.

Now here’s the thing about vintage: It is cool for a design to look old, but it must function in a modern way. Find ways to incorporate elements with animation, parallax scrolling or video for a contemporary touch.

3. Interaction

Websites featuring elements “you can touch” continue to grow in popularity. This is a little more than interaction; it’s a more immersive interaction experience.

What does this mean exactly?

Website designers are creating unique experiences that rely on the user for movement. Moving the mouse might make something on the screen move or shift in a particular way. A flick or scroll might cause another action to happen. Overall, the user should feel as if he or she is dictating the action on the screen based on his or her physical motions. (Pretty cool, right?)

This type of interaction is becoming more and more popular. It integrates with a number of other design elements to create an overall experience that is as much about delight and feeling as information.

Make sure to click over to each of these examples as well, to see these interactions in practice. Here’s an idea of what you’ll find:

• Haus: Click anywhere on the screen and move the colored blob with a 360-degree motion effect. The animation responds to user movements while continuing its slow in-shape movement.
• Emirates: Use the mouse to spin the globe. The motion seems to also mimic the time and speed of the click to showcase destinations.
• Fake Music: Every flick of the mouse changes the featured homepage element. Click around for more animated effects, such as navigation movement, a grid style layout and options to find and buy music.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve seen all the examples, did you notice one theme that really stood out among the trends? Once seen as a color that was nearly impossible to use well, yellow and gold tones are being showcased in a number of interesting ways. The same can be said for vintage elements, which are almost everywhere.

What trends are you loving (or hating) right now? I’d love to see some of the websites that you are fascinated with. Drop me a link on Twitter; I’d love to hear from you.

MegaBundle: 1000+ Unique Graphic Design Elements – only $18!

Source

Last year I watched a talk by Marcin Wichary about his work at Medium and, although the content of his talk was enlightening, funny and charming I couldn’t help but gawp at the way that his slides appeared to transition and jump. At one point of the talk he hijacked a slide and started inputing values and moving things around and I had no idea how he did it. Was it Keynote? Had he made his own native app?

Well, Marcin has written extensively about his process for making a talk, in a series he calls The Rectangle Behind You. Some of his talks use Node.js to communicate between multiple devices, whilst most of them use HTML and a bit of JavaScript to tie things together:

I will share a lot of what I learned: from ideas to code. Maybe it will inspire you to treat your presentation as apps… and even if you don’t, I hope you will find something useful in some of the checklists and principles that helped me throughout the years.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

---

The Rectangle Behind You is a post from CSS-Tricks

Tips because of Composing Essays

Since all the Reading up Residence still cannot teach you features to develop to do with, a number of concepts for coming up with a wonderful .

1. First, pick the theme in which you’re interested. Assume that appeal to you k9s.
2. Then make an effort to narrow the subject right something you should be able to decide upon knowledgeably. Let’s assume there’s a beagle and you also also take into account quite a lot information on beagles according to your very own knowledge in operating a person particular.
3. Now thought of a headline regarding topic. “Beagles are the best canine breed.Centimeter By any means . personal dissertation thing alternatively “hook.”
4. To make up your new material, address the question “why” quite five times. The right beagle wonders for the skin for “beagles actually are smart” or a “beagles will be not either not big enough not too large they are really ok.”
5. Wrap this. Submit a much smaller the bottom line that a lot of summarizes the points you earn. “Clearly, beagles are advised since they are guidelines and they are generally the most wonderful degree.”

The post Tips because of Composing Essays appeared first on Visual Swirl Design Resources.

Creating an academic essay

Creating a tutorial essay or dissertation s incredibly more likely to be in accordance to essays homework . the duty that could be seen as unconquerable lots of persons. Additionally, if considered appropriately, this could develop into quite easy.

We advise using to undergo these types of phase amongst document look:

• The phase the following is hunt for files while using topic analysis plus key words used when brainstorming. That is good for internet marketing shopping around beyond the stockpile cataloging devices.
• Look belonging to the merchandise may located and as a consequence evaluation these things gravely. As soon as the specifics looks as if pleasurable, saving a duplicate and also make substantial points suitable for reference. Using some stamped hold from our assortment, it’s always advisable to put in writing all pages and posts, since you will any will have associated with them to make pricing.
• After creating studied your wants to make citation, create guide fence report. It is normally completed in a major alphabetical arrange. All students are liable to hang up doing this piece of work up until discontinue, which is actually a larger oversight, to be then you’ll definitely be required to check the instructions paper therefore if you are to set the surnames of an quoted inexperienced authors not to mention verso coming from the story. Folks who suffer well-composed investigation area coming from the beginning much simpler visualize new and different indeed may your time and. You will see rules referring to big formatting versions active in the corresponding section.

https://onedayessay.com/

However, once you’ve got performed typing which the draw, see whether every one of the happen to be added as it should be, modern casino fail to complete this may well plagiarism accusations. Should you say selected principles obtained in products, build the mention of contributor with the hire yet take care of this intellectual property dues the creators of these studies.

A well-composed writing useful resource index will aid you to large numbers, and often conveniently are in which for that reached services, see every results pages and books’ knowledge. Most importantly, a checklist which consists of latest runs may influence an beat in a much optimistic procedure used, considering it shows you your actual homework with calm becoming a high school student.

The post Creating an academic essay appeared first on Visual Swirl Design Resources.

Web design is an ever evolving and changing process. What is in vogue today might fall out of favor tomorrow. We once used to have brightly colored pages filled with multiple banners and what not — remember, once upon a time, MySpace used to be the de facto standard of UX in web design. However, today, we have come a long way from that, and are now headed towards a more minimal and less intrusive web design ideology. With more than two months already gone by, what trends can be expected to shine and rise to prominence in 2016?

Flat Design

Flat Design has been around for quite a while, so this is a not a very recent phenomenon. Gradients and the like have fallen out of favor, and more and more designers are now incorporating flat design in their projects.

That said, 2016 will surely see further growth as well as an evolution of flat design, as far as websites are concerned. For one, flat design is no longer being viewed in isolation, as every other major web design concept has “flat” affixed to it. Instead, it is being used in a symbiotic manner with other design ideologies. As such, you might come across a minimal design with flat design elements incorporated within itself, and so on.

In other words, flat design is now becoming a very common entity, and it shall be employed in assonance with other design manners, much like responsive design has become as common nowadays all thanks to the rise of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

Speaking of responsive design…

The Role of Mobile-Friendly Design

It goes without saying that responsive design is here to stay, and with the role of mobile devices ever on the rise, it is nearly impossible to picturize web design and development sans responsive design.

However, another equally viable but lesser implemented approach is expected to gain some more acceptance in 2016: adaptive design.

Basically, adaptive design, much like responsive design, focuses on creating a better experience for mobile internet users. However, unlike responsive design wherein the same website responds to the user’s device size and resolution, adaptive design focuses on having two versions of the same content: website.com and m.website.com, for instance, for desktop and mobile visitors respectively.

Why would adaptive design gain momentum in 2016? With more, especially larger websites focusing on mobile apps and the mobile browsing segment, adaptive design is rising in popularity. Surely, it is probably still going to lag behind responsive design, but it will still find good usage in the months to come.

Material Design

Ever since Google introduced Material Design, it has been rising in popularity. However, for the most part, the principles of Material Design have dominated mobile app design, and not truly web design.

That said, the trend is surely changing, and in 2016, we can definitely expect to see more of Material Design in web design projects and websites.

There are a good number of WordPress themes, for example, out there that adhere to Material Design principles. But those are just a small fragment of the total picture, and more and more frameworks are coming up based on Material Design for the web.

Scrolling Changes

Page scrolling has evolved a lot over the past few years. We used to have only Previous and Next links, but then came pagination, and that truly revolutionized the manner in which we navigate websites.

However, of late, infinite scroll has been gaining momentum, with the page loading further as and when you scroll down the content, and so on.

Will infinite scroll continue to rise? To some extent yes, but not entirely.

Basically, infinite scroll seems to be reaching limits of growth, with more and more content-centric websites focusing on paginated navigation once again. Social networks, such as Facebook and Google+, on the other hand, are relying heavily on infinite scrolling — this is also done so as to ensure uniformity with the mobile apps of such networks.

Thus, for practical purposes, pagination will rise in stature in 2016, albeit infinite scroll is not going to vanish anytime soon.

Reductionism

Reductionism in web design seems to be rising as well, but in 2016, this reductionism will not be affecting just design elements, but content as well.

We already have seen how many blogs are dropping the sidebar and its widgets in favor of a clean and minimal layout that just focuses on the content. Such reductionism is bound to rise in 2016, primarily in smaller websites such as blogs and portfolio sites. However, the absence of a sidebar or a header menu will also imply that the role of the footer is amplified.

What do you think of these design trends and predictions for the remaining months of 2016? Share your views in the comments below!

(dpe)

When I was young and learning to program, I was fascinated by the possibility of creating things that could live inside my monitor. I had the same feeling when I started to play with procedural content generation, which is to find the rules behind a phenomenon, encode them in an algorithm, and use that algorithm to create something virtual, but realistic — a plausible simulation.

Typically, you can give a seed or some initial parameters to a procedural content generation algorithm, and get some result. You could generate the landscape of a city, the shape of a tree or an entire world.

The post Diving Into Procedural Content Generation, With WorldEngine appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

If your WordPress causes trouble sending and receiving email, read on. We have a solution for you. Of course, you can use special third party services like Mandrill for this job, however, in contrast to the following solution, they aren’t free. In this article, we’ll show you an option that doesn’t cost any (additional) money at all while still being very effective. You just use one of your email addresses that come with your hosting package or your server. We’ll show you how to set up an SMTP server for the delivery of your WordPress email.

The Problem With WordPress Email

WordPress uses the mail function of PHP to send its internal email. But often, this is the reason for the problem. As many shared hosting providers don’t have this feature configured correctly, and some don’t have it activated at all. This poses the issue that your WordPress is not able to send email properly. New users, for example, don’t receive passwords, and you aren’t informed about comments on your blog. Of course, you can use a third-party service like Mandrill or Sendgrid. However, these services aren’t free and can get rather expensive with many users or user accounts.

But don’t be afraid, there is a solution to the problem. You can use a service for that you already pay either way.

Using One of Your Email Addresses for WordPress

With every shared hosting package or server, you receive a domain alongside the package, and this allows you to create own email addresses. This is rather easy and will solve the WordPress issue. An email address looks like this:

yourname@yoururl.tld

The creation of an email address works differently for every provider, which is why I’ll show you how it works using my provider hostNET.de in the easyTECC4 administration panel as an example. We strongly recommend using an email address like wordpress@yoururl.de.

Creating an Email Address

In the lower screenshot, I enter the email address I want to use, decide on a password and the mail quota (storage size of the mailbox), and click save. Now, I’ll receive the access information and can set up my email address in WordPress. The SMTP port is necessary here for a safe login. Typically, the Port 587 is used. For you, this can be a different one, which you should look up in your system’s support area. If in doubt, ask your hosting provider.

Important: Write down the access information and the server address, to not forget them.

How to Use Your Email Address for WordPress

We will be using the free plugin WP Mail SMTP to ease the process. Unfortunately, there are two plugins identically named WP Mail SMTP. Make sure you download the correct one (view screenshot).

Now download WP Mail SMTP (easy SMTP), install, and activate it. Subsequently, navigate to the plugin settings under »Settings => Email” and apply our parameters according to the following pattern:

Clicking it Opens the Graphic in Higher Resolution

Entering Credentials

First, you need to enter your email address. Then, enter the sender name in the field “From Name“. The option “Send all WordPress email from SMTP” has to be active. Enter the SMTP host in the “SMTP Options” area. This is the server address from which the email is sent. The field “Use SSL encryption” needs to be ticked for access information and transfer to be encrypted. For “Authentification“, you need to click “Yes: Use SMTP authentication“. Below that, you have to enter your username, and your email address’ password. Then click the button »apply changes”.

Checking the Settings With a Test Email

Now enter an email address, a subject, and the message in the field “Send a Test Email“. Click »Send Test”. This generates a test email. If you receive the email, you’ve accomplished that mission and the delivery of email through your server works. If not, you’ll receive an error message.

Troubleshooting Email Problems With WordPress

The most common reason the plugin is unable to send email is an incorrectly entered SMTP host (server address for delivery), or a wrong port. Make sure you’re using the correct port. When in doubt, ask the support of your hosting provider. SSL works for most providers, but unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t. Then switch from “Type of Encryption” to “None” and try again.

Conclusion

With a bit of thought and without any additional costs, we’ve solved the problem, and our WordPress now sends important email reliably. The poor delivery via PHP’s mail function has been avoided, and email is now sent directly via your hosting provider.

(dpe)

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.

The 6 Biggest Design Mistakes Brands are Making Today

The Most Exciting CSS Development You’ve Never Heard of

CSS Only Responsive Tables

The Death of Instagram

Apple, It’s Time to Move on from “OS X”

Web Typography is Broken. Here’s How We Can Fix it

“Deadpool” Visual Effects Breakdown

8 Unintuitive Lessons on Being a Designer

Android Apps are About to Look More like iOS Apps

The Biggest Threat to WordPress Isn’t Another CMS

Protecting the World’s Rarest Colors

Working not Working

The Problem with Flat Design, According to a ‘UX Expert’

CSS Flexbox is Entirely Logical (Almost)

10 Years of Famous First Tweets

Material Colors App

The Pros, Cons, and Future of Flat Design

The Freelancer’s Organized Guide to Getting More Clients

JavaScript is the Most Common Coding Language on Earth

A Typography Workshop

Website Design: Grain & Mortar

Google is Making the Excellent Nik Collection for Professional Photographers Completely Free

People with Names that Break Computers

Blandly: We Build Bland Experiences

Why Twitter Beats Facebook

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

LAST DAY: 500+ Professional Wireframing Elements with Sketchy – only $19!

Source

Quickly note something. That’s not a rare task to perform. At least not for me. And since Moleskine doesn’t provide proper paper quality anymore, I stay away from writing with pen and notebook. But what’s the fast, uncomplicated alternative? Of course there are plenty of note apps, and for the most part they are free, like Google Keep, for example. But none of them are fast. Fast in the sense of everything being instantly available without loads of clicking and saving.

Papier: Quite Close to Its Eponym

The new Chrome extension with a similar look to Byword or iAWriter, that wants to be the fast note app you’ve been searching for just as long as me, comes from France, Bordeaux to be exact, home of the design team Muxu-Muxu which happen to be the extension’s creators. Accordingly, almost logically (if you know French, that is), the extension is called Papier.

The functionality is simple, very simple. Install Papier via the Chrome Web Store, and you’re done. From that point on, Papier can be found on any new tab that you open. Without any detours, you can then directly start writing. The content is stored within the browser cache, and is ready for editing, whenever you open Chrome.

Papier: No Feature Giant

At the bottom right of the browser window, you can read how many lines and words the note already contains. Thus, it could also be used as a fast editor for the next draft of a blog post. Typically, you pay attention to a minimum length. You don’t? Ask Google why you should.

In the browser window’s bottom left corner, there are a couple more features. For example, you could print your notes, or switch into a night mode in which the notes appear in white font before a black background. You could also activate a fullscreen mode for writing without distractions. Formattings such as bold, italic, underlined, and crossed can be accessed from this menu, but also directly using keyboard shortcuts.

That’s it. That’s the extension’s full scope of features.

The extension saves automatically. Thus, the content is available in every new tab. Papier doesn’t manage every new tab as a new note. There’s a single note with any desired length that automatically replicates itself over all open Papier tabs. If it was any different, Papier would have to allow some sort of file management, because how else would a tab know which note to open.

The “restriction” that you only have a single note page is the main reason as to why Papier is so fast and uncomplicated. You’d be better off planning your next bestseller with something else, but you can comfortably let the Chrome extension Papier handle the reminder that you need to buy a pack of almond milk on your way home. But you could also use a piece of paper for that …

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

That’s not very social

They can’t hear you

Innovative thinking

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

Tell Your Story with the Fairy Tales Font + Bonus Vector Animal Set – only $6!

Source