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.
Spotify in Neumorphism
The Most Popular CSS Framework Comparison 2020
The Fastest Google Fonts
Blush, Illustrations for Everyone
New.css
Facebook Releases Avatars – Here’s How to Get Yours
Redesigning the Zoom Experience
Responsive Design Checklist: Your 7-Item List for Responsive Design
8 Certifications for Web Designers to Level up their Resumes
Product Design: How to Build a Customer Journey Map
COVID-19 has Spawned a Mental Health Crisis. Can Branding Break the Taboo?
Ikea Releases Instructions on How to Build Homemade Forts for Children
Design Systems: From Definition to Distribution
How to Build a Social Media Presence: Tips for Designers & Creators
UX Best Practices During COVID-19
Top 40 Favorite Ecommerce Sites in 2020
Automated Accessibility Checker for Web Projects
6 Web Accessibility Features that Benefit More People
The Kawaiization of Product Design
How to Create a Custom Bootstrap Theme from Scratch
A “contrary” Typographic Identity for Oslo’s Munch Museum
How Graphic Design Contributes to Better Branding
Markdown Tutorial
43 Habits of Successful Web Designers
Exploring Data Visualization Psychology
Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.
I like Tom’s assertion that React (which he’s using as a stand-in for JavaScript frameworks in general) has an ideal usage:
There is a sweet spot of React: in moderately interactive interfaces. Complex forms that require immediate feedback, UIs that need to move around and react instantly. That’s where it excels.
If there is anything I hope for the world of web design and development, it’s that we get better at picking the right tools for the job.
I heard several people hone in on this:
I can, for example, guarantee that this blog is faster than any Gatsby blog (and much love to the Gatsby team) because there is nothing that a React static site can do that will make it faster than a non-React static site.
One reaction was hell yes. React is a bunch of JavaScript and it does lots of stuff, but does not grant superpowers that make the web faster than it was without it. Another reaction was: well it actually does. That’s kind of the whole point of SPAs: not needing to reload the page. Instead, we’re able to make a trimmed network request for the new data needed for a new page and re-rendering only what is necessary.
Rich digs into that even more:
When I tap on a link on Tom’s JS-free website, the browser first waits to confirm that it was a tap and not a brush/swipe, then makes a request, and then we have to wait for the response. With a framework-authored site with client-side routing, we can start to do more interesting things. We can make informed guesses based on analytics about which things the user is likely to interact with and preload the logic and data for them. We can kick off requests as soon as the user first touches (or hovers) the link instead of waiting for confirmation of a tap — worst case scenario, we’ve loaded some stuff that will be useful later if they do tap on it. We can provide better visual feedback that loading is taking place and a transition is about to occur. And we don’t need to load the entire contents of the page — often, we can make do with a small bit of JSON because we already have the JavaScript for the page. This stuff gets fiendishly difficult to do by hand.
That’s what makes this stuff so easy to argue about. Everyone has good points. When we try to speak on behalf of the entire web, it’s tough for us all to agree. But the web is too big for broad, sweeping assertions.
Do people reach for React-powered SPAs too much? Probably, but that’s not without reason. There is innovation there that draws people in. The question is, how can we improve it?
From a front-of-the-front-end perspective, the fact that front-end frameworks like React encourage demand us write a front-end in components is compelling all by itself.
There is optimism and pessimism in both posts. The ending sentences of both are starkly different.
Apple is well-known for the sleek animations on their product pages. For example, as you scroll down the page products may slide into view, MacBooks fold open and iPhones spin, all while showing off the hardware, demonstrating the software and telling interactive stories of how the products are used.
Just check out this video of the mobile web experience for the iPad Pro:
A lot of the effects that you see there aren’t created in just HTML and CSS. What then, you ask? Well, it can be a little hard to figure out. Even using the browser’s DevTools won’t always reveal the answer, as it often can’t see past a element.
Let’s take an in-depth look at one of these effects to see how it’s made so you can recreate some of these magical effects in our own projects. Specifically, let’s replicate the AirPods Pro product page and the shifting light effect in the hero image.
The basic concept
The idea is to create an animation just like a sequence of images in rapid succession. You know, like a flip book! No complex WebGL scenes or advanced JavaScript libraries are needed.
By synchronizing each frame to the user’s scroll position, we can play the animation as the user scrolls down (or back up) the page.
Start with the markup and styles
The HTML and CSS for this effect is very easy as the magic happens inside the element which we control with JavaScript by giving it an ID.
In CSS, we’ll give our document a height of 100vh and make our 5? taller than that to give ourselves the necessary scroll length to make this work. We’ll also match the background color of the document with the background color of our images.
The last thing we’ll do is position the , center it, and limit the max-width and height so it does not exceed the dimensions of the viewport.
Right now, we are able to scroll down the page (even though the content does not exceed the viewport height) and our stays at the top of the viewport. That’s all the HTML and CSS we need.
Let’s move on to loading the images.
Fetching the correct images
Since we’ll be working with an image sequence (again, like a flip book), we’ll assume the file names are numbered sequentially in ascending order (i.e. 0001.jpg, 0002.jpg, 0003.jpg, etc.) in the same directory.
We’ll write a function that returns the file path with the number of the image file we want, based off of the user’s scroll position.
const currentFrame = index => (
`https://www.apple.com/105/media/us/airpods-pro/2019/1299e2f5_9206_4470_b28e_08307a42f19b/anim/sequence/large/01-hero-lightpass/${index.toString().padStart(4, '0')}.jpg`
)
Since the image number is an integer, we’ll need to turn it in to a string and use padStart(4, '0') to prepend zeros in front of our index until we reach four digits to match our file names. So, for example, passing 1 into this function will return 0001.
That gives us a way to handle image paths. Here’s the first image in the sequence drawn on the element:
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As you can see, the first image is on the page. At this point, it’s just a static file. What we want is to update it based on the user’s scroll position. And we don’t merely want to load one image file and then swap it out by loading another image file. We want to draw the images on the and update the drawing with the next image in the sequence (but we’ll get to that in just a bit).
We already made the function to generate the image filepath based on the number we pass into it so what we need to do now is track the user’s scroll position and determine the corresponding image frame for that scroll position.
Connecting images to the user’s scroll progress
To know which number we need to pass (and thus which image to load) in the sequence, we need to calculate the user’s scroll progress. We’ll make an event listener to track that and handle some math to calculate which image to load.
We need to know:
Where scrolling starts and ends
The user’s scroll progress (i.e. a percentage of how far the user is down the page)
The image that corresponds to the user’s scroll progress
We’ll use scrollTop to get the vertical scroll position of the element, which in our case happens to be the top of the document. That will serve as the starting point value. We’ll get the end (or maximum) value by subtracting the window height from the document scroll height. From there, we’ll divide the scrollTop value by the maximum value the user can scroll down, which gives us the user’s scroll progress.
Then we need to turn that scroll progress into an index number that corresponds with the image numbering sequence for us to return the correct image for that position. We can do this by multiplying the progress number by the number of frames (images) we have. We’ll use Math.floor() to round that number down and wrap it in Math.min() with our maximum frame count so it never exceeds the total number of frames.
We now know which image we need to draw as the user’s scroll progress changes. This is where the magic of comes into play. has many cool features for building everything from games and animations to design mockup generators and everything in between!
One of those features is a method called requestAnimationFrame that works with the browser to update in a way we couldn’t do if we were working with straight image files instead. This is why I went with a approach instead of, say, an element or a
with a background image.
requestAnimationFrame will match the browser refresh rate and enable hardware acceleration by using WebGL to render it using the device’s video card or integrated graphics. In other words, we’ll get super smooth transitions between frames — no image flashes!
Let’s call this function in our scroll event listener to swap images as the user scrolls up or down the page. requestAnimationFrame takes a callback argument, so we’ll pass a function that will update the image source and draw the new image on the :
We’re bumping up the frameIndex by 1 because, while the image sequence starts at 0001.jpg, our scroll progress calculation starts actually starts at 0. This ensures that the two values are always aligned.
The callback function we pass to update the image looks like this:
We pass the frameIndex into the function. That sets the image source with the next image in the sequence, which is drawn on our element.
Even better with image preloading
We’re technically done at this point. But, come on, we can do better! For example, scrolling quickly results in a little lag between image frames. That’s because every new image sends off a new network request, requiring a new download.
We should try preloading the images new network requests. That way, each frame is already downloaded, making the transitions that much faster, and the animation that much smoother!
All we’ve gotta do is loop through the entire sequence of images and load ‘em up:
const frameCount = 148;
const preloadImages = () => {
for (let i = 1; i < frameCount; i++) {
const img = new Image();
img.src = currentFrame(i);
}
};
preloadImages();
Demo!
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A quick note on performance
While this effect is pretty slick, it’s also a lot of images. 148 to be exact.
No matter much we optimize the images, or how speedy the CDN is that serves them, loading hundreds of images will always result in a bloated page. Let’s say we have multiple instances of this on the same page. We might get performance stats like this:
That might be fine for a high-speed internet connection without tight data caps, but we can’t say the same for users without such luxuries. It’s a tricky balance to strike, but we have to be mindful of everyone’s experience — and how our decisions affect them.
A few things we can do to help strike that balance include:
Loading a single fallback image instead of the entire image sequence
Creating sequences that use smaller image files for certain devices
Allowing the user to enable the sequence, perhaps with a button that starts and stops the sequence
Apple employs the first option. If you load the AirPods Pro page on a mobile device connected to a slow 3G connection and, hey, the performance stats start to look a whole lot better:
Yeah, it’s still a heavy page. But it’s a lot lighter than what we’d get without any performance considerations at all. That’s how Apple is able to get get so many complex sequences onto a single page.
Further reading
If you are interested in how these image sequences are generated, a good place to start is the Lottie library by AirBnB. The docs take you through the basics of generating animations with After Effects while providing an easy way to include them in projects.
When you use font-display: swap;, which Google Fonts does when you use the default &display=swap part of the URL , you’re already saying, “I’m cool with FOUT,” which is another way of saying web text is displayed right away, and when the web font is ready, “swap” to it.
There is already an async nature to what you are doing, so you might as well extend that async-ness to the rest of the font loading. Harry Roberts:
If you’re going to use font-display for your Google Fonts then it makes sense to asynchronously load the whole request chain.
When someone first hears about your nonprofit and wants to do more research before donating, their first stop will likely be your website. In this day and age, your organization’s website is expected to have all of the information about your cause and how to get involved.
However, if it’s poorly designed or otherwise lacks the information that users are seeking, they may ultimately leave without taking any further action.
Designing an effective website is essential for driving user engagement and securing the crucial support your organization needs to fulfill its mission. There’s a lot that goes into nonprofit web development, though. For those new to the web design landscape, getting started can seem slightly daunting. However, the right content management system (CMS) — also known as a website builder — will simplify the design process and help you effectively convey your brand, drive donations, and further your mission.
With the right CMS tools, you can create an engaging, professional website with little-to-no design or coding experience.
Designing your nonprofit’s website can be exciting. It gives your team the opportunity to spread the word about your cause, boost supporter engagement, and express your organization’s vision. If you’re ready to secure support for your nonprofit by creating a well-designed website, let’s get started!
1. Focus on smooth navigation.
A major part of the user experience is the structure of your nonprofit’s website. If users can’t easily navigate your website, they likely won’t continue engaging with your content. They shouldn’t have to dig through your web pages to find the information they need. Instead, intuitive navigation will help them find exactly what they’re looking for in just a few clicks.
Start by designing a navigation bar that’s visible across your website. For the best results, aim to keep it minimal. To do this, feature high-value pages that you’d like to drive traffic to. For instance, this may include your ‘About Us’ page, your donation form, and your blog. From here, use a hierarchical structure to indicate which pages take precedence.
Shorten navigation titles so that they’re between 1 to 3 words.
Avoid jargon and language that don’t clearly portray the landing page.
If possible, stick to only one level of drop-down menus.
Don’t include every single page in your navigation.
Remember, different users visit your website for a number of various reasons. Make sure it’s easy for new users to find out more about your organization, donors to access your donation page, and volunteers to locate new giving opportunities.
If your navigation is unintuitive, users will have a difficult time locating content that’s of interest to them, which may ultimately drive them away from your website. To help, make sure your CMS allows you to customize your menu structure so that you can arrange your navigation menu how you’d like. This way, you’ll have a much simpler time funneling users to your high-value pages.
2. Optimize for mobile devices.
Today, most internet users browse the web on their mobile devices, which means potential supporters may be viewing your content on smaller screens. In fact, mobile users make up roughly half of all nonprofit website traffic, according to Double the Donation’s nonprofit fundraising statistics page. Because of this, you’ll want to ensure that mobile users can access content across your entire website with ease.
To avoid having to manually adjust each element, your CMS should be mobile responsive, meaning it allows mobile users to easily view and interact with your content. This way, they won’t have to zoom in and out or rotate their devices to read your content. Otherwise, they may end up leaving the page due to frustration.
For a positive mobile experience, your system should adjust elements to fit any screen size. Specifically, these elements should include:
Navigation menus
Images, videos, and galleries
Forms
Pop-ups
As technology progresses, mobile responsiveness is becoming increasingly important. Make sure your team prioritizes this in the web development process so you won’t negatively impact the mobile user experience.
3. Maintain an active blog.
Fuel your organization’s growth by developing powerful blog posts that effectively communicate your mission. Blogs are impactful engagement tools for nonprofits of all sizes. With these valuable resources, supporters can stay up-to-date on all the progress your team is making toward its goals.
When composing your blog posts, keep these best practices in mind to maximize user engagement:
Incorporate powerful narratives. Storytelling enables readers to connect with your cause on an emotional level. Consider writing narratives about those directly involved with your cause, whether that’s those who benefit from your work or the volunteers and team members who have seen the impact firsthand.
Use compelling imagery. When used strategically, imagery enables you to better illustrate the importance of your work. You’ll need to go above and beyond generic stock photos by featuring your own high-quality images of staff members, advocates, and those directly impacted by your work.
Don’t be afraid to use white space. Overloading your pages with too many design elements can distract readers and direct their attention away from your core message. Incorporate white space to break up content and make it easier to digest.
Create well-designed CTAs. When readers are inspired by your blog posts, make sure they know exactly what their next steps are. Do this by incorporating eye-catching calls-to-action (CTAs) that use actionable phrases such as “Donate Now!” with a link to your donation page.
Running a blog takes time, but luckily, dedicated blogging tools can simplify the process. With the right CMS toolkit, you’ll be able to quickly craft new posts and design them in a way that captures your audience’s attention. No matter the type of content you share, take extra time to ensure it’s valuable. You’ll be much more likely to connect with readers and keep them involved with high-value content.
4. Create a compelling donation page.
While your overall website provides essential information about your nonprofit, one page in particular serves as a way to deepen engagement and convert users into donors: your donation page.
To drive donor engagement and make sure supporters are excited to give to your cause, your donation page should prioritize their experience from start to finish. To create an effectively-designed form, follow these best practices:
Only capture essential information. The more fields a donor has to fill out, the more likely it is that they’ll lose momentum and abandon the process. Therefore you should only request vital information, such as their name, contact information, and payment details. If possible, aim to keep it a maximum of one page.
Brand the page. Make sure your donation page matches the rest of your website, so visitors don’t think they’ve somehow ended up on a third-party website. A CMS with built-in donation pages will feature the same logo, colors, fonts, and images as the rest of your pages.
Offer multiple giving options. Offer suggested giving amounts and recurring donation options to help donors decide their gift sizes and to encourage continued contributions. By making donating convenient, you can maximize your fundraising potential.
The donation process is when donor engagement is at its peak, and the last thing you want is to lose momentum at this stage. Because of this, you’ll need to ensure that users have a positive experience by taking the time to create an effective design.
For more actionable tips, visit Morweb’s donation page design guide. Do all you can to improve their experience, and you’re sure to secure their financial support—both now and hopefully again in the future.
5. Adhere to accessibility guidelines.
When you’ve taken the time to develop a compelling nonprofit website, you want as many people to be able to view your content as possible. To accomplish this, you’ll need to adhere to web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) so that those with visual or hearing impairments can interact with your website.
To start, prioritize the following web compliance and accessibility best practices in your design:
Use high-contrast colors. High-contrast colors enable readers with visual impairments to see and read your content. The WCAG 2.1 guidelines require a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1, so be sure to test your contrast colors for each design element.
Employ clear text structures. The main content on each of your web pages should be clearly titled. This makes it much easier for users with visual impairments and those using screen reader technology to jump to different sections.
Offer video alternatives. Visitors with visual or hearing impairments may struggle to understand your videos without some extra help. Include captions or a written transcript. Then, consider adding an audio description to describe visual-only elements.
Many web accessibility guidelines require the assistance of a professional web developer. However, there are several steps you can take on your own so long as you’ve invested in a good, non-technical CMS. These are only a handful of tips you should follow, but they should serve as a great starting point. Explore more web compliance and accessibility best practices with this comprehensive guide, so you can enable all users to access your website.
In an increasingly digital world, your nonprofit must have a digital presence in order to continue striving towards its goals. By creating an effective website, you’ll form powerful connections with users and drive engagement.
By leveraging several web development best practices, you’ll put your organization on the digital map and generate buzz around your mission online. So long as you’re armed with a powerful and easy-to-use CMS, your team will be set up to design a beautiful and content-rich website that’s sure to engage your audience.
One of the biggest concerns for anyone on the internet, whether you’re selling a product or buying one, is security.
And honestly, nobody can blame them.
The internet is a scary place with lots of potential security threats.
But, don’t freak out too much.
There are lots of security measures in place to make sure that your internet browsing session is an enjoyable one.
Today, we’re going to be highlighting one of the best security measures any brand can make with their website: SSL protection.
Now, thanks to our friends at ZeroSSL, SSL protection just became a lot easier.
Let’s go over exactly what ZeroSSL is and what it can do to help you.
What is ZeroSSL?
To put it simply, ZeroSSL is a new, completely free to use, and trusted certificate authority and SSL platform.
Their aim is to make it easy and extremely affordable to create SSL certificates for anyone.
ZeroSSL is the first real alternative to Let’s Encrypt, offering completely free SSL certificates through an easy-to-use UI and API.
They’re launching this in partnership with an existing CA, and are a completely trusted Sub-Authority on their own.
Unlike Let’s Encrypt, ZeroSSL not only offers an API/ACME, but also an easy-to-use API that allows users to create both 90-day and 1-year validity certificates through an unprecedentedly easy and simple process.
They are also currently testing their own ACME Server in BETA which will be released in May, and allows all existing ACME & Let’s Encrypt Clients to automate certificate issuing through ZeroSSL.
Basically, it’s a plug-in alternative to Let’s Encrypt’s ACME.
ZeroSSL offers both single domain, multi-domain and wildcard certificates for free through ACME, and allows users to create 1-year certificates with an affordable subscription plan.
In addition to ACME, they also offer a REST API to issue certificates automatically.
Unlike Let’s Encrypt, they also allow users to validate domain ownership via email (not just DNS), making it much easier to quickly issue certificates via the UI.
If we tried to mention them all in this article, you’d be here a while.
We mentioned a few just above, but it really only scratches the surface.
Here are some of the highlights that you’ll probably want to know about:
Wildcard SSL
Need to protect a fixed or variable number of subdomains using your SSL certificate?
Wildcards can be issued for any type of ZeroSSL certificate, regardless of validity.
One-step validation
To validate SSL certificates using Zero SSL, it only takes a few minutes.
It’s straightforward and supports automatic CSR-generation and domain verification via email, HTTP or DNS (CNAME) file upload.
Super quick installation
Installing SSL certificates literally couldn’t be any easier with Zero SSL.
Using the readily available instructions online, all you have to do is download your certificate file and follow a few easy steps before you’re ready to roll.
Management console
ZeroSSL’s user interface is as intuitive and easy to use as they come.
Everything that you could possibly need to manage your SSL certificates is all gathered in one place.
SSL certificate monitoring
ZeroSSL takes certificate security very seriously. By enabling certificate monitoring, you’ll get security measures beyond a simple expiration warning message.
ACME automation
Automatically renew your 90 day certificates with ACME automation.
ZeroSSL comes with a dedicated ACME certbot.
It’s also supported by all major ACME integrations.
SSL REST API
ZeroSSL features a straightforward SSL REST API that supports certificate creation, validation, renewal, management, and automated status webhooks.
Trusted by major brands
ZeroSSL is not only the greatest SSL certificate authority and SSL platforms on earth, but it’s also trusted by numerous, massive brands around the world.
With 1,000,000+ certificates issued monthly, 500,000+ happy customers, and 99.9$ internet coverage, it’s no wonder major brands like Lenovo, Slack, and Uber trust ZeroSSL every day.
Pricing
As we mentioned at the start, ZeroSSL offers a free package that contains 3 90-day certificates, and there’s no need to enter a credit card whatsoever.
In addition to that free plan, they also have a lot of other pricing options to offer, too.
No matter the size of your brand or your specific needs, ZeroSSL has something for you.
Starting at just $10 per month, there’s really no competition.
Keep in mind that if you don’t see a package that fits your needs, they also offer custom enterprise packages just for you.
After everything we’ve mentioned here today, and the unrivaled support that ZeroSSL offers, the only conclusion that we can come up with is that we all should sign up as soon as possible.
Creating an encrypted channel between you and your clients in order to insure security is vital in this day and age.
SSL certificates provide that security and ZeroSSL provides a quick and easy way to obtain those certificates.
One way of getting an influential audience as a company is to create awareness for your brand using customized merchandise. Your merchandise should be personalized, usable, and of high quality to last long. It should also be unique to make it identifiable.
Ideas on how to customize your merchandise varies. You may use branded caps, pens, books, hoodies, which is an excellent marketing strategy as it reaches a greater audience.
Importance And Benefits Of Custom Merchandise
Increased brand awareness is one of the obvious benefits of using custom merchandise. According to statistics, 89% of marketers have increased brand awareness as their top goal. Giving away customized merchandise also helps to build a strong relationship with your customers, and they are likely to recommend their friends to your services.
Custom merchandise also leads to an increase in the sales of your brand. Nonstop branding increases your company’s revenue by up to 23%.
Regular customers are just as valuable as new customers, and according to a study by PPAI, 20% of customers are likely to revisit your company after receiving custom merchandise. Giving regular customers merchandise is a sure way of retaining them.
As a consumer, however, you have to be cautious as some custom branded merchandise can be deceiving. An excellent custom branded merchandise does not always mean that the product will is of high-quality. This is one of the things you should keep in mind when searching for products.
Custom Merchandise Ideas That Will Help Your Marketing Strategy
Top 5 Custom Branded Company Merchandise Ideas
Here are a few ideas for custom branded company merchandise that covers all of this spectrum, specific to Software and Creative companies, as they take into account their target market, and look at how the products could be useful for this market especially.
The ideas below and the related sites all specialize in their product niche, so they are a good start when looking for any of these items, as they are likely to know more and have more options than others.
1. Custom Laptop Sleeves
Laptops have become essential products in the cooperate world as they are portable and stylish, unlike desktops. The laptop sleeves are light in weight; thus, do not add any extra weight to the laptop.
Laptop sleeves come in different shapes and sizes, and this is essential as it ensures that you will get a sleeve for your laptop no matter its size. The availability of a wide variety of laptop sleeves also makes it easy for you to choose the most attractive as per your preference.
The cost of a laptop sleeve depends on the type and quality of material used. Most laptop sleeves have zips to secure your item from falling out accidentally. The zips further make the accessibility of the device easy when needed. Sleeves with built-in handles make it easy for you to carry laptops.
In 2019, research showed that an average person in the United States spends 70% of the time on smartphones. The phone’s screen automatically gets filled with fingerprints, oily smudges, makeup, and dirt. Sticky screen cleaners help to clean all the dirt from your screen conveniently. They are small in size, thus convenient for use on the screen. The cleaners are washable, which makes them usable for a long time.
Additionally, their sticky nature makes it hard to lose. The microfiber cloth ensures that your screen remains unscratched. Each time your customer gets to use the sticky screen cleaner, it reminds them about your brand. This is convenient and useful customized merchandise for your valued customers.
These are plastic toys that you squeeze with your hand to reduce anxiety, stress, and tension. Stress balls can be so therapeutic, especially when you are anxious. They are small in size and easily rest on car dashboards, tables, and key holders.
When these stress balls are customized, customers can relieve stress as the stress balls continually remind them of your services. They are attractive and have high quality, which makes them long-lasting. Your company’s logo can fit perfectly. There are different varieties of stress balls that you can choose over the different seasons relatable to your customer’s preference.
Drink bottles are some of the most thoughtful gifts you can give your customers. Most of these bottles are easy to carry along.
Drink bottles are ideal for most office workers as it helps them remain hydrated while they promote your brand. Customize these bottles for your office customers. Additionally, drink bottles come in a variety of sizes, making it convenient for your customer’s preference. The longevity of these bottles is unbeatable; therefore, it can be used over a long period. Let your customers remain hydrated as they push your brand with customized drink bottles.
The use of tote bags has become popular, and people are using them daily. Use that as an opportunity, customize your tote bags and sell them to customers for shopping. Tote bags are a way of reaching a greater audience, even at the local setups. The affordability can make everyone own one as they popularize your brand.
You can get plain Tote bags and transform them attractively. People love beautiful products. Tote bags are easy to clean even with the stubborn stains. They are also reusable for their high-quality material. Be sure to use bold, strong colors on your customized tote bags for easy visibility from a distance.
How unique are your passwords? Although the average business user has 191 passwords, 81% of confirmed data breaches are due to weak, stolen, or reused passwords.
Even though 91% of people know that reusing the same password increases their risk of a data attack, 66% do it anyway. Working from home, we not only hold personal data on our computers but also our business’. Because of this, it’s crucial you take time to create one-of-a-kind login credentials – especially with cyberhacking on the rise. Understanding the password sector of cybersecurity can help you do this, because, at the end of the day, you are the more forefronting asset in protecting yourself from security breaches.
1960: The Invention of the Password
Fernando J. Corbató, a founding member of Project Mac, pioneered the first variant of password security in his work developing MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System. EComputerNotes defines time-sharing operating systems as multitasking computers – using time slots to allow multiple people to simultaneously use one computer for their individual purposes. To prevent overlap, a personal point (a password) was required for each user to access their personal files.
Of course, this made passwords new at the time, so hacking was the furthest from anyone’s mind. However, 1962 was the year things changed.
Allan L. Scherr, another founding member of Project Mac and PhD candidate at MIT, was given just 4-hours per week to use the CTSS he shared with others. However, the simulations he designed required far more time to run. To get around the CTSS’ time slots, he printed the system’s password file, giving him the ability to log in as others. As a result, he had more time to run his programs. However, this gave hackers a new idea on a way to maliciously obtain user data.
The 1970s: Hashes & Salt Used as Protective Measures
Between 1962 and 1974, hackers had a field day taking advantage of then-weak security systems. As a result, data scientists stepped in to equip technology with greater protections.
In 1974, Robert Morris, an American cryptographer (someone who develops security algorithms), invented the Unix Hashing command. This command uses one-way encryption to translate passwords into numbers, this way actual passwords aren’t actually stored on the device in case a hacker gets a hold of it. Interestingly enough, the hashing command is still used in many systems today, i.e. MacOS and the Playstation 4.
In 1979, Ken Thompson, a computer scientist then employed by Bell Labs, joined Morris to coin the cyberterm “Salt.” The act of salting adds random characters to stored passwords, making them indecipherable should they be maliciously revealed. However, salting cannot stop a password from being guessed. In the words of Morris, “The 3 golden rules to ensure computer security are: do not own a computer, do not power it on, and do not use it.” In other words, stay on top of the ways you draft a password. By pre-adding numerical and symbolic characters, you can armor your passwords even before systems do.
The Rise of Password Hacking
Although printing the system’s storage file containing every user’s passwords worked for quite sometime, more strategic approaches didn’t develop until later.
In 1988, Robert Tappan Morris – whose father created hashing – created The Morris Worm. This was the first computer worm sent onto the Internet, and went on to infect 1 in 10 computers connected to the Internet at the time. Although T. Morris had intentions of the worm being a harmless experiment, the incident birthed an entirely new fleet of hackers.
Here’s something interesting. After The Morris Worm was studied, it was found that nearly 50% of users had easily guessable passwords. The most common password was “123456.” Do any of your accounts – even your mobile devices – use this password?
Famous Password Breaches of the 21st Century
RockYou was a software company who developed widgets for MySpace and applications for Facebook. However, it was found that RockYou’s databases stored all user data in plain text. Even worse, their social networking apps used the same username and password as each individual’s webmail account. As a result, 2009 hackers accessed 30 million RockYou accounts by obtaining their unencrypted login credentials.
However, that’s not all.
In 2011, the login credentials for 90,000 personnel across Homeland Security, the military, State Department, and private contractors were leaked. The massive breach known as Military Meltdown Monday ignited when an anonymous user hacked a contractor for the Department of Defense.
Although cybersecurity has evolved to keep up with hackers, data breaches can still happen. Taking the recent hackings of large corporations and government officials into account, this should be even more of a reason for you to instil your credentials with the best shields you can.
How You Can Stay Protected
Password management apps are your friend – especially if you’re working from home on a shared network. In 1999, RoboForm released one of the oldest password management apps still in use. These softwares help users create stronger passwords and securely store a master list of all of their passwords into one vault. In fact, many operating systems include their own password manager – such as the macOS Keychain.
However, keep in mind that password management apps require yet another password themselves to login – and many of these have been hacked in the past. If used properly, you can pad yourself with an extra layer of cyber protection.
In 2004, Bill Gates said, “There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords. People use the same password on different systems, they write them down and they just don’t meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure.” Having called it then, the future of cybersecurity is set to move far beyond passwords. Our first step toward this was biometrics, but certificate and risk-based authentications have other solutions.
In the meantime, give your catalogue of passwords a refresh. You can find more information on how to do so in the infographic below. The history and future of password security is as complex as informative. Have you ever been hacked?
Typography is an integral part of website design. The typography and fonts you use play a huge role in multiple aspects of a website design. It affects factors such as readability, user experience, and even the perceived length of an article or page. It is very important that web designers get it right with typography to adequately convey the purpose of the website and its content.
As with almost every part of web design, there are several tools available to help make you more effective. Typography is no different.
In this article, we would be looking at 20JS Libraries/Plugins for typography to help you create awesome web pages. Some of these tools even deal with the dreaded stuff like widows and orphans.
1. FlowType.js
FlowType is a responsive jquery plugin that helps you to automatically resize font size based on a specific element’s width. For website typography to be readable, there should be approximately 45 to 75 characters per line. For most screens with only CSS media queries, this can be difficult to achieve. Flowtype adjusts your font size to ensure that there is a perfect character count per line no matter the kind of screen or browser the reader is using.
2. Blast.js
Blast.js allows you to do: typographic animation, juxtaposition, styling, search, and analysis. The tool allows you to separate text to enable typographic manipulation. It has character, word, sentence, and element delimiters built-in. Blast also matches phrases and custom regular expressions.
3. Textillate.js
Textillate.js is a simple plugin for creating CSS3 text animations. The plugin combines different libraries to help apply CSS3 animations to any text. To make use of it, all you need to do is add textillate.js and its dependencies to your project.
4. Widowtamer.js
Widowtamer.js is a JavaScript plugin that would automatically fix typography widows on your web pages. The plugin is designed to work with only responsive sites.
5. jQuery WidowFix
JQuery WidowFix is a jQuery plugin to help you fix widows. It fixes them by adding a nonbreaking space between the last two words. The tool is lightweight and easy to use.
6. Slab Text
Slab Text is a jQuery plugin to help you create big, bold headlines. You can also resize your viewport width so that regardless of the viewport size, the combinations of words within your headline will remain on the same line.
7. Kerning.js
Kerning.js is a simple jQuery script that allows you to scale your web type with real CSS rules automatically. It comes with no dependencies so when you add it to your web page and add some CSS rules, your page will be automatically beautified.
8. Lettering.js
Lettering.js is a jQuery plugin for radical web typography. The plugin offers you complete down-to-the-letter control. Some of the things that can easily be done with Lettering.js are Kerning Type, Editorial Design, and Manageable Code.
9. React Text Gradient
React Text Gradient is a cool plugin that allows you to add text gradients to your site. It’s a React component that creates text gradients with CSS. The component will detect if a website background-clip is available and would then apply the gradient over the text.
10. Typed.js
Typed.js is a JavaScript library that types out sentences in a browser, deletes them, and moves on to the next string. The tool is pretty easy to use and you can create an unlimited number of strings. The library is great for storytelling.
11. FitText
FitText is a jQuery plugin used for inflating web type. The plugin automatically scales text so that it fills the width of a parent element. The plugin ensures that the layout of the page is not broken no matter the kind of browser you are using.
12. TypeButter
TypeButter is optical kerning for the web. This plugin allows you to create beautifully designed texts. Typebutter also allows you to Kern your headlines and removes spaces between characters that make text hard to read. All you need to do is install the plugin and your fonts would lose unnecessary spacing.
13. Font-To-Width
Font-To-Width is a script that allows texts to fit within their containers. Instead of scaling the font size to make text fit, Font-To-Width chooses a width or width variant and then allows for letter and word adjustments as needed. Note that this script is made for headlines or short pieces of text. It is not meant for multi-line body of text. It also works best in browsers that support subpixel spacing like Chrome. Browsers that round spaces to integer values will show rounding errors.
14. Font Flex
Font Flex is a jQuery plugin for dynamic font sizes. The plugin makes your text flexible and adaptable to any screen. The lightweight jQuery extension is intended for use with responsive or adaptive CSS layouts.
15. TextTailor.js
TextTailor.js is a jQuery plugin that allows text to fill the height of the parent element or truncate it when it doesn’t fit. It works perfectly with posts that have images and fixed fonts.
16. Type Rendering Mix
With Type Rendering Mix, you can decrease the font-weight for browsers that use Core Text to render text. It also allows you to disable web fonts when no anti-aliasing is applied. You can also disable web fonts if they render badly with some text rasterizers.
17. Textualizer
Textualizer is a jQuery plugin that transitions through blurbs of text while animating each character. When the text is transitioning, any character that is common to the next blurb is left on the screen and moved into its new position. Some of the effects it has are slideLeft, slideTop, fadeIn, and random.
18. Jumble
Jumble is a jQuery plugin that adds colors to your headlines and also animates them. You can set parameters for the color shuffle based on brightness and saturation hue. You are also provided with a good range of colors you can jumble from.
19. Arctext.js
Arctext.js is a jQuery plugin that allows you to curve text using CSS3 & jQuery. You can curve text up to a radius of 300, change the direction of the text, create non-rotated letters, and set or animate text. The plugin will calculate the right rotation of each letter and distribute it across the arc of the set radius.
Exploring Typography With Different JS Libraries/Plugins
As a web developer, you need to have an arsenal of tools to be efficient and get the best out of your web designs.
Relying on just your skills might make web typography difficult to circumvent. When you use the JS libraries/plugins for typography, you have control over the look, feel, and function of your text. You can easily tackle widows and orphans, add special effects, and create a friendly UX.
As a web designer, you may find yourself in a position where a client wants you to design their brand logo. If you’re feeling up to the task, there are some things you need to know first.
For instance:
How do you translate the value of a brand into a logo?
Where can you go for logo design inspiration?
Which tools should you use to create a logo (like Wix Logo Maker)?
How do you piece together a logo from a bunch of ideas?
Make no mistake: designing a logo is just as complex a task as building a website. Not only do you need to understand what goes into making a great logo, but you need the right tools to create it.
If you’re thinking about doing this, the following guide will answer the four above questions for you.
Tips For Defining Your Brand With Great Logo Design
Let’s say I invited you over to my apartment and you got a gander at my workspace. Here it is:
Apple products are easy to spot even without the iconic “apple” icon. (Image source: Apple) (Large preview)
Even if you’re not an Apple user, you’d instantly know that I was working from one of their laptops. While Apple’s distinctive product design might be the clue you pick up on first, the apple icon would certainly seal the deal.
The Apple logo design is memorable and leaves a lasting impression — even without having to spell out the company name.
This is what you want to accomplish when designing a brand logo for your client. And here is how you should go about piecing it together:
Your client might come to you with logo designs that they like the look of and tell you to run with it. Or they might simply suggest you take the company name and make it look “cool”.
But that’s not how great logos are built.
Just as you dive deep into a client’s business, its mission, and what kind of value they bring to their target user before building a website, you’ll have to do similar research for a logo.
Which Questions Do You Need To Ask?
What’s nice about logo design and web design is there’s a lot of overlap in what you need to ask clients to get started. So, consider building a questionnaire that tackles both pieces if you’re building both the branding and site for your clients.
For now, let’s look at the logo questions:
Why did you start your company?
If you can get to the heart of why they went into business, you’ll be able to create a logo that feels more genuine to that original mission.
What does your company do?
Identifying this is important as you don’t want to design something that looks great, but is all wrong for the market they’re working in.
Who do you serve?
While the client’s opinion of the logo matters, you need to focus on building something that looks good from the eyes of their audience.
Why do customers choose your company over others?
Their unique selling proposition will help you differentiate their logo from the competitors’ designs.
Who are your top 3 competitors? How do you feel about their logos?
This is a great question to ask if you want to get a raw, emotional response as opposed to the more buttoned-up responses the other questions may elicit.
What are your company’s values?
A good way to identify a unique edge for a brand is by looking at what they prioritize. Integrity? Customer commitment? Green initiatives?
How would you describe the company’s personality in 3 words?
You’ll be able to get a sense for the company’s “voice” when you talk to the business owner. But it’s always good to see how they describe it, too.
Do you have a slogan?
You won’t necessarily build the words into the logo (especially since there’s no room for it on mobile). But a slogan can help inform the design.
Where do you see your company in 5 years?
Rather than design something that looks good for the company on Day 1, you should create a logo that captures who they plan to be in the near future.
Who are your heroes and why?
Take a gander at the companies they look up to. Even if they don’t have a clear vision for their company yet, who their heroes are will give you a clue as to where they’re heading.
One last thing to ask is whether or not they’ve selected brand colors or fonts yet. The likelihood of this is slim if they’re asking you to design a logo, but it’s better to ask now than to find out later and have to rework it.
How Do You Get The Answers You Seek?
There are a couple of ways to do this. You could always schedule a call with your client and run through the questions with them. The only problem with that is it could either end up feeling like storytime or like pulling teeth.
In my opinion, the better option is to automate this with an online questionnaire. (This also allows you to scale your logo design efforts). Google Forms is always a great option as it’s easy to use and it’s free.
An example of a Google Forms logo client questionnaire. (Image source: Google Forms) (Large preview)
But if you’re already using something like Content Snare to collect files and information from web design clients, you might as well use it for this as well.
Tip #2: Get Inspired By Other Logos
Once you have a clear idea of who your client is and the message they want to convey, it’s time to start designing. But it won’t be as easy as writing out the name of the company and then adding graphical elements to it.
Take some time to do research on the competitive landscape and to gather outside inspiration for your client’s logo.
For the purposes of this post, let’s pretend that your new logo client is opening a dog grooming business in New York City. Here’s an example of how you might survey the competitors’ logos:
The negative space design is unique and works well with the designer’s use of the recognizable Scottish Terrier dog breed.
The star is a good choice as it can be used on any channel and would be instantly recognizable.
The star symbol is a nice way to give this salon an air of luxury (like a VIP club).
Based on the information provided by your client, it might also be beneficial to look outside their industry for inspiration — especially if they’re looking up to titans of other industries. By starting with the competition though, you’ll get a good idea of what the logos and brands all have in common (if anything).
For example, in this particular space, we see a lot of pictorial logos with animal-related images. But in terms of colors, fonts and even shapes, the personality of the business and the unique selling proposition have led to wildly different designs.
As you survey existing logo designs, consider how closely you want your logo design to align with or how far it should deviate from them. At this point, you know your client fairly well, so when you see something that’s more in the vein of what you’re trying to do (or not do), you’ll immediately know it.
Tip #3: Find The Right Tool To Create Your Logo
When it comes to designing a logo for your client, you should be using a tool that makes your job easier. But that “job” really depends on what your client is paying and what their expectations are.
For Pre-made Logo Design
Are you going to compile a batch of premade logos — personalized with their info, of course — and let them choose the one they like best?
In that case, a free logo maker tool would work fine. So long as there’s a variety of logo styles to choose from in your client’s niche, you should be able to find plenty of designs to share with them.
Best for:
Very small budgets;
Really short timelines (i.e. a day or two);
Temporary logos.
For Custom Logo Design
Are you planning to create 10 custom logos and run through series after series of “Which do you like?” questions until you whittle it down to one winning design?
In that case, you’ll want to design it with your Adobe Illustrator or Sketch software. The process will take a while, but if your client has the money to spend and wants something truly unique, this is the best way to do it.
Best for:
Price is no object,
Client envisions something very specific,
Enterprise clients in very high-profile positions who can’t afford to have their logo look like anyone else’s.
The Best Of Both Worlds (Custom Design Without The Hassle)
Would you prefer something between the two options above, where you could wield your creative influence to create something custom without all of the hassle?
In that case, the Logo Maker that Wix offers is your best bet. You can use this tool for a wide range of clients — those that want something done quickly and cheaply all the way up to clients who want a personalized logo.
Best for:
Any budget;
Any timeline;
Logos you don’t want to spend too much time designing graphics for, but still want to be able to customize the key elements (like colors and layout).
Similar to the Wix site builder platform, Wix Logo Maker aims to make light work of what would otherwise be time-consuming and tedious work.
It’s an easy, intuitive way to design the perfect logo for your client and spares you the trouble of having to start from scratch while still creating something custom (if that’s what you need).
Let’s take a closer look.
The Logo Questionnaire
Similar to the client questionnaire I recommended you create above, Wix takes you through a series of questions as well.
First, it asks for the name and slogan for the business:
Wix Logo Maker question #1: What is the name of your business? (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
The next thing it asks for is your industry:
Wix Logo Maker question #2: What is your industry? (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
Next, it wants to know about the style and personality you want for the logo:
Wix Logo Maker question #3: What should the style of the logo be? (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
After that, the questionnaire will take you through a series of logo designs, trying to get a sense for what you like and don’t like:
Wix Logo Maker question #4: Which logo designs do you like? (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
It also takes into account where this logo will appear:
Wix Logo Maker question #5: Where will logo appear? (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
Dozens Of Premade Logos To Choose From
All of these questions will eventually lead you to this page. There are dozens of logo designs that have already been populated with the company name, tagline (if you have one) and sometimes a pictorial mark matching the industry you gave:
After completing a short questionnaire, Wix Logo Maker shows you dozens of premade logo designs. (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
Like I said, if you have a client that has a small budget but wants your help finding the right logo for their business, you could just as well use this logo maker. You’ll receive over 80 different logos to choose from, so you could realistically cherry-pick the logos you think would work best and run with that.
Or…
If you’re contracted to design something more custom, this logo maker enables you to do that as well.
Customizing Your Logo Design From Every Angle
There are so many things to consider when it comes to designing a logo. Luckily, Wix Logo Maker keeps you from having to figure out what those key elements are.
On the sidebar, you’ll find the key areas of the logo you need to focus on. You can use the preset options available or you can click into the logo and start editing the most granular pieces of each element:
An inside look at how to customize a logo with the Wix Logo Maker. (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
Here are some things to think about as you work on your logo:
Colors
There’s more to color selection than how good it looks. Color comes with a lot of meaning and it can have an effect on customers’ emotional responses as well. It also can impact the readability and accessibility of your site. So, before you jump to using any particular set of colors, brush up on color theory and make sure you have the right ones picked out.
Although this is something you’re probably thinking about from the beginning, it might be a good idea to save it to the end after you’ve dealt with the structure of the logo.
Typography
If the company name and/or slogan is to appear in the logo, typography is something you’ll need to spend a lot of time considering. Again, this isn’t just an aesthetic choice. It can have a serious impact on memorability, emotionality, and accessibility.
Icons can do a lot of good for logos. They can add balance. They can provide insight into what the business is about if the name is obscure. They can bring more personality to the design. They can also serve as a stand-in in smaller spots, like the browser favicon or as a social media profile image.
What’s nice about this Logo Maker is that you don’t just get to personalize the icon, but also the shapes within or behind the logo. So, you can play with depth, geometry and layout when designing your logo as well.
Collecting Your Logo Assets
Once you’re happy with the logo you’ve designed and your client has signed off, Wix continues to streamline the process with one final step:
Choose your logo plan after creating a logo with Wix Logo Maker. (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
You have two options:
Download (or print) all logo PNG files, resizable SVGs, and 40+ social media logos.
Get the standard logo PNG files in a range of colors.
Wix provides users with all the logo files they need. (Image source: Wix) (Large preview)
As you can see, everything’s been thought of. So, it’s less time you have to worry about exporting your logos in the right file formats, sizes, and colors. You just need to focus on creating something your client will love.
The Value Of A Well-Designed Logo
A lot of a brand’s success hinges on how great their logo design is. So, of course, you want to design a professional and modern logo that will serve your clients well. By taking the time to learn about your client’s business, creating a design around their vision, and then using the right tool to bring it all together, you’ll be able to do just that.
