If you're looking for the latest in advertising and marketing, design related technology and lifestyle tips, and art or design highlights then you're in the right place. Find all this and more with the Design Block blog.
Pantone has been a colour leader for a while now, but as designers, there are great many advantages of using Pantone as a colour guide. Designers routinely undergo multiple handovers each time they work on a project, and earlier this year, the company promised to simplify work processes for…
It’s true that people don’t look like their Instagram shots, or they’re not as happy as their Facebook profiles try to convince us. It’s also true that designers don’t use all those trendy font combinations you might think.
Forget the baby books, there’s a new way to get baby name inspiration. According to a new study, Millennial parents are naming their kids based on available domain names.
This year is set to be an important one for advertisers currently using Google’s digital marketing services. On June 27 Google turned the digital marketing world on its head when it announced a complete rebrand of its advertising products.
The web is a very blue place, and not metaphorically, either. The Internet’s most heavily trafficked websites are literally coloured with nearly twice as many shades of blues as that of yellows and reds, and three times as much greens. But is the colour blue enriching…
As a technique that helps boost conversion rate, the use of landing pages is at an all-time high. A landing page can help you achieve your marketing goals be it increasing email subscribers list or generating better leads for specific products.
Over 5000 years of art history has just been made available online for free by New York’s biggest museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As well as releasing more than 400,000 artworks for personal and commercial use, the Met has made over 500 free art books available for your…
What’s so difficult about creating a good logo? They’re usually simple, sometimes complex, but mostly something you should be able to do lickety-split. So, no problem, right? When you only see the result of a designer’s efforts, logo design can look like it was a…
Instagram recently began testing a new feature that Snapchat helped make famous: notifying users when other people take screenshots of photos and videos in Instagram Stories.
Last year, global eCommerce reached US$2.3 trillion and is expected to double by 2021. In the United States alone, eCommerce represents almost 10 percent of retail sales. Even as the general public is increasingly coming to prefer online shopping, many websites still face unique challenges to their success.
As designers, when mocking up concepts for our projects, we tend to use plenty of stock images. Instead of buying images the client might not like, we use watermarked images to try before we buy. However, showing watermarks on our concepts look ugly and we…
Unfortunately, starting out really isn’t as easy as becoming an overnight sensation. As much as we think and hope that our product or service will be an instant hit, that doesn’t happen. When it comes to getting your name out there, startup marketing is a…
If you’re like me, you probably remember doodling away on the computer using Microsoft Paint, or even Corel Draw. So it’s ironic with all of the amazing things we can do on our smartphones and tablets these days, that creating a decent drawing is still difficult. However, Google’s…
Burger King recently unveiled a genius, yet a little infuriating video ad that’s designed to intentionally set off Google Home; the voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant.
When you have over a billion websites to choose from, along with the distractions of day-to-day life, getting consumers attention, and keeping it, is hard. With a staggering amount of information generated daily, people don’t have time to read an endless page of online content. In fact, most users will leave…
Unfortunately, like most jobs, the work of a developer isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. It’s filled with unique frustrations that only other developers would be able to relate to.
Images and photography has always been an integral part of design. Unfortunately, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing unrealistic stock images of people smiling at the camera while performing a task. Not only that, but it can get rather expensive if you’re constantly purchasing images from…
Trends are known to change in all creative fields, with website design being no different. More than ever before, everything in web design, from imagery to navigation, to content, must serve a purpose.
Buying clothes online is a risky venture, since much of shopping is knowing how the apparel feels and fits your body. One of the best ways to persuade people to buy clothes online is by being very meticulous. That’s why fashion industry websites are on top of…
When you’re on the computer, either at work or later at night, visiting websites that blast loud autoplay videos when you forget your volume setting can prove to be quite annoying.
We’re a visual society. And with our fast-paced lives and the amount of information we’re constantly barraged with, it takes a striking visual to get our attention. But you also need smart copy presented with good typography to back it up.
Humans rely on visual cues for nearly everything. In fact, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and our brains can process images 60,000 times faster than text. That means for a bloggers and content marketers, blog graphics are an important part of…
If you want to be discovered for your creative abilities, the quickest and easiest way is online. A portfolio website—with assistance from social media—is the best way to show the world what you can do. In fact, it can even help attract the attention of…
With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, constant waves of new technology and shifting design trends, it can be difficult to figure out what your website needs and what it doesn’t. And because your website is the online face of your business and brand, it needs to reflect…
When Microsoft released Windows 10, it also released the icon font Segoe UI Symbol. This icon font is recommended for use by developers when designing apps on Windows 10 devices. But one design company argues that Segoe UI Symbol adds visual noise because the icons…
Trends come and go in all aspects of the design industry, as do the colour trends that go along with them. So far, this year has been all about vibrant colours. Hues like red, orange, pink and bright green, blue and purple have become a focal point and…
If you’re looking to start a career as a designer, you”ll quickly be overwhelmed by the number of titles thrown around. There are user experience (UX) designers, user interface (UI) designers, motion designers, product designers, graphic designers and so on.
Do you know the difference between responsive design and adaptive design? There’s some argument over whether responsive or adaptive designs are better. Regardless, responsive design is the solution most chosen for multi-screen problems. That means designers need to become familiar with the concepts and basic principles for responsive…
Does you have a brand rivalry going on with another company? Instead of spending another sleepless night wondering what to do about them, consider turning their logo into a penis. No, this isn’t joke. For a small fee of between US$25 to $35, website Penised will turn…
Google is changing the world. I bet you have a hard time remembering what it was like before you could Google something? Chances are now that you use it everyday for work and play. But do you know the crazy facts around Google’s history or its various secrets?
Whether you’re saving images for print or web, it can be tough to know exactly which filetype is the best to use. That’s especially true if you’re trying to save space with file size.
More and more, a company’s website is ever becoming its public face. Web trends show that consumers are doing more research online than ever before when looking to buy. So, if a business has a poorly designed website, that doesn’t work on a mobile device—or worse—they don’t have a…