10 New Design Skills You Can Learn in August 2017 - envato.com coupon

Feeling creative? Here’s a selection of the best of this month’s design tutorials and courses on Envato Tuts+. You can learn the best way to create animated GIFs, put together a surreal photo manipulation, draw different types of hair, and much more.

And if you’re not sure which one is right for you, you can take a short quiz at the end to get a personalised recommendation!

1. Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

Photo manipulation is a wonderful way to create whole new worlds from your imagination, without needing to draw or paint anything yourself. In this tutorial, you learn how to take seven different photos and blend them together into one weirdly haunting scene. Get the step-by-step instructions here.

2. Animate Icons!

Sometimes good design is eye-catching, but other times it’s almost unnoticeable. A well-designed icon may not win any great plaudits, but it’s one of the little details that adds up to a better user experience for your website, app, game, presentation, etc. So why not take things to the next level by adding animation. Take the short video-based course for full instructions on creating icons in Adobe Illustrator and then animating them in After Effects.

3. Draw Hair in 4 Different Styles

Did you know that the average human head has about 100,000 individual hairs? What that means is that if you want to draw someone’s hair, you can’t draw separate lines for each strand—you need to learn some tricks to create the illusion of 100,000 hairs while using far fewer lines. Take this drawing tutorial to see how it’s done.

4. Get Up and Running With Sketch

Most of these design tutorials and courses use Adobe software because it’s so popular and offers so many features. But Adobe is not the only game in town. Take this comprehensive, 17-part video course to get up and running with Sketch, a powerful digital design application that’s great for icon design, web design, and more.

5. Learn the Quick Way to Create Professional Logos

Have you ever had one of those annoying clients who demands double the work in half the time? Of course you have. Here’s a trick for icon designers: have a few flexible logo kits ready to customise so that you can meet even the tightest deadline. Take this short course to learn how to create the three building blocks of a successful logo kit.

6. Paint “Love” in Sign Language

OK, I’ll be honest—I’m mostly just including this one because I love the end result. But it does also teach some really useful digital painting skills. Look at the dramatic lighting and the realistic textures of each hand; those are some techniques you could use in a wide variety of projects. See how to create this painting from scratch.

7. Make an Animated GIF

Whether you love them or hate them, animated GIFs are all over the web. This tutorial shows you an easy method of putting together an animated GIF in Adobe Photoshop. The example is of a wolf’s glowing eyes, but feel free to use the same techniques for laughing dogs, weird celebrity mashups, or whatever your heart desires. Start animating your GIFs here.

8. Go Back to the Nineties

The 1990s are popular again! Who knew? As far as I remember, the 1990s weren’t even popular in the 1990s. But if those headache-inducing colours and shouting fonts give you a flood of happy nostalgia, this is your chance to step back in time to the days of oversized cargo pants, overused fluorescent colours, and Hootie & the Blowfish. (Oh, and you can also learn some useful flyer design skills in Adobe InDesign.) Enter the time machine here.

9. Send a Ransom Note

Well, no—don’t actually send a ransom note, OK? That would be creepy. But this tutorial does teach some useful skills to help you manipulate fonts and work with shapes and textures in Photoshop to create a realistic text effect. Take the tutorial to learn how it works.

10. Create a Realistic Mockup

If you’ve ever worked in product or packaging design, you know the importance of a good mockup. Clients often struggle to see the potential of a design until you show them how it will look in the real world. This final tutorial in our list teaches you to create your own wine-bottle mockup from scratch in Photoshop. Along the way, you’ll learn how to manipulate photos, create realistic shadows and reflections, add lighting, and more. Ready to get started? Click here for the full instructions.

Take the Quiz!

If you still can’t decide which tutorial or course to take, try this short quiz to help you out.

The post 10 New Design Skills You Can Learn in August 2017 appeared first on Envato.

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Fluorescent Feature: Neon in Design - envato.com coupon

Winning Designs in our Abstract Low Poly Photoshop Action Contest - envato.com coupon

GraphicRiver author Lil_Bro kindly gave away his colorful Abstract Low Poly Photoshop Action and we invited our community to share what they could create using it.

Here are all the winners selected by Lil_Bro himself, along with some of our favorite highlights from the contest:

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Winner ($250)

Romlam Digital Selfies by Romlam

Our grand prize winner (which may take a while to load as both images are animated GIFs) stood out like a true champion with its combination of glitchy, technicolor rays and subtle flurries of animated low poly artifacts. A marvelous, unique creative effort from Romlam, many congratulations!

Runner-up ($150)

Fireside by Maiq

Well done to Maiq for this contemplative image that captures a reflective mood and animated campfire. The radiant blue circles in the nighttime sky give it an almost painterly effect.

Third Place ($100)

Kingfisher by LeAmino

The contrasting colors of burnt orange and deep blue on the Kingfisher work exceptionally well with the low poly effect. The subtle use of text and DNA map in the background help present a compelling image of the beauty and complex design of life.

Bonus Prize (T-Shirt)

Owl by JeriTeam

To celebrate the launch of photos on Envato Elements, we offered an Envato T-Shirt to the best submission that utilized a photo from Envato Elements. And here’s our winner! The warm colors and feathered texture of the owl are really accentuated with the Photoshop action giving it an almost HDR quality. Well played, JeriTeam!

Contest Highlights

With over 130 entries it was tough picking just 4 winners. Here are some of our other favorite entries in the contest that showcase the different ways the Abstract Low Poly Photoshop Action can be utilized.

Einstein by CGCortex

Dream Sky by icanstudios

Puddle by WeltonArruda

La Habana by gemerdy

Thumbs-up by redisinani

Leaves by ThemeSLR

Horse by JLbeat

Shatter by bymbsurn

Snowboarder by demomusic

Eiffel Tower by GraphicGrape

Nautical Helmet by Tokojka

Lightbulb by Tokojka

Hummingbird by C0BeCTb

Orange Splash by Anastasiamart1

Muscles by shivkarthik

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See How the Photoshop Action Works

Lil_Bro, the author of the Photoshop action used in all of the above contest entries, has made a video showing how to load an image in Photoshop and apply the Abstract Low Poly action, watch below:

To see more work by Lil_Bro, check out his portfolio or some of the cool individual items below:

 

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More Chances to Win

We’ll be in touch with all winners very soon! In the meantime, keep visiting our community forums to discover more chances to win via multiple creative contests we run on a regular basis. We love seeing your creative ideas and talent being applied to our contests!

→ Visit our Community Forums

Related Posts

• What are Photoshop actions and why should you use them?
• What can Photoshop actions do?
• 55 must-have creative Photoshop actions
• Photoshop in 60 seconds: Photoshop actions and How to Use Them

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What the Daily Show, Doctor Who and the Australian Government Used From Envato - envato.com coupon

 

Welcome to the Famous 5: 5 famous places Envato items have been used.

The Daily Show & DJ Khaled

Item used: American Bald Eagle, Running Cheetah, Little Hippo Underwater, Polar Bear, White Fairy Tale Unicorn Walks, Big Black Hippopotamus Open his Mouth, Komodo Dragon, European Hedgehog by Multipedia

First today, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah has used an Envato item in this truly ridiculous piece featuring Noah and “living meme” DJ Khaled.

The segment begins with Noah reviewing the day’s headlines, losing hope that world will ever get out of its current slump. Enter DJ Khaled who pulls the late night host out from behind his desk and into “Khaled’s World”, which is almost entirely made up of items by Envato author Multipedia.

Including, American Bald Eagle, Running Cheetah, Little Hippo Underwater, Polar Bear, White Fairy Tale Unicorn Walks, Big Black Hippopotamus Opens his Mouth, Komodo Dragon, and European Hedgehog.

Gee Daily Show, stock up why don’t you. I love it.

Doctor Who?

Item used: Big Bang by SpaceStockFootage

Each week in the UK around 5 million people tune in to watch venerable sci-fi series, Doctor Who. On a recent evening SpaceStockFootage happened to be one of them when he noticed something familiar pop up on his telly.

Right there in the middle of episode 8 of season 10, which is currently airing, he saw his item Big Bang make an appearance.

“I wasn’t there at the time, so I’ve used some artistic license…” he says of the item.

Apparently it looks realistic enough.

SHAREit

Item used: Happy Corporate Ukulele & Whistle by UJ-pro

SHAREit is an app that allows you to share files, videos and more from one phone to another.

It’s apparently simple, fast, and its commercial uses Happy Corporate Ukulele & Whistle by UK-pro.

It’s been viewed nearly 9 million times on YouTube.

Lexus

Item used: Energetic Indie Rock, Energetic Indie Rock by AurusAudio

Imagine. Exhilerate. Amaze.

Luxury carmaker Lexus has released a video looking ahead to its future, featuring two tracks by AurusAudio which are both called Energetic Indie Rock.

It’s one of those fluffy ads that shows a lot of futuristic, innovative looking things, over narration featuring buzz words like “Imagine, Exhilarate, and Amaze”. And I live for it.

And it’s not the first time AurusAudio has had his music used by a big brand. He had one of these Energetic Indie Rocks used by none other than YouTube in their much reviled YouTube Heroes video last year. And then used again in PewDiePie’s parody of that very piece.

Nice one.

Australia’s Liberal Party Makes a Youth Site Posing as Junkee

Item used: Newspaper by tagDiv, Big Pack of Elements by Motion-Land

Item used: Big Pack of Elements by Motion-Land

And finally today to something I’m sure the makers of this next project wish was a bit more famous and little less infamous.

Australia’s Liberal Party, which is currently in government, recently launched a new website focused trying to connect with millennials called The Fair Go.

It aims to get the country’s younger generation familiar and talking about pet right wing issues like, how the unions are abusing your retirement funds, and educating us on the fact that apparently women are just people.

It’s a familiar storyline: An out of touch group of politicians attempting to talk to youths and producing cringe-worthy results. But wait, the story gets even more delicious.

After the site’s launch, Australian pop culture publication, Junkee, noticed something familiar about The Fair Go. It’s design was identical to Junkee’s.

After some high tech hacking, which involved right clicking and inspecting the page source, Junkee confirmed The Fair Go is built off of ThemeForest theme, Newspaper by tagDiv, which is great. But, that the site’s designer changed literally every element of it, including the fonts, to look like the pop culture site.

And here’s where I wonder what the strategy here actually is. Is it, “If we make it look like Junkee, they’ll just read it and think it is Junkee because young people are stupid”?

Not long after the Junkee expose, the site mysteriously updated their design with new fonts. A fact which Junkee of course then included as an update to their article.

It was all very amusing.

Whatever your feelings on the subject, it’s great to see the Aussie government buying products from one of their own.

In fact, they love us so much they’ve used Motion-Land’s fantastic VideoHive item Big Pack of Elements in a video currently sitting on their front page.

Thanks Prime Minister Turnbull!

And that’s the Famous 5 for this week.

Cheers to the Envato Community for scouting out Envato items that have popped up in famous places, keep them coming!

And thanks to designercow for designing our logo.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Envato and I’ll see you next episode.

Bye bye!

Credits

Tropical House by VISIONSS

Videogame Theme 1 by Sound-Tricks

Sci-Fi Background by Electrokid

Awkward Comedy by lucafrancini

Written, Presented Edited by Dom Hennequin

The post What the Daily Show, Doctor Who and the Australian Government Used From Envato appeared first on Envato.

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The Changing Face of Web Design: Are Subscription Services the Future? - envato.com coupon

Over the past decade, subscription services like Netflix have initiated a change in how we shop, relax and live day-to-day.

Image: Into the Future by Rawpixel 

The way we access everything from entertainment to personal care items has been turned upside down.

Want to watch a movie or original series? Just fire up your tablet. Need some help keeping that beard just so? There’s a plethora of razor delivery services to help you there. One by one, the traditional channels of access are being replaced (or rivaled) by subscription-based services.

Inevitably, we’re now starting to see this trend show up in web design (take Envato Elements, for example). After all, if an industry of people who spend their time working on the web aren’t prime targets for these types of services, who is?

Let’s dig a little deeper into the subscription model and discover the strengths, weaknesses and how it all relates to those of us in world of web design.

Convenience, choice and access

The biggest selling point of any subscription service is the convenience factor. Simply put: more than ever, people want to spend their time on the important stuff. Going out to the drugstore to buy shaving supplies or diapers might be easy enough. But it’s even easier to have those items delivered to your door at a regular interval. It’s one less thing you have to think about. Plus, it saves you a bit of time that can be better spent elsewhere. As the thinking goes, the more of these handy services you sign up for, the more time you’ll save.

Choice and access are also key drivers of society’s tilt towards subscriptions. In the case of Netflix, you’re given access to a huge library of programming that you can watch from just about anywhere. And, while they may not have every single title you’re looking for, they have provided a healthy mix of old, new and original content that will keep you happily entertained.

Too much of a good thing?

Choice can be a wonderful thing. But to some degree, it’s possible to become frustrated with a service like Netflix because there are too many choices. You might wonder how in the world you’d choose from thousands of available titles. Not everyone is apt to scroll through an endless listing of options.

But that’s really where great UI/UX come into play. If it’s easy to find what you’re looking for, frustration becomes less likely. So, a service that offers a lot of choices can balance that with simple navigation and smart categorization – both things that Netflix has mastered over time.

Beyond utilizing a fantastic initial setup, Netflix also uses algorithms to find related content you might enjoy. That makes discovery of new movies or shows an easier, more natural experience. Overall, they have taken positive steps to remove as many pain-points as possible.

Whether you’re buying access to gourmet coffee or the latest music, you’re most likely doing so because it makes your life easier and more enjoyable. That’s the beauty of a well-done subscription service.

Why an unlimited subscription works for web designers

New subscription-based services focused on web design are starting to take hold. This is especially so when it comes to things that everyone needs – like design assets. Frankly, shopping around on various sites for a particular design element is tedious. Prices can vary greatly from site to site, and it takes up too much precious time. An unlimited, one-stop shop provides a level of convenience that is sorely needed.

The cost savings over the traditional pay-as-you-go model is tremendous. And, the more you use an unlimited service, the more you put the old way to shame. Downloading just a handful of design assets can easily run into triple-digit costs. With an unlimited service, you’ll pay the same monthly fee regardless of how much you download.

Changes in design and marketing require more resources

Modern web design is all about short bits of text combined with graphic elements that guide the user along a desired path. With that, various content sections within the same page can each require multiple elements. Things like icons and illustrations are vital to getting your message across.

Top: Splashes Creative Agency Template by CreativeWS. Bottom row: Abstract Paint, Vol. 8 by Jim_LePage, apple by Alex_star, Picture Art Mockup [Vol 6] by sherlockholmes. All from Envato Elements. 

Websites within a variety of industries such as news organizations, charities or financial firms also require resources for editorial purposes. Design assets like charts and infographics help to present complex information like statistics in a more user-friendly manner.

But this need is not just limited to traditional websites. Keeping customers and fans engaged beyond a website has become just as important. Therefore, the same type of elements are also needed for your social media, online advertising and email marketing materials.

The same can also be said for your efforts offline. Whether you’re promoting your own company or working for someone else, print and other physical items are still important. Logo creation, brochures, business cards and the like aren’t going away anytime soon. Having a healthy supply of fonts and templates are a must.

These days, the cycle of content creation doesn’t stop. That means designers need access to a steady stream of resources to meet the demand.

Subscription services are natural fit for web design

When you think about it, web-based subscription services have been a part of a web designer’s toolbox for quite some time. Web hosting, email list services and even domain names have long been necessities. In recent years, some of the software we use to design and develop sites have gone to this model as well. In that way, perhaps we were ahead of the curve.

Now, subscriptions for just about anything and everything are becoming mainstream. So it makes perfect sense that a new breed of designer-centric services are popping up.

Top: SunTour Creative Travel Agency HTML Template by CreativeWS. Bottom row: Mother and daughter playing on the beach at the sunset time. by altanaka; Social Media Icons by brandifystudio; Burtons by amtypes. 

These services bring convenience and cost-saving potential. They’re also agile and can adapt to the changing needs of designers.

And, importantly, they’re the future of the industry. The on-demand world we live in requires us to evolve along with it. With the help of the right services, we’ll be able to keep up.

Check out our library of design assets on Envato Elements.

The post The Changing Face of Web Design: Are Subscription Services the Future? appeared first on Envato.

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We Analyzed 1,000 Fonts: Here Are the Top Typography Trends This Year - envato.com coupon

At Envato, we see a lot of fonts.

While we’re working on web designs, or reviewing the typeface library of over 1,000 fonts on Envato Elements, we start to notice a few trends.

Here’s a few lists of our favorite must-download fonts to add to your collection:

• 26 elegant script and handwritten fonts
• 37 classic serif fonts
• Using Handwritten Typography in Web Design
• Designers pick their favorite handwritten fonts for 2017

 

Based on what we’ve seen so far this year, here’s our picks for the best trends and styles for font design: 

1. Almost-but-not-quite Helvetica

In 2007, the documentary Helvetica detailed the history of Helvetica in design. It’s a classic, never-fail font – or is it boring and overused?

This year, we’re seeing simple, Helvetica-inspired styles with a twist, like Lorano (pictured above) and Pine Font.

 

2. Make it big – and then make it bigger

Not only does big text size increase accessibility in designs, but it’s also bold and eye-catching. When in doubt, just try scaling up a few sizes. (Image: Monrad Sans)

 

3. Geometric designs and bright colors

Geometric, playful design has dominated many aspects of design this year, including fashion, interior design – and typography. It’s a fun, almost primary-school vibe that adds a retro element to any design. (Image: Median layer).

 

4. Hand-drawn everything

If you’re looking for the top trend right now, we suggest going the hand-drawn route. “It makes my works look natural – it’s as if I make the writing by my hand, instead of some computer font,” writes one of our designers. And it’s not just for fashion bloggers – from watercolor details to graffiti-style designs, the hand-drawn look is one we’re seeing all around the web.

 

5. So many serifs

Want to be seen as trustworthy and reliable? According to a study done a few years ago, the answer might be to use a serif font. The category of ‘decorative serifs’ keep this look from being too traditional. (Pictured: Kingston).

 

6. Mismatched

Much like the brutalist-inspired style of using contrasting colors and nontraditional color palettes, using two web fonts that wouldn’t traditionally wouldn’t be paired together is a good way to get the attention of your audience – like Burtons, a ‘delightful font duo’ of script and serif (above). Try combinations like serif + sans serif, handwritten + monotype, or condensed + expanded, or bold + thin. There are no rules.

 

What other trends in typography are you seeing this year?

The post We Analyzed 1,000 Fonts: Here Are the Top Typography Trends This Year appeared first on Envato.

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