Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Ten years ago, a lot of breweries found they could get away with soliciting a friend to design their beer packaging. Not anymore.

With so many beers competing for attention on the shelves, standout beer labels have become a critical part of any brewery's marketing strategy.

So which breweries have come up with those really standout designs?

One of the most important skills you can learn as a designer is how to choose type. This is because text is one of the primary ways designers can communicate with users. Typography can make or break a design.

There’s a beauty and complexity to typography. Some people devote their entire careers to type. Thankfully, their work is well documented, so we have tons of online resources for typography.

This article is designed to serve as a starting point for helping you learn how to choose type for your designs. It will encourage you to explore fonts and font combinations beyond those you’re familiar with....

When I worked as a web designer, I was fascinated by how design trends changed each year. Since hanging up my design boots and focusing on being CEO of Envato, my focus has shifted from visual trends, to industry and technology ones. As I did in 2014 and 2015, here’s my take on where the world is moving!...

Trump's "Make America Great Again" hat was pervasive, potent, and deeply misunderstood.mp's ubiquitous bright red trucker hat, festooned with "Make America Great Again," is now seared into our collective memory. It was the most hated and most loved symbol of the election, the most comical and the most serious. It was a poorly designed product that turned out to be very strong branding. It was the most misunderstood design of the election—for designers and non-designers alike.

But most of all, it's a lesson about the limitations of "good" design. "No one wants to give [Trump] credit, understandably, because it’s not something that was designed," says Lindsay Ballant, a designer, art director, and adjunct professor at the Maryland College of Art. "It should be something that designers think about. Good design doesn't necessarily mean effective design."

As we move on from the 2016 election and contemplate the role of design in subsequent political campaigns, understanding the difference between good and effective design is imperative....

In 2009, I started a stock media company with a single vision: to provide premium creative content that everyone could afford. This idea grew into VideoBlocks, followed by the launch of GraphicStock and AudioBlocks. Now, we’re adding millions of photos to our new image Marketplace and it’s time to bring our expanding libraries together as Storyblocks.

Posters offer a diverse canvas for graphic designers, and some of the very best are not only beautifully designed but also inspiring and thought-provoking. There are hundreds of stunning poster designs that are instantly eye-catching, but we’ve narrowed this list down to a few of the most intriguing examples from the current decade. Whether you prefer to be bold or understated, you’re certain to find something here that will get your creative juices flowing.

The golden ratio (or the divine proportion) is a mathematical constant that can be often seen in the natural world, as well as in the artwork throughout the history. In mathematical terms, when a is larger than b, and the two are added and then divided by a, the sum represents the golden ratio (1.618). That number is represented by the Greek character “phi”.

It is still not clear why this ratio is so appealing to the human eye. Anything following this ratio tends to be perceived as attractive and even the slightest change in an image that gets closer to the ratio is automatically considered to be more beautiful to the human brain.

It is not a matter of magic; it is just a yet unexplained fact that our minds react very positively to anything formed on the basis of the golden ratio. As many artists have been using this fact, so could you when it comes to web designing....

You’d think that, 20 years later, as design has gotten more sophisticated and information about design has become much more accessible, designers would learn to avoid design mistakes, but a recent, large-scale usability study from 2016 by the NN Group found just the opposite to be true.

Instead of learning from past mistakes, designers have been continually repeating them throughout the decades. In fact, if there’s one thing that’s certain in web design, it’s that these errors continue to persist because designers keep forgetting the basics:

• Enabling users to find information


• Enabling users to read that information


• Enabling users to understand where to click and where the destination is...

Ready to refresh your website? The start of the year is a great time to take a hard look at your existing design – or even new projects – and think about how to incorporate some of the latest trends into the framework.From functionality to color and typography, 2017 will be a year of new ideas and new visual concepts to explore. Some of those designs are already starting to pop up, providing you with just enough visual inspiration to get off to the right start in the new year. Let’s take a look....

While clients often ask you to cram in as much information into a page as possible, seasoned web designers know this can lead to a usability nightmare. Confident and careful use of whitespace, in contrast, is all about giving content room to breathe.

The examples listed here work because everything the visitor needs is still there on the page; all that’s absent would just be clutter. In place of that clutter, whitespace helps create a balanced, easy to navigate interface where you can find what you need without being overwhelmed....