So, if you are the one to master 3D art in Blender software, this post will be obviously handy. Here you will find 20+ from Roman Klco’s numerous tutorials showing the process of 3D modeling. This set features 3D artworks inspired by famous movies and cartoons. Here you will find places, buildings, characters, vehicles, objects, and details that will instantly remind you of known stories. Enjoy!

Jurassic Park

The Sopranos

Iron Man’s Garage

Harry Potter’s Patronus

Hogwarts

Hogwarts Express

Simpson’s House

Bumblebee Beetle

Star Wars Stormtroopers

Star Wars Millenium Falcon

Star Wars AT-AT

Star Wars X-Wing

Knight Rider

Friend’s Central Perk

Witcher

Witcher Castle

Avengers HQ

Futurama Ship

Futurama

Rick and Morty’s Garage

Kill Bill Character

Thor Character

Check more projects by Roman Klco on Dribbble

For more inspiration, check the video tutorials on Procreate illustrations, examples of awesome 3D illustrations, black and white illustrations, 3D portraits of famous people, dog illustrations, love illustrations, and other posts from our D4U Gallery in which we gather impressive creatives to share their art with you.

Сообщение 3D Art: Blender Tutorials by Roman Klco Inspired by Movies появились сначала на Design4Users.

The release of the new style called Fluent Icons was announced on Product Hunt today, and we’d like to unveil a bit more about that news in our fresh D4U Review post.

The new design style contains 965 color graphics covering a variety of topics.

The bright color graphics are pixel perfect and consistent to be effectively used in user interfaces, infographics, presentations, and social media visuals. The icons can be used in personal and commercial projects, free for a link attribution. Those who have Icons8 Pro license, get the extended range of options as they can get all the icons in SVG format in various sizes.

Сообщение Icons8 Released About 1000 Icons in New Style Inspired by Fluent Design появились сначала на Design4Users.

So, here we’ve collected our favorite video tutorials on Procreate art from Gal Shir’s YouTube channel. Get inspired and try it by yourself!

Skating Turtle Illustration

Nature Woman Illustration

Funny Kitten Illustration

Underwater World Illustration

Cardinal Bird Illustration

Magic Forest Illustration

Galaxy Mind Illustration

Explorer Illustration

Cute Snowman Illustration

Koi Fish Illustration

Koi Galaxy Illustration

Forest Ghosts Illustration

Space Run Illustration

You may also like the collections of love illustrations, spring illustrations, winter illustrations, summer illustrations, autumn illustrations, and other D4U Inspiration posts

Сообщение Inspiring Video Tutorials on Procreate Illustration by Gal Shir появились сначала на Design4Users.

These product images are great to post and share throughout online shops and social media! These are also perfect to make your product catalog and it makes it so much easier for you to keep updating regularly and here is why.

They Make It Easier to Update Your Product Images

Instead of having to hire a professional photographer every time you make new designs or want to renew your products in-store or on your website, you can simply update your images with mockups that you can make in a few seconds. No need to spend a fortune on photoshoots.

What’s the great thing about mockups? You can also use the exact same image if you want to keep a style through your website, but you can also upload different angles from the same product, different colors, and anything else you need to really show you design!

What Kind of Mockups Can You Use?

There are tons of mockups styles you can use to make your images. Let’s go over some of your options.

Studio Mockups

Studio mockups are great to point all focus on your products. Lighting is very flattering, backgrounds are neat and clear. It’s the perfect image for a product to show its features with a very close look!

Context Mockups

Context mockups are great to show your products being used in real-life situations and events to show your designs’ style. You can use for example an urban setting, you can show you products in the wild, in the city, how they look on a house, and basically any surrounding you may need to give context to your products.

Mockups with Models

Again, a great mockup style to show products being used by real-life consumers! You can choose all kinds of models depending on who your product is for. There are kids, adults and seniors, all races, shapes, colors, and sizes! Plus, you can choose your model activity if you are making a sport’s product for example, if it’s for a bridesmaids party, even for dog products! There is surely a perfect mockup for your needs.

Garment Only Mockups

These are literally “garment only mockups” which means no models, just product but they can vary from studio shots to context backgrounds. The focus is completely on your product but it may also have a few other elements to accent it’s own style or usability.

Mockup Type According to Its Use

Depending on what kind of products your designs are for, you can choose a different type of mockups, for example, apparel mockups for any apparel product. Print mockups show branding material like flyers, posters, business cards and more. Devices mockups are great to show apps or websites and how they look on different technological devices like phones, tablets, computers, kindles, smartwatches and more.

Making a Mockup Is Easy

This is certainly a task for everyone, designer or not, the time you can save on your work by using mockups is precious. Making a mockup takes only a few seconds. Basically, you start by choosing the right mockup for your design (this might be the most difficult part since there are so many options). Depending on which site you are using to make your mockups, you will be finding different filter options or even tags. Use your filtering options to get to the right mockup for you and consider all the styles we have mentioned before.

1. On Placeit, for example, to choose the right template, and you may use tons of different tags, filters, and even a search bar to find exactly what you are looking for.

2. After, you simply have to drag and drop your design or upload it from your computer. You can adjust your design as many times as you need to get a perfect product mockup.

3. When you are done you simply have to click on the download button. Now, your downloading options on Placeit are the following: you may get a PNG file with great quality to post and share anywhere or you may choose a high format image for large scale printing purposes.

To Wrap It Up

So to recap, mockups are a great tool for any kind of designer due to how versatile they can be. You can find tons of different mockup styles that can perfectly suit your designs work to showcase them in the best way. They look professional and because it is so easy to make a mockup, you can update your content constantly with new images and with new designs as often as you need.

Save tons of hours on photoshoots and editing with pre-made templates that allow you to show your designs using fantastic looking mockups. Get as many images as you want all under a budget, this may vary greatly depending on which website you decide to use, but most places will give you mockups for a very fair price.

Placeit, for instance, gives you unlimited downloads with your subscription, yes that’s right, unlimited downloads. You can find product mockups categories like tote bag mockup, hoodie mockup, mug mockup, bag mockup, coaster mockup, apron mockup and so much more!

About the author: that’s the guest post by Valeria Santalla is a multi-disciplinary graphic designer and writer that loves to create branding images for local business, collaborating at Placeit.net one of the largest logo maker and design template library website.

Check 17 trends in graphic design and illustration, get inspired with collections of creative logos and packaging, and review 6 stages of branding design

Сообщение Product Mockup Styles That Are Time Savers for Designers появились сначала на Design4Users.

Line Art

One of the trends in graphic design that really evolved this year is line art. Based on the popularity of clean and sophisticated outline graphics and typography, it moved to the next level, presented with more and more line illustrations and artworks integrated into branding, web design and printed stuff.

Artistic line art applied to Shpin’s Wine identity design

Broken Proportions

As for digital illustration, the year 2019 let the trend of broken proportions get even more solid positions. It started getting established last year, yet this year it achieved the amazing diversity of styles, plots, exaggeration or tinification, and visual metaphors. Such an approach is definitely effective in setting visual originality, wished so much by brands. Still, to be done harmonically and beautifully, it requires real artistic talent from the illustrator: to break the rules, you need to know them perfectly!

Illustration for digital service featuring people with unusual body proportions

Hero illustration for a landing page featuring a character with uncommonly broken body proportions

Blog illustration on design process using broken proportions and perspective

Dynamic Composition

This year brought lots of graphic design examples and digital artworks based on dynamic compositions. Perhaps, the fact-pace modern world dictates that trend: we see more and more characters and graphic elements moving, running, flying, swimming, cycling, doing anything except standing still.

Dynamic composition applied to the illustration on ecommerce and shopping

Illustration devoted to the theme of UX design instantly transfers the feeling of speed and races

3D Art and Animation

The trend of graphics in volume seems to reach more and more popularity this year, covering multiple design tasks and goals. No wonder: 3D art gives depth and realism where it’s needed, allows designers to step beyond the limits of two dimensions and sets solid connections to the objects of the physical world.

Lovely 3D illustration and animation created for onboarding of the Status App

3D animation showing the cosmic power of creative UX design process

Gradients

Gradients are still in fashion, especially when it comes to digital art. Thoughtfully touched gradients allow to add atmospheric depth to the image and create the original attractive style.

Atmospheric sunset river illustration built on a gradient approach

Visual Noise Effect

Visual noise seems to be one of the most popular visual effects in illustration this year. It instantly makes the digital artworks cozier and adds natural vibes to digital art.

The Winter Olympics illustration shows how visual noise effect changes the artwork style and performance (up – without noise, down – with noise)

Surrealism

This year digital art appears to step much closer to high arts than ever before. One of the ways to do it has been integrating the elements of surrealism into illustrations and branding. It definitely gives the outcome that is quite specific and out-of-the-box, so both artists and brands should be ready for all kinds of feedback. The comments and emotions on it can be either positive or super negative, yet there’s one thing for sure: nobody will stay indifferent. Isn’t that what people and brands strive to get?

Surrealistic illustration inspired by artistic world heritage in this style

Surrealistic characters integrated into identity design for the food delivery service called Quizine

Primitivism Vibes

Another popular way of adding classical art to graphic design is the primitivism direction. Yes, those illustrations that are referred to as “my kid can paint better”. Anyway, the ones that do understand that particular art direction, make fun and enjoy the best sides of primitivism integrated into digital art.

Digital illustration reflecting the creative approach with primitivism vibes

Artistic digital illustration with the vibes of primitivism and surrealism

Flat Lay Art

Although we can hear that flat lay has lost its positions in photography, graphic design and digital illustration seem to not care about that. It may be inspired by the best food-photographers that still make special art of flat lay evolution, elaborate and high-quality pictures of workspaces, and many other factors. Anyway, due to a variety of tools, brushes, and textures, flat lay has got a new breath in illustrators’ artworks this year.

A series of food illustration in flatlay style

Geometric Motifs

Nothing seems to be more harmonic and clear to the human eye than geometric shapes and patterns. This year, geometry continued establishing itself as an integral part of digital art and branding. Creative combinations and lovely patterns based on it are also very effective in creating emotional background and mood, considering the psychology of shapes.

Geometric motifs used in title image for the blog article about visual dividers

Packaging design for Bennet tea brand, based on geometric pattern

Nature Motifs

One of the most debatable and popular themes of recent years is living with respect to nature and love for our planet. Sure, design and arts responded to it diversely. As a result, we observe the growing popularity of nature motifs and themes in identity design, artistic elements added to user interfaces for web and mobile, illustrations, and animation.

Digital artworks created for the website devoted to zero-waste living

Playing Off Negative Space

Negative space has always had great artistic potential, but it’s not the skill that’s easy to tame. This year it got trendy in both logo design and illustration, making identity and visuals artistic, unique, and eye-catching.

Illustration playing with the negative space and color contrast

This symbol has been designed for Aviar, the company that deals with flight rights protection. The designer created an elegant and bold symbol playing with visual metaphors of a plane and shield combined with the power of negative space.

Limited  Color Palette

As well as in user interface design, the domain of graphics made a step to creative experiments withing limits and restrictions. Color as the most expressive and emotional factor of graphic design, for sure, took the top position in the rating of limits. So, more and more graphic designers and illustrators choose to provide their designs within a very limited color choice or even monochromatic palette.

The limited and defined color palette for the big set of brand illustrations for Moonworkers project allows for strengthening the visual consistency of the brand image

Original graphics for MYWONY brand intro is done in the style of classic comic books and wrapped in a monochrome palette with rare bright color accents

Atmospheric digital illustration based on a limited color palette

The artwork performed in limited and muted color palette setting a particular mood and emotional background

Expressionist Shadows and Contrasts

Another popular trend in the digital illustration is visual expressionism achieved with high color contrast and exaggerated shadows. The artworks of this kind are always catchy and atmospheric. Perhaps, that’s the reason why such an approach is especially broadly presented in illustrations featuring landscapes, architecture, and interiors.

Deep shades, long shadows, and harmonic contrast accents in the digital illustration sharing the vibes of isolation and melancholy

Expressive color accents making the winter look even more white and fresh in the artwork

Pastel autumn vibes in the expressive illustration playing with light and shadows

The Christmas illustration using color contrast as the main artistic and emotional device

Animated Details

Recently presented Procreate functionality for animation may amplify the presence of one more popular trend: animating some details of static illustration instead of making everything move. Animating only some details, designers draw viewers’ attention to the specific elements or zones, let us concentrate on something significant, make illustrations more playful and lovely.

Lovely winter illustration adding liveliness and mood with the animated snow, winking, and pattern on the sweater, yet leaving the background absolutely static

Glitch Effect

Glitches are still in fashion this year, so they are quite often presented in typography animation to catch even more attention to the most important detail or message.

Glitch effect applied to promo graphics by Tubik designers for Designmodo

Logo and Identity Motion

Motion applied to brand elements has been growing its presence for this year. Animated logos and identity details make brand UI-friendly, add more interactivity, and allow designers to add more emotion to the brand image.

Hypnotizing and futuristic logo animation for the platform producing and supporting AI-based conversational user interfaces and bots. Motion allows for making the smooth curves of the brand sign even more expressive for digital interactions.

Let’s open the new creative year hoping it will be even brighter, smarter, and obviously beautiful in the spheres of graphic design and digital art.

Originally published in Tubik Blog

Сообщение 17 Trends in Illustration and Graphic Design to Meet 2020 появились сначала на Design4Users.

The timeless and enduring blue hue is simple, classic and elegant. As Pantone mention, the color of the sky at dusk, it highlights the desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era. From the psychological perspective, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue brings a feeling of peace and calmness, aids concentration and brings clarity, re-centers the thoughts.

As it’s given on the official website of Pantone, the Color of the Year 2020 can be found in the following color systems:

Also, designers are given visual references for different spheres.

Classic Blue in Fashion

Classic Blue in Beauty

Classic Blue in Interior and Home Decor

Classic Blue in Graphic Design and Packaging

For over 20 years, Pantone’s Color of the Year has influenced product development in a variety of industries, including fashion, home furnishings, industrial design, product packaging, and graphic design. The Pantone Color of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, the color experts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world looking for new color influences. That can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, playstyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention.

Earlier Pantone Colors of the Year 

Сообщение Turn to Classics: Pantone Color of the Year 2020 Is Classic Blue появились сначала на Design4Users.

The reason behind this is the fact that a well-crafted email can pretty much convince a person to do anything, with less effort than the rest of the marketing channels, and it can be used for any product, brand or service. This is why there are plenty of email marketing and marketing automation platforms, like Moosend, that offer marketing automation for agencies, SaaS platforms, high-end brands, retailers, real estate, any type of product or service one could ever imagine.

By sending an email, you’re essentially knocking on someone’s door and asking them to hear you out. It can capture customers’ attention like nothing else, but only if your email is well-crafted and on top of current design trends. So, let’s go see what those are going to be for 2020.

Illustration by Justas Galaburda

Hyper-Personalization

It may seem unrelated at first, but hyper-personalization (not simple personalization like we’re used to) has to do with everything email, and that includes email design.

Source

You see, we’re not talking about email segmentation like we know it at this point. Instead, we’re talking about emails that will appeal to each and every person in your audience and will serve a purpose that will be tailor-made and will feel personal. Hyper-personalization is achievable through the use of machine learning and AI technology that will be able to train itself by running through your data and detecting the patterns that are evident in that data.

After that, the machine… Learns. By implementing the patterns, it can distinguish in the data. By learning, the machine enables itself to predict and suggest accordingly, making hyper-personalization possible. So, if responsive design is what got you the most email opens for 2019, or if a specific user is used to not clicking through an email whose dominant color is a pastel one, you’ll be able to recreate it. This will help you deliver results that will get clicked and will appeal to your audience with one-on-one content. And this will, ultimately, help you reach your KPIs in the end.

Interactivity

Interactivity is one of the finest ways to draw attention and the more attention your email gets, the more fruitful your efforts at CRO. Your email will need to be something that gets you noticed, that helps the user engage with your brand, and that encourages them to go ahead and click around.

Source

You can use plenty of interactive elements, and there’s bound to be one that’s best for your niche and the reason why you’re sending your email campaign.

For example, sliders will work best for those times when you want to display more than three products, whereas the scratch effect and flip cards will boost engagement when you want to go through with something like recommendations of similar products or discount codes and offers.

There are a whole lot of other options as well, but the point is that interactive emails help engagement rates and “discovering” the content is way more fun than reading about it in the main body of an email.

Just don’t overdo it, as it could get confusing and distracting in the end. You’ll see what I mean below.

Thinking Small

You don’t need too much content. Just the right amount can make the user be convinced and happy with what they’ve found and what they’re willing to do with your product or service. You need small pieces of content that will be memorable, like a punchline, something shareable.

Ultimately, you need something your prospect will remember and that they won’t forget to interact with. Small videos, tidbits of information, bite-sized infographics, anything that will be compact enough, small enough, and also memorable enough is what you need.

Why do you think flip cards are one of the interactive features mentioned above? They’re ideal for breaking content in two, making it appear smaller and helping out with making it memorable.

Social Media Shares and Feedback

In terms of engagement again, social media platforms are what can help you win this game. But not without leveraging email marketing.

You see, you can have the best Twitter header or the most wonderful idea that will help you reach out to social media influencers, and it still won’t matter that much if your email marketing game is not strong. Easily digestible pieces of content can be used to your absolute advantage.

Include a button that will encourage social sharing. It can either be for one small little quotes I mentioned before or a large one like the ones we’ve come to know and love:

You can create unique buttons to share content, purchases, and so on and so forth. Just make sure to make your button discreet enough for your users not to feel intimidated by it, and you’re good.

And since email marketing is way more than simply promotions and payment receipts, you can design a beautiful email campaign that will have customer feedback as to its main goal.

Feedback is a win-win for both your brand and the customers. On the one hand, you’ll know better than any AI platform can show what your prospects and customers need; on the other hand, you’ll create the type of brand that actually cares. For example, in this email, I’ve got the option of tracking and using the hashtag, and the customer service email is right there for me in case I need it.

However, there’s a fancier way to ask for feedback, and it will rule email design for (at least) 2020. Think about incorporating interactive elements here as well, like check-boxes or quizzes. Whether it has to do with your Net Promoter Score or general feedback of what your users would like to see on your platform, interactive quizzes are a great way to craft a memorable email with ease.

Bold Fonts, Emoji-ed Subject Lines and Muted Colors

This has been going around in 2019, but we will see a great rise in those three elements in 2020. Let’s begin with the emojis in email subject lines:

This image is from my personal inbox, and I dare say it made me click. Emojis are what carry the “feeling” of a message, and it is the equivalent of the use of colors in the main body of an email since it helps convey the tone. Not to mention that messages with an emoji in their subject line are what increases open rates by 56%, according to a report by Experian.

But let’s move on to the fonts. Minimal is making a comeback, and the fonts are expected to be bold, simple and no-fuss, allowing the message to shine through without it being too much:

Netflix used this very well, as well as the GIF trend and the small, digestible bits of information. You can see that the font is bold, it’s not too much, and the message is clear: Series premiere is on September 12th, go check the trailer.

This is all the information one may need when it comes to a series anyway, and Netflix didn’t bother with odd details like a summary. That’s all included in the trailer anyway.

And as far as the colors are concerned. There will be a rise in the use of muted colors. Intense colors are now a thing of the past, and the softer, darker colors that are easier on the eyes will see an increase in use.

Two Trends That Are Here To Stay

Of course, I’m talking about User Generated Content (UGC) and video email marketing. Those two trends are guaranteed to stay beyond 2020.

Let’s begin with video email marketing. Here’s an example:

We’re talking about a Halloween makeup tutorial I received in my inbox about a couple of weeks ago. Clicking on this got me to a dedicated page that showed me the tutorial and the products used. And this gave the brand a better chance at conversion:

Source

I saw the products in action, and this was all that I needed in order to be convinced to buy something off an email.

And as far as UGC is concerned, this is a very underrated (so far) but highly effective technique that can drive more engagement.

After all, who doesn’t want to be a marketer, and who doesn’t want to see their content featured in a newsletter? Especially now, with the rapid rise of social media platforms that are centered around UGC, like Instagram or VSCO.

UGC practically leverages the good old word-of-mouth marketing that all consumers trust to this day-hence the rise of influencers-and can work as referral marketing does. Users create content for a brand. The brand trusts users enough to share it without damaging its own image. The users become ambassadors, engage with the brand, and convince their friends to buy as well, and the prospects turn into customers easily, seamlessly, and, most importantly, at a low cost. In fact, 92% of buyers trust in recommendations from people they know.

By incorporating that fact into the design of an email, you’re shooting for maximum engagement, conversions, and shares-who would miss out on a chance to show that their content was actually taken in by their favorite brand?

Takeaway

All in all, email design will appear to be simpler and no-fuss in 2020, but with a lot more complex, interactive elements that will aim for engagement.

This means that we’ll see a huge rise in personalization that will take over email design as well.

Author: the guest post by Téa, a content writer working for email marketing software company Moosend and an obsessive writer in general. 

You might also like the review of hot UI design trends, tips on choosing color scheme for user interface and effective design for CTA elements

Сообщение Hot Email Design Trends to Consider for 2020 появились сначала на Design4Users.

Artificial Intelligence

There is no denying that artificial intelligence or AI has become one of the fastest-growing technologies of today’s generation. However, most people believe that it’s going to influence only those tasks and jobs that are mechanical or repetitive in nature viz. accounting, supply chain management, etc. That is not exactly true, as AI is also venturing into creative domains like graphic design. In fact, it’s now possible to create a logo with AI as there are many online tools and apps that come packed with massive repositories of fonts, icons, and colors and use advanced algorithms that can create the perfect combinations of these assets to design unique logos.

The idea of AI in graphic design can be scary for professionals and remote designers who are making a living by creating designs in the traditional way. However, they have nothing to be afraid of as these tools won’t replace them altogether but only support them in their jobs and facilitate the design processes.

Futuristic Patterns

Futuristic visuals and designs are becoming more and more common in the marketing and branding industry today. You can check out any 10 popular advertisements today, and you will see that at least a few of them will demonstrate a product or idea with visuals that are too advanced for our generation. But that’s the whole point, and it’s intentional- to attract the users with the promise of tomorrow’s technology.

An excellent example to make a case for futuristic designs is BBC Two. You can look at the new design to see how beautiful and modern it looks. The previous design that was used by the company is shared below.

It doesn’t take long for one to decide which design is more trendy. Although at this point it can’t be said how long this new trend about ultra-modern designs will last, it’s for sure not going anywhere soon. So, it doesn’t matter whether you are creating designs that use negative space or gradients, you want to consider the “futuristic elements” when you get to work.

Shiny Textures

For years, graphics designers have been using shiny or metallic textures for different kinds of products to showcase a “high-end” attribute and character. The key is focusing on the metallic effect in a way that the overall design is minimalistic, and only brand fundamentals are highlighted.

One of the most common materials that’s used by designers in their products is gold, probably because it looks luxurious and prevents the product from looking tacky. Another great way to incorporate metallic textures in designs is to put them as engravings over other base products, preferably those that are non-metallic.

Sensory Designs

If you have been paying attention to the advancements in the design industry, then you must have realized that design has started to venture into the sensory domain. In other words, you can find it interfering with our interactions with smell or taste.

A good example of human senses merging with design and advertisement is the digital smell technology that allows dating app users to potentially evoke 10 kinds of virtual smells, including minty, woody, and fruity. The technology of odor transmission was discussed with newsgroup NBC News, and it shed light on how it could offer a complete package, i.e., an integrated virtual reality or augmented reality.

Experiments on “electric smell” were conducted in Malaysia in which the researchers inserted electrodes in the nostrils to delivery weak electric currents where neurons that send odor signals to the brain were triggered. They were able to evoke 10 kinds of virtual odors. Although the technology is far from seeing commercial applications, industry stakeholders see massive potential in it and think it can be used in modern advertisements and entertainment areas like movies, dating apps, video games, etc.

Final Words

It’s not easy to come up with accurate predictions for graphic design’s future. However, one can certainly take comfort in the fact that changes are coming, and most of these changes are good. What’s important for the professionals, though, is that they learn about these changes and trends so that they can adapt accordingly.

About the author: that’s the guest post by Prashant Sharma

You may also like to review 19 hot UI design trends in 2019, a color glossary for designers, and a pack of case studies showing how shape and color work in logo design

Сообщение Brief Insights to Graphic Design Technology Trends 2019 появились сначала на Design4Users.

Hero Illustrations

Hero images are not a kind of modern-day invention: for recent years, they have been used for making web pages clear, elegant, catchy and meaningful. No wonder: hero images improve perception as most users notice and decode images much faster than words, so the picture is not only the element of attraction but also an informative part of the page, providing a quick visual message about the content.

The correct composition of the hero image can strengthen navigation and bring more attention to the call-to-action button. Yet, talking about trends, for the recent year we are seeing the wide and diverse digital illustrations in contrast to photos that were much popular before. It can be explained, perhaps, with the higher flexibility of illustrations for user experience design goals. Digital art opens limitless possibilities on styles, characters, environments, compositions, and perspectives, and a combination of them with all the other layout elements into one design.

The web page where hero image and copy content present solid composition, set a positive atmosphere and inform users about the theme of the content the Health Blog provides.

The landing page for the illustration conference builds the composition around the original and eye-pleasing animated hero image.

The web page of the gallery of Pritzker Prize winners and nominees in the online architecture magazine features the artistic digital portrait of Zaha Hadid.

The landing page of the kindergarten uses a big funny and cute monster designed and animated as a hero image to entertain users and set the needed emotional background.

Typography Based Webpages

Bold and catchy typography as a crucial part of any design concept continues to keep its high presence in web and mobile layouts. It’s even hard to call it a trend as it should be seen as a default and vital part of the UI design process. Designers pay much attention to keeping it not only beautiful but also readable and scannable with typographic hierarchy and choice of proper fonts. Yet, there is a noticeable trend contrasting to the previous one: more and more websites and apps are based around typography as the core of the user experience design and attractiveness, with no images at all. The visual and emotional appeal, in this case, is reached with not only the search for interesting and original fonts but also with animation, color contrast, filled and outline letters in one piece of text and other tricks. What’s more, design approaches now demonstrate deeper care about text content itself and its integration into the layout. For example, informative and catchy taglines have shown growing presence as a part of web interfaces, especially in landing pages.

The website of a construction company is based on animated interactions and color contrast with the tagline. The color also works as a way to unite the company logo, tagline, and CTA button into one harmonic system of the layout.

Typography-based home page for the website of the urban digital conference, with catchy animation for the text content.

Transparency Behind Navigation

Many examples in this post feature another popular trend of this year: the transparent background for navigation elements. Now designers find the good level of contrast to make the navigation visible and legible instead of marking out special zones with another background. Such an approach supports the feeling of the integrity of all the layout.

Fashion portfolio website features the transparent header navigation

The ecommerce website selling insects uses the transparent background for header navigation and social buttons in the bottom part of the page

3D Graphics and Animation

For the recent year, the integration of various 3D graphics into mobile and web interfaces has demonstrated the rocketing growth. As well as the diversity of styles and approaches. What’s more, many designers move from static images to 3D animation to make webpages and app screens even more dynamic and engaging.

Creating this kind of graphics is quite a challenge that requires specific skills and artistic eye; also, it’s time-consuming. Nevertheless, it’s worth bothering: 3D is always eye-catching and users never pass by not noticing it. 3D images are a kind of flexible visual content. On the one hand, they often look photorealistic which is a big advantage for user interface design: this kind of graphics may save the game in cases when photo content you need is impossible to get or highly expensive. On the other hand, designers have room for creative experiments and may create non-realistic images increasing the originality of the user interface.

The website of the company building sustainable houses integrates 3D visualization of their product in day and night views.

The health blog applies the 3D animation of body parts as the core visual element on the page

The landing page for the flying school features the animated 3D hero image of a plane in low poly style

The welcome screen of the restaurant app features the complex and realistic 3D animation to engage users from the first seconds of interaction

Full-Screen Background Visuals

Another trend winning more and more positions on a wide variety of websites is full-screen background images. These can be all types of visuals: photos, illustrations, abstract compositions or specially rendered visualizations. The approach makes the screens visually and emotionally appealing as well as informative, as the image instantly captures users’ attention much faster this way. Also, it supports the feeling of the integrity of all the layout elements. However, it requires much skill and effort to find the right contrast and hierarchy of elements and integrate the navigation and text content properly so that the page wouldn’t turn into the illegible mess.

The model portfolio page uses her full-screen photo as a basis of the layout, the navigation and text information are harmonically put on it and don’t spoil the impression from the photograph.

The website of the company selling hot-air balloon rides uses full-screen theme images as an impressive and catchy background and adds dynamic and the feeling of flight with slight unobtrusive animation.

The landing page for the mail management app features the beautiful full-screen illustration with the copy content and call-to-action button elegantly integrated into it

Video Backgrounds and Diverse Video Content

With non-stop progressing technical improvements in the sphere of web development, video backgrounds for web pages aren’t seen as a great challenge anymore. As well as the integration of diverse video content into the web layouts. So, more and more designers now turn to full-screen videos as a way to capture people’s attention, create the needed atmosphere and give an instant view on the product or service that is offered.

Home page design based on a full-screen video about the product and processes for a website of the studio producing custom wedding dresses

Home page design featuring an atmospheric full-screen video for a website of an agricultural holding

Metallurgy plant website applying atmospheric theme video content on the home page

Diverse promo and explainer videos also get a high presence on webpages and mobile screens. In particular, they are helpful for marketing goals and increase brand awareness efficiently. A video works well for attracting customers’ attention and provide them with core information quickly. A video activates several channels of perception — audio, visual, sound — simultaneously and enhances them with the power of storytelling. That makes video content meaningful and memorable especially if based on high-quality graphic design and animation. People are daily overloaded with tons of information, so most of them aren’t ready to devote much time to learning about products or services. That’s when videos save the game as a dynamic and attractive way of communication.

Here’s an example of an explainer video designed for OffCents app promotion.

Minimal Mobile Navigation

In mobile user interfaces, with the limited space on the screen, designers tend to find ways of reducing space for navigation, and this way increasing space for content. This trend is now the reason for hot debates at the aspect of usability and clarity of interaction design; yet, new ideas arise and take their place.

The bar inventory application focused on interactions with content tabs and minimal navigation

One of the design practices getting popularity for the recent year is experimenting on mobile  UI interactions without buttons. This approach saves precious space on the screen for more information and it is even believed to be the initial step to the virtual interfaces based on gestures only.

The nature encyclopedia app presents interactive infographics for a variety of themes. All the interactions with the data are based on gestures without any buttons applied in the layout.

Font Experiments and Contrast

No doubt, combining fonts in interfaces is not a trend but a core operation as old and stable as the design itself. However, the recent year was marked with trailblazing experiments in this sphere. With a massive focus on readability seen before, a whole lot of interface designs started looking like twins with the same well-checked font combinations. So, now more UI designers step forward to more originality and fresh looks achieved with fonts. It is especially noticeable in the domain of taglines, headlines, brand names and short phrases that are usually presented in quite a big size so sophisticated or experimental fonts don’t do any harm for their readability.

A product card for the tea ecommerce website features quite an experimental font making the whole design look original

The landing page designed for a security app combines experimental hero illustration with the solid and bold font to create the bright and emotional look

Split Screens

The trend of designing split screens and pages really holds ground for the recent year, getting more and more diverse expressions on websites and apps. This design practice is nothing new – it goes away and comes back in various spheres of design, but now it’s well back and alive. The approach is thought to be effective at the perspective of responsive design: it enables to play with content variations not missing the consistency. In addition, it opens the limitless area for color combinations and experiments. Split screens are helpful when it’s important to show the duality of options of equal importance.

A landing page for the car security service app with a contrast split screen uniting the parts with a digital artwork visualizing the theme

Split webpage for a food order and delivery service: one part applies the light background, text description and bright CTA button while the other users a tasty-looking meal photo as a background

Product page for an online bug store uses a split screen with informative part to the left and interactive one to the right, all united with a product image in the center

Asymmetric and Broken Grids

Creative experiments with grids have never stopped for the recent year. The custom grid is the way to save the feeling of harmonic layout and placement of the elements with a higher level of flexibility and originality. In many cases, it’s also the way to rethink the visual hierarchy and draw the visitors’ attention to the needed zones or elements of the layout. Or it helps to make the consumption of much homogeneous content easier. Asymmetry and broken grids are found as one of the ways to reach this goal. However, this sort of creativity requires thorough research and testing so the effective result often comes via several iterations tested and analyzed in terms of usability and visual perception.

The gallery app uses the asymmetric grid to present various types of artworks in one beautiful feed

The website for an agricultural holding uses the grid that changes in the process of interaction and makes the interfaces more engaging and visually appealing

Interactions with photo galleries on MYWONY website features the asymmetric grid to make only one picture in focus but also support the feeling of the big gallery

Visuals-Based Ecommerce

Design for the ecommerce interfaces is a special challenge: it should keep a good balance between common well-known patterns easily recognized by buyers and creative solution that help the platforms stand out from the competition. The trend of this year is prominent, sometimes even overwhelming visuals demonstrating products and quite small text content blocks contrasting to them.

Hero section design for an ecommerce website and its mobile view feature prominent photos in combination with sophisticated typography

The ecommerce platform selling hand-crafted furniture and interior decor features the prominent 3D visualization

The online store of stuff for fishing also built around big visuals demonstrating the items

Overlaying Animation

UI designers never stop searching for new methods of making pages and screens engaging. One of the ways getting more and more popular is the animation of several interactive layers that make scrolling experience original and dynamic as well as support the integrity of interaction for long webpages or feed screens.

The home page designed for the website of the innovative energy service quickly grabs attention and informs users about its values with a nice animated hero image that makes the scrolling experience natural and dynamic.

Experimental Art-Inspired Graphics

As custom illustration has established well in user experience design and many products and companies use it now, the competition grows day by day. So, illustrators and UI designers are always in search of new solutions and ideas that would step to the next level of originality. Recently, it evolved into creative experiments that look based on high art. They push the limits of traditional composition and proportions, give rise to unusual characters, fantastic creatures, and unexpected stories.

The experimental illustration is used as a hero image on the website for the food delivery service. You may like it or not, but it will definitely catch your attention.

Website design for a small family-run winery features artistic and creatively animated illustrations

Interactive Intro and Onboarding Stuff

Onboarding design is for sure not an invention of today. Still, one of the really hot and rocketing trends of this year is the appearance of diverse introduction projects giving a deeper understanding of the brand, company or product and supporting their promotion with emotional and catchy storytelling. These can be tutorials, integrated gamification elements and mini-games, cartoons, interactive magazines and much more.

Creative and interactive brand intro for MYWONY, a brand of wedding dresses

Limited and Monochrome Color Palettes

The growing interest in minimalist design for maximum functionality resulted in a broad presence of monochrome UI solutions for web and mobile. The layouts of this kind usually look stylish, harmonic and non-distractive. However, designers have to invest much time and effort to make them not boring and ensure that all the core elements of interaction are instantly visible.

The landing page for an event devoted to Bauhaus movement features the limited and contrast color palette that reflects the values and approaches of that artistic school

Design for an online store selling cosmetics and beauty care stuff features the sophisticated interface in different shades of nude to make an advantageous background for the items

The home page for a web platform on cybersecurity is based on the monochrome layout and catchy futuristic animation 

User Choice of Color Scheme

Another thing to mention about color is personalization. User interface designers and developers strive to provide more functionality with which users may customize the features according to their personal needs. One of the most popular ways is giving a user the choice of the color scheme they like more for a particular interface. Sure, it takes more time on the design process but definitely contributes much to positive user experience.

These are screens of a stock analysis app Bitex that offers users the choice between light and dark color schemes

Color Contrast Across Pages or Screens

One more way to apply color contrast for the sake of user experience is using contrasting colors as backgrounds for different screens within one app or website. This way designers not only add a pinch of diversity into the product but also provide effective visual separation for different kinds of content or various purposes.

Nature encyclopedia app uses a dark background for encyclopedia screens and light background for charity screens

MYWONY website uses a dark background for Lookbook screens and light background for Collection screens

Infographic-Style Numbers

As we mentioned in the article about web scannability, readers subconsciously associate numbers with facts, stats, sizes and distance — data which is potentially useful. So numbers included in copy catch reader’s attention while words representing numerals can be missed in the bulk of copy. What’s more, numbers are more compact than the textual numeral, so it makes the content more concise and time-saving for scanning. One of the trending design features goes even further: it makes the numbers prominent and more noticeable than text as it’s often done in infographics.

Here’s design for an award-winning biography website devoted to Stanley Kubrick’s path of glory, life, and creative heritage. Contrast and elaborate typography as main visual expressiveness tools are successfully combined with prominent infographic-style numbers presenting important dates, milestones, and facts to make the resource informative and information digestible.

Environment community website sets the visual hierarchy of the home page to make the major information, infographic-style numbers, and CTA instantly visible.

Forms Above the Fold

Although there is much claiming that the importance of the above-the-fold aka pre-scroll area of the webpage is not that vital, users still interact with it much more than with everything that is below. So, some websites and landing pages put the interactive forms right into this strategic part, often right below the website header. This way the users that are ready to act and complete conversion without learning more can do it immediately.

The landing page designed for a delivery service that takes care of clients’ luggage delivers it to the destination chosen by the client features the form right below the header

The landing page for the scuba diving courses also features the interactive form of the extended search in the above the fold area

In general, it’s easy to see the global design community continues with building up the diversity in interface design. And that is the most user-friendly trend. There are millions of users with different tastes and preferences, feelings of what is convenient and beautiful for them, and now they use apps and websites as a part of their daily routine. The more variants we design for them, the wider range of options users will get to find the ones which fit their specific wishes. Looking forward to seeing what trends will be found the most popular at the end of the year.

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение 19 UI Design Trends for Web and Mobile Worth Your Attention появились сначала на Design4Users.

Shell Fuel Save

Campaign Craft Certificate in Loeries 2018 award in the category Print Crafts – Illustration

Forcam

Design for FORCAM global brand relaunch. The main idea was to show Human-Machine Interaction through organic living lines in harmony with the metal parts of the robotized structure.

Penguin Audiobooks

The collection of sophisticated artworks based around the same composition but reflecting different themes and times.

The Greek Classics

From the author’s description: We wanted to convince people that can bring alive the world book, making for deeply immersive literary experiences. And we chose ‘The Illiad’ from our range of Greek Classics to illustrate this point. We put The Illiad’s ‘Trojan Horse’ episode center-stage in an ear-shaped arena in Ancient Greece; which was brought alive with careful attention to the crafts and architectural patterns of the time’ the city planning, the daily costumes of the people, the class divisions in society visible in the arena’s seating arrangements, right down to local rituals like the burning of incense to appease the Gods. 

World War II History

From the author’s description: …We chose ‘The Third Reich Trilogy’ from our range of World War II History titles to illustrate this point. We put Hitler center-stage giving a rousing speech to the Nazis in an ear-shaped arena in the center of Berlin. This was brought alive with careful attention to the architecture, costumes, and the mileu of the city at war. From the Nazi motifs to the city-center cleared for Der Fuhrer, to the crisscrossing tram-, telegraph- and electric lines to the dark and foreboding atmosphere of a world at war.

Indian Mythology

From the author’s description: we wanted to convince people that Penguin Audiobooks transforms titles based on Indian mythology, into deeply immersive literary experiences as well. The title in question: JAYA by Devdutt Patnaik. Inspired by the mythos of the Indian epic, Mahabharata, depicted here is an episode from it – Draupadi’s Marriage. To win princess Draupadi’s hand in marriage, suitors have to shoot an arrow through the eye of a golden fish attached to a revolving chariot-wheel. Just by looking at its reflection in the water. Taking center-stage in the ‘ear arena’ is Arjuna, who succeeds. The arena is faithfully recreated in a mix of the Hindu and Buddhist architecture styles of India and South Asia. Including the profiles, recesses, design motifs on stone and other details. The costumes, tropical vegetation, and the ceremonial elephants are based on medieval Indian paintings, and they enhance the overall drama. 

Coca Cola Olympics

Visualization of Coca Cola in the Olympic Games theme.

Time Machine Project

Harmony of Hardcode

Aren’t all those artworks stunning? Keep up with the new inspiring design collections coming soon.

Check Alexander’s portfolios on Behance and ArtStation

Don’t miss the collections of digital illustrations about childhood by Pascal Campion, awesome animal illustrations by Therese Larsson and other D4U Inspiration posts.

Сообщение 3D Inspiration: Breathtaking CG Art by Aleksandr Kuskov появились сначала на Design4Users.