What is Digital Design and Why is it Important?

Digital design, UX design, UI design, graphic design…for the laypeople among us, all of these terms are enough to make your head swirl (hint hint: it might be because they’re all related).

Recently, we spilled the tea on UX and UI design (and even covered the differences and similarities they share with graphic design). Now, we’re explaining the field of digital design and sharing all the reasons it plays an important role in the digital world.

Today, we’re digging deeper into the following questions:

What is digital design?
What do digital designers create?
Why is digital design important?
What’s the difference between digital design and other types of design work?

Buckle up and get ready to learn about digital design and all the ways it helps make our digital lives easy, breezy, and beautiful.

What is digital design?

First things first: digital design spans several forms, but it’s essentially design work made for digital spaces. To keep it simple, digital design is content created for and viewed on a digital screen. You might be thinking, “Hey, this sounds really broad.” And you’d be correct. Digital design is a broad field and is often used as an umbrella term to describe several types of design work including UX/UI design, graphic design, and web design (more on this below).

Within the world of design, there are those who work in the physical world creating print designs and those who work in the digital world creating digital designs. Here’s an even further breakdown:

Print projects include magazines, brochures, business cards, print ads, book covers, and other design work you’d find in the physical world. Conversely, digital designs include deliverables you’d find on the web and other digital platforms.

What do digital designers create?

Digital designers create design deliverables that live on digital platforms like websites or applications. Some of these deliverables include things like:

PDF graphics for content like white papers or reports
Website graphics and layouts
Interactive elements like buttons
Infographics
Wireframes and prototypes
Digital ads

Tracking the success of digital design through analytics

Digital design tracks its success through analytics. This sets it apart from print design and gives it a leg up as designers can track how many eyes are on their designs through things like engagement (likes, comments) and page views. A digital designer may create several variations of a design and monitor its success through the use of analytics. They may conduct A/B testing with the different design variations to see which variation users best respond to. This can be especially helpful for companies using their digital designs to help advertise or sell a product or service.

Interactivity and digital design

A major way digital design differs from print design is that it can be, and often is, interactive. Interactivity means the digital design can respond to you (the user) and serves a functional purpose. For example, a checkout button on an online store can be clicked on to initiate a purchase process. This feature would be considered interactive. It’s important to note here that not all forms of digital design are interactive, some graphics like logos or infographics can simply serve the purpose of branding or telling a story.

Which careers fall under digital design?

You might be thinking, “Ok. I think I get it. But, what’s the difference between digital design and other types of design work?” Like we said, digital design encompasses several forms of design work. This news is especially exciting for people who are interested in working in the field because different strengths can be used across the medium. Thus, the job prospects are plentiful. Here are a few career options for those interested in digital design.

Graphic Designers

Graphic Designers work to create cohesive branding through the use of visual elements. They often create fixed images rather than interactive ones. One thing to remember is Graphic Designers also work in the print world. They produce deliverables like banner ads, logos, business cards, infographics, and digital illustrations.

UX/UI Designers

UX and UI Designers work together to create intuitive, beautiful, and functional mobile apps, websites, and products. User Interface Designers work specifically to make digital interfaces enjoyable and easy-to-use through the use of aesthetics. User Experience Designers, however, ensure users have the best experience throughout their entire journey using a product, app, or website. Like Graphic Designers, UX Designers can also work in physical spaces but you’ll mostly hear about them working in the digital world these days. UI design is a strictly digital practice. Oftentimes, these roles are merged into one.

Web Designers

Web Designers offer design services specifically catered to the web. They create layouts and web pages, merging the work of a graphic designer with coding. The end result is an accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and easy-to-use website.

Why is digital design important?

Our lives are largely online in 2020, so the design of our online interactions
is hugely important. Digital design affects the way we work, learn, shop, and socialize. Think of it this way: elements of digital design affect our purchasing decisions. When we shop online, we rely on the website to direct us (through design) to the pair of shoes we’re looking for. The usability of the site, the navigation, and the checkout button were all thoughtfully created by a digital designer (probably a UX and UI Designer in this case).

Digital design ensures we have useful experiences in the online world. It can be especially important for business owners who need aesthetically pleasing designs to attract and retain customers. For students who are largely going to school online right now, it’s important that their digital educational tools are easy to understand and navigate so they can be successful in their studies. The same goes for workers who use digital tools in their day-to-day lives: from communications to file sharing, an effective interface can make our jobs easier.

Unsplash: The Perfect Source for Free Images?

What is Unsplash?

Unsplash is a free stock photography site. The website has more than one hundred thousand contributing photographers. Even more impressive is the number of photo impressions ( more than 10 billion per month) on their photo library which has surpassed 1.5 million photos.

How Does Unsplash Work?

Unsplash is based on the premise that photographers upload their work to the site. These photos are in turn curated by editors. Users are free to download the photos and use them in any way they want with no restrictions.

License

The Unsplash license is very permissive. It is like a Creative Commons Zero License (CC0). It allows users to use photos for commercial or non-commercial purposes without providing any attribution or obtaining permission. This has allowed the service to become one of the largest photography suppliers on the web. Whether you are a blog writer looking for images to perfectly suit your content, or a company looking to visually tell a story about itself.

In fact, Unsplash has become so popular you may be realizing that you have seen images downloaded from it in many online articles and websites.

The license was updated in 2018 and now does not allow Unsplash photos to be sold without being first modified, which includes printed images and photos printed on goods.

App

The Unsplash App is an app on the Apple App Store. You can use it on your iPhone or iPad. It includes useful features such as drag and drop of photos, and submission of photos to Unsplash right from your portable device. No subscription is required and you have access to over 1.5 millions free images. Not bad for an app.

There is also an android app named Unsplash. However from user reviews it seems that it is more limited than the iOS version and has some issues to be worked out.

Unsplash Photos

Thanks to the entrepreneurial vision of the creators of the site, Unsplash photos have made their way to the far reaches of the internet and beyond. They have helped create websites, demos, physical products, brochures, and many other products. Businesses, independent creators, educational institutions and non-profits have all benefited from the site.

Free Pictures To Use for Business

Unsplash had an interesting beginning. Its creator was having trouble locating images for his company website and ended up having to hire a photographer. Later, he posted the photos publicly on a social media platform and encouraged others to use them.

The practice of companies using photos for profit without paying the photographers is somewhat controversial now.

How Does Unsplash Make Money?

Unsplash is going to be making money through its Unsplash For Brands service, described later.

Unsplash Photos for Free

Sharing something for free, although it may seem counterintuitive at first, attracts contributors. As a result of that the audience grows even larger and the cycle repeats. It has been found that a majority of users who get their images from Unplash have never downloaded stock images. This larger audience is what many companies are after but cannot reach.

Don’t forget: Nothing beats free. And this does not only apply to photos. Once you have a free service that draws millions of hits a month, think about all the ways you can utilize that traffic.

One more interesting thing is, if you click on the info button for a photo, you basically get to see the camera settings for the image, including camera make, aperture, shutter speed, dimensions, focal length and ISO. How great is that, you can see what settings were used to take your favorite images. There is also a share button so you can quickly share a photo via email or social media.

What do you think? How has your experience been with Unsplash? Any issues our readers should know about? Any other similar services I missed?

If you are looking to build your own photography portfolio website, check out

Introducing Offset: What It Means for the Contributor Community

What is Offset? Created by Shutterstock, Offset is a new site showcasing an entirely new collection of images. The site is currently open to select preview customers at

Offset’s purpose is to offer high-quality commercial and editorial imagery with simple and clear licensing terms through an elegant customer experience. Offset images will be available with royalty-free licenses at flat, per-image pricing.

Offset images are gathered from world-class assignment photographers, publishers, and agencies, with a focus on unique, authentic content. This collection of images is not available on Shutterstock or vice versa, and Offset images are not available by subscription. Offset images are independently sourced and do not come from Shutterstock contributors.

Why create a new site?

Offset is more than a unique collection; it’s a unique search experience, purchasing experience and brand that’s specifically tailored to the needs of buyers of high-end imagery.

How is Offset content different from Shutterstock content?

In contrast to Shutterstock’s submission and review process, each Offset image is hand-selected by a team of curators. The Offset team seeks out exceptional photos and illustrations with specific qualities:

Beautiful images that tell a story alone or together
Authentic and natural-looking images
Sophisticated and contemporary art direction and style
The highest production values and standards

Who are the artists who contribute to Offset? Can I contribute?

Offset contributors are visual storytellers with a deep passion for their craft. Many are dedicated assignment photographers and illustrators who have never licensed their images as stock before. Currently the process is highly selective and by invitation only.

Who decides which images are chosen for Offset?

Offset curators have comprehensive backgrounds in photography and illustration, with prior experience working with the top photographers and studios at leading image agencies, publishers, and consumer brands. Those brands include National Geographic, William Sonoma, Trunk Archive, the Associated Press, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and others.

How is Offset being rolled out?

Our goal is for Offset to join the Shutterstock family as the premier destination for visually powerful, authentic, and hard-to-find images. For now, Offset is open only to a preview audience of customers. However, we plan to expand the number of invited customers, open the site to the public, and ramp up our marketing throughout 2013.

What is DrawKit

DrawKit is an open source website that provides ready-to-use illustrations. The illustrations provided are completely free and you don’t need to add attribution when using them. That is one of the reasons why DrawKit is perfect for both commercial and personal projects.

The website updates its illustrations collections every week, which means there are always fresh new images. You can also sign up for weekly illustrations to make sure you get the updated collections.

DrawKit Features

There are plenty of open-source websites available out there, but there are some things that make DrawKit worth considering. Here are some of them:

1. Free illustrations with MIT license

DrawKit offers plenty of free illustrations under an MIT license. This means that you can use the illustrations for free both for personal and commercial needs without the need to add attributions.

2. Plenty of categories

It is easy to look for the illustrations you need in this website since it is neatly categorized into several themes. You only need to find the categories you need and then browse through it to find the images you want.

3. Customizable

Illustrations in DrawKit are available in two styles, bright colored and simple black-and white sketches. They are also customisable, so you can edit the illustrations as you like to suit your needs. Every component of the illustrations from its color, layout to backgrounds are customizable. You can even scale them to any size you want.

4. Icons and animations are also available

DrawKit does not only provide illustrations, but also icons and animations. The illustrations and icons come in SVG and PNG files, while the animations come in json files.

5. New illustrations update every week

James Daly, the author of this website aims to add 2 -4 new illustrations every day. Therefore, you can expect new fresh images on the websites every week. You can also subscribe to get free weekly illustrations from DrawKit.

6. You can request new illustrations

DrawKit also allows its user to request or vote on what illustrations to create next. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about not finding the illustrations you need as you can request them. The requested illustrations are arranged by the number of votes, so you can see which illustrations are most voted.

Those are some features that make DrawKit worth trying for anyone who needs illustrations for their project. Not only has a wide selection of free customizable illustrations, the website itself is user friendly and easy to navigate. You can search per available category and download them at once.

An Introduction To Humaaans

If you’re a designer in tech you’ve likely come across them. Any search for UI or product design on Dribbble will yield at least a few. Amid the sea of pastel blues and pinks, accented neon purples and gamboge yellows, these faceless, nebulous bodies have become the lorem ipsum of graphic embellishment in todays product landscape.

Humaaans is a library of vector based, free-to-use illustrations launched in late 2018 by Pablo Stanley, Design Lead at InVision. Upon its arrival, this mix-and-match collection exploded in popularity, inspiring waves of similarly floaty, ambiguous humanoids that remain on-trend to this day.

For many upstart product designers, illustration libraries are a practical resource to easily extend the communication around a product. As with all free asset collections, they can expedite the design process while elevating the status of the original creator.

However, for companies trying to establish a brand, these libraries can act as pitfalls against finding a unique voice within the market.

The Purpose of Illustrations

Their role in product.

Illustrations used in product need to live within the context of a brand. This means that effective graphics are supplemental to the overall messaging, serving only to elevate what is already being communicated through an established design system. If a team finds benefit in curating illustrations, time, attention, and budget is needed in order to make sure the deliverables add value to the product experience.

Several digital product companies already utilize custom illustrations to elevate their brand experience. Examples include:

Duolingo uses its famous owl and school-like graphics to communicate their friendly, game-based approach to language learning. Most graphics in the app serve as visual aids within lessons.

CoStar incorporates abstract symbols and objects to add a little mysticism to an otherwise pulled-back, monochromatic astrology brand.

Byte uses colourful 3D renderings to communicate the diversity of content found within the app, suggesting an energetic and ever-changing experience.

Despite their differences, the common thread between these apps is how they use graphics as a tool to push communication. Everything is presented with a purpose in mind, elevating the brands overall messaging.

All too often, designers plonk in graphics because someone decided “we need something here”. This is when libraries like Humaaans come into play. Without consideration into the communication intent behind their illustrations, designers reach for the most immediate aesthetic option on hand. This graphics-for-the-sake-of-it approach dilutes the core messaging of a product through visual ambiguity.

To avoid this, designers looking to add a little art should ask themselves:

What would graphics serve to effectively communicate within the product?
How would their presentation elevate the voice of our brand?

What is Vexels?

Vexels is your one-stop solution for finding Merch-ready designs and graphics. With Vexels, you no longer need to search Google manually for each and every graphic you want to use. You can download everything from backgrounds to icons, text phrases, “Merch-ready designs”, and even t-shirt mockups!

All of their designs look amazing. With over 43,000 graphics in their database, you can find just about anything for any type of design. Content is updated daily, so you will always have new designs to look through. Most of them are editable so you can quickly and easily customize them to your liking.

What can Vexels designs be used for?

For Merchers, VEXELS can be used to source great Merch-ready Designs you can sell t-shirts with on Merch by Amazon and other PODs.

If subscribed, they can be used for creating Merch by Amazon t-shirt designs. But, there is so much more that it can be used for. Here’s a few more example:

Adding Vectors To Existing Designs

I’ve mentioned this several times before, but creating t-shirt variations of best-selling shirts is a great way to increase your monthly earnings. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Rather than upload designs in niches you haven’t explored, you can create variations of already selling designs. This is great for both you and the customer because it gives them more variety to choose from, and is great for you because it gives you a better chance at someone purchasing either of your designs.

Let’s say you have a t-shirt of a bear that is selling pretty well on Amazon. With Vexels, you could quickly download a vector of a tree, slap it on your design, and upload that.

You now have a similar, but still different, variation of your best-selling design.

For Designers

If you are a designer, then Vexels would be perfect for you. Vexels offers a “Merch Subscription Plan” specifically for Merch Sellers and Merch Designers. If you prefer to outsource your designs, you can still make use of Vexels. Simply find the artwork you want to use for a particular design, download it, and tell your designer to use this in their design. This ensures that the design isn’t trademarked and that it can be used for commercial purposes!

What CAN’T the designs be used for?

You obviously can’t resell or redistribute the artwork. You also can’t use the artwork to make offensive, unlawful, defamatory, or pornographic material. Which shouldn’t be a problem for any of you, because Amazon doesn’t allow those types of shirts to sell, either.

An Introduction to Beautiful Flat Icons Design

Flat Design is one of the newest approaches in web design, aiming for simplicity and powerful visual impact and using shapes as patterns and backgrounds. Microsoft’s Metro user interface is probably the most popular Flat Design example.

We already discussed the Flat Design approach in-depth, and we did it for quite some time now. Most of you know Designmodo promotes Flat Design with proudness and designers its own framework according to the Flat Design principles. Therefore today we took our time to browse around the web and find even more flat design examples, only this time we will focus mostly on icons, not on web designs as whole.

Responsive Icon

This icon can be used to mark themes and layouts which are responsive and fit every device perfectly. Funny about this is that if you look for more than five seconds at the icon, the background will change. Actually, it is not really happening, but your eyes see it that way.

Calendar and Night Icon

There are two icons here: there is the calendar icon, which in my opinion is the result of some amazing work, and a more abstract icon, which could be used for activating a “sleep mode” for example. Although the second icon is a bit abstract, the calendar is amazing.

What Is Behance?

Behance is one of the many tools that Adobe has to help creators stand out. It’s somewhat like LinkedIn, in the sense that you can use it to showcase your professional work and connect with others.

Creators in several fields can use Behance, but it’s especially helpful for visual artists such as designers, photographers, and videographers.

Behance is quite old in social media terms; Adobe launched the service in 2005.

What Can You Do on Behance?

Behance’s offerings are pretty diverse, and knowing what you can use the service for before signing up will help you get the most out of it. Below is a breakdown of the main things you can use this Adobe-owned tool for.

The main reason most creators use Behance is for creating a portfolio. You can publish projects that you’ve either completed for clients or for your own enjoyment.

When you create a new project to share, you can include several elements. These include, but are not limited to:

Photos
Videos
Audio

If you’ve got an Adobe Lightroom account, you can save time and import visuals directly from there. When you create new projects on Behance, you can increase your visibility by adding tags and sharing the tools you’ve used.

Display NFTs

In 2021, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) became increasingly prominent online. If done correctly, you can potentially build an additional income stream by selling these.

On Behance, you can share your NFTs with others. After creating them, all you need to do is connect your cryptocurrency wallet with your Adobe account and make the tokens visible to others.