Carrie Cousins

Business / 13 Sep 2024

10 SEO Habits That Will Increase Website Traffic

Everyone wants more website traffic, right? But are you doing all the little things that help boost search engine ranking with every new image upload or content update?

Creating the right habits from the start will keep your website in tip-top shape and hopefully result in bonus points from the Google algorithm.

The good news is that this list is packed with actionable, everyday tips. Start with a solid website framework and then employ these techniques with every update to get on the path to creating great SEO habits that won’t be tough to maintain.

PowerPoint Templates / 12 Sep 2024

Pitch Deck Design: 10 Tips to Stand Out

A good pitch deck is designed for specifically one thing – to help your startup get funding from investors. But how do you stand out from the crowd, and make a memorable impression?

There’s a delicate balance to creating a deck with just enough slides to entice potential funders, without providing so much information that they are overwhelmed.

Most pitch decks contain less than 20 slides. So how do you create a pitch deck design that stands out? Here are our ten tips to help you get started.

Business / 12 Sep 2024

How Much Should You Charge for Design Services?

It might be one of the most asked questions among freelance designers: what do you charge clients?

There can be so many variables in setting rates that you can stick to, and you have to make a choice between hourly and fixed options. Either way, a good pricing strategy can help you get the clients you want and earn a solid income from freelance work.

After you figure out pricing. Which is a challenge for almost anyone!

Background Textures / 30 Aug 2024

30+ Background Design Trends & Styles for 2024

One of the most important early design decisions you will make is what kind of background will carry a project. Should it be a single color, colorless, use trendy elements such as geometric shapes, gradients, or wood grain patterns? Or would a solid background design can help make a project shine?

Staying on trend with background design styles is important as well. A trendy background choice shows that a website design is modern and the content is new. A modern visual framework can even signal a user that you are thinking about their needs and making the most of the tools that will make their experience better.

So how do you do it? Here’s a look at background design trends and styles, with a few great options to try.

Business / 19 Aug 2024

What Is a Lookbook? (+ 20 Stunning Examples)

Whether you’re a designer wanting to show off work or have a request to create one for a client, a lookbook can be an effective way to showcase a variety of elements in a single design.

A lookbook is a portfolio of sorts and has wide application in a number of fields, including website design, graphic design, and development.

Here’s a guide to what a lookbook is, what to include in one when you start designing it, and some examples that are sure to help you find a little lookbook inspiration.

Font Collections / 25 Jun 2024

30+ Typography Trends for 2024

Want to give your design a quick facelift? Using new and interesting typography trends might be the answer. Designers are using bold colors, cutouts, gradients, and even customizations to create lettering that stands out.

Changing typefaces or recreating an image or header in a trending style can give a design a fresh look without a full-scale overhaul. Not sure where to start? This list features typography trends with examples to use as inspiration for how to use them.

Here’s a look at the top typography trends this year.

Procreate Brushes / 1 May 2024

20+ Procreate Tutorials (For Drawing, Lettering, Sketching + More)

Procreate is one of the hottest drawing apps on the market. It’s a robust tool that you can use for fun, personal projects as well as professional and client work on your iPad.

With a tool that has so much functionality, it can be a little overwhelming to think about it all. Working through tutorials can help, so we’ve collected 15 for Procreate to help you get started. These cover off all different levels of knowledge, and help you learn how to draw, letter, sketch and more in Procreate. Grab your iPad, pencil, and dive into some creative work!

And the best part is that every one is free.

Shopify Themes / 16 Apr 2024

35 Beautifully Designed Shopify Themes for 2024

There are over 3.7 million online stores built on Shopify. If you were to explore some of these stores, they would mostly look the same since many of these stores still use the default free themes.

The key to building a successful Shopify store that drives continuous sales is to use a high-quality and professional theme that makes your shop look more authoritative and memorable. Today, we’ll help you achieve that goal.

In this post, we showcase some of the best and most beautifully designed Shopify themes you can use to setup an online store that stands out from the crowd.

The visual appeal of the theme design is important but we also made sure these themes have proper layouts that boost engagement and responsive designs that look great across various devices and platforms. Rest assured, you can’t go wrong with any of these Shopify themes.

Business / 16 Apr 2024

Everything a Web Designer Needs to Know in 2024

The job title “web designer” keeps expanding. Depending on your role and how many people are on your team, the term “web designer” can mean a number of things, and the scope that it covers seems to keep growing with every year that passes.

It can be beneficial for you to be familiar with multiple roles to help be the best, most functional, web designer you can be in 2023.

Here’s everything you need to know. From having a grasp on your job description, to the visual elements of web design, to the functional elements of how a web project needs to work and perform.

Flyer Templates / 9 Feb 2024

Flyer Design Ideas & Inspiration: How to Stand Out

A flyer is a great way to promote your work, event, or even a business offering. This small piece of collateral is a point of contact that can help get people excited about something and generate interest.

A well-designed flyer grabs the attention of users and is something that people want to grab a hold of.

While most flyers are on the smaller side, they can include anything from printed pieces that are postcard size to information that is the size of a sheet of office paper (and even slightly larger).

Here’s how you create a flyer design that stands out.

Software / 29 Jan 2024

The 13 Best Photoshop Alternatives for Mac (2024)

You don’t have to use Adobe Photoshop on your Mac to edit images like a pro. There are plenty of Photoshop alternatives for Mac that you can download or use in-browser to create just the right images and graphics for your projects. And some of them are completely free!

None of these are necessarily one-size-fits-all solutions. Each tool tends to serve a specific purpose; Do you want to edit online or on a desktop? Are you editing photos or multiple file types? Is all the work for web or will images get printed?

Here’s a list of the best Photoshop alternatives for Mac in 2023, but not in any particular order. Have a read through to find the one that’s right for you.

Trends / 11 Jan 2024

50 Best Website Color Schemes of 2024

Does it ever seem like certain website color schemes just get all the attention? As with every other aspect of web design, there are color schemes that tend to trend more than others. Bright colors, stark palettes, and even some mismatching schemes are elements of color that are trending.

Here’s a look at some of the best website color schemes (in no particular order). For each, we’re also sharing the color codes that make up the key elements of the design, so it’s easy to play around with these color schemes yourself too!

One of the biggest trends in color schemes that you might notice is the use of dark dominant colors and backgrounds and shades of gold and bright red or pink hues for accents. This dark/light combo is an evolution of black and red in many minimal designs from a few years ago with a more modern touch.

Here are some great examples of color choices done right, to inspire your next project.