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November 20, 2024

Fonts That Speak: Typography as a Storytelling Tool in Modern Design

Typography plays a pivotal role in every design and it has the power to make or break a creation or sometimes even an entire business.

While good typography has helped businesses boost revenue bad typography has cost brands millions, mainly as a result of disregard for the psychological effects and the user experience of typography design.

The style and design of the fonts you use are just as important as the wording you choose for the messages in a design. As the German typographer Hans Peter Willberg once said, “typefaces are not only there to be read, you also see them.”

Let’s dive into the world of typography design and explore how it relates to storytelling to figure out how you can leverage it.

Importance of Typography in Storytelling

For centuries, typography has been more of an art form than just text. The history of calligraphy dates all the way back to 200 BCE. In every ancient culture, from China to Greece and Rome, the inscriptionists and writers always put an emphasis on making letters look beautiful.

Even today, great designers go the extra mile to make typography look exceptional and stand out, not just to make text and titles beautiful but also to improve readability and user experience. And it’s especially a key aspect in storytelling.

Take a wedding invitation, for example. A handpicked script handwritten or calligraphy-style font goes a long way to make the entire invitation look romantic and create a meaningful connection with the reader.

On the other hand, a bad choice of fonts can completely ruin the entire purpose of the design as well as the reputation of the brand.

Or it could even ruin an important awards ceremony, like the Oscars 2017.

To tell a great story, you need good copy. A brilliantly worded story can deliver a message much more effectively than a statement. But, you also need the right font to create a meaningful and emotional connection through that story.

How Typography Evokes Emotions

There’s a psychological impact behind the different styles of fonts you use in design. Have you noticed how brands from certain industries always prefer to use serif fonts while businesses in the creative industry stick to sans-serif fonts?

Even when creating designs related to certain topics, you will choose fonts appropriately. For a nature-themed design, you will use a brush font. Or for an urban-themed design, you will prefer a graffiti-style font.

No matter which style of font you use, typography has the ability to evoke emotions. Sometimes, seeing a classic retro-style font in an advertisement will take you back to your childhood. Or a handwritten text will remind you of a note from your mother.

Typography also plays a role in conveying the overall mood of the design. Depending on the context, it could make you hungry, thirsty, happy, sad, or even disgusted at times.

Typography as a Visual Voice

Typography is a defining factor of the visual voice and tone of your brand’s messaging. With the correct font, you can choose to make your message formal or playful.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but more often than not, you’d be lost without the words. The example above shows the power of the word and the importance of the font choices.

Fonts are often used to give designs a personality. There’s a reason why you almost always see handwritten script fonts in Christmas-themed designs. Or serif fonts in luxury branding designs. It’s all part of creating an overall visual voice and tone for the design.

Guiding Readers on a Journey

Take a closer look at this article you’re reading. You’ll notice how easy it is to scan through this post, thanks to the subheadings we use throughout the article. In the section below, you’ll see how we create another level to this hierarchy with numbered subheadings to make things even simpler for you to read.

Without the subheadings, bullet points, and numbered lists, this article will be a plain wall of text. You will feel overwhelmed and bored to even attempt to read it.

But, through this typography hierarchy, we are able to take you, the reader, on a journey. Sometimes we’ll use bolded text to emphasize key points or italics to bring more attention to things.

The scale, weight, style, and spacing in typography all play a role in reinforcing narratives and guiding the reader by maintaining their attention. That’s the power of typography!

5 Tips for Typographic Storytelling

There are many factors to consider in typographic storytelling. The following are some of the most important things you should consider for creating effective stories.

1. Consistency and Relevance

When choosing a font, always consider its relevancy to the subject matter as well as the brand messaging. Even though sometimes clients come to you with their own list of font choices, it’s your job as the designer to educate them on the importance of typography design.

Creating a relevant and consistent look for typography should be your number one priority.

2. Importance of Font Pairing

Choosing the right font to accompany your main font is another important part of typographic storytelling. It’s with a good combination of fonts for titles and body text you can create good contrast and hierarchy in designs.

Using flexible fonts with multiple font weights and styles is a great way to make sure your designs can shine on every medium and platform.

3. Ensure Readability

Some fonts will look great on digital designs but come out distorted in prints. Other fonts will often look amazing in large sizes but completely unreadable in small text.

Readability is paramount in every design. You should take time to test every font in different sizes and formats to ensure they look great no matter how and where you use them.

4. Print vs Digital

Understanding the differences between the print and digital mediums is crucial to creating typography designs that resonate with the target audience. People interact with these two platforms very differently. Some users will zoom in and out of a digital design to take a closer look while others read the same text on a giant billboard.

Pay close attention to these requirements and details for more effective typographic storytelling.

5. Follow the Trends

Typography continues to evolve with new and unique trends. Whether it’s variable fonts or 3D color fonts, it’s your job to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and adopt them for appropriate projects. These trends will help elevate your storytelling in modern design.

Conclusion

When talking about typography, we can’t forget about emojis. Like it or not, they are now part of storytelling and how we write and express our emotions. Even the Oxford Dictionary has recognized emojis as words.

Much like the calligraphy letters from ancient times, there will come a day in the distant future when researchers will analyze the meaning behind emojis. That will be our proud contribution to the history of typography.

Nevertheless, you can’t ignore the importance of typography and its impact on storytelling, especially as a designer. So, continue to learn and explore new ways to utilize it to your advantage. You can start by reading up on our top typography trends guide.

November 20, 2024

Invoker Commands: Additional Ways to Work With Dialog, Popover… and More?

The Popover API and <dialog> element are two of my favorite new platform features. In fact, I recently [wrote a detailed overview of their use cases] and the sorts of things you can do with them, even learning a few tricks in the process that I couldn’t find documented anywhere else.

I’ll admit that one thing that I really dislike about popovers and dialogs is that they could’ve easily been combined into a single API. They cover different use cases (notably, dialogs are typically modal) but are quite similar in practice, and yet their implementations are different.

Well, web browsers are now experimenting with two HTML attributes — technically, they’re called “invoker commands” — that are designed to invoke popovers, dialogs, and further down the line, all kinds of actions without writing JavaScript. Although, if you do reach for JavaScript, the new attributes — command and commandfor — come with some new events that we can listen for.

Invoker commands? I’m sure you have questions, so let’s dive in.

We’re in experimental territory

Before we get into the weeds, we’re dealing with experimental features. To use invoker commands today in November 2024 you’ll need Chrome Canary 134+ with the enable-experimental-web-platform-features flag set to Enabled, Firefox Nightly 135+ with the dom.element.invokers.enabled flag set to true, or Safari Technology Preview with the InvokerAttributesEnabled flag set to true.

I’m optimistic we’ll get baseline coverage for command and commandfor in due time considering how nicely they abstract the kind of work that currently takes a hefty amount of scripting.

Basic `command` and `commandfor` usage

First, you’ll need a <button> or a button-esque <input> along the lines of <input type="button"> or <input type="reset">. Next, tack on the command attribute. The command value should be the command name that you want the button to invoke (e.g., show-modal). After that, drop the commandfor attribute in there referencing the dialog or popover you’re targeting by its id.

<button command="show-modal" commandfor="dialogA">Show dialogA</button>

<dialog id="dialogA">...</dialog>

In this example, I have a <button> element with a command attribute set to show-modal and a commandfor attribute set to dialogA, which matches the id of a <dialog> element we’re targeting:

Let’s get into the possible values for these invoker commands and dissect what they’re doing.

Looking closer at the attribute values

The show-modal value is the command that I just showed you in that last example. Specifically, it’s the HTML-invoked equivalent of JavaScript’s showModal() method.

The main benefit is that show-modal enables us to, well… show a modal without reaching directly for JavaScript. Yes, this is almost identical to how HTML-invoked popovers already work with the popovertarget and popovertargetaction attributes, so it’s cool that the “balance is being redressed” as the Open UI explainer describes it, even more so because you can use the command and commandfor invoker commands for popovers too.

There isn’t a show command to invoke show() for creating non-modal dialogs. I’ve mentioned before that non-modal dialogs are redundant now that we have the Popover API, especially since popovers have ::backdrops and other dialog-like features. My bold prediction is that non-modal dialogs will be quietly phased out over time.

The close command is the HTML-invoked equivalent of JavaScript’s close() method used for closing the dialog. You probably could have guessed that based on the name alone!

<dialog id="dialogA">
  <!-- Close #dialogA -->
  <button command="close" commandfor="dialogA">Close dialogA</button>
</dialog>

The `show-popover`, `hide-popover`, and `toggle-popover` values

<button command="show-popover" commandfor="id">

…invokes showPopover(), and is the same thing as:

<button popovertargetaction="show" popovertarget="id">

Similarly:

<button command="hide-popover" commandfor="id">

…invokes hidePopover(), and is the same thing as:

<button popovertargetaction="hide" popovertarget="id">

Finally:

<button command="toggle-popover" commandfor="id">

…invokes togglePopover(), and is the same thing as:

<button popovertargetaction="toggle" popovertarget="id">
<!--  or <button popovertarget="id">, since ‘toggle’ is the default action anyway. -->

I know all of this can be tough to organize in your mind’s eye, so perhaps a table will help tie things together:

`command`	Invokes	`popovertargetaction` equivalent
`show-popover`	`showPopover()`	`show`
`hide-popover`	`hidePopover()`	`hide`
`toggle-popover`	`togglePopover()`	`toggle`

So… yeah, popovers can already be invoked using HTML attributes, making command and commandfor not all that useful in this context. But like I said, invoker commands also come with some useful JavaScript stuff, so let’s dive into all of that.

Listening to commands with JavaScript

Invoker commands dispatch a command event to the target whenever their source button is clicked on, which we can listen for and work with in JavaScript. This isn’t required for a <dialog> element’s close event, or a popover attribute’s toggle or beforetoggle event, because we can already listen for those, right?

For example, the Dialog API doesn’t dispatch an event when a <dialog> is shown. So, let’s use invoker commands to listen for the command event instead, and then read event.command to take the appropriate action.

// Select all dialogs
const dialogs = document.querySelectorAll("dialog");

// Loop all dialogs
dialogs.forEach(dialog => {

  // Listen for close (as normal)
  dialog.addEventListener("close", () => {
    // Dialog was closed
  });

  // Listen for command
  dialog.addEventListener("command", event => {

    // If command is show-modal
    if (event.command == "show-modal") {
      // Dialog was shown (modally)
    }

    // Another way to listen for close
    else if (event.command == "close") {
      // Dialog was closed
    }

  });
});

So invoker commands give us additional ways to work with dialogs and popovers, and in some scenarios, they’ll be less verbose. In other scenarios though, they’ll be more verbose. Your approach should depend on what you need your dialogs and popovers to do.

For the sake of completeness, here’s an example for popovers, even though it’s largely the same:

// Select all popovers
const popovers = document.querySelectorAll("[popover]");

// Loop all popovers
popovers.forEach(popover => {

  // Listen for command
  popover.addEventListener("command", event => {

    // If command is show-popover
    if (event.command == "show-popover") {
      // Popover was shown
    }

    // If command is hide-popover
    else if (event.command == "hide-popover") {
      // Popover was hidden
    }

    // If command is toggle-popover
    else if (event.command == "toggle-popover") {
      // Popover was toggled
    }

  });
});

Being able to listen for show-popover and hide-popover is useful as we otherwise have to write a sort of “if opened, do this, else do that” logic from within a toggle or beforetoggle event listener or toggle-popover conditional. But <dialog> elements? Yeah, those benefit more from the command and commandfor attributes than they do from this command JavaScript event.

Another thing that’s available to us via JavaScript is event.source, which is the button that invokes the popover or <dialog>:

if (event.command == "toggle-popover") {
  // Toggle the invoker’s class
  event.source.classList.toggle("active");
}

You can also set the command and commandfor attributes using JavaScript:

const button = document.querySelector("button");
const dialog = document.querySelector("dialog");

button.command = "show-modal";
button.commandForElement = dialog; /* Not dialog.id */

…which is only slightly less verbose than:

button.command = "show-modal";
button.setAttribute("commandfor", dialog.id);

Creating custom commands

The command attribute also accepts custom commands prefixed with two dashes (--). I suppose this makes them like CSS custom properties but for JavaScript events and event handler HTML attributes. The latter observation is maybe a bit (or definitely a lot) controversial since using event handler HTML attributes is considered bad practice. But let’s take a look at that anyway, shall we?

Custom commands look like this:

<button command="--spin-me-a-bit" commandfor="record">Spin me a bit</button>
<button command="--spin-me-a-lot" commandfor="record">Spin me a lot</button>
<button command="--spin-me-right-round" commandfor="record">Spin me right round</button>

const record = document.querySelector("#record");

record.addEventListener("command", event => {
  if (event.command == "--spin-me-a-bit") {
    record.style.rotate = "90deg";
  } else if (event.command == "--spin-me-a-lot") {
    record.style.rotate = "180deg";
  } else if (event.command == "--spin-me-right-round") {
    record.style.rotate = "360deg";
  }
});

event.command must match the string with the dashed (--) prefix.

Are `popover` and `<dialog>` the only features that support invoker commands?

According to Open UI, invokers targeting additional elements such as <details> were deferred from the initial release. I think this is because HTML-invoked dialogs and an API that unifies dialogs and popovers is a must-have, whereas other commands (even custom commands) feel more like a nice-to-have deal.

However, based on experimentation (I couldn’t help myself!) web browsers have actually implemented additional invokers to varying degrees. For example, <details> commands work as expected whereas <select> commands match event.command (e.g., show-picker) but fail to actually invoke the method (showPicker()). I missed all of this at first because MDN only mentions dialog and popover.

Open UI also alludes to commands for <input type="file">, <input type="number">, <video>, <audio>, and fullscreen-related methods, but I don’t think that anything is certain at this point.

So, what would be the benefits of invoker commands?

Well, a whole lot less JavaScript for one, especially if more invoker commands are implemented over time. Additionally, we can listen for these commands almost as if they were JavaScript events. But if nothing else, invoker commands simply provide more ways to interact with APIs such as the Dialog and Popover APIs. In a nutshell, it seems like a lot of “dotting i’s” and “crossing-t’s” which is never a bad thing.

Invoker Commands: Additional Ways to Work With Dialog, Popover… and More? originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

November 20, 2024

55+ Best Free Adobe Illustrator Brushes 2025

If you’re looking for new and creative Illustrator brushes to expand your collection, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re sharing a collection of handpicked and free Adobe Illustrator brushes in various categories.

Whether you’re an artist working on a new drawing or a designer enhancing a digital design, this list has all sorts of Illustrator brushes for everyone. Keep scrolling to explore the collection and be sure to download all the brushes. After all, they are free!

We’ve also created a quick guide on how to add brushes to Illustrator to help you out with installing these.

What Type of Free Illustrator Brush Do You Need?

We’ve broken our collection down into different categories, so you can quickly find just the right Illustrator brush for your project!

Pro Brushes
Watercolor Brushes
Calligraphy Brushes
Paint Brushes
Texture Brushes
Line Art Brushes
Ink Brushes
Abstract Brushes
Hair Brushes

Here are just a few great brushes you can download when you subscribe to Envato Elements.

80+ Watercolor ProBrushes for Illustrator

This is a bundle full of Illustrator brushes with various styles of textures. It includes 83 brushes with watercolor strokes and textures. All of which have been handcrafted by a professional designer. The brushes are available in dry, strokes, thin, and a few other categories and they are compatible with Illustrator CS3 and higher.

28 Shader Brushes for Illustrator

Shading is one of the most time-consuming tasks of digital illustrations. But, with this pack of Illustrator brushes, you’ll be able to cut that work in half. The bundle includes 28 unique shader brushes in 4 categories made just for Illustrator. As an added bonus, it also comes with 12 textures.

Outstanding Oil Paint Brushes for Illustrator

If you’re a fan of oil panting-style drawing, this collection of oil paint brushes will come in handy. It includes 50 different brushes that you can use to draw illustrations with realistic oil painting look and feel. The brushes are compatible with Illustrator CS1 and higher.

Scribble & Scrawl Illustrator Brushes

This is a big collection of scribble brushes that are perfect for your creative and professional art projects. It includes 13 standard scribble brushes and 18 squared scribble brushes as well as lots of long and messy brushes. These are ideal for native, primitive, and child-like art designs.

Fine Liner Brushes & Patterns for Illustrator

This Illustrator brushes pack covers all aspects of line art as it comes with a huge selection of brushes for you to select from. There are outline pattern brushes, stipple brushes, line brushes, and many other types of brushes included in the bundle. They are compatible with Illustrator CS5 and higher.

Mosaic Tile Illustrator Brushes

This Adobe Illustrator brush set offers a convenient entry point for artists eager to venture into mosaic art. This set, comprising 10 tile brushes, 25 patterns, and 15 seamless textures, enables you to create realistic artworks that effectively imitate physical mosaic art.

164 Cartoon Vector Brushes for Illustrator

This is a vast collection of expertly crafted digital tools that enable artists to infuse their cartoons, doodles, and other works of art with life. This set includes fun squiggles, expressive strokes, and sections like Regular, Triangle, Squeeze, and Faded brushes.

Grit Photoshop and Illustrator Brushes

A creative bundle of Illustrator brushes for adding a rugged texture to your designs with ease. It includes 20 unique grit variations suitable for both Photoshop and Illustrator. Harnessing this tool can give your creations an authentic distressed look. It’s compatible with CS6 to CC versions of the software.

Rebel Ink – Pen Brushes for Illustrator

Rebel Ink is a dynamic set of 26 Adobe Illustrator brushes with unique characteristics for enhanced customization. They are vector based, delivering versatile and high-quality designs. As a third-party offering, this set provides wide-ranging creative options for personalization, pushing your Illustrator use beyond the usual.

Pixel Perfect – 8bit Brush Tool Kit

This is a unique Adobe Illustrator brush set specifically designed for creating pixel art, taking inspiration from iconic 80s and 90s gaming aesthetics. The tool kit includes a range of pixel brushes, shaders, decorative brushes and a pixel pattern library that allows easy creation of 8-bit to 32-bit inspired art.

17 Colorful Brushes for Adobe Illustrator

You don’t have to be a skilled designer to create beautiful artworks with this pack of Illustrator brushes. It includes 17 colorful brushes with paint splatter designs that can be used to create various styles of crafts from modern art to print designs.

Vintage Illustrator Brush-Kit for Designers

This brush kit is designed for artists who work with vintage-themed drawing styles. The bundle includes 54 different vintage brushes with ink and pen styles. You can also adjust the width of the strokes without affecting the quality as well. You’ll need Illustrator CC to use this brush set.

Liquid Style Brushes for Illustrator

Featuring a retro look and vibe, this pack of Illustrator brushes comes with a trendy liquid style strokes and textures. They are perfect for adding textures and stylistic elements to your various print and digital designs. The brushes are compatible with Illustrator CS5 and higher.

Retro Comic Book Tool Kit – Brushes + Patterns

Comic book artists will surely appreciate this bundle of goodies for Illustrator. It comes complete with 84 vector brushes, 4 comic book texture patterns, overlays, layer styles, and everything you need to draw comic-themed illustrations and designs.

Multicolor Mixed Paint Brushes for Illustrator

This is a very unique brush kit for Illustrator that features 21 brush strokes as graphic styles that allows you to paint with 3 different colors at once. It also includes 24 color swatches but of course, you can also add your own colors. If you’re new to graphic styles, there’s a tutorial on how to use them as well.

Stipple Brush Set for Photoshop & Illustrator

Stipple Brush Set for Photoshop and Illustrator

Stipple brushes are mainly used to adding texture and depth to drawings but with this bundle of Illustrator brushes, you’ll be able to do much more. It includes 30 stipple brushes for Illustrator and 32 brushes for Photoshop.

Free Watercolor Illustrator Brushes

Free Japan Watercolor Brushes for Illustrator

This collection of beautiful Illustrator brushes feature a set of watercolor brushes inspired by Japanese designs. It includes both paint and calligraphy brushes that are perfect for creative artists and illustrators. The brushes are compatible with Illustrator CS3 and higher.

Essential Vector Brushes for Illustrator

This is a free sample brush pack from a premium bundle. The free samples include various vector brushes you can use in Illustrator, including watercolor brushes, charcoal brushes, marker brushes, and more.

Free Creative Watercolor Illustrator Brush Set

A bundle of creative watercolor brushes for Illustrator. These brushes feature realistic watercolor texture designs with both strokes and splash designs. They are most suitable for creative designers.

Free Multicolored Illustrator Brushes

This set of free Illustrator brushes feature multicolored brush stroke designs. It includes 57 different designs you can use with your various creative projects.

Free Calligraphy Illustrator Brushes

Free 10 Calligraphy Illustrator Art Brushes

If you’re looking for brushes for your calligraphy artworks, this brush pack is perfect for you. It includes 10 free calligraphy brushes for Illustrator featuring hand-crafted designs.

Free Artistic Sketch and Calligraphy Brushes

This set features a collection of simple and free Illustrator brushes you can use with both your sketch artworks as well as calligraphy designs. The brushes are free to use with your creative projects.

Free Paint Illustrator Brushes

Free Painted Canvas Brushes for Illustrator

This pack includes more than 60 different painted canvas brushes inspired by canvas paintings. Each brush in this pack has a unique design that will allow you to craft amazing illustrations with Adobe Illustrator.

12 Free Wax Crayon Effect Brushes for Illustrator

A collection of bright and colorful brushes for Illustrator. This bundle includes 12 wax crayon brushes you can use to paint, draw, and add texture. These are pattern brushes and they will repeat along the path you draw.

12 Free Brush Stroke Illustrator Brushes

A bundle of free Illustrator brushes featuring watercolor and paint-style brush stroke designs. This pack is completely free to download and use with your creative projects.

Preppy Art – Free Illustrator Brushes

Made from real paint strokes, this free pack of paint brushes for Illustrator is a must-have for every designer and artist. It includes 29 brushes in vector format with textures inspired by designs from the 1960s.

Marker Pen Strokes Free Illustrator Brushes

This set of free brush pack comes with a set of Illustrator brushes that feature marker pen stroke designs. It includes 64 different brush designs you can use to add texture and draw stylish illustrations.

Patts Brush Collection Free Sample

Patts Brush collection is a premium Illustrator brush pack. The artist was kind enough to include a free sample set of brushes for you to try and use with your personal projects. You can download them for free.

Free Texture Illustrator Brushes

Day 1 – Free Illustrator Texture Brushes

This bundle includes a set of 5 free texture brushes you can use in your art and graphic designs. These scatter brushes are just as good as a premium brush set. They are available in Procreate and Affinity formats too.

Retro Strokes Free Illustrator Brushes

This free Illustrator brush pack includes 9 unique vector brushes inspired by retro art. Each brush in this pack has a different stroke design, which will allow you to use them for outlines, shading, and many other types of work.

Free Spray Paint Stipple Brushes for Illustrator

This is a collection of spray paint-inspired brushes for Illustrator. These brushes have been made using real spray paint designs and they allow you to create authentic textures and artworks for various illustrations.

Free Spray & Hatch Illustrator Brushes

This is a collection of creative Illustrator brushes you can use to add texture to your designs. It includes two different styles of brushes featuring 10 spray painting brushes and 10 hatch texture brushes. All free to download.

30 Free Vintage Shading Brushes for Illustrator

Use this big bundle of shading brushes to give a vintage look and feel to your various graphic designs. It includes 30 brushes with various styles of designs. You can download them all for free.

55 Free Illustrator Vector Brushes Collection

This is actually a premium brush pack that includes 55 high-quality texture brushes for Illustrator. Somehow the brush pack is still free to download. You better grab it while it lasts.

Free Wax Crayon Texture Illustrator Brushes

This free bundle features a set of 40 unique Illustrator brushes that feature creative wax crayon style textures. These are perfect for adding depth and textures to your drawings. The brushes are compatible with both Illustrator and Affinity Designer.

Small Wonders – Free Texture Illustrator Brushes

Small Wonders is a bundle of premium Illustrator brushes. But it also includes a free sample of the brush pack that includes a few texture brushes you can use in your personal design projects for free.

Free Line Art Illustrator Brushes

Free Outline Brushes for Illustrator

This set of free outline brushes for Illustrator will surely come in handy when you’re working with line art designs. This brush set features 60 different brushes including dashed, rounded, abstract, and various other brush styles.

Free Handmade Pencil Brushes for Illustrator

This is a bundle of free goodies for Illustrator that includes free pencil brushes, text effects, texture patterns, and much more. It’s a must-have for artists and designers who create hand-drawn artworks.

Free Natural Line Art Illustrator Brushes

A set of line art Illustrator brushes featuring natural flowing designs. These brushes are free to download and use with your personal projects.

Paper Tooth Free Illustrator Line Brushes

This is a bundle of high-quality Illustrator brushes designed for creating vector line artworks. The pack includes multiple brushes with various stroke designs with jagged edges.

Free Floral Pattern Brushes For Illustrator

Even though this isn’t technically line art, we wanted to include this beautiful floral pattern brush set on our list. It includes 25 floral pattern brushes as well as 25 vector illustrations that work with Illustrator CS6 and higher.

Free Ink Illustrator Brushes

Free 24 Marker Pen Brushes for Illustrator

A set of marker pen brushes for creative projects. This pack comes with a set of 24 brushes in 6 different styles featuring outline, thick, scribble, messy, and many other styles of marker pen brush designs.

31 Free Hand Crafted Grunge Marker Brushes

Another collection of marker brushes featuring hand-crafted brush designs. This bundle includes 31 different brushes with classic grunge designs. You can use them to draw art and craft backgrounds as well.

Free Dry Ink Illustrator Brushes

This free bundle includes a set of creative Illustrator brushes featuring dry ink designs. These brushes are ideal for creative projects and artworks.

Free Adobe Illustrator Grunge Brushes

Another free Illustrator brush pack that comes with a set of ink-like brushes with various grunge designs. These are most suitable for digital drawings.

Free Abstract Illustrator Brushes

Free Vintage Banner Brushes for Illustrator

This is a very unique abstract Illustrator brush pack that features a collection of banner brushes. These are perfect adding small banner icons and graphics to your artworks and designs.

Free Rope Brush for Illustrator

A creative Illustrator brush featuring a rope-style texture design. This brush is perfect for adding borders and texture to different types of art and graphics.

Free Vintage Illustrator Border Brushes

If you want to add elegant vintage-style decorative borders to your designs, this Illustrator brush set will come in handy. It includes 5 stylish border brushes with vintage patterns for free.

Free Tribal Illustrator Brushes

This free Illustrator brush set features creative tribal-style brushes. You can use them to add decorative elements to your designs as well as to add creative borders to illustrations.

Free Illustrator Border Brushes Collection

Another collection of free border brushes for Illustrator. This brush set includes various styles of geometric brushes you can use in your designs. There are 15 different brushes in this pack.

Free Nature Border Brushes for Illustrator

You can download this brush pack for free to add beautiful nature-themed borders to your artwork. These brushes come in 7 different styles for you to choose from.

Free Hand-Drawn Arrow Brushes for Illustrator

A collection of free arrow brushes for Illustrator. If you want to draw an arrow for your new banner ad or illustration, look no further. This pack includes 13 different arrow brushes for you to grab for free.

Free Lipstick Vector Brushes for Illustrator

An Illustrator brush with a lipstick stamp may seem quite odd at first, but it will serve as a great source when designing patterns and backgrounds for creative projects such as greeting cards and banners.

4 Free Doodle Brushes for Illustrator

This is a small collection of simple Illustrator brushes you can use to draw doodles with hand-drawn look and feel. It’s also perfect for drawing borders and frames as well.

Free Hair Illustrator Brushes

The Hairbrush Kit – Free Illustrator Brushes

A must-have brush pack for drawing hair. This set of free Illustrator brushes are ideal for artists and illustrators who work with character illustrations.

How to Add Brushes to Illustrator

Adding brush packs in Illustrator is quite easy. Simply follow the steps below.

First, make sure to extract all the files in the downloaded ZIP file
Then locate the .AI file that contains all the brushes
Open the Illustrator app and go to the Window menu and to Brush Libraries >> Other Library
Now browse to the folder where your downloaded .AI brush library file is located and open it
That’s it!

For more professional and high-quality brushes, be sure to check out our best Photoshop and Illustrator brushes collection.

November 20, 2024

30+ Clever and Funny Christmas Print Ads

Christmas is nigh upon us. You’re likely rushing around like a crazy person this week trying to get all your work done, finish up your shopping, preparing to travel, etc. Let’s take a minute to slow down and absorb some solid Christmas-themed design inspiration.

In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the clever and/or funny Christmas ads. Some will make you laugh, others might earn an approving nod or even a roll of the eyes. All are definitely worth a look and are sure to get your brain in a creative mode.

Meaningful Christmas

It’s important to remember that Christmas is all about giving and sharing your joy with others. These emotional Christmas ads from non-profit organizations highlight that in clever ways. The creativity in these ads help bring attention to important causes and make someone else’s Christmas a joyful one.

This Is Not Christmas

Waiting for Christmas

This is no place to call home

Redirected Letters to Santa

ADOPT A GIFT

Calling All Santas

While the Grinch might be a familiar theme this season, the most popular character in Christmas ads is Santa Claus. The jolly old elf – and derivatives – easily evokes holiday emotions.

Santa’s Secret

Stylish Santa for Jupiter Gentleman’s Threads

Giver Viacci Travel

McDonald’s Santa

Cairo Festival

Construction Santa

Omino Bianco Laundry Santa

Feeling Grinchy

The Grinch has been a character of the holiday season since the original animated film, “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” came out in 1966. The character is known for his antics and hate for the holiday at the start of the movie. This season the character is being revived in a new film and is a mainstay in Christmas advertising.

The Grinch for Wonderful Pistachios

Grinch Billboards

Window World

Christmas Trees and Decorations

Sometimes the most clever print ad designs from the holiday season focus on elements that everyone recognizes, such as Christmas trees and decorations. These ads bring together a different spin on holiday traditions and gift-giving.

Black and Decker Christmas Tree

Carla Christmas Tree

Red Cross Stocking

Stihl Christmas Tree

Christmas Pencil

Christmas Pets

Animals are a common character in Christmas print promotions – maybe it is the cute factor. These animals are sure to grab your attention and pull your giving spirit.

Shave-a-Thon Christmas

Champion Pet Food Christmas Adoption

Christmas Songs

Simple Christmas Connections

Sometimes the smallest hint of the holidays in concert with brand identity can be the perfect marriage of elements. Creating a holiday theme that’s not so overtly holiday is a craft in itself. (And it seems like beer brands have this technique mastered.)

Heineken Mistletoe

AB InBev Merry Christmas

Interesting Artwork

Combining elements and imagery that’s a little unexpected is a common advertising tactic. That is just as applicable in the holiday season.

Reinbeer

CADD Don’t Drink and Drive

Dylon Clothes Dye

BMW Jingle Bells

Kmart Jingle Joes

Pirates of Christmas

Have a Good Holiday!

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah or Festivus, we here at Design Shack would like to wish you a very happy holiday season. Let us know what you think of the ads featured and tell us if you’ve seen any others worth sharing.

November 20, 2024

Swagger Meets Laravel: An In-Depth Integration Tutorial

Swagger, also known as OpenAPI, offers a powerful way to document and test APIs interactively. Integrating Swagger with Laravel helps create a comprehensive and user-friendly API documentation experience. This tutorial will guide you through integrating Swagger with your Laravel application, focusing on the key steps without delving into code. 1. Setting Up Your Laravel Project …

Continue reading "Swagger Meets Laravel: An In-Depth Integration Tutorial"

The post Swagger Meets Laravel: An In-Depth Integration Tutorial first appeared on Lucid Softech.

November 20, 2024

20+Top Free Smoke Photoshop Brushes for Eye-Catching Visuals

When it comes to leveling up your designs, few tools can rival the dramatic flair of a smoke brush in Photoshop. Whether you’re crafting ethereal album covers, cinematic posters, or moody social media graphics, smoke effects are a go-to for creating depth, intrigue, and atmosphere. But let’s be honest—hunting down high-quality tools often feels like sifting through fog. That’s where free smoke Photoshop brushes come in, saving your time and your wallet.

Think of these brushes as a shortcut to visual storytelling. Instead of painstakingly creating smoke from scratch, a few clicks can conjure swirling tendrils or hazy plumes that perfectly suit your vibe. It’s as if someone handed you a magic wand labeled “Instant Atmosphere.”

But why should you care about finding the right smoke brush for Photoshop? Simple: not all smoke is created equal. A good smoke brush packs realism and flexibility, blending seamlessly with your design. A bad one? It sticks out like a sore thumb, killing the mood you’re trying to build.

Let’s talk about usability. The best free Photoshop smoke brushes are not only versatile but intuitive, letting you adjust size, opacity, and flow in seconds. You don’t need to be a pro digital artist to make these tools work for you—though if you are, they’ll feel like an extension of your creativity.

What makes this collection stand out? These brushes aren’t just functional; they’re handpicked to offer variety—wispy tendrils for elegance, thick plumes for drama, and everything in between. Whether you’re designing surreal portraits or adding atmospheric overlays to your photography, you’ll find a brush here to match your vision.

With that said, it’s time to clear the air—literally. Let’s dive into the list of free Photoshop smoke brushes that will take your designs to new heights.

Free Smoke Photoshop Brushes

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Free Photoshop Smoke Brushes

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Thick Smoke Photoshop Brushes

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Free Particle Smoke Photoshop Brush Set

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Smoke Brushes for Photoshop

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Free Smoke Brush Photoshop

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Thin Smoke Brushes

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Free Realistic Smoke Brushes for Photoshop

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Cigarette Smoke Brushes

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Smoke Photoshop Brushes

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Photoshop Smoke Brushes

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Smoke Brush Set

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Real Smoke Brushes

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Ink, Smoke Splatter Brushes Photoshop

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“Here are Some Premium Options to Consider”

20 Smoke Photoshop Brushes

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Smoke Brushes

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20 Vertical Smoke Brushes

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100 Cloudy Smoke Photoshop Stamp Brushes

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Smoke Photoshop Brushes

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The post 20+Top Free Smoke Photoshop Brushes for Eye-Catching Visuals appeared first on CSS Author.

November 19, 2024

70+ Best Stencil Fonts 2025

Looking for the best stencil fonts for your next design project? We’ve collected our favorite stencil letter fonts to give you dozens to choose from, all beautifully crafted to give you a stylish stencil effect.

When it comes to designing movie posters, video game covers, and military and industrial-themed designs, you can’t go wrong with a stencil font. Stencil fonts can be a great choice for making bold statements and grabbing attention. And they work well with many types of print and digital designs as well. (We’ve also included a few delicate stencil fonts, for more subtle use cases as well!)

Enjoy browsing through our hand-picked collection of the best stencil fonts, and see if you can find one font that’s a good match for your next design project.

Top Pick

Arcline – Modern Stencil Font

Arcline is a unique stencil font unlike any other font on our list. This font comes with a design inspired by the typography commonly used in drawings related to engineering.

The font also comes in 4 different weights, including light, regular, bold, and an inline typeface.

Why This Is A Top Pick

The geometrically correct and unique design of this font makes it truly one of a kind. It’s a must-have stencil font that fits in with many different types of print and digital designs.

Peligro – Bold Stencil Font

When thinking of stencil fonts, there’s a specific typography design that always comes to our mind. This font features that same iconic look. It’s the perfect choice for creating classic stencil typography for your projects. The font includes all-caps letters with numerals.

Vodan – Classic Stencil Font

Vodan is a beautiful stencil font that comes with a classic and classy letter design. It has the perfect look for crafting logos for modern luxury and fashion brands. The font also has both uppercase and lowercase characters.

Goodies – Modern Stencil Serif Font

This font puts a unique spin on the classic stencil typography design. The letters use a mix of modern and vintage design elements to make this font one of the best stencil serif fonts on our list. It comes with several alternates and ligatures too.

Modest – Creative Stencil Font

Modest is the perfect stencil font you can use to design big bol titles for your masculine designs. It will fit in perfectly with men’s clothing and drink brands. The font includes all-caps letters with alternates, ligatures, and multilingual characters.

Kinlock – Free Elegant Stencil Serif Font

Kinlock is a beautiful stencil font that has an elegant letter design. This font will make your classy logo designs, titles, and labels look even fancier. You can download it for free to use with personal projects.

Broken Silence – Modern Stencil Font

This modern stencil font combines robust, urban aesthetics with a raw stencil style. Its versatility makes it perfect for street-wear branding, game titles, logos, and more. This font duo offers uppercase, lowercase, numbers, standard punctuation, and multilingual support in OTF, WOFF and TTF. It even has PUA Encoding.

Grunt – Rough Stencil Font

This a distinctively rugged stencil font. With the simple use of the Caps Lock key, you can alternate between unique characters for a more personalized design. The creative asset delivered in OTF and WOFF files is a versatile pick for your next project.

Spencer – Clean Stencil Font

This stencil font combines modern style with an industrial influence, offering bold and distinct lettering. Its strong strokes and clean cuts provide a commanding presence, making it ideal for branding, posters, and signage. Despite its rugged aesthetic, Spencer maintains excellent legibility for striking, yet clear messaging.

Warband – Military Style Stencil Font

Warband is a military-style stencil font, offers a rugged and gritty texture, perfect to capture a commanding presence in your design projects. Be it impactful headlines or army-themed posters, Warband delivers just the right punch. With clean and textured styles available in OTF, TTF, and WOFF files.

Mogeruma – Bold Stencil Font

Mogeruma is a bold and dynamic stencil font, perfect for a variety of branding projects. Its authentic style can make your posters, logos, sports designs, and more, really stand out. Offering versatility across different contexts, this font comes in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats.

African Gribald – Greek Stencil Font

This is a vibrant stencil font that asserts authenticity and creative appeal. Its range of uses is extensive, offering diverse themes and styles to meet various needs. This display font is available in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats. For an expanded selection of themes and font styles, a visit to the provider’s profile page is highly recommended.

Hovan Mono – Monospaced Stencil Font

This is a distinctive monospaced, stencil font that exudes both strength and sophistication. Perfect for tech-oriented or industrial projects, its stencil design mimics stamped letters and imparts a mechanical edge. Its monospaced structure enhances readability, making it ideal for coding or other technical contexts.

Handey Military – Stencil Font

A distinctive stencil font ideal for a variety of design needs including movie scenes, posters, album covers, logos, and diverse labeling requirements. It comes with OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, providing great flexibility for diverse applications.

Hyper Oxide – Bold Stencil Sport Font

Hyper Oxide is a bold stencil font that epitomizes strength and modernity. This unique, dynamically designed typeface features bold lines and stencil cutouts, offering versatility across various platforms and mediums. Besides its salient features like uppercase letters, numerals, and punctuation marks, it also supports multilingual characters as well.

Zeados – Futuristic Stencil Font

Zeados is a futuristic stencil font that infuses boldness and authenticity into any design. Excellent for a variety of branding projects like posters and logos, or even sports marketing, it stands out remarkably across different contexts. The package includes Zeados.OTF, Zeados.TTF, and Zeados.WOFF formats, providing great flexibility and usability.

Pearlone – Stylish Stencil Serif Font

This stylish stencil font features a unique design where some characters have a pearl-like dot, hence the name Pearl-one. The font comes in regular and bold weights. You can use it to craft unique logos and typography for your design project.

Fashion Stencil Logo Serif Font

Just as the name suggests, this stencil font comes with a very fashionable letter design that’s especially suitable for logos, labels, and typography designs related to fashion brands. The font includes uppercase and lowercase letters.

Wargate – Stencil Font Family

Wargate is a family of stencil fonts that share a bold letter design. This font has a military-themed design that will make your logos and titles look more masculine. The font is available in 5 different weights with multilingual support for 28 languages.

Loccomotive – Rounded Stencil Font

This is a very unique stencil font that comes with a set of creative letters featuring rounded edges. This font is ideal for casual and friendly typography designs, especially for custom T-shirts, brand identities, business cards, and more.

Senda – Free Stencil Display Font

Senda is a free stencil font that you can download and use for free, even with your commercial projects. This font has a stylish letter design that’s most suitable for crafting attractive logos.

ReRun – Stencil Font Family

ReRun is a family of industrial style stencil fonts that can be used for album covers, film titles and video games. It features uppercase letters, punctuation, numerals, and language support. Don’t hesitate to take ReRun for a spin or add it to your shortlist at the very least.

Towards – Minimal Stencil Font

Towards is a minimal and classy stencil font perfectly fitting to a pool of creative and professional projects. It can be used for logos, watermarks, invitations, product designs, stationery, greeting cards, labels, and other branding and packaging purposes.

Basker – Vintage Stencil Font

Basker is an excellent stencil font for any project that demands a vintage look. It comes with a full set of uppercase and lowercase characters, punctuation, symbols, stylistic set, and multilingual support. Download it right away.

Billy Magie – Stylish Stencil Font

Billy Magie is a bold and stylish stencil font that will take your projects to next level. Invest your money in this typeface, and it will pay for itself many times over.

Casa – Free Stencil Font

If you’re wanting to get your hands on a free stencil font, look no further than Casa. It’s a clean, and modern typeface that will help you create remarkable designs.

Quas Stencil – Luxury Font

Quas is a stencil font featuring an elegant and luxurious design. This font is perfect for making designs for luxury, high-end, and fashion-related businesses. It’s also a great fit for logo designs.

Opera – Bold Stencil Font

Opera is a family of bold sans-serif fonts. It includes 10 different fonts featuring thin, bold, westers, stencil, and much more. It’s perfect for all kinds of designs from bold titles, book covers, signages, and posters.

Monty – Modern Stencil Font

Monty Stencil comes with a smooth and creative design. It’s designed with marketing, packaging, and branding work in mind. The font also features a unique style of stencil design that can add a personal touch to your designs.

Marsh – Free Stencil Font

March is a free font that features one of the most creative stencil designs we’ve seen. Unlike most other stencil fonts, this font uses its own style of shapes and spacing to create a unique design.

The font includes multilingual support and you can use it for free with your personal projects.

Finding stencil fonts that support other languages is not easy. This font supports Espanol, Portuguese, Deutsch, and many more. And it’s free!

Storehouse – Stencil Font

Storehouse stencil font comes with an old-school vintage-themed design, which was inspired by the signage and posters from the 1800s. The font is available in 10 different styles, including bold, shadow, outline, and stencil.

Exomoon – Display Stencil Font

Exomoon is a modern space and sci-fi themed stencil font that’s most suitable for designing modern posters, book covers, and greeting cards. It’s an all-caps font that also comes with lots of glyphs.

Botera – Creative Free Stencil Font

Botera is a modern serif font with a stylish stencil design. This font is ideal for logo and poster designs. It’s free to use with your personal projects

Evolve – Unique Stencil Font

Evolve features a unique design of its own. Even though it’s technically not a stencil font, it has a similar design that you can use to design unique stencil designs.

Arcane – Logotype & Stencil Font

Arcane is a logotype font that features a stencil-inspired design. While it’s the best choice for designing logos, the font can be used for website designs, business cards, and other branding material designs as well.

Organa Caps – Stencil Font

Organa Caps is a unique stencil font that comes with a creative design, unlike any other font. The font is available in 3 different styles and it’s ideal for designing product tags, packaging, and posters.

Goku – Didot & Stencil Font

Goku is a multilingual font that’s been designed for an official Watches of Switzerland event. It comes in two styles and features lots of ligatures, alternates, and glyphs.

Hand Stencil

This is elegant font features a mix of hand-lettered and a stencil design. It’s a brilliant combination that creates a unique typeface. The font is perfect for crafting posters, book covers, greeting cards, T-shirt designs, and much more.

Portico Stencil Rough

Portico is a stencil font with a classic design. It features a rough and grunge style design that will add more depth to your designs. The font can be used to create big bold titles, headers for websites, and to craft posters and greeting cards.

College – Free Stencil Font Family

College is a free font family that includes various styles of stencil fonts with a design inspired by the arches and columns of the buildings in France. The font is free to use with your personal and commercial projects.

Bripokus – Free Stencil Font

This free stencil font is the perfect choice for crafting big titles and heading in websites, posters, and social media. The font is completely free to use with your personal and commercial projects.

Arkibal – Stencil Serif Font

Check out Arkibal, a stencil serif font with bold, and chunky lettering, perfectly suited for projects needing to emulate the classic old documents and store signs look with a modern approach. A great option for a wide range of creative and professional applications!

Sharpshooter – Stencil Army Font

As the name suggests, Sharpshooter is a military stencil font that can be used for online games, movie titles, Youtube thumbnails, and covers, t-shirts, posters, and other branding material. Drop everything, and grab Sharpshooter right now!

Autobahn – Stencil Spray Font

Next up we have Autobahn, a spray-painted stencil font that will give your designs a gritty, and distressed appearance. The font is perfect for bringing an urban graffiti or military style to the page without having to get your hands soaked in the paint.

Ouders – Free Stencil Font

If you are looking for a vintage stencil font with a rough and grungy vibe, Ouders is well worth checking out. Fitting for a large pool of branding designs, Ouders certainly deserves a place in your designer’s toolkit. Get your hands on it now!

Saint George – Free Stencil Font

Want to experiment a little with your font choice? Consider Saint George, a clean and innovative stencil font that you’ll surely keep using for many design projects for years to come. The best part is that it’s available for free. It’s one of the most downloaded free stencil fonts out there and for a good reason.

Hemingwar Font

Hemingwar is a beautiful stencil font with a retro-modern hand lettering design. The font features natural extensions with rounded corners and comes in normal, stencil, and roughened versions as well. The font consists of all letters, numbers, and punctuations.

Stargaze Typeface

Stargaze is not an ordinary stencil font. It’s a retro-futuristic font inspired by stencil designs. The font features both regular and stencil letters mixed-in to make one unique look. It includes all uppercase letters, numbers, punctuations and a unique reversed versions of the letters, which can be enabled with the Caps Lock.

Bladekade Stencil Font

This stencil font is unlike any other you’ll normally find anywhere on the web. This font features an elegant script font style with a vintage design. It’s ideal for designing logos, badges, product labels, and website headers. The font will definitely make your designs stand out.

Bastille Font Duo

Bastille is yet another futuristic cyberpunk themed font inspired by stencil design. This font is perfect for designing movie posters, title screens, book covers, and T-shirt designs. The font includes regular and italic versions as well.

Ember Typeface

Ember is a poster stencil font that comes in two different styles that will fit in well with digital and print designs. It has a rough post-apocalyptic look that makes the font perfect for luxury branding works, especially for businesses related to men’s products.

Leixo – Free Stylish Stencil Font

Leixo is a free stencil font that comes in multiple weights, including italic, bold, and rough designs. The font also includes more than 320 glyphs as well.

Fontuna – Free Stencil Font Family

Fontuna is a family of fonts that comes with various types of typefaces with condensed design. It includes a stencil typeface as well.

Jakes – Free Creative Stencil Font

This stencil font features a creative design that will make text look as if it was hand-drawn by a child. The font is available in both thin and bold weights. You can use it for free with your personal and commercial projects.

Typehead Stencil Font

Featuring a vintage design, this stencil font family comes with 4 different styles of typefaces, including regular, decorative, regular stencil, and decorative stencil. These fonts will help you add that old-school industrial look to your print and web designs.

Lunar Eclipse Font Duo

This unique font features an unusual design inspired by stencil fonts that makes it more suitable for logo designs, business card designs, and other high-end product and branding works. The font is available in two versions with both uppercase and lowercase letters.

Mind the Gap Urban Stencil Font

This font comes with a classic urban stencil font design. According to its designer, the font was created by hand-cutting the letter stencils and spray painting the letters. Which makes it truly an original stencil font. It includes uppercase and lowercase letters with numbers and punctuations.

LUNA Stencil Font

Luna is a minimalist stencil font with a modern design. It features tall and narrow letters with a basic stencil design and it’s available in two different styles: Regular and Stylish. This font can be used to design great website headers, social media posts, logos, and more.

Braunstein Font

Braunstein is a stencil font with a classic design that makes it best for retro-themed design projects, including product packaging, badges, T-shirt designs, signage, and more. The font features a hand-made design that will add a natural look to your designs.

MM Cruella

A yet another minimalist font with a modern stencil look. This font is ideal for business and branding works related to feminine products. It can be used to craft logos, titles, business cards, and banners. The font is available in 5 weights and includes lots of ligatures and alternate characters.

Maroque Stencil Font

This unique stencil font features a design style inspired by the patterns and forms found in Moroccan architecture, art, and carpets. It has a one of a kind design that will add a unique cultural look to your greeting cards, posters, and other designs.

Thunderbolt Stencil Font Family

Thunderbolt is a font family that comes in 4 different styles, including regular, rounded regular, stencil, and rounded stencil. The fonts can be used with many different types of projects including both print and digital designs.

Raleigh Font

Raleigh is a modern stencil font with an elegant design. This font features a futuristic stencil look that will allow you to create more attractive website headers, logotypes, greeting cards, and more. The font comes in several different styles including regular, bold, and italic.

Sargento Gorila Fonts

This is a stencil font that comes with both regular and italic styles. The font features a military-themed design and includes ligatures and lots of alternate characters such as bitcoin symbol and sergeant symbol.

Revelation Stencil Font

Revelation is a futuristic stencil font with a minimalist design. It features a smooth rounded design with a perfectly measured stencil effect. It comes in regular and light versions, which includes the complete alphabet, numbers, Latin characters, and 370 glyphs.

Aquos Typeface

Aquos is a stencil font with a unique design. The font features a creative layout that includes shapes inside the letters. It’s ideal for creating modern logotypes, website headers, and print designs.

Transsiberian Stencil Font

This stylish stencil font will certainly help add a specific uniqueness to your design projects. This font features an elegant and a modern design. And it includes both uppercase and lowercase letters with rounded edges as well as numbers, glyphs, and icons.

Melting Point Sci-fi Font

This stencil font comes with an attractive sci-fi look that makes it the perfect choice for crafting book covers, movie posters, and title screens. The font is available in light, regular, italic, bold, and more styles.

Mantra Stencil Font

Mantra is a bold display font with a stencil look. The font is ideal for designing posters, banners, social media posts, and website headers. It also includes a unique stencil effect with unevenly cut out designs.

Mussolina Font

This stencil font also has an uncommon stencil effect that features curved and slanted stencil cut outs. It’s also a multilingual font that supports German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages.

Capsule X Pro Font

Capsule X is a beautifully minimalist stencil font that has a modern design. It’s perfect for crafting logos, signage, website headers, business cards, and more. The font includes both uppercase and lowercase letters as well.

Portfolio Stencil Font

This modern stencil font not only features a unique design, it also comes packed with more than 900 glyphs, Latin characters, and kerning pairs. The font is available in bold, regular, extra bold rounded, and light versions as well.

For more great fonts, check out our monogram fonts and lettering fonts collections as well!

November 19, 2024

Here’s How I Write a Resignation Letter That Makes a Good Last Impression

I’m all too familiar with that uncomfortable feeling in your stomach when you have to hit send on a resignation letter to your manager.

(I’ve written four over the course of my career.)

I always try to tell myself that millions quit their jobs every month. But as a people-pleaser, I can never seem to shake the nervous energy.

Since it’s very rarely an easy conversation to have, I like to make sure my resignation letter is direct but respectful. Appreciative but intentional. Cordial but professional. You get it.

Here’s how you can write a good resignation letter that turns an awkward goodbye into a chance for a long-term professional connection. Or at the very least, a chance to secure a few references for the future.

Table of Contents

What is a resignation letter?
How to Write a Professional Resignation Letter
Resignation Letter Format
What do I include in a professional resignation letter?
What Not to Include in a Resignation Letter
Free Professional Resignation Letter Templates
Resignation Letter Examples and Samples

What is a resignation letter?

A resignation letter is a formal document that lets your employer know that you are resigning from (or leaving) your position.

It’s the official announcement of your departure from the company with details about your last day and your transition plan.

David Rubie-Todd, co-founder & marketing head at Sticker It notes, “I'd say that the resignation letter should not be an explanation of why you are leaving. It is a notice that you are — nothing more and nothing less.”

I couldn’t agree more. It’s your official statement that you will no longer be performing your duties and will be moving on from the company. We’ll get into what you should and should not include a little later.

There’s only been one instance where I’ve handed in a physical resignation letter to my manager, but it can be submitted either by email or print.

I typically submit my resignation letter during the conversation where I’m giving my two weeks' notice or immediately after.

The way I see it, your resignation letter should effectively convey two things: your gratitude for the opportunity and your professionalism.

I like to start the resignation process with a face-to-face conversation with my manager. That way, I can keep the actual letter brief and only focus on the relevant details — like the date of my last day and my exit plan.

There are other touchpoints, like the final 1:1s with your manager or your exit interview with HR, where you can discuss your departure (and the reasons for it) in more detail.

Should you use AI to write a resignation letter?

As a writer, I use AI for very specific purposes — like summarizing information or outlining ideas for inspiration. That said, I believe it’s best to use AI tools like ChatGPT to help you format or finalize your resignation letter.

Here’s an example where I asked ChatGPT to write a simple resignation letter for me.

Granted, I didn’t provide any background details about my role or experience with the company, but this is a pretty good structure to help me get started:

[Date]

Dear [Manager’s Name],

I am writing to inform you of my decision to resign from my position as [Your Position] at [Company Name], effective [Last Working Day, typically two weeks from today’s date].

I have appreciated the opportunities and experiences I’ve had during my time at [Company Name], and I want to thank you and the team for the support and guidance you provided me.

I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition during my remaining time here and will do my best to complete any outstanding tasks or projects.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Another one of my favorite ways to use AI is to polish my writing, and HubSpot's AI paragraph rewriter is so great for this.

You can use it to experiment with different tones and strike the right balance. This is especially handy if you’re leaving a job with a bad taste in your mouth — been there.

Here’s an example:

Original language: I guess I learned a few things from this job, but I need to move on from this toxic environment as soon as possible.

Updated with AI paragraph rewriter: While I’ve gained some valuable insights during my time here, it’s essential for my well-being and professional growth to move on at this time.

Try HubSpot’s AI paragraph rewriter for free.

You can also use it to refresh language from a previous resignation letter or rework an output from ChatGPT to fit your current situation.

Either way, resignation letters are pretty straightforward, so I say use AI to help speed up the writing process.

OK, now let’s talk about the ideal resignation letter format.

Resignation Letter Format

I pulled one of my old resignation letters from the archive, so I’ll use this to talk about format.

(Removed all the juicy details, sry.)

January 20, 2022

Dear [Manager’s Name],

I’m writing to notify you that I’ll be leaving my role as [My Position] at [Company Name]. My last day will be February 9, 2022.

I want to thank [Company Name] for all of the support and guidance I received during my time here. It has been a pleasure working alongside people who are truly passionate about giving underrepresented communities the resources they need to lead healthier lives. The Healthcare Team here is, without a doubt, one of a kind.

During the next couple of weeks, I’ll work closely with you to make this transition as smooth as possible, and I’ll reach out to [Colleague Name] to notify [Client Name] of my departure.

Wishing the team continued success, and I look forward to staying in touch.

All the best,

Alana Chinn

alana@email.com

LinkedIn

The format of a resignation letter should be detailed but brief. Inform your manager of your decision, but keep it professional.

I’ll break it down further in the next section for easy reference.

Writing a professional resignation letter starts with understanding each of its components. We’ll use mine as an example.

1. Date and Greeting

This part is straightforward. List the date you’re submitting your resignation letter so HR has a formal filing date. Then, greet your manager with a simple salutation.

Here’s what I did:

January 20, 2022

Dear [Manager’s Name],

2. Statement of Resignation and End Date

The fact that you’re leaving your role at the company is why you’re writing the letter in the first place, so I like to lead with that. State the position you’re resigning from and the date of your last day.

That, folks, is your statement of resignation.

Pro tip: I wouldn’t feel the need to gush here. In fact, I’d avoid openings like this:

“I'm so sorry, but I'm resigning from the role of [Your Position] in two weeks, although it's been a true pleasure working with you all. I know this is the worst, but I promise, I wouldn't if I didn't have to.”

Here’s what I did:

I’m writing to notify you that I’ll be leaving my role as [My Position] at [Company Name]. My last day will be February 9, 2022.

3. Expression of Gratitude

For the body of my resignation letter, I usually include two short paragraphs. The first expresses my gratitude for the opportunity.

Take a moment to reflect on your time at the company. Thank them for the valuable training, the supportive team environment, or even just the work experience.

If you have negative reasons for leaving, try to be as specific and genuine as possible. I'm sure you can find at least one good thing about the job … right?

Here’s what I did:

4. Transition Details

Onto the second body paragraph: the one that briefly talks about my transition plan. Here, I note how I’ll help tie up any loose ends and make the transition as seamless as possible.

Pro tip: I recommend creating a separate transition plan that outlines your projects and tasks with full details on how you’ll hand over your responsibilities.

No need to include that in your resignation letter.

Here’s what I did:

During the next couple of weeks, I’ll work closely with you to make this transition as smooth as possible, and I’ll reach out to [Colleague Name] to notify [Client Name] of my departure.

5. Closing Paragraph and Contact Information

To wrap things up, I usually include a closing paragraph with well wishes and an opening to stay in touch. I’ll add a link to my LinkedIn profile (if we’re not already connected) and my personal email address.

You can add your phone number too, if you feel moved to do so.

Here’s what I did:

Wishing the team continued success, and I look forward to staying in touch.

All the best,

Alana Chinn

alana@email.com

LinkedIn

1. Future Career Moves

While you can mention where you're going next, I don’t recommend telling your employer about your new position at length. Keep things professional and focus on setting your existing team up for success before your departure.

2. Distasteful Language

While you may feel the urge to criticize your former job, the resignation letter isn't the time to air out the dirty laundry.

Trust me, you never know when you might cross paths with your old colleagues in the future — especially if you’re staying in the same industry.

George Cotter, SEO consultant at Tall Marketing says, “If you are leaving because of a conflict or something overtly negative, remember, you‘re resigning — it says all they need to know. You don’t need to tell them again.”

You’re on your way out anyway. Let that speak for itself.

3. Emotional Attachments

It’s not uncommon to form connections with your teammates. I’ve been known to have a work bestie or two. However, save the emotional sentiments for face-to-face conversations.

Your resignation letter is a professional document, so I say stick to the formalities.

4. Criticism of Coworkers

Similar to distasteful language, your resignation letter doesn't need to include negative comments about your colleagues or managers at the company. The letter is meant to conclude your tenure — stay focused.

5. Anger or Bitterness

The reality is you may be leaving a job with some resentment. I know I have.

But expressing anger or bitterness on your way out is not the way to go.

Daniel Cook, HR/marketing executive at Mullen and Mullen says, “I like to avoid negativity, as this is not the place to air grievances or provide criticism about the company or co-workers.

Even if I am leaving because of negative experiences, a resignation letter should be focused on moving forward — not on past complaints.”

Try to reflect on positive moments and how you gained useful knowledge about the industry rather than airing out the dirty laundry.

For more tips, watch what HubSpotter Jamal Meneide has to say on the topic of resignation letters:

Free Professional Resignation Letter Templates

Let’s face it: We have just about everything at HubSpot, including free resignation letter templates (hooray, we all say in unison). These templates are versatile and super easy to customize based on your role.

Download the Templates for Free

I pulled out a few of my favorite one-size-fits-all options from the pack.

General Resignation Letter Template

Download this Template

[Header]

[Date]

Dear [Manager's Name],

I’m writing first and foremost to thank you for my experiences at [Company Name] for the last [Time Spent Working at Company]. During this time, I’ve [Outline Positive Experiences/Learnings/Relationships During Your Tenure].

Today, I’m sharing the news of my difficult decision to resign from my role as [Your Position] at [Company Name]. My last day will be [Last Working Date].

The decision to move on was not easy, but I believe it the best thing for me at this time. I have been afforded the opportunity to [Describe New Role/Opportunity], which will allow me to [Explain Benefits of Transition].

I look forward to making the next [Length of Time Until Departure] as positive and productive as possible. I want to leave this team in the best shape for the organization and my replacement, and will be happy to work in whatever capacity is needed until my last day. Please let me know what I can do to help during this transitional period.

Once again, please accept my sincerest thanks for everything these past [Time Spent Working at Company]. I wish nothing but success for this company and team in the future and hope to stay connected. You may reach out to me at any time at [Email or Phone Number].

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

What I like: This resignation letter template is a good one because it provides space for you to thank your manager, outline positive experiences from your time at the company, share your last day, and talk about why you decided to leave.

New Opportunity Resignation Letter Template

Download this Template

[Header]

[Date]

Dear [Manager's Name],

Please accept this message as my letter of resignation from my role as [Your Position] at [Company Name], effective [Last Working Date].

After this time, I will be [Describe New Opportunity].

During this time of transition, I will aim to be as supportive as possible to this team. Specifically, I plan to [Outline Steps You’ll Take to Ensure a Smooth Transition]. If I am needed in any other capacity before my departure, please let me know and I will be glad to assist however I can.

While I will be moving on, I know I will look back on my time at [Company Name] with fondness and gratitude. Specifically, [Positive Memory or Contribution #1] and [Positive Memory or Contribution #2] will always be moments for which I will always be appreciative.

Thank you for your support and understanding during this time. I look forward to ensuring a successful transition for my team and my replacement.

All the Best,

[Your Name]

What I like: If you're interested in sharing details about the next steps in your career, this is a great template to use. It also gives you the opportunity to reflect on your experience and accomplishments at the company with gratitude.

Reason for Leaving Resignation Letter Template

Download this Template

[Header]

[Date]

Dear [Manager's Name],

I would like to formally notify you of my decision to part ways with [Company Name], effective [Last Working Date].

The reason for my resignation is [Reason(s) for Resignation]. While I would have liked to continue working for [Company Name], I have decided the best option for me was to move on, because [Reason(s) for Departure].

I understand that my departure may cause some disruption, and so I’d like to be as helpful as possible before I go. Please do not hesitate to let me know how I can assist in an effective transition.

Thank you for this experience. I wish this company and everyone who works here all the best.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

What I like: This resignation letter template gives you the space to explain your reason for departure, should you choose to do so. However, it‘s still a simple and concise way to let your current company know you’re planning to move on.

Job Resignation Letter Templates

While HubSpot's templates are great for all-purpose use, I recognize that certain positions — like healthcare and C-suite roles — merit a more specific letter of resignation when you leave.

I've included a few templates for some of these more dynamic roles below.

1. Contractor Resignation Letter Template

As a contractor, you may need to adjust the focus of your resignation letter to address your final assignments, unfinished tasks, and how you’ll accept your final payment.

Use this template:

Image Source

[Header]

[Date]

Dear [Manager’s Name],

I regret to inform you that I will be resigning from my position as the [Department] Freelancer as my contract with [Company Name] expires on April 20, 2022.

I have enjoyed my time here, and I have learned and grown a great deal. I am happy to have been a part of the company, and I would like to thank you for the opportunities I have had.

I am saddened to be moving on from the company, but I am going to be taking on new challenges with [New Company Name]. I hope my experience here has helped the company with its projects, and I am happy to have been a part of the team.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. I will be available to help you with any final projects.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

2. Executive Resignation Letter Template

A quick email or two-paragraph notice to your superior might not suffice as an official resignation if you're in an executive- or senior-level leadership role.

Because these roles are harder to fill, you might play a more significant role in the transition period.

Use this template:

[Date]

Dear [Leadership Entity],

Please let this letter serve as my resignation as [Your Position] at [Company] effective [Last Working Date].

I will cherish the friends I have made and hold onto the many accomplishments that are part of my history with [Company Name]. As we part ways, I’m proud we were able to [List of Major Accomplishments].

I am confident that the board will be able to find an excellent replacement for [Your Position] and continue the company’s well-deserved success.

For all future communications, you can reach me by phone at [Phone Number] or by email at [Email Address].

I wish you and the company the best in the future.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

3. Teacher Resignation Letter Template

As a teacher, you may want to hold space to discuss your experience working with students and how you will help your temporary or full-time replacement with the transition.

Use this template:

Image Source

[Date]

Dear [Leadership Entity],

Please accept this letter as my formal resignation from my position as [Your Position] at [School Name]. To ensure ample time for a smooth transition, my last day of employment will be [Last Working Day].

My experience as an educator has been insightful, challenging, and fulfilling, and working with the [School Name] students has brought me great joy. Thank you for the opportunity to invest in the lives of children through learning and play. I am grateful to have been part of this team and will carry the many lessons I learned with me into my future endeavors.

Because the continued success and care of the students are of the utmost importance to me, I am dedicated to doing whatever I can to make the transition as seamless as possible. I am happy to train my replacement on our current curriculum and [List of Responsibilities].

I wish all the best for the [School Name] students, teachers, and administration. Thank you again for your support and leadership during my time here.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

4. Nurse Resignation Letter Template

As a nurse, it's important to give adequate notice of your departure to ensure there are no healthcare disruptions for your patients.

You can use your resignation letter to thank your employer for the experience and offer training support for your successor.

Use this template:

Image Source

[Date]

Dear [Manager’s Name],

I am writing to inform you of my resignation as [Your Position] at [Facility Name], effective two weeks from today. My last day of work will be [Last Working Day].

Working at [Facility Name] has been a rewarding experience. I have enjoyed my time with you and learned a great deal about working successfully with a team.

It was an honor to work with such dedicated staff who are committed to making [Facility Name] a place to receive compassionate care. I thank you for the training and the opportunity to grow with you in my career. I wish all the residents and staff good luck in the future.

If you feel it would be helpful, I would be happy to assist with the hiring and training of my successor over the next two weeks.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. My email address is [Email Address], and my cell phone number is [Phone Number].

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

Resignation Letter Examples

Now that you have a few templates under your belt, I’m going to share some hypothetical (!) examples of resignation letters from my current position as Marketing Blog editor at HubSpot.

That way, you can see some of the blanks filled in with real information.

Short Resignation Letter Examples

Short resignation letters are great for situations where:

You need to leave a job abruptly for personal (or professional) reasons.
You don’t want to overshare details about your departure or next steps.
You’re unhappy with your experience and want to remain professional.
You haven’t been with the company for very long.

Here are two short resignation letter examples using my role as an inspo:

Example 1:

November 15, 2024

Dear Meg,

I’m writing to inform you that I will be resigning from my position as Marketing Blog Editor at HubSpot on November 30, 2024.

I appreciate the opportunity to grow as a content strategist during my time here. I am committed to working with you and the rest of the Blog team to facilitate a smooth transition before my departure.

Thanks again for the opportunity to be a part of such a fantastic team and HubSpot’s impactful work.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

Example 2:

November 15, 2024

Dear Meg,

I’m writing to notify you that I’ll be leaving my role as Marketing Blog Editor at HubSpot. My last day will be November 30, 2024.

I want to thank you, the Blog team, and HubSpot for all of the support and guidance I received during my time here. My goal is to make this transition as smooth as possible over the next couple of weeks.

Wishing the team continued success, and many more well-timed GIFs.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

Long Resignation Letter Example

Longer resignation letters work well if:

You’re leaving on a positive note and want to emphasize that.
You’ve been with the company for a while and have built close relationships.
You want to leave things open to work together again in the future.

Here’s an example (again, using my role as an inspo):

November 15, 2024

Dear Meg,

I am writing to formally announce my resignation from my position as Marketing Blog Editor at HubSpot, effective November 30, 2024. This decision has been made after careful consideration and reflection of my professional goals.

I want to express my gratitude to you and the entire Blog team for your support and camaraderie during my time here. Thanks to HubSpot, I’ve had opportunities for growth and learning as a content strategist that I will be able to take with me.

I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition during my last two weeks with the company. I’m willing to assist with the handover of my responsibilities and support any training for the acting editor.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be a part of the HubSpot Blog team. I wish you all nothing but continued success in the future, and I look forward to keeping in touch.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

Professional Resignation Letter Samples

Haven’t had enough yet?

I’m a firm believer that you can never have too many examples. So, here are some more resignation letter samples for even more scenarios.

1. Gracious Resignation Letter Sample

For times when you can honestly say you loved your job:

[Date]

Dear Manager,

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as Data Analyst for Company A, effective November 30, 2024.

I appreciate the opportunities for professional development that you have provided me over the past four years. I have enjoyed my tenure at Company A, and feel grateful to have started my career alongside such a dedicated team.

I have accepted a teaching position in Virginia. While my experience at Company A was rewarding, I'm excited to pursue my passion for teaching.

If I can be of any help during this transition, please let me know. I am willing to help out with freelance work until you find a replacement.

Thank you again for the opportunity to work at Company A. I wish you all the best and look forward to staying in touch. You can email me at alana@email.com.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

2. Immediate Resignation Letter Sample

For times when you have to leave your job sooner than anticipated:

[Date]

Dear Manager,

I regret to inform you that I'm resigning from my position as the Data Analyst at Company A, effective immediately.

While my contract requires me to work until December 31, 2024, I would be grateful if I could cease working immediately. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this sudden news may cause.

Thank you for the fantastic opportunities you've offered me to grow professionally and personally.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make the transition smoother.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

3. Retirement Resignation Letter Sample

For the time when you’re officially, really, and truly off the clock:

[Date]

Dear Manager,

After much consideration, I have decided to retire from Company A on December 31, 2024.

I have enjoyed working here over the past 10 years, and I am proud of everything our team has accomplished. Though I am sad that this chapter of my life is closing, I am looking forward to traveling and spending more time with my family.

As we prepare for my departure, I am happy to assist with hiring my replacement and anything else that will help make this a smooth transition.

Thank you for all the opportunities and support you have offered me over the years. I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

4. Extended Notice Resignation Letter Sample

For times when you’re able to provide ample time for transition:

[Date]

Dear Manager,

Please accept this letter as notice of my intent to resign from my position as Data Analyst at Company A at the end of this quarter. My last day will be December 31, 2024.

While it is tough to leave this incredible team, I will be moving on to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa. It's always been my dream to write books and I believe that this is the best path for me to achieve that.

Thank you for all the support and guidance you have given me over the last five years. I am deeply grateful for all of the opportunities I have had here.

Since my last day is six weeks from now, I will work toward completing my current projects, along with training and handing off my high-level tasks to other members of the team. Please let me know if there's anything I can do that may help ease this transition.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

5. Personal Reasons Resignation Letter Sample

For times when life throws you a curveball:

[Date]

Dear Manager,

I regret to inform you of my resignation from Company A. Due to personal reasons, I am no longer able to fulfill my duties as Data Analyst. My last day of employment will be November 30, 2024.

It has been wonderful working with you and the team for the past three years. I truly appreciate the opportunities I have been given to develop my skills and grow within my role.

Over the next two weeks, I will work to complete my remaining assignments and hand off my ongoing projects to other team members. I am also happy to assist with anything else you may need during this transition.

Thank you for your guidance and understanding. I will look back on my time here at Company A fondly, and I wish you all the best in the future.

Sincerely,

Alana Chinn

Ready, Set, Resign

“Remember, your resignation letter is part of your professional brand, says Harmanjit Singh, founder & CEO of Website Design Brampton. “It's like your digital footprint — it lasts longer than you might think.”

My final advice? Don’t let one bad experience keep you from building your professional bridges and keeping your network intact as you start your next adventure.

Best of luck with your graceful goodbye!

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

November 19, 2024

AI’s Transformative Impact On Web Design: Supercharging Productivity Across The Industry

As I sit down to write this article, I can’t help but marvel at the incredible changes sweeping through our industry. For the first time in my career, I feel like we’re no longer limited by our technology but by our imagination. Well, almost. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the web design landscape in ways we could only dream of a few years ago, and I’m excited to share with you how it’s supercharging our productivity across various aspects of our work.

AI Is A Partner, Not A Competitor

Now, before we dive in, let me assure you: AI isn’t here to replace us. At least, not for a while yet. There are still crucial areas where human expertise reigns supreme. AI struggles with strategic planning that considers the nuances of human behavior and market trends. It can’t match our emotional intelligence when navigating client relationships and team dynamics. And when it comes to creative thinking that pushes boundaries and creates truly innovative solutions, we humans still have the upper hand.

But here’s the exciting part: AI is becoming an invaluable tool that’s supercharging our productivity. Think of it as having a highly capable intern at your disposal. As the Nielsen Norman Group aptly put it in their article “AI as an Intern,” we need to approach AI tools with the right mindset. Double-check their work, use them for initial drafts rather than final products, and provide specific instructions and relevant context.

The key to harnessing AI’s power lies in working with it collaboratively.

Don’t expect perfect results on the first try. Instead, engage in a back-and-forth conversation, refining the AI output through iteration. This process of continuous improvement is where AI truly shines, dramatically speeding up our workflow.

Let’s explore how AI is reshaping different areas of our industry, looking at some of the many tools available to us.

AI In Design: Unleashing Creativity And Efficiency

In the realm of design, AI is proving to be a game-changer. It’s particularly adept at:

Collaborating on layout;
Generating the perfect image;
Refining and adapting existing imagery.

Take AI in Figma, for instance. It’s become my go-to for generating dummy content and tidying up my layers. The time saved on these mundane tasks allows me to focus more on the creative aspects of design.

Generative imagery tools like Krea, which uses Flux, have revolutionized how we source visuals. Gone are the days of endlessly scrolling through stock libraries. Now, we can describe exactly what we need, and AI will create it for us. This level of customization and specificity is a game changer for creating unique, on-brand visuals.

Relume is another tool I’ve found incredibly useful. It’s great for a collaborative back-and-forth over designs or for quickly putting together designs for smaller sites. The ability to iterate rapidly with AI assistance has significantly sped up my design process.

And let’s not forget about Adobe. Their upcoming tools, such as lighting matching for composite images, are set to take our design capabilities to new heights. If you want to see more of what’s on the horizon, I highly recommend checking out the latest Adobe Max presentations.

AI In Coding: Boosting Developer Productivity

The impact of AI on coding is nothing short of revolutionary. According to a McKinsey study, developers using AI tools performed coding tasks like code generation, refactoring, and documentation 20%-50% faster on average compared to those not using AI tools. That’s a significant productivity boost!

AI is helping developers in several key areas:

Coding faster;
Debugging more efficiently;
Automatically generating code comments;
Writing basic code.

To put this into perspective, AI now writes 25% of the code at Google. That’s a staggering figure from one of the world’s leading tech companies.

Tools like Cursor AI and GitHub Copilot are at the forefront of this revolution, offering features such as:

AI pair programming with predictive code edits;
Natural language code editing;
Chat interfaces for asking questions and getting help.

I’ve personally been amazed by what ChatGPT 01-Preview can do. I’ve used it to build simple WordPress plugins in minutes, tasks that would have taken me significantly longer in the past.

AI In UX: Enhancing User Research And Analysis

In the field of User Experience (UX), AI is opening up new possibilities for research and analysis. It’s allowing us to:

Conduct user research at scale;
Analyze open-ended qualitative feedback;
Query analytic data using natural language;
Predict user behavior.

I’ve found ChatGPT to be an invaluable tool for data analysis, particularly when it comes to making sense of analytics and survey responses. It can quickly identify patterns and insights that might take us hours to uncover manually.

Tools like Strella are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in user research. AI can now perform user interviews at scale, allowing us to gather insights from a much larger pool of users than ever before.

Attention Insight is another fascinating tool. It uses AI to predict where people will look on a page, providing valuable data for optimizing layouts and user interfaces.

Microsoft Clarity has also upped its game, allowing us to ask questions about our analytic insights, heatmaps, and session recordings. This natural language interface makes it easier than ever to extract meaningful insights from our data.

AI In Copywriting: Elevating Content Quality And Efficiency

When it comes to copywriting, AI is proving to be a powerful ally. It’s helping us:

Transform poor-quality stakeholder content into web-optimized copy;
Brainstorm value propositions and create high-converting copy;
Craft compelling business cases and strategy documentation;
Write standard operating procedures.

Notion AI has become one of my go-to tools for content creation. It combines the best of ChatGPT and Claude, allowing it to draw upon a wide range of provided source material to write detailed documentation, articles, and reports.

ChatGPT has been a game-changer for improving the quality of website copy. It can take user questions and bullet-point answers from subject specialists and transform them into web-optimized content. I’ve found it particularly useful for defining value propositions and writing high-converting copy.

For refining existing content, the Hemingway Editor is invaluable. It can take the existing copy and make it clearer, more concise, and easier to scan — essential qualities for effective web content.

AI In Administration: Streamlining Mundane Tasks

AI isn’t just transforming the technical aspects of our work; it’s also making a significant impact on those mundane administrative tasks that often eat up our time. By leveraging AI, we can streamline various aspects of our daily workflow, allowing us to focus more on high-value activities.

Here are some ways AI is helping us tackle administrative tasks more efficiently:

Getting our thoughts down faster;
Writing better emails;
Summarizing long emails or Slack threads;
Speeding up research;
Backing up arguments with relevant data.

Let me share some personal experiences with AI tools that have transformed my administrative workflow:

I’ve dramatically increased my writing speed using Flow. This tool has taken me from typing at 49 words per minute to dictating at over 95 words per minute. Not only does it allow me to dictate, but it also tidies up my words to ensure they read well and are grammatically correct.

For email writing, I’ve found Fixkey to be invaluable. It helps me rewrite or reformat copy quickly. I’ve even set up a prompt that tones down my emails when I’m feeling particularly irritable, ensuring they sound reasonable and professional.

Dealing with long email threads or Slack conversations can be time-consuming. That’s where Spark comes in handy. It summarizes lengthy threads, saving me valuable time. Interestingly, this feature is now built into iOS for all notifications, making it even more accessible.

When it comes to research, Google Notebook LLM has been a game-changer. I can feed it large amounts of data on a subject and quickly extract valuable insights. This tool has significantly sped up my research process.

Lastly, if I need to back up an argument with a statistic or quote, Perplexity has become my go-to resource. It quickly finds relevant sources I can quote, adding credibility to my work without the need for extensive manual searches.

Conclusion: Embracing AI For A More Productive Future

As I wrap up this article, I realize I’ve only scratched the surface of what AI can do for our industry. The real challenge isn’t in the technology itself but in breaking out of our established routines and taking the time to experiment with what’s possible.

I believe we need to cultivate a new habit: pausing before each new task to consider how AI could help us approach it differently. The winners in this new reality will be those who can best integrate this technology into their workflow.

AI isn’t replacing us — it’s empowering us to work smarter and more efficiently. By embracing these tools and learning to collaborate effectively with AI, we can focus more on the aspects of our work that truly require human creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the rapid pace of change, don’t worry. We’re all learning and adapting together. Remember, the goal isn’t to become an AI expert overnight but to gradually incorporate these tools into your work in ways that make sense for you and your projects.

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November 19, 2024

Complete CSS Course

Do you subscribe to Piccalilli? You should. If you’re reading that name for the first time, that would be none other than Andy Bell running the ship and he’s reimagined the site from the ground-up after coming out of hibernation this year. You’re likely familiar with Andy’s great writing here on CSS-Tricks.

Andy is more than a great writer — he’s a teacher, too. And you’ll see that in spades next week when his brand-new course Complete CSS is released one week from today on November 26.

As someone who also runs a front-end course, I can tell you it takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort to put something like Complete CSS together. I’ve been able to sneak peek at the course and ~~like~~ love how it’s made for many CSS-Tricks readers — you know CSS and use it regularly but need to ratchet it up from good to great. If my course is for those just getting into CSS, Andy will graduate you from hobbyist to practitioner in Complete CSS. It’s the perfect next step for narrowing the ever-growing learning gaps in this industry.

Early bird price is £189 (~$240) which is a steep cut from the full £249 (~$325) price tag.

Complete CSS Course originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

November 19, 2024

50+ Best YouTube Thumbnail Templates in 2025

With over 500 hours of video content being uploaded every minute, it’s now tougher than ever to build a successful channel on YouTube. Creating quality content is not enough, you also need to market your videos effectively to get more views.

Using high-quality video thumbnails is one of the best ways you can use to attract attention to your videos. Think of it like fancy packaging for your video content.

The thumbnail cover you use for your YouTube video is the first thing users see when browsing videos on YouTube or searching on Google. By using creative and descriptive thumbnail covers, you’ll have a higher chance of getting more clicks and views for your channel.

Big brand channels on YouTube have their own dedicated designers creating unique thumbnail covers for each video. But, you don’t have to spend any money on designers when you have YouTube thumbnail templates.

In this collection, we’re bringing you some of the best custom YouTube thumbnail templates you can use to create attractive thumbnail covers for all kinds of videos. Have a look.

Gaming YouTube Thumbnail Templates

This is a collection of trendy YouTube thumbnails for gamers and streamers, featuring a set of five expertly designed, fully customizable PSD files. Each template is designed for 1280 x 720 px resolution and 72 DPI, showcasing vibrant colors, dynamic layouts, and striking fonts to make your content shine on YouTube.

Gaming Video YouTube Thumbnails

Another creative YouTube thumbnail pack featuring a set of editable thumbnail templates ideal for gaming YouTube channels. They’re designed with striking typography, dynamic compositions, and vibrant colors that will make your content pop.

Live Stream YouTube Thumbnail Templates

An impressive pack of four customizable gaming YouTube thumbnails guaranteed to elevate your YouTube channel. Armed with high-quality PSD files, these customizable thumbnails are not only visually stunning but very user-friendly, ready to swap out images, alter text, and modify colors swiftly.

Business Tips YouTube Thumbnails

This is a set of sleek and professional YouTube thumbnails created for business-centric YouTube videos. The designs are modern and elegant, with fully editable and well-organized layers. These templates can easily be personalized across platforms such as Figma, Sketch, and Photoshop.

Podcast YouTube Thumbnail Templates

A collection of YouTube thumbnails for enhancing your online podcast videos. They are easy to personalize with adjustable texts, content, objects, and color schemes. The package includes four distinct designs, created in Photoshop, in a convenient 1280 x 720 px, 72 DPI resolution landscape format.

Fitness Gym YouTube Thumbnail Templates

These YouTube thumbnails are specifically tailored for fitness-oriented videos. The design utilizes striking visuals and bold elements that embody the vibrancy of a high-intensity workout. It features editable text, customizable vector shapes, easy-image-editing smart objects, and a layout of 1280 x 720.

90s Music YouTube Thumbnail Template

This is a set of YouTube thumbnail templates offering customizable designs for music-related videos. Crafted with a 90’s aesthetic, this template is ideal for vlogging, live streaming, music, night parties, or anything else music-related. With well-organized layers, the design and color of these fully editable banners can be personalized to fit your needs. It includes 4 different thumbnail designs.

Creator Podcast YouTube Thumbnails Template

Elevate your content with this colorful YouTube thumbnail template kit, ideal for users wanting attractive, distinctive thumbnails. With four unique designs, this template kit offers a colorful retro style that is fully customizable. Regardless of your editing experience, these templates help to create thumbnails that truly stand out, enticing viewers to engage with your content.

Beauty Fashion YouTube Thumbnails Template

An excellent YouTube thumbnail template pack for content creators looking to improve their videos’ aesthetics. The product comes with four customizable designs, allowing you to craft attention-grabbing thumbnails to make your videos stand out. Even if you’re new to content creation or a seasoned professional, this thumbnail template set is a boon for boosting clicks and views.

Modern Business Finance YouTube Thumbnail

This is an appealing and professional YouTube thumbnail template pack that is most suitable for business and finance videos. This package includes six easily editable designs in a standard 1920×1080 size, perfect for catching viewers’ attention. Well-organized layers and the use of free font add to its usability.

Daily Vlog YouTube Thumbnail Template

This YouTube thumbnail template collection comes with six unique designs, giving your forthcoming trending video a professional and creative look. This template, perfect for travel, health, and wellness YouTube creators, has a standard 1920×1080 size and is well-layered for easy editing in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.

Gaming Channel YouTube Thumbnail Templates

This is a collection of YouTube thumbnail templates for gaming content creators, vloggers, and influencers, designed to boost views and engagement. Featuring an elegant and modern design, these templates are ready for immediate use on YouTube, with organized, high-resolution, fully-layered files that allow for easy customization of text and colors.

Football YouTube Thumbnail Template

A versatile YouTube thumbnail template pack for any sports-related YouTube content. Ideal for live streaming, vlogs, and football videos, this customizable template includes four well-structured PSD layers. The design is professional and clean, allowing users to easily alter colors, text, and design as needed.

Fashion YouTube Thumbnail Templates

A fantastic collection of creative YouTube thumbnail templates for making attractive thumbnails for your content. It’s perfect for various categories like live streaming, fashion, lifestyle vlogs, and more. With a clean, professional design and fully editable features, it’s effortless to tailor the template according to your needs.

Gaming YouTube Thumbnails Pack

Kick your gaming platform up a notch with this set of YouTube thumbnail templates. This pack includes 3 PSD files, tailored to a 1280×720 pixel specification – perfect for enhancing your video visibility. These are ideal for compilation videos and gameplay videos too.

Makeup & Beauty YouTube Thumbnail Kit

Ready-to-use, high-resolution thumbnail templates for makeup and beauty channels. It showcases a sophisticated design that can help your YouTube channel stand out and grow. The kit includes multiple layered files for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Sketch, and Figma, with editable texts and colors.

YouTube Thumbnail Template for Business Videos

If you have a business marketing channel on YouTube, this template can come in very handy. The pack comprises a stylish, yet professional thumbnail, and end screen, both fully layered, well-organized, available in high-resolution and provides easy customization.

Holographic YouTube Thumbnails

Here we have a bundle of 6 YouTube thumbnails with striking 3D typography. It’s a great product for YouTubers, or video bloggers looking for a cool design for their channel. The thumbnails are very easy to tweak using the smart object replacement feature.

YouTube Thumbnail Template for Gaming Videos

If you have a YouTube channel covering gaming-related content, this set of thumbnail templates will help you design covers for your videos that attract more views. It includes 4 different designs that you can edit with Photoshop.

Gym Fitness YouTube Thumbnail Templates

The thumbnail templates in this pack are designed with gym and fitness YouTubers in mind. It includes 4 styles of thumbnail layouts you can use to create covers for tips videos, fitness training classes, and more.

Travelista – Travel Vlog YouTube Thumbnail Templates

This is a must-have set of YouTube thumbnail templates for travel vloggers. There are 3 colorful and creative thumbnail designs in this pack for crafting amazing covers for your videos. The templates come in both PSD and AI file formats.

Tech Video YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Tech YouTubers and bloggers will find the templates in this bundle most useful. It includes 4 different layout designs that are perfect for making covers for your tech tutorials, guides, news videos, and much more.

Free Business Video YouTube Thumbnail Template

This is a free YouTube thumbnail template you can use to create a high-quality cover for business and professional videos. It’s especially suitable for channels for brands and agencies.

Fashion Vlog YouTube Thumbnail Template

The YouTube thumbnails in this bundle are designed specifically for fashion and beauty vloggers. It includes 4 stylish designs to make attractive cover designs for your trendy videos. The templates are fully customizable.

Kids Play – YouTube Thumbnails for Kids Channels

If you have a YouTube channel covering kid-friendly videos, this set of thumbnail templates will come in handy. The pack includes 4 creative thumbnail templates that will make your videos appear more colorful in the user feeds.

Room Tour YouTube Thumbnail Template

If you really want your YouTube channel’s thumbnail to stand out against the crowd, this beautifully crafted, and well-organized template is just what you need. Customize this template to your heart’s content, and watch your channel grow in a short span of time.

Free Music Festival YouTube Thumbnail Template

If you wish to run a live stream of a music festival or concert on your YouTube channel, this futuristic-looking, vaporwave-inspired thumbnail template deserves your undivided attention. The template is fully customizable and available for free.

Digital Marketing YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Whether you’re a business promoting services or an agency covering marketing trends, this set of templates will help make your videos look more professional on YouTube. It includes 10 different thumbnail templates in PSD, AI, and EPS file formats.

Fitness & Workout YouTube Thumbnail Templates

You can use the templates in this pack to create simple and clean thumbnails for your fitness-related videos. There are 4 different design layouts in the pack. You can edit them with Photoshop to change colors and edit text.

Free YouTube Thumbnail Template for Bloggers

Another free YouTube thumbnail template featuring a simple and effective design. This template is most suitable for bloggers for making covers for their tips and tricks videos.

YouTube Thumbnail Templates for Lifestyle Videos

Lifestyle videos need clean and minimal thumbnail covers that describes what the video is all about. This bundle of YouTube thumbnail templates has designs that are perfect for any type of lifestyle video. It includes 6 thumbnail templates for travel videos, reaction videos, daily routine videos, and more.

Free Recipe YouTube Thumbnail Template

Do you have a cooking channel on Youtube? This free thumbnail template can be of great use. It features a colorful, and modern design guaranteed to draw your audience’s attention at a glance. It’s an excellent template that you should definitely give a shot to.

Self-Help Blogger YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Whether you’re making an unboxing video or teaching self-help tips, this set of YouTube thumbnail templates will surely be useful to you. It includes multiple thumbnail cover designs featuring modern layouts with beautiful colors and shapes. They are perfect for all kinds of channels from solopreneurs to big brands.

YouTube Thumbnail Templates for Tutorial Videos

Tutorial videos are a big niche on YouTube. In fact, you’ll find thousands of videos on the same topic when searching for tutorial videos. With the help of these thumbnail templates, you’ll have a better chance of ranking higher on YouTube and getting more views. They are professionally designed for various types of tips, guides, and tutorial video content.

Fashion Vlogger YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Fashion and beauty vloggers will find this collection of YouTube thumbnail templates quite useful as it includes several high-quality designs that are ideal for various types of videos. The templates are available in easily editable PSD files with organized layers.

Food Recipe YouTube Thumbnail Template

If you have a YouTube channel for food or drink recipes, this multipurpose YouTube thumbnail template will help you design more attractive thumbnail covers for your videos. It’s fully customizable so you can change its images, colors, and text to your preference. The thumbnail also comes in 720p to 8K resolution PSD files.

Free Gaming YouTube Thumbnail Template

This is a set of free YouTube thumbnail templates specially crafted for gaming content creators. It includes multiple video game-themed thumbnail templates featuring popular multiplayer games such as PUBG, Overwatch, and more.

Free YouTube Thumbnail Templates for Gamers

Another free bundle of YouTube thumbnail covers. This pack also includes 2 thumbnail templates for gaming videos as well as 2 templates for other types of content. The templates are easily editable and come in a high-resolution PSD file.

Travel Vlogger YouTube Thumbnail Templates

One of the best thumbnail templates in this collection is for travel videos. The bundle is worth downloading just for that template. However, there are many other thumbnail designs in this pack you can use to create covers for different types of YouTube videos. All of the templates are available in Full HD resolution and comes in editable PSD files.

Creative YouTube Thumbnail Templates

This is a collection of multipurpose YouTube thumbnail templates that includes 6 beautiful designs for crafting all kinds of video thumbnail covers. The templates feature colorful and creative designs that are most suitable for design, fashion, and even tutorial videos.

YouTube Thumbnail Templates for Business Videos

You can use the thumbnail templates in this bundle to create professional thumbnail designs for your business and brand videos. It includes 6 professionally crafted thumbnails that are perfect for podcasts, business trends, customer success stories, and much more.

Yoga & Health YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Want to create an effective thumbnail cover for a photography video? Or make an attractive thumbnail for a morning routine fitness video? Then grab this YouTube thumbnail templates pack. It includes several stylish thumbnail designs you can use with various types of videos.

Outdoor Adventure YouTube Thumbnail Cover

This creative YouTube thumbnail template is ideal for creating covers for outdoor, travel, and adventure videos. It’s especially useful for making thumbnail covers for event and conference videos as well as live streams. The template comes in 4 resolutions and in an editable PSD file.

Free YouTube Thumbnail for Sports Videos

This free thumbnail template is perfect for making a cover for a simple sports training or fitness video. It comes in EPS file format, which allows you to even edit and customize the tiny shapes in the template. You’ll need Adobe Illustrator or a vector editor to edit this template.

Free YouTube Thumbnail for Music Videos

This creative and colorful thumbnail design is ideal for making a cover for a music mix video or a soundtrack video. The template is free to download and it comes in an easily editable EPS file. Don’t forget to attribute the author when using this free template.

Retro Youtube Thumbnail Cover Templates

If you’re looking for a YouTube thumbnail cover template with a retro old-school design, this bundle will come in handy. It features 6 different templates with classic designs with subtle colors. The templates are easily customizable and you can change the colors and fonts to your preference.

Stylish YouTube Thumbnail Templates

The beautifully stylish thumbnail templates in this pack are simply perfect for all kinds of fashion, beauty, and lifestyle videos. It includes 6 templates with fully customizable PSD files. They are available in Full HD resolution and with free Google Fonts.

Cake & Bake YouTube Thumbnail Template

This YouTube thumbnail template is most suitable for creating covers for videos related to cake, cupcakes, and sweets. It will especially look great on baking recipe videos. And it will surely attract the attention of anyone who loves sweets and treats.

Fitness YouTube Thumbnail Template

If you’re creating fitness videos to promote your gym on YouTube, this thumbnail template will be quite useful to you. It comes with a simple design that helps you include more information in the thumbnail to promote your videos and the business. It comes in multiple resolutions as well.

7 Gym & Fitness YouTube Thumbnail Templates

A bundle of more creative YouTube thumbnail templates for gym and fitness videos. This collection includes 7 different thumbnail designs in editable PSD files. They feature different styles of layouts to help get more views to your videos. All the text, shapes, and colors in the templates are editable as well.

5 Travel & Vacation YouTube Thumbnail Templates

You’ll never run out of stylish thumbnail designs for your travel and tour videos when you have this bundle of YouTube thumbnail templates at your side. It includes 5 different styles of thumbnail designs that are perfect for your outdoor and travel vlogs.

Free YouTube Thumbnail for Gaming Videos

Grab this free YouTube thumbnail template to create a cover for your gaming videos. This template is ideal for making game review videos as well as podcast videos. The template is free to use with attribution. You can edit it using Adobe Illustrator.

Free Food Recipe YouTube Thumbnail Cover

This free YouTube thumbnail template comes with a simple and clean design. It’s perfect for making covers for food recipe videos as well as food review videos. The template comes in EPS file format and with fully editable components. Make sure to attribute its author when using the free template.

5 YouTube Thumbnail Tips for Generating More Clicks

The main goal behind using a YouTube thumbnail template is to drive more clicks and views to your videos. These tips will help you achieve that goal.

Create a Consistent Look

Branding is an important part of creating a successful YouTube channel. If you look at any popular YouTube channel, you’ll see how they have a consistent look across its profile, including the channel cover and thumbnails.

The easiest way to create a consistent look in your YouTube videos is to use a thumbnail template. Use the same template across all your videos. This will make your videos stand out in search results and make your brand instantly recognizable.

Use Big Bold Titles

If all YouTube thumbnails have one thing in common that’s the giant title. Every thumbnail now uses big bold titles that grab attention. These big titles help the audience easily understand what the video is about and get them to click on the link.

Make sure that you also use big bold titles in your YouTube thumbnails. And, more importantly, create good contrast between the background and the text.

Pick the Right Font

When talking about the title design of YouTube thumbnails, we can’t ignore the importance of using a great font.

Use a premium font, if you can, for your YouTube thumbnail text. There are YouTube fonts you can find with various designs. Use the right font that fits your channel content and brand.

Use Fewer Images

The thumbnail of a YouTube video is all about summarizing the contents of the video. And you need to do it while using a very few elements to avoid clutter and distraction.

As a rule, avoid using too many images in your thumbnail. Use just one close-up image or a cropped-out portrait if possible. Usually, images with faces that show various reactions tend to get the most clicks. This is why you see a lot of YouTube thumbnails with mouths wide open, among many other funny reactions.

Arouse Curiosity

Plan your YouTube thumbnail design in a way that arouses the user’s curiosity. You need to get them intrigued and excited to click the link and watch your video.

In addition to refining the design, colors, and layout of your thumbnail, you should also experiment with different copy for the titles to find what works best for your channel.

November 19, 2024

Diversity and Inclusion in Tech: How to Build an Inclusive Tech Culture

Welcome to Creator Columns, where we bring expert HubSpot Creator voices to the Blogs that inspire and help you grow better.

Sometimes I say I lived through the “good moment” in tech — when companies and teams openly championed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Or at least that’s what they claimed.

During that time, it was heartening to see more people from historically excluded groups entering and staying in the industry. It felt like change was happening — diverse teams were forming, working together, and asking the tough questions.

Start by Asking the Tough Questions

The most important shift I noticed was in the types of questions being raised — the ones that no one had really addressed before or even considered. Questions that had no simple answers.

We were facing complex challenges, things no one had ever thought to tackle, and we needed to accept that these problems couldn’t be solved with a one-size-fits-all solution. Leadership roles have traditionally been dominated by men, a reflection of the patriarchy society we live in worldwide.

According to recent estimates, it will take over 130 years to reach gender parity globally at the current rate of progress.

This statistic underscores the need for immediate and transformative action to bridge the gender gap in leadership and beyond. At the same time, it’s important to recognize we won’t solve our diversity problem in one year.

We can ask thoughtful questions to bring complex challenges to light — issues that may have been previously overlooked.

As an IC (individual contributor), you have the power to raise these questions. By doing so, you help foster a deeper understanding of the obstacles at hand and encourage brainstorming for new solutions.

For example, If someone says they couldn’t hire someone from an underrepresented group, you could ask, “What specific outreach strategies did we try, and were they effective in reaching diverse candidates?”

Or if discussing why there’s a low percentage of women or people of color in the company, you might ask, “What support systems do we have in place for diverse talent to thrive here?”

These moments can serve as more than just questions — they’re opportunities to re-evaluate existing approaches and to explore innovative ways to address these challenges. We can transform those uncomfortable moments into brainstorming and problem solving.

More Than Just Numbers

When we talk about diversity and inclusion, it’s easy to get lost in metrics. But true diversity is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet, and inclusion is not about checking the right boxes. It’s about much more than that.

There’s a quote I love: “Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is dancing like no one’s watching.”

It captures the essence of what we should be striving for — a space where people can not only participate but also feel so comfortable that they can be fully themselves.

Building Truly Inclusive Teams

I’ve always been passionate about building teams that are accessible and inclusive, both in the way we hire and in the way we operate internally.

Accessibility goes beyond external hiring practices — it’s about creating an environment where everyone feels they belong, whether they’re introverted or extroverted, people of color or neurodivergent individuals.

Our goal should be to create an environment that’s welcoming to everyone, not just the stereotypical “extroverted white male tech bro.”

Actionable Strategies for Inclusion

1. Make room for multiple voices.

One thing that’s crucial in fostering inclusion is giving quieter voices a chance to be heard. Often, in larger meetings, people who tend to stay silent unless prompted face an even greater barrier to bringing their ideas to the table.

Imagine you’re in a large meeting where the team is discussing new ideas, and there’s one team member who is usually quiet but always offers thoughtful insights in one-on-one settings. They don’t naturally jump in during larger group discussions, and because of this, their ideas often go unheard.

This person is someone with English as a second language and you understand how challenging it might be to brainstorm ideas with the leadership team.

I remember when I just moved to the United States and the amount of time I spent worrying if the person I was communicating with was actually understanding me and my accent.

You might not want to put this person on the spot, but if you remember something she mentioned in your 1:1 meeting, you could say, for example: “This topic is great because I actually had a deep discussion about it with Samantha, where she presented some really good arguments. Samantha, remember when we discussed your ideas on how to better prioritize our backlog, and you mentioned that new tool you're testing?”

2. Check in with your team.

That’s why setting dynamic agendas and actively checking in with team members is so important. Call on them to contribute ideas, but also allow them to pass if they don’t have something to add at the moment.

This creates a space where every type of voice has the opportunity to be heard, but no one feels pressured.

3. Cast a wider talent net.

Another strategy is to broaden your hiring practices. Encourage your teams to share job openings with their communities and look in places where you wouldn’t normally search.

For example, companies usually share their job openings in their newsletters and on LinkedIn. You can take those openings and share them with the community and groups you're part of. Or, if you have someone in mind, you can directly share the job opportunity with them.

With that, you’re helping to expand the reach of those job openings that sometimes might not go to the communities and people you know.

4. Connect with relevant nonprofits.

How about partnering with nonprofits that empower minority groups to enter tech? Not only can these organizations help bring more diverse candidates into your pipeline, but they can also help you address your own blind spots as a leader.

Inclusion isn’t just about solving problems with diversity; it’s about making space for different personalities, languages, and cultures.

And no, this isn’t something that will be “fixed” overnight. Remember, we’re dealing with complex, nuanced problems that require collective effort. But all of this work is worth it because we know that diverse teams produce better results and create better products.

Resources to Keep in Mind

Latinx in Power Podcast: This podcast interviews individuals with Latin and Caribbean heritage, aiming to demystify tech through storytelling. Hearing stories and lessons from industry leaders can not only inspire but also create significant changes in your career.
Techqueria: Be part of the largest global community of Latiné professionals in tech, learn and get inspired by them.
Latinas in Tech: I love this community and this is how I found other latinas who work in tech, I highly encourage you to be part of this community.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Survey Questions to Ask Your Employees: Take a look at this list of 24 survey questions focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for employees.
Company Values: 60+ core company values that will shape your culture & inspire your employees

The Real Work Behind Diversity and Inclusion in Tech

We need to move beyond only talking about DEI in tech. It’s time to take meaningful, tangible action.

By welcoming diversity not only in race, gender, or ethnicity but also in personality, background, and perspective, we can create more vibrant, creative, and effective teams.

As we all know at this point, this doesn’t just benefit the individuals; it benefits the entire organization.

November 19, 2024

The Pros and Cons of Instagram Marketing, According to an Expert [+ Research]

I was in high school when I uploaded my first Instagram post, and now that I'm almost 30, I can say for sure I've changed a lot since then.

The same can be said for the social media platform, and those changes have led to a few pros and cons of Instagram marketing.

With Instagram being around for so long, you may wonder if the platform is still relevant in marketing or if the pros of Instagram marketing still outweigh the cons.

Fortunately, I asked an expert for her thoughts, and I consulted the findings of our most recent Instagram Marketing report.

Here's what I've discovered:

Is Instagram marketing still effective in 2024?
4 Pros of Instagram Marketing
4 Cons of Instagram Marketing
Why Instagram Can Be Challenging for Brands

Is Instagram Marketing still effective in 2024?

In our 2024 Instagram Marketing Report, 88% of responding marketers say Instagram marketing has been effective for their company this year.

Furthermore, 71% of marketers who sell products directly within the app say its social shopping features yield high ROI.

With those numbers in mind, I'd say Instagram marketing is still valuable and effective in 2024. Samantha Meller, head of social media at HubSpot's The Hustle, agrees—but with a condition.

"Without a doubt, I'd say pretty much every brand should be on Instagram," she says. "That said, the traditional playbook of Instagram has gone out the window."

Meller says marketers must be nimble and adaptable to succeed on the platform.

"You can't just rest on your laurels of what's worked in the past," she says. "You must always continue to innovate and have that ear-to-the-ground mindset about what's happening right now that you can relate to your business."

Moreover, think about how your content can provide value to their audience.

For example, one of my favorite Instagram accounts is Fenty Beauty. The makeup brand doesn't just post gorgeous images of its products; it also uses Reels and Stories to show its audience how to use the products for timely looks.

Its latest video features a tutorial by beauty influencer Alegria Jimenez, showing viewers how to create a holiday look.

Image Source

While Instagram certainly has its value in marketing, it's not without its challenges. I asked Meller about the pros and cons she's experienced in Instagram Marketing. Here's what she told me:

4 Pros of Instagram Marketing

1. Instagram is great for brand awareness.

Like 40% of marketers in our Instagram Marketing Report, The Hustle's top goal on Instagram is to raise brand awareness.

"It's a way for us to connect with our audience and to reach potentially new audience members who would ideally turn into customers at HubSpot," she explains. "It's a way for us to showcase all the different content we're doing across The Hustle brand, such as videos, podcasts, long-form editorial stories, our newsletter, etc."

Meller notes that Instagram followers are more valuable than on other platforms because they are more invested in the account and its content. They're also likely to continuously see your content.

"When you follow someone on Instagram, it's a lot more of a commitment than following someone on TikTok," she says. "If you're following someone on Instagram, it's because you want their content to appear in your feed. But, if you follow someone on TikTok, you still might not see their content for months."

2. Instagram helps marketers determine what their audience is into.

"Instagram is valuable in finding out what type of content our audience is into, what kind of stories they want to hear about, and what they don't want to hear about," Meller explains.

"I'm a big believer that knowing what your audience doesn't want can be even more helpful or valuable than knowing what they do want."

Meller says The Hustle uses these insights to enrich its content, including podcasts, newsletters, and more, both on and off the platform.

3. Instagram makes engaging with audiences a breeze.

54% of marketers say their goal in 2024 is to increase engagement on Instagram, and Meller says engagement is one of the platform's perks.

"We've made many changes to our Instagram and social media strategy in the last few months, and we've seen some really exciting metrics come out of our new strategy," she shares.

"We're getting a big increase in impressions and engagement, which means our audience is responding to our content a lot more than they had been in the past."

Interacting with your audience is the most popular and fruitful strategy for engagement. You can do this by replying to comments and sharing images and videos of your followers using your products.

4. Instagram can put your content in front of new audiences.

This pro didn't come from Meller. Instead, it is my own observation as both a creator and an Instagram user. Instagram has implemented new features and algorithms that help push your content to new audiences.

For example, collaborative posts allow for the same content to appear on two different accounts. Let's say I'm a smaller business that managed to have a well-known creator showcase my product in their Instagram content.

Said creator can post the content in collaboration with my account and their followers will see both my account and the product, granting my brand more exposure.

Instagram is also experimenting with showing recommended accounts on users feeds.

4 Cons of Instagram Marketing

1. Instagram's algorithm is volatile.

If there is one thing my creator friends and I complain about about Instagram, it is its constantly changing algorithm. Meller relates.

"Instagram's algorithm is always doing something new. Just when you think something's working, it changes, and something isn't working," she says. "You could have one week or month where your content is really hot, and then the next month, you're thinking, 'What's going on? Did people forget about us?'"

2. Instagram constantly introduces new features.

New features aren't always bad, but they can be overwhelming for marketers if new rollouts are constant and if these features are pivotal in getting your content seen.

"A lot of social managers joke that every time Adam Mosseri posts a video, there's panic," Meller laughs, "because we're thinking, 'Now what? What feature are they going to introduce that the algorithm is going to favor, that we all have to bend over backward to cater to so our content continues to be seen?'"

3. Budgeting for influencer marketing can be a challenge.

Again, this isn't from Meller, but based on my own observations.

For many marketers, influencer marketing seems out of reach — after all, don't you have to spend big bucks to partner with mega influencers? Fortunately, there are ways to incorporate influencer marketing into your budget, even if you're a small or upcoming business.

While it seems like a best practice to partner with influencers with many followers, HubSpot’s Instagram Engagement Report says your efforts are more worthwhile if you partner with influencers who may have fewer followers but a more engaged community (known as micro influencers).

Micro-influencers provide smaller, highly engaged audiences without the hefty price tag of a mainstream celebrity, making this type of marketing more accessible to various brands.

With 86% of marketers saying influencer marketing was effective for their company, I still say it's worth a try.

4. There are tons of competition on and off the platform.

"There's a lot of competition with not only other brands or content on the platform but also Instagram itself is competing with other apps, such as TikTok," Meller explains. "All the apps are vying for your attention, so the more other platforms grow in popularity, the fewer people are going on Instagram."

Why Instagram Can Be Challenging for Brands

To summarize, Instagram is challenging for many brands because of its unpredictable algorithm, fierce competition, and constant rollout of new features that must be prioritized.

But, Meller says marketers shouldn't let these factors intimidate them. Instead, they should roll up their sleeves and start researching.

"I've been doing what I've been doing for the better part of a decade now," she says, "and there's a bunch of resources, newsletters, and people that I follow in the social media space to make sure I have a pulse on everything."

Here are some sources Meller's recommends:

Meller says Rachel Karton's "Link in Bio" is a "magnificent resource for social media managers. "
"ICYMI" by Lia Haberman is a weekly newsletter about different changes going on in the social media landscape.
The internet!

"For better or for worse, I am just so chronically online. I'm ways consuming content, reading, watching, and listening," Meller says. "I like being in the know. That's what makes a good social media manager. You really do have to live and breathe being online, online culture, and knowing what people are talking about."

Final Thoughts

Instagram constantly evolves, but it remains an excellent platform for businesses trying to increase brand awareness and audience engagement. That said, it's not without its challenges, such as an ever-changing algorithm.

However, the above resources and tips can help you navigate the platform and build a valuable Instagram marketing strategy.

November 19, 2024

Conducting B2B Market Research the Right Way — Here‘s Everything I’ve Learned

Few things bring me joy like diving into a Wikipedia rabbit hole for a few hours. I relish the chance to research topics and ideas and discover the unexpected ways they connect.

And while I may relax that way in my personal life, I also use those skills in business, where I conduct B2B market research to build marketing strategies and plans.

Understanding businesses as buyers is its own kind of rabbit hole. They can be complex entities, with dozens or hundreds of employees and leaders, each possessing unique needs and desires.

It’s a lot to unpack — but, to thrive in the modern marketplace, knowing your buyer is the foundation.

Let’s chat about how you can learn about B2B buyers and how market research can equip you and your team for success.

Table of Contents

What is B2B market research?
How To Do B2B Market Research
B2B Market Research vs. B2C Market Research
Benefits of B2B Market Research
B2B Market Research Methods
Conducting My Own B2B Market Research

Market research uncovers important information like:

How companies view their industry and the marketplace for your products.
What company leaders need and want from a particular vendor.
Where they are in the buying cycle and what it’ll take to move them along.

B2B market research requires both quantitative (hard, numerical) and qualitative (softer, subjective) data. The end goal is to prepare your company to best position your offerings with your target business market.

We’ll get to specific methods of conducting B2B market research later. But items like surveys, competitive analyses, and customer interviews will provide the data you need to make the best decisions.

B2B Market Research vs. B2C Market Research

If B2B market research is how you understand companies as consumers, then B2C market research is how to discover the same details from consumers themselves.

What makes them different, and when should you use each?

Buying Complexity

Both the target audience and product marketplace are more complex in B2B buying scenarios.

With B2C buying, you’re selling directly to one consumer. They — or perhaps along with a spouse, partner, or other family member or friend — are the ultimate decision maker.

For instance, if you’re buying a new car, you may include your spouse or partner in viewing and test driving vehicles. But the car dealership is selling to you, the ultimate buyer. The product or service is therefore straightforward: Here’s the car with certain features and the price.

B2B buying gets complex quickly. Usually, B2B products are more complicated.

They require multiple stakeholders to get invested in the process, and they reach across several departments. Consider integrating a new CRM across an enterprise.

That change will affect a lot of employees.

As such, B2B buying happens as a committee effort. The average B2B buying committee has around 11 people, according to Gartner. B2B sellers need to “multi-thread” their deals by working alongside all these interested parties to close the deal.

Decision Making

The differing levels of complexity affect how buying decisions are made.

B2C transactions typically happen quicker. Now, buying a car is usually a multi-week affair. Instead, let’s consider your last trip to the grocery store.

How long did you spend deciding to buy, let’s say, a box of Hamburger Helper? If you’re like the average consumer, that’d be 13 seconds.

These decisions also tend to be more impulsive or emotionally driven. You’re hungry (bonus tip: never shop hungry). And Hamburger Helper sounds delicious. So, you transact and buy a box for dinner.

B2B transactions involve more people and deeper research and consideration. Ergo, they take longer. The typical B2B cycle can run from a few weeks to 3-9 months, depending on what you’re buying. Personally, I’ve seen these decisions take years to fully flesh out.

Because you’re in it for the long haul, B2B buying also relies more on relationships and trust. Buying dinner from the grocery store doesn’t require a nurture cycle. But if I’m trusting a vendor with my enterprise’s new CRM (and potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars), I need to believe they’re the best fit.

Emotions can play a role — you want to like who you’re buying from. But these are often more rational buying decisions, focused on business needs, ROI, and value propositions.

Preferred Research Methods

Perhaps one of the most important differences between B2B and B2C market research is how you acquire data for decision-making. While both types use quantitative and qualitative data, they use that information differently.

For instance, B2C market research is typically more quantitative-driven.

Researchers use consumer surveys and polls to gather information. They want to capture a diverse consumer base, so the number of participants is high.

B2C researchers seek “statistical significance,” which means they received enough responses from consumers to apply their findings across the broader consumer base. The number to reach significance should be about 10% of your target population. For most research, that falls between 100-1,000 respondents.

Conversely, B2B researchers probably dream of convincing 1,000 businesses to respond. Business markets are usually more niche, meaning they have fewer potential respondents for surveys. Plus, business buyers often hold information closer to their chests; they don’t want proprietary data to leak.

B2B market research is therefore more qualitative-driven. Researchers use more in-depth surveys, prospect interviews, and focus groups to gather intelligence.

They’ll target questions to get to the real meat of the matter. What are the deepest pain points? And what do leaders need and want to solve it?

You’ll also see researchers place greater weight on responses based on a respondent’s influence over a final decision. The CEO’s answers will mean more than the Marketing Manager’s.

If you’re struggling to get high-quality information from your B2B sources, hear what B2B International has to say.

And, if you’re craving more about the B2B/B2C split and how B2B buyers view the market, see our latest data-packed research report on B2B buyers.

Benefits of B2B Market Research

Conducting market research should deliver a lot of benefits. But which ones can help companies the most right now?

To answer this, I talked with Theresa Goodwin. She’s the CEO of Boldthink, a brand consultancy. Goodwin shared several benefits recent clients have received from B2B market research.

1. Expanded Market Reach and Growth

Regular research helps your company grow: professional services marketing firm Hinge found companies that conduct B2B market research at least quarterly grow up to 70% faster and are almost 50% more profitable than firms that don’t.

You can also reach new markets or expand into current ones with good research.

One of Goodwin’s clients wanted research into their employer brand and how to use it to attract more clients and employees. Through primary and secondary research, Goodwin’s company helped the business redevelop their employer brand, gaining market share within talent pools.

2. More Effective Outreach

Market research also helps you talk to the right companies and people for growing your business.

For instance, Goodwin’s client saw a surge in applications from qualified talent who aligned with the company’s values.

“By connecting with the right talent, they didn’t just hire more people, they hired people who wanted to stick around,” she said.

3. Increased Brand Engagement

Across digital and physical channels, Goodwin’s client saw more people interact with their brand. What’s more, employees began advocating for the brand. They actively shared their brand experiences — further attracting like-minded talent.

4. Streamlined Operations

It’s easy to overlook internal benefits. But, the process of understanding buyers and the market can help standardize operational needs.

“The new materials we developed made things like RFPs and proposals more efficient for their internal team,” Goodwin shared. The client could do more thanks to a clear understanding of their business and positioning.

B2B Market Research Methods

A good B2B market research report will use primary and secondary sources and quantitative and qualitative data to develop insights. How do you get that information? I’ll cover some of the most common research methods below.

1. Surveys

A B2B survey should gather crucial information on your potential buyers like:

Company profile.
Needs and challenges.
Product or service use.
Decision-making process.
Details and perceptions on the industry.

B2B surveys don’t need the same level of statistical significance that B2C surveys require. But, you do need enough business leaders to respond.

You can expect a response rate for a B2B survey between 10-30%. Make sure you reach out to a lengthy list of potential respondents to gather sufficient data.

2. Interviews

Use customer interviews to collect highly detailed qualitative information. You can handle this process within focus groups or individual interviews.

You can get a lot of great info from interviews, but you don’t have as much control over the process. Customers can go off on tangents or wander into unexpected territory. Goodwin says that can be a good thing.

“Embrace the messiness of the process,” she said.

“Not every conversation will go as planned, and sometimes unexpected insights will pop up that challenge your assumptions. Be ready to pivot and adjust your approach as you go. Flexibility is key and sometimes the best insights come from the conversations you didn’t anticipate.”

3. Competitor Analyses

Know where your company sits in relation to your competitors. Price, product features, and customer support are all differentiators your buyers will care about.

Also evaluate more qualitative elements like competitors’ marketing portfolios and value propositions to get a better sense of who they are and what makes you unique.

Pro tip: Generative AI can help collect and crunch competitor data to produce a solid competitive analysis. Tools like ChatGPT can parse through publicly available documentation and uncover new insights into competitors.

4. Digital Marketing Analysis

Review publicly available information online about your industry, competitors, and potential buyers. Everybody is posting something, so look into some of the most common places:

Social media like Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Websites hosted by competitors and buyers.
Aggregate sites like G2 that provide public data on products and services.

Pay close attention to engagement on social media (i.e., How many likes did your competitor’s latest posts generate?). Also, if you have access to SEO research tools, dig into keyword use. Google Trends offers a fine top-level place to begin.

5. Pilot Programs

If you’re launching or revamping a product or service, offer pilots to current or potential customers. You can gather significant amounts of data — especially qualitative data and valuable testimonials.

Don’t forget to interview program participants after their pilot ends.

Pro tip: If you’re ready to get going with any of these research methods, or want to dig deeper into market research how-tos, our market research guide can help.

When you’re ready to start B2B market research, follow these steps to prepare you and your organization for success.

Step 1: Define research objectives.

If you want solid insights at the end, lay a good foundation at the beginning, and clearly define what you’re seeking to accomplish with your B2B market research.

Think of objectives like:

Understanding market size.
Identifying customer needs.
Analyzing competitors’ strategies.

You won’t know what the result will look like yet, but establish objectives to begin.

Step 2: Set target audience.

Build the boundaries for who you want to respond to your research outreach.

Filters could include:

Geographic location.
Industry type, including niche options.
Company size and makeup.
Leadership level for ideal respondents (e.g., VP of Marketing or CMO).

A target audience with these types of boundaries will help you capture an accurate slice of your larger market.

Step 3: Conduct primary and secondary research.

Depending on your objectives and target audience, start digging into available data. Secondary research like industry publications, public data sets, and reports from government agencies and market research firms offer ample information.

If you want to get specific, however, include primary research, too. Surveys and interviews can provide a qualitative boost to your research.

Pro tip: Explore HubSpot’s list of market research tools to help you gather data and analyze for insights.

Step 4: Assess success metrics and insights.

See how the information you gathered fits into your objectives. Did you capture the right kinds of data? How did it match up to your goals? What did it all reveal?

Qualitative data can offer a big boon to your business. Goodwin and her team share this fact with clients.

“I measure the success of a B2B market research project by the insights it brings to the table,” Goodwin said.

“Success isn’t just about confirming what we already know — it’s about uncovering something new. Did we have that ‘aha’ moment? Did we find the answers to our core questions that validate or challenge our assumptions? If the research leads to actionable insights that inform strategy or drive decisions, then it’s been successful.”

Conducting My Own B2B Market Research

When I’m building B2B market research plans, I lean on a few tips to remember during the process. I also asked Goodwin for some of her feedback on running these programs.

Foster comfortable, engaging interview environments.

In the past, I did a lot of thought leadership development, which included acting as a journalist. I’d interview subject matter experts and transform their ideas into actionable insights. You want that kind of journalistic flair when you run research interviews.

Goodwin elaborates on this point: “Asking people for specifics encourages them to go beyond surface-level responses and makes the conversation more personal and relevant to them,” she said.

“This allows you to dive deeper and get insights you may not have otherwise gotten from just asking one question. Plus, it helps them feel more comfortable knowing there isn’t a right or wrong answer because it’s all about their unique perspective.”

Pro tip: Goodwin also cites “Buyer Personas” by Adele Revella as a fantastic guide for preparing and running top-notch buyer interviews. “It taught me how to structure my conversations, dig deeper, and make interviews feel more natural rather than scripted,” she said.

Proactively handle organizational impatience.

Doing great research takes time. There’s lots of ground to cover when planning objectives, conducting research, and compiling results.

During this process, people can get antsy. Leaders may expect results sooner than you’re ready (or able) to share. Everyone wants juicy insights, but you have to earn them.

Goodwin sometimes sees this impatience with her clients and has developed her own approach to that conversation.

“My favorite saying is, ‘We have to slow down to speed up,’ and I use it every time I explain my market research process. Rushing through research can lead to costly do-overs later, so investing time upfront saves resources in the long run,” she said.

“When clients understand this, they see the value in letting the process unfold. If a client insists on moving quickly, I set clear expectations and explain that insights will be limited and could impact the strategy’s effectiveness. That way, they understand what they’re sacrificing for speed.”

Develop Your B2B Market Research Acumen Today

B2B market research requires diligence, patience, an eye for detail, and a keen interest in understanding data and relationships. When leadership wants answers yesterday, all of this can feel overwhelming.

But, conducting market research can be an enlightening experience. You hear directly from customers and prospects. And you can lead fascinating conversations that take unexpected but interesting turns.

All in all, B2B market research can be fun.

With the many tools and techniques available online, you can start conducting deep research into your target market, audience, and potential business customers.

Set two or three targeted research objectives and start seeking the unexpected today.

November 19, 2024

Color Psychology in Action: Choosing Colors That Influence User Behavior

There’s a close connection between the traffic lights and the “sale” signs you see in stores and online. Can you guess what it is?

From the early days of our childhood, we are taught to stop at traffic lights when they turn Red and to always pay close attention to them. When we grow up, we unknowingly follow the same rule whenever we see a sign or an ad using that same color.

Have you noticed how every “sale” sign is designed using a Red background? Because it instantly commands attention!

There’s a psychology behind the colors we see in the designs around us. Designers and marketers have been using this concept to create more impactful branding designs and advertising campaigns for decades.

But is color psychology a real thing? How does it work? Can you use it in your own design projects? Let’s find out.

Color Psychology in Action

(Credit: TheLogoCompany)

Isn’t it strange how the biggest brands in the same industry share similar colors in their branding designs?

Some of the most influential tech companies such as Facebook, IBM, Intel, Salesforce, Samsung, and Dropbox all share the color Blue in their brand identity design as it’s associated with trust, reliability, and security.

It’s the same reason why many luxury brands, like GUCCI, Prada, CHANEL, and Louis Vuitton, use the black color in their designs as it’s the color of minimalism, elegance, and sophistication.

Each and every one of these colors has the power to connect with humans on a personal level and evoke different emotions. That’s what color psychology is all about. And it’s not just a concept either, there’s actual science behind it.

Science Behind Color Psychology

Color psychology spans many different areas, subjects, and industries ranging from genders to cultures, lifestyles, professions, and much more. And there have been many studies proving the impact of color psychology in each of these areas.

When it comes to color psychology in branding and user experience design (UXD), there are a few specific studies that show interesting findings.

One research published in the International Journal of Management and Human Science has found that people often make the decision to buy a product within 90 seconds and about 62 to 90% of that product assessment is done based on the colors alone.

A great example of this is the Coca-Cola product design. Whenever you see a soft drink can with a white logo on a red background, you immediately assume it’s Coca-Cola and grab it off the shelves without a second thought. Also, note that this is the same color combination used in those “sale” and “discount” signs in supermarkets.

Another research from the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science has solidified the importance of color usage in branding design and how strong of an impact it has in forming consumer brand perceptions. Proven again by another study from the University of Loyola, which found that “color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent.”

(50,000-year-old cave paintings, Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil / Source: Wikimedia)

All these research and studies are examples of how our human brain processes colors and how they evoke different feelings and emotions. It’s nothing new really, color psychology has been around since the birth of civilization, proven by even the findings of the earliest cave paintings using colors such as red, yellow, and gray colors depicting scenes of hunting, clashing, and sexual activity.

How Colors Affect User Behavior

Whenever someone appears to be feeling sad, we often ask “Feeling blue?”. Or when someone’s angry, we say “his face was red”. There’s a reason why we associate these emotions with specific colors.

(Credit: Wordstream)

All these colors have associations with our emotions. However, the same colors can also evoke different emotions based on the situation as well.

For example, companies like Facebook and PayPal use the color blue to evoke a sense of socialness, trust, and loyalty. While that same color is used by law enforcement agencies to convey security and dependability.

Another example is the color red. When we see this color on a stop sign, we immediately feel a sense of alertness and attention. But brands also use this same color to evoke feelings of excitement, passion, and sometimes power.

For a much more detailed understanding of color psychology, we encourage you to explore the ColorPsychology.org website. It includes more in-depth explanations about each color and how they affect emotions.

Myths and Misconceptions

Color psychology is not a magic formula and it certainly doesn’t work the same way for everyone. As we mentioned before, the effects of color depend on the context and situation. And it’s also important to remember that people from various parts of the world and different cultures have unique associations with colors.

The colors you use to evoke a sense of excitement could translate into a completely opposite reaction from people from a different part of the world.

(Strawberry Coca-Cola in Japan / Source: Stars and Stripes)

For example, in Western culture, the color black is associated with luxury and elegance while the same color represents death and mourning in Eastern cultures. When creating designs that target international audiences, understanding the symbolism of color is crucial to creating universal designs.

5 Tips for Choosing Effective Colors

Color psychology is not just about evoking emotions and persuasion. You can use it in user experience design to create color schemes that improve user engagement and retention as well.

These tips will help you choose a more harmonious color palette for your designs while also making your designs more effective and accessible.

1. Design with Accessibility in Mind

Accessibility is one of the most important aspects to keep in mind when creating a color scheme for a design. Making your designs accessible to all, including people with disabilities like color blindness, is not only required by the law but it’s also part of making more inclusive designs.

When it comes to choosing colors, always remember to pick color tones and shades that meet accessibility standards.

2. Pick the Right Shades and Contrast

The shades and the contrasting of the colors you use will also have different psychological effects on people. A good example is the new trend of pastel and soft colors, which aims to create more soothing and calming vibes through designs. However, a small adjustment to color contrast will make a different outcome in such a design project.

3. Guide Users Toward Action

Colors can also be used to guide users and persuade them to take action. For example, the colors used in Call to Action (CTA) buttons on websites are designed with this goal in mind. These CTAs often feature brighter accent colors like red or green to grab attention and also to create a sense of urgency, which persuades users to click the “buy” button much faster.

4. Understand the Target Audience

Understanding the culture, ethnicities, and beliefs of your target audience is also crucial to creating a more appropriate color palette that’s also effective. When creating color schemes that target a wide range of audiences, it’s always best to go with tested and proven colors used by the more successful brands.

5. Test the Color Palettes

It’s always wise to test your color schemes and designs before going public. If you can’t afford a focus group, you can use various other means to test your designs. Even using platforms like Reddit and Facebook groups would suffice. Or you can use affordable user testing platforms such as UserTesting to get that job done.

Conclusion

Whether you’re designing a brand identity, crafting an app interface, or even a social media campaign, having an understanding of color psychology is vital to delivering more effective and successful results.

Having even a basic understanding of color psychology is enough to make a big difference in your design outcomes. However, you should follow a proper course from a reputable institution to get all the accurate knowledge about this subject.

You can also explore our gallery to see how different kinds of designs use color psychology with their respective color palettes included. And read up on the latest color trends here.

November 19, 2024

Black screen appears when using the laptop webcam.

hi guys
Black screen appears when I try to use my laptop webcam. Ive already:

Uninstalled and reinstalled the webcam driver.
Checked privacy settings to ensure the webcam is enabled.
Checked for hardware changes.
Despite these efforts, the issue persists. I have an interview coming up and urgently need to fix this. The laptop is a Dell Latitude 9520 running Windows 10. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

November 18, 2024

Why American are used Lenovo ThinkPad Laptop

i am heard that most of the American are used ThinkPad laptops.

November 18, 2024

AI Target Audience: What I Learned [+ Tools to Try]

I‘ll be honest: I don’t know anything about an “AI target audience” or finding an audience via AI.

However, I want to learn because I recently started working with a local pole fitness studio in my neighborhood.

I want to help it gain new students. So, dear reader, we are going to learn about AI audience targeting, its benefits, and helpful AI target audience tools together.

Here we go!

Table of Contents

What is AI audience targeting?
Benefits of Using AI for Target Audiences
How to Find Your Target Audience Using AI
6 Best AI Tools for Target Audience Research

What is AI audience targeting?

After some research, I've found that AI audience targeting is when you use artificial intelligence to find and engage with a distinct group of potential customers (your target audience).

Specifically, AI target audience tools examine audience behaviors, interests, regional preferences, and demographics to guide marketing strategies and content.

Benefits of Using AI for Target Audiences

Using AI target audience tools can help improve many aspects of a marketing strategy.

I'm personally most interested in how it can help with advertising, content, and customer engagement since these are most important to me as I help my neighborhood business.

Advertising

AI target audience tools would be most helpful in advertising because they could analyze large quantities of data in seconds, allowing me to draw conclusions quicker, decide on my advertising strategy, and pivot quickly when necessary.

As I said, the business I‘m working with is a pole fitness studio. An AI target audience tool would help me quickly figure out our target audience’s behaviors, where they search for pole fitness content, and what platforms they frequent.

From there, I can craft an advertising strategy tailored to them, thus boosting the studio's visibility and gaining more students.

Content

I‘m trying to grow the business’ visibility on social media. I've found that some videos perform better than others, but analyzing all the content performance data is still tedious, and I need to figure out what our audience likes.

As I said earlier, AI audience tools can analyze this data faster than I or any human could, allowing me to adjust my content strategy and create engaging content more quickly.

How to Find Your Target Audience Using AI

According to my research, I can find and understand my target audience using AI via the following:

1. Predictive Analytics

I can't stress enough how efficient AI is at analyzing data. In this case, AI can quickly assess data to build models for future consumer behavior.

For example, my neighborhood studio could use predictive analytics to figure out when someone is in the market for classes if a potential student:

Attended one of its events, such as the Halloween-themed pole dance workshop it hosted
Is a part of a demographic of people who are interested in learning pole fitness
Lives in an area where there are gyms, fitness programs, and dance studios
Clicked on an ad for the studio recently

If someone does one or more of the following, AI will help the studio find them and create targeted ads and content to encourage them to become regular students.

2. Behavioral Analytics

AI can analyze behavioral analytics metrics such as where your audience is coming from, what they click on your site, and how long they're on your platform to help you better understand their behavior.

For example, visitors to the pole fitness website always click on the website's banner. That would encourage me to update the banner to take visitors to a signup page to register for classes.

3. Hyper-personalized Content

AI audience targeting can effectively analyze data to deliver personalized content and ads to potential consumers. For example, let‘s get back to the pole fitness studio I’m working with. AI target audience tools can assess:

The time of year most students sign up for fitness classes or gyms
The needs and concerns of first-time students
How old the average student is
Where most potential students reside locally

Thanks to AI's speed, I could use all this information to create targeted and quickly pivot when consumer needs change.

6 Best AI Tools for Target Audience Research

Now that I know what AI target audience tools are, their benefits, and how they can be used, it‘s time to explore tools to help me market my local pole fitness studio and help you market your own business.

Here are the best ones I’ve found and plan on testing out for the pole studio I'm working with.

1. HubSpot's Breeze AI

I promise I‘m not biased when I say HubSpot’s Breeze AI boasts several excellent tools for finding and engaging your target audience. One feature I find most useful for my marketing goals is Breeze Social Media Agent.

I'm currently leveraging social media to boost awareness of the pole fitness studio and encourage potential students to register for classes.

Breeze Social Media Agent can help me achieve this by analyzing past post-performance data and assessing business details and industry best practices.

It will then use the information to optimize my social media strategy with data-driven post suggestions.

Best for: Refining and optimizing your social media strategy.

2. ExactBuyer

ExactBuyer helps businesses find their ideal customers, gather relevant data, and use the information to create realistic, targeted buyer personas.

Even better, the AI-powered tool allows users to consistently update and refine the gathered data to optimize the personas in real time.

I wanted to use ExactBuyer to create realistic buyer personas for prospective students interested in the studio's classes.

Best for: Creating hyper-focused buyer personas.

Image Source

3. OpinioAI

OpinioAI is one of the most interesting AI target audience tools because it allows users to create buyer personas and chat with them to get insight into consumer thoughts on their business.

You can talk to your persona about its favorite brand, hobbies, behaviors, needs, and more to get insight into your target audience. Think of it as a virtual one-on-one conversation with a potential consumer.

Best for: Gathering insight into the wants and needs of your target audience.

Image Source

4. Pixis

Pixis AI features allow users to create precise, targeted content for their audience.

Its AI Targeting feature is most interesting because it establishes custom audience cohorts based on search trends, competitive keywords, and brand keywords.

Best for: Identifying niche audiences.

Image Source

5. GapScout

GapScout delivers AI-powered insights that pinpoint content gaps and emergency trends that competitors in your niche are missing.

Best for: Helping your brand tap into underserved needs in your market.

Image Source

6. Userpersona

This is a great AI tool for marketers new to creating and understanding user personas to guide their brand strategy. All users need to do is describe their product and service, and Userpersona will do the rest.

For example, I typed in the information about the pole fitness studio I'm working with, and here is what Userpersona generated.

It only took one sentence for Userpersona to generate a persona called "Sarah Smith" to represent our target audience and give me an idea of how and who to market the studio.

Now, we both know quite a bit more about AI target audience tools and how to use them.

I plan on using HubSpot's Breeze AI to help my favorite local pole fitness studio attract more students. I hope you will also try the tools I listed. Good luck!

Importance of Typography in Storytelling

How Typography Evokes Emotions

Typography as a Visual Voice

Guiding Readers on a Journey

5 Tips for Typographic Storytelling

1. Consistency and Relevance

2. Importance of Font Pairing

3. Ensure Readability

4. Print vs Digital

5. Follow the Trends

Conclusion

We’re in experimental territory

Basic command and commandfor usage

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The show-popover, hide-popover, and toggle-popover values

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Creating custom commands

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Meaningful Christmas

Calling All Santas

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Have a Good Holiday!

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Basic `command` and `commandfor` usage

The `show-popover`, `hide-popover`, and `toggle-popover` values

Are `popover` and `<dialog>` the only features that support invoker commands?