Multiple Anchors

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Only Chris, right? You’ll want to view this in a Chromium browser:

This is exactly the sort of thing I love, not for its practicality (cuz it ain’t), but for how it illustrates a concept. Generally, tutorials and demos try to follow the “rules” — whatever those may be — yet breaking them helps you understand how a certain thing works. This is one of those.

The concept is pretty straightforward: one target element can be attached to multiple anchors on the page.

<div class="anchor-1"></div>
<div class="anchor-2"></div>
<div class="target"></div>

We’ve gotta register the anchors and attach the .target to them:

.anchor-1 {
  anchor-name: --anchor-1;
}

.anchor-2 {
  anchor-name: --anchor-2;
}

.target {
  
}

Wait, wait! I didn’t attach the .target to the anchors. That’s because we have two ways to do it. One is using the position-anchor property.

.target {
  position-anchor: --anchor-1;
}

That establishes a target-anchor relationship between the two elements. But it only accepts a single anchor value. Hmm. We need more than that. That’s what the anchor() function can do. Well, it doesn’t take multiple values, but we can declare it multiple times on different inset properties, each referencing a different anchor.

.target {
  top: anchor(--anchor-1, bottom);
}

The second piece of anchor()‘s function is the anchor edge we’re positioned to and it’s gotta be some sort of physical or logical insettop, bottom, start, end, inside, outside, etc. — or percentage. We’re bascially saying, “Take that .target and slap it’s top edge against --anchor-1‘s bottom edge.

That also works for other inset properties:

.target {
  top: anchor(--anchor-1 bottom);
  left: anchor(--anchor-1 right);
  bottom: anchor(--anchor-2 top);
  right: anchor(--anchor-2 left);
}

Notice how both anchors are declared on different properties by way of anchor(). That’s rad. But we aren’t actually anchored yet because the .target is just like any other element that participates in the normal document flow. We have to yank it out with absolute positioning for the inset properties to take hold.

.target {
  position: absolute;

  top: anchor(--anchor-1 bottom);
  left: anchor(--anchor-1 right);
  bottom: anchor(--anchor-2 top);
  right: anchor(--anchor-2 left);
}

In his demo, Chris cleverly attaches the .target to two <textarea> elements. What makes it clever is that <textarea> allows you to click and drag it to change its dimensions. The two of them are absolutely positioned, one pinned to the viewport’s top-left edge and one pinned to the bottom-right.

If we attach the .target's top and left edges to --anchor-1‘s bottom and right edges, then attach the target's bottom and right edges to --anchor-2‘s top and left edges, we’re effectively anchored to the two <textarea> elements. This is what allows the .target element to stretch with the <textarea> elements when they are resized.

But there’s a small catch: a <textarea> is resized from its bottom-right corner. The second <textarea> is positioned in a way where the resizer isn’t directly attached to the .target. If we rotate(180deg), though, it’s all good.

Again, you’ll want to view that in a Chromium browser at the time I’m writing this. Here’s a clip instead if you prefer.

That’s just a background-color on the .target element. We can put a little character in there instead as a background-image like Chris did to polish this off.

Fun, right?! It still blows my mind this is all happening in CSS. It wasn’t many days ago that something like this would’ve been a job for JavaScript.


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

Smashing Hour With Lynn Fisher

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I’m a big Lynn Fisher fan. You probably are, too, if you’re reading this. Or maybe you’re reading her name for the first time, in which case you’re in for a treat.

That’s because I had a chance to sit down with Lynn for a whopping hour to do nothing more than gab, gab, and gab some more. I love these little Smashing Hours because they’re informal like that and I feel like I really get to know the person I’m talking with. And this was my very first time talking with Lynn, we had a ton to talk about — her CSS art, her annual site refreshes, where she finds inspiration for her work, when the web started to “click” for her… and so much more.

Don’t miss the bit where Lynn discusses her current site design (~24 min.) because it’s a masterclass in animation and creativity.


Smashing Hour With Lynn Fisher originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

20+ Best Spray Paint Textures & Backgrounds (Splatter, Drips, Leaks, & More)

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If you’re looking to add a gritty, urban vibe to your designs, spray paint textures and backgrounds are the perfect solution.

Whether you’re creating digital artwork, branding, or eye-catching event graphics, spray paint textures add a layer of authenticity and creativity that’s hard to achieve with traditional tools. From street art-inspired projects to bold, edgy posters, spray paint elements can instantly bring a raw, artistic energy to your work.

In this post, we’ve rounded up the best spray paint textures and backgrounds for you to use in your next project. With a variety of options ranging from splatters and drips to fully painted surfaces, these resources give you the freedom to create designs that feel dynamic and expressive.

Spray Paint Leaks Backgrounds

Spray Paint Leaks Backgrounds

Featuring colorful graffiti wall textures, this is a collection of abstract spray paint textures with a hand-crafted artistic look. They come as a pack of 10 unique and striking JPG backgrounds with a high resolution of 6000 x 4000, 300 dpi in RGB format. These vibrant designs are ideal for web and print applications – from social media covers to logo backdrops, posters, or invitations.

Horizon Spray Paint Texture Backgrounds

Horizon Spray Paint Texture Backgrounds

Experience the vibrancy of hand-crafted colorful spray paint textures. This creative bundle features 10 unique graffiti wall textures in an array of colors, providing a lively backdrop for web pages, social media profiles, apps, presentations and printed projects. Delivered in JPG format with high-resolution clarity (6000×4000, 300 dpi, RGB), these textures can bring dimension and depth to your design work.

Graffiti Spray Paint Textures

Graffiti Spray Paint Textures

This is an impressive collection of 29 vibrant PNG images featuring spray paint graffiti style textures. Housed in a single .zip file, these high-resolution textures are ideal for different design needs – from adding a creative touch to projects, using for masks and overlays, or setting unique backgrounds. All the items use an RGB color space to enhance your creative process.

Paint Splatter Texture Backgrounds

Paint Splatter Texture Backgrounds

This spray paint textures bundle offers a collection of 15 varied designs, each texture is presented in high-resolution 6000 x 4000px format. With a crisp 300 DPI and convenient JPG formatting, these spray paint textures are perfect for adding a unique and vibrant touch to any digital project.

Spray Paint Textures & Overlays

Spray Paint Textures & Overlays

A unique spray paint textures pack offers authentic and high-resolution textures extracted from real spray paint patterns. With 10 varieties to choose from, these full transparency textures are flawlessly isolated and prepared as transparent PNG files. Adjust the dark grey opacity as needed, and enhance your design projects with these fine detailed, 48-megapixel sized overlays to bring a real-life spray paint effect.

Spray Paint Colorful Backgrounds

Spray Paint Colorful Backgrounds

A vibrant collection of handcrafted spray paint textures, featuring graffiti-style elements perfect for a variety of digital and print uses. The set includes 10 distinctive, high-resolution (6000 x 4000, 300 dpi, RGB) JPG backgrounds, ideal for websites, social media, apps, presentations, logos, and print items like flyers, cards, posters, and more.

101 Blob & Spot Spray Shapes

101 Blob & Spot Spray Shapes

Explore the world of spray paint textures with this collection of high-resolution designs and shapes. Crafted with inks on paper and meticulously scanned and edited in Photoshop, these unique abstract shapes can enhance any project, whether it’s web design, art, posters, flyers, banners, or covers.

32 Abstract Spray Paint Shapes

32 Abstract Spray Paint Shapes

The 32 Abstract Spray Paint Shapes asset is an expansive assortment of unique, digitally enhanced PNG files of ink-sprayed shapes. With a high resolution of up to 6000 pixels, these beautifully abstract textures, originally painted on paper, can enhance a variety of projects including web design, art creation, and print materials like cards, posters and flyers.

Spray Paint Texture Bundle

Spray Paint Texture Bundle

A unique spray paint textures pack that showcases over 100 authentic spray paint marks in high-resolution png files that can be effortlessly integrated into your projects. This versatile bundle provides varying spray paint splatters, drips, and marks, which can be scaled, copied, pasted, or color-customized to add grunge detail to your artwork.

Spray Paint Drip Textures

Spray Paint Drip Textures

Invite some vibrancy into your artwork with this collection of spray paint textures. These authentic, captivating textures are perfect for any design project and are easy to use. They offer impressive detail, having been scanned at a high resolution before being converted to vector formats. With their dark grey color, full isolation, and transparency in various formats, these textures are versatile and adaptable to your choice of software.

20 Paint Splatter Textures & Brushes

20 Paint Splatter Textures & Brushes

Explore new depths in your graphics designs with this spray paint textures pack. It offers high-resolution ink splatter effects, suitable for enhancing illustrations, photos, and website layouts, and even for creating realistic blood splatter. The pack includes 20 PNG files, 1 PSD file, and an ABR file with 20 brushes, guaranteed to add elegance and memorability to your designs while saving you time.

Paint Splashes Backgrounds

Paint Splashes Backgrounds

This is a collection of vibrant, urban-style designs filled with splattered acrylic paint reminiscing the energetic spirit of youth. These grainy textures serve as a multifunctional decorative asset featuring unique graffiti-like brush strokes and chaotic mud bursts. Ideal for youth apparel, advertising material, digital product presentations, and more.

Spray Paint Drips Textures

Spray Paint Drips Textures

This is a versatile collection of 20 high-resolution PNG files with spray paint textures. With a vibrant RGB colour space, these textures are brilliant for incorporating into design projects, creative edits, background visuals, masks, and overlays. Their spray paint drip style serves as an innovative design element, adding a unique artistic flair to various creations.

Subtle Spray Paint Textures

This is a comprehensive set of gently sprayed textures, created from high-resolution scans of spray-painted paper and converted into multiple formats like AI, EPS, and PNG. Perfect for both Illustrator and Photoshop, these dark gray textures, crisply detailed and fully customizable, come with transparent backgrounds and can be paired with DRIP textures to add depth to your design projects.

12 Spray Paint Textures

12 Spray Paint Textures

An eclectic collection of abstract spray paint shapes as PNG files. These high-resolution shapes, crafted thoughtfully from ink on paper, are edited digitally for optimal use. They reach up to 9000 pixels in size and can significantly enhance visual arts projects, such as cards, banners, templates, websites, and more.

Paint Splatter Art Textures

Paint Splatter Art Textures

This spray paint texture pack offers a collection of modern, abstract paintings that were originally created with real paint, then scanned at high resolution and converted to Vector EPS, AI, and PNG formats. Ideal for various design projects, these finely detailed textures come with fully isolated, transparent backgrounds.

20 Spray Paint Graffiti Texture

20 Spray Paint Graffiti Texture

Explore your creative side with this unique spray paint texture pack. Featuring 20 PNG textures in stunning 8K resolution (6000 x 4000 px), it ensures compatibility with Photoshop and other graphics programs that support PNG files, promising to enhance any design project with a vivid, urban touch.

Spray Paint Splatter Brushes & Textures

Spray Paint Splatter Brushes & Textures

This spray paint textures collection contains high-resolution, handmade ink splatter effects in a pack of 21 black and white jpg or png images. Perfect for adding texture, grunge effects, or realistic blood splatter to your designs. Incorporate these greyscale bitmaps into any application compatible with .jpg or .png files, offering easy layering and color changes in photoshop.

Free Spray Paint Textures

Free Abstract Art Spray Paint Texture

Free Abstract Art Spray Paint Texture

This beautiful spray paint texture features a colorful design with an abstract and artistic design. You can use it in various ways to create backgrounds as well as for adding textures to designs.

Free Spray Painted Fence Texture

Free Spray Painted Fence Texture

This is a real photo of a spray-painted fence that features a very authentic design. It has a realistic look with a rusted metal fence background that will add a vintage feel to your design project.

Free Green Spay Paint Texture

Free Green Spay Paint Texture

You can use this spray paint texture to add a gritty look and feel to your posters, flyers, and various other designs. By changing colors, you can even make it look like a blood-splatter texture.

Free Spray Paint Texture Background

Free Spray Paint Texture Background

This free texture also comes with a green spray paint design. It features a stain-like design that you can blend with various graphics and backgrounds to create unique designs.

Colorful Free Spray Paint Texture

Colorful Free Spray Paint Texture

This is a free spray paint-style texture you can use to create colorful backgrounds. It features a sidewalk with spray-painted spots that add an authentic look to this textured background.

100+ Modern Professional PowerPoint Templates 2024

Featured Imgs 23

In today’s collection, we’re bringing you a set of fresh new modern, professional PowerPoint templates for creating presentations that stand out from the crowd. Give your presentation a modern edge, and convey your message in a professional way.

We handpicked a collection of unique and modern PowerPoint templates that you can use for crafting slideshows for all kinds of presentations, including startup pitch decks to business projections, photography, marketing, design, and more.

We’re also sharing our tips for creating a modern presentation, to help you get started fast.

Top Pick

Bore – Minimal Modern PowerPoint Template

Bore - Minimal Modern Powerpoint Template

This modern and creative PowerPoint template includes all the right elements of professional presentation design. It has a beautifully minimalist design, an attractive color palette, and a stylish content layout.

The template itself includes more than 30 unique slide designs you can easily customize to change colors and the fonts however you like. It also includes lots of editable vector graphics and shapes as well.

Why This Is A Top Pick

Since this template features a modern and universal design, you’ll be able to use it to design slideshows for all kinds of business, agency, and creative presentations.

Ideolozi – Company Profile PowerPoint Template

Ideolozi - Company Profile PowerPoint Template

Ideal for various presentations, Ideolozi is a modern, clean, and easily customizable PowerPoint template. It provides 30 high-resolution slides with a 16:9 aspect ratio that can effortlessly be used for business plans, pitch decks, annual reports, and more.

SEO Strategy – Modern PowerPoint Template

SEO Strategy - Modern PowerPoint Template

This is a dynamic, modern PowerPoint template catered towards digital marketers, SEO specialists, and other business professionals. Highly customizable, it offers a structured layout to present SEO strategies, tactics, and key metrics. Ideal for a range of presentations, including pitches, reports, and training sessions.

Game – Modern PowerPoint Template

Game - Modern PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is designed to deliver captivating presentations. Equipped with 30 customizable, high-quality slides, this professional template is effective for a range of uses from business to education and marketing. It features a modern design, six color combinations, standard & widescreen aspect ratios, and an exceptional icon selection.

Artficial Intelligence PowerPoint Template

Artficial Intelligence PowerPoint Template

A sleek, modern PowerPoint template tailored for impactful presentations. Suitable for various uses, including business, marketing, and education, this template boasts easy customization and 30 creative slides, in both standard and widescreen formats. The template, available in six colour combinations, also includes eye-catching icon.

Business Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

Business Pitch Deck PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is perfect for entrepreneurs and business leaders preparing impactful, professional pitches. Easily create persuasive presentations with a structured breakdown of your business proposal, growth strategies and financial forecasts. This high-quality template is not only ideal for marketing strategies and financial reports, but also for educational workshops and more.

Conference Presentation Modern PowerPoint Template

Conference Presentation Modern PowerPoint Template

A professional and versatile PowerPoint template perfect for creating compelling presentations for conferences, seminars, or business meetings. It’s ideal for speakers, event organizers, and corporate teams. Its features include a professional design, easy customization, high-quality graphics, and master slides.

Case Study – Modern PowerPoint Template

Case Study - Modern PowerPoint Template

This is a high-quality PowerPoint template perfect for showcasing success stories, project results, or insightful research. Ideal for businesses, consultants, educators, and researchers, this template allows for a clear, engaging display of case studies. Key features include a professional layout, easy customization, and image placeholders.

Architecture Modern PowerPoint Template

Architecture Modern PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is perfect for architects, interior designers, and construction professionals when presenting their designs, concepts, and projects. The clean, professional design allows for easy customization and showcases high-quality graphics with image placeholders and master slides.

Look Book – Furniture PowerPoint Template

Look Book - Furniture PowerPoint Template

A versatile and modern PowerPoint template for bold presentations. Its design lends itself perfectly to use by businesses and individuals for various purposes including brochure creation, project promotion, and personal portfolios. It is easily editable, with resizable graphics and easy color changes, and it’s based on Master Slides for added convenience.

Portfolio Design – Professional PowerPoint Template

Portfolio Design - Professional PowerPoint Template

A versatile creative PowerPoint template that can cater to numerous applications, be it a corporate presentation or a personal portfolio. This design-centric PowerPoint template includes editable and resizable graphics, easy color change capabilities, and incorporates free web fonts.

Akbar – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Akbar - Modern Business PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is perfect for diverse presentation needs including corporate and business profiles, creative agencies, portfolios, start-ups, pitch decks, and personal portfolios. It features 39 editable and resizable slides designed with free web fonts, based on master slides.

Osmar – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Osmar - Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Osmar is a business PowerPoint template that is perfect for crafting professional business presentations. Whether you’re a creative agency, startup, or looking to present a company profile, this template can be tailored to suit a variety of needs. With 39 editable and resizable slides, you can drag-and-drop content in an easily editable 16:9 widescreen ratio format.

Malaiz – Professional Business PowerPoint Template

Malaiz - Professional Business PowerPoint Template

A modern, dynamic PowerPoint template for all your professional presentations. Perfect for a range of contexts from startup pitches to photography portfolios, this easily editable 39-slide template incorporates free web fonts and resizable graphics based on master slides.

Meerotie – Professional PowerPoint Template

Meerotie - Professional PowerPoint Template

Meerotie is a dynamic, modern PowerPoint template perfect for both business and personal use. Features include 120 clean and creative slides with a bold design, a handmade infographic, a 16:9 ratio and easily editable images, fonts, and layouts. This fully adaptable template makes presenting your next project hassle-free and effective.

Enativing – Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

Enativing - Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

This is a versatile and modern tool for a multitude of fields, from advertising to startups. It features 30 unique slides that are fully editable and resizable, complete with over 500 icons and a drag-and-drop interface.

Black White – Professional Agency PowerPoint Template

Black White - Professional Agency PowerPoint Template

A contemporary PowerPoint template perfect for enhancing your agency presentations. It features 20 unique, easily customizable slides with bold and elegant designs. The template offers drag-and-drop picture placeholders with auto-adjustment and comes complete with device mockups as well.

Professional Consulting PowerPoint Presentation

Professional Consulting PowerPoint Presentation

This is a modern, engaging template perfect for business presentations, project pitches, and lookbooks. Offering a variety of editable graphics and drag-and-drop picture placeholders in a widescreen format, the package includes PowerPoint and XML files along with fully editable layouts.

Hermoso – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Hermoso - Modern Business PowerPoint Template

The Hermoso is a versatile PowerPoint template with a modern design. Ideal for contemporary businesses, this template can be used to present a variety of content including company profiles, portfolios, and startup pitches. With over 30 editable slides featuring resizable graphics, it provides convenience and flexibility.

Amin – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Amin - Modern Business PowerPoint Template

A modern, easy-to-edit PowerPoint template ideal for various purposes, such as business presentations, corporate profiles, start-ups, creative agencies, or personal portfolios. It includes 39 slides, editable graphics, recommended free web fonts, and a 16:9 widescreen ratio.

Professional Portfolio PowerPoint Template

Professional Portfolio PowerPoint Template

This is a modern, multipurpose PowerPoint Template ideal for presentations related to business, creative agencies, brand guidelines, and more. Offering 30 high-resolution slides in a 16:9 aspect ratio, this template is carefully designed for easy customization.

Alpha – Business PowerPoint Template

Alpha - Business PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is made with modern businesses in mind. It’s ideal for crafting professional presentations for business meetings, company profiles, and pitch deck slideshows. The template includes 39 unique slides for you to choose from.

Stanbiz – Startup Business Plan PowerPoint Template

Stanbiz - Startup Business Plan Powerpoint Template

Design the perfect slideshow to showcase your startup and business plans with this professional PowerPoint template. There are 36 different slide layouts included in this template with fully customizable designs.

Gray Gold Company Profile Presentation Template

Gray Gold Company Profile Presentation Template

The dark gray and gold design of this PowerPoint template gives it a very stylish look and feel. The template is ideal for making slideshows for various marketing and product showcase presentations. It includes 26 unique slides.

Minimal Portfolio PowerPoint Presentation Template

Minimal Portfolio PowerPoint Presentation Template

The modern and minimal design of this PowerPoint template offers a beautiful canvas for crafting bold and beautiful presentations for your professional projects. There are 24 slides in the template that are especially suitable for portfolio presentations.

Aqua – Free Marketing Plan PowerPoint Template

Aqua Marketing Plan PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template comes with a colorful watercolor-themed design. It’s perfect for professional marketing presentations and slideshows. The template has 32 unique slide layouts.

Minimal PowerPoint Presentation Template

Minimal PowerPoint Presentation Template

Craft minimal presentations with an aesthetic feel using this PowerPoint template. It’s made with various business and agency portfolio presentations in mind. There are 21 different slide layouts to choose from.

Cell – Creative Professional PowerPoint Template

Cell - Creative Professional Powerpoint Template

The bold and dark design of this PowerPoint template will allow you to make professional slideshows for presenting your projects and portfolio in style. The template includes fully customizable slides with image placeholders, device mockups, and much more.

Media-Press Kit – Professional PowerPoint Template

Media-Press Kit - Professional PowerPoint Template

Just as the name suggests, this PowerPoint template is designed to help you craft a professional-looking media kit or a press kit for a brand. It includes 16 carefully crafted slides with all the important sections for promoting your brand and business.

Crowdfunding – PowerPoint Infographics Slides

Crowdfunding - PowerPoint Infographics Slides

If you’re planning on launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for your business or product launch, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. It includes 17 different crowdfunding-themed infographic slides in 12 different color variations.

Photographer Portfolio – Free Professional PowerPoint Template

Photographer Portfolio - Free Professional PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template is a great choice for crafting a simple portfolio slideshow for a photographer. There are 29 unique slides in the template with different styles of layouts for showcasing your work more effectively.

Gosamp – Urban Professional PowerPoint Template

Gosamp - Urban Professional Powerpoint Template

Gosamp is a modern PowerPoint template that features a trendy and attractive design. It comes with more than 30 unique slide layouts you can use to create presentations for digital marketing and fashion brands. Each slide in the template also includes image placeholders, editable graphics, and much more.

Logica – IT Consultant PowerPoint Template

Logica - IT Consultant PowerPoint Template

This template is designed with consulting agencies in mind. The template includes 30 different slide layouts with clean and professional designs. You can also customize it using PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

Business Plan – Professional PowerPoint Template

Business Plan - Professional PowerPoint Template

If you’re looking for a PowerPoint template to create a killer business plan slide deck, this template is perfect for you. It includes 25 carefully crafted slides that can be used to make a professional presentation to showcase your business and company plans.

Tradents – Brand Guidelines Presentation Template

Tradents - Brand Guidelines Presentation Template

Use this PowerPoint template to make attractive brand guideline slide decks. You can choose from 30 unique slides, which include slides for detailing everything from font choices to color schemes and everything in between. You can easily edit and customize each slide to your preference as well.

Free Growth Business Plan PowerPoint Template

Free Growth Business Plan PowerPoint Template

This free PowerPoint template is ideal for making simple and professional presentations for describing your business growth plans. There are 39 different slide layouts included in the template. Along with editable graphs, charts, and vector graphics.

Roline – Professional PowerPoint Template

Roline - Professional PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template combines elements from both professional and modern worlds to offer a set of beautiful slide layouts. It’s perfect for creating everything from business presentations to pitch decks and more. The template includes 50 unique slides with editable designs.

Koman – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Koman – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

Presentations with dark designs are great for highlighting content more effectively. This PowerPoint template is designed to help achieve that goal. It includes a total of 39 slides with fully customizable layouts. And it features editable shapes and graphics as well.

Marketing Pitch – Modern PowerPoint Template

Marketing Pitch - Modern PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template includes many different infographic slides you can use to visualize data in your marketing meetings. It features a clean and professional design. The template comes with 30 unique slides.

Wicka – Business PowerPoint Template

Wicka – Business PowerPoint Template

You can use this PPT to create professional presentations to promote creative brands and agencies. The template lets you choose from 39 different slides. It includes master slide layouts, editable vector graphics, image placeholders, and much more as well.

Free Business Profile PowerPoint Template

Free Business Profile PowerPoint Template

This is a free PowerPoint template for designing business presentations with professional slides. It comes with 23 unique slides. Each slide can be easily customized to change colors, fonts, and images to your preference.

Social Humanity – Modern PowerPoint Template

Social Humanity - Modern PowerPoint Template

This professional PowerPoint template features a minimalist slide design. It’s perfect for making presentations for non-profit organizations and many other businesses. The template includes 30 unique slides.

Business & Corporate PowerPoint Template

Business & Corporate PowerPoint Template

Use this template to design a modern and creative presentation for your corporate business. It includes a total of 420 slides featuring 40 unique slides in 8 pre-made color schemes. The template also has transition animations as well.

Lonux – Professional PowerPoint Template

Lonux - Professional PowerPoint Template

Lonux is a PowerPoint template you can use to design presentations to showcase your professional services. The template includes 39 unique slides filled with editable shapes, master slide layouts, image placeholders, and more.

Aserlla – Clean Business PowerPoint Template

Aserlla - Clean Business Powerpoint Template

Looking for a PowerPoint template with a clean and professional layout? Then this template is for you. It includes slides in both dark and light color themes as well as in 3 pre-made color schemes.

Business & Consulting Toolkit Free PPT

Business & Consulting Toolkit Free PPT

This creative PowerPoint template not only comes with a set of modern slides but also features multipurpose designs you can use to create many different types of presentations. It includes 50 unique slides with graphs, maps, infographics, and more.

Reendinguz – Modern PowerPoint Template

Reendinguz - Modern Powerpoint Template

If you’re looking for a minimal PowerPoint template with a modern design to create clean and effective presentations, this template is perfect for you. It includes 30 unique slide designs featuring 5 different color schemes to choose from. The layouts made with vector shapes are easily editable as well.

Galerino – Professional PowerPoint Template

Galerino - Powerpoint Template

Galerino is another modern PowerPoint template that comes with a total of 150 slides. It features image placeholders for easily placing your images in the slides as well as master slide layouts, illustrations, and editable vector graphics.

Best Business – Modern PowerPoint Template

Best Business - Powerpoint Template

This is a great PowerPoint template you can use to design an elegant and attractive slideshow for a professional presentation. It includes 30 slides that you can choose from 5 different color schemes. It also comes with an infographic, gallery slide, illustrations, and much more.

Browney – Contemporary PowerPoint Template

modern powerpoint templates

If you are looking for an elegantly designed, professional PowerPoint template for modern businesses, Browney is an ideal choice. This collection of five templates, each having 30 slides, is a great option for making an impression on potential investors or clients.

Sparrow – Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

modern powerpoint templates

Exclusively designed for creative industries, Sparrow features a modern, uncluttered design with a splash of bright colors that instantly draws the attention of your audience. There is a smorgasbord of slides for you to customize to your heart’s content, and easy-to-use features that make the dreadful task of making a presentation look like a piece of cake.

Poolest – Simple PowerPoint Template

modern powerpoint templates

The best presentations are often the ones without any bells and whistles. Poolest is a minimal yet eye-catching option, making it one of the best professional PowerPoint templates on our list. We wholeheartedly recommend you try out Poolest for your upcoming presentation.

Modela – Free Creative PowerPoint Template

professional powerpoint template

With a stylish, modern, and striking design, Modela is an effective presentation template with multi-purpose slides, data infographics, and a 16:9 widescreen ratio. It’s one of the best free modern PowerPoint templates available on the web and can be fully customized to reflect your own branding.

Arina – Free Business PowerPoint Template

modern powerpoint templates

Arina, a modern and sophisticated PowerPoint template is a great choice for businesses looking to make an impact. It features an elegant layout, easy-to-edit slides, and a range of amazing features that really should be seen to be fully appreciated.

Round – Clean Business PowerPoint Template

Round - Powerpoint Template

Round also comes with a set of modern and professional slide designs. Each slide in this PowerPoint template is available in 5 different colors. It also includes master slide layouts, image placeholders, editable vector graphics, and more.

Voodoo – Free Professional PowerPoint Template

Voodoo - Free Professional PowerPoint Template

VooDoo is a free PowerPoint template that features a set of highly professional slides, including ones with infographics. The free version of the template includes 5 free presentation slides and 5 infographic slides.

Kirkland – Business PowerPoint Template

Kirkland - Business PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is a great choice for making all types of professional and business presentations. It comes with a set of beautiful slides made with a minimal content layout full of colorful shapes and images. The template includes 30 unique slides with 5 different colors to choose from.

Twenty Five – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Twenty Five - Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Minimalism takes a key role in every modern and professional presentation design. This template will allow you to leverage both those factors to your advantage by crafting a set of slides full of clarity and creativity. It includes 25 unique slides for you to choose from. And comes in Google Slides version as well.

Quizy – Quiz Themed Powerpoint Template

Quizy - Quiz Themed Powerpoint Template

A very unique PowerPoint template designed specifically for quiz and questionnaire-based presentations. This template comes with 30 slides featuring colorful quiz-themed designs and layouts. It’s perfect for making your presentations more entertaining for events and conferences.

Rexse – Pitch Deck Powerpoint Template

Rexse - Pitch Deck Powerpoint Template

Rexse is a pitch deck PowerPoint template you can use for all sorts of business and startup investor presentations. The template comes with 40 unique master slide layouts with modern designs. Each slide features editable graphics, icons, shapes, and image placeholders for easy customization.

Original – Free Modern PowerPoint Template

Original - Free Modern PowerPoint Template

This beautiful PowerPoint template is completely free to download and use with your personal projects. It’s ideal for making a simple slideshow for design and lifestyle-themed presentations.

LEARN – Education Powerpoint Template

LEARN - Education Powerpoint Template

Just as the name suggests, this PowerPoint template is designed for all sorts of educational presentations. It’s ideal for making presentations for educating the audiences of your products and services. The template includes 30 unique slides.

Atea – Clean Professional Presentation Template

Atea - Clean Professional Presentation Template

The clean and creative design of this presentation template gives it a truly unique look and feel. This PowerPoint template features 30 unique slides that are available in 5 different pre-made color schemes. It also comes in Keynote and Google Slides versions as well.

Accasia – Creative Business PowerPoint Template

Accasia - Creative Business PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template comes with a slide design filled with creative and abstract shapes. This gives the entire presentation a very uncommon look and feel. The template includes 30 unique slides. You can easily customize the design using its pre-made color schemes and image placeholders.

Aquos – Minimal Professional PowerPoint Template

Aquos - Minimal Professional PowerPoint Template

If you’re working on a presentation for a corporate brand or a modern business, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. It comes with 30 minimalist slides that feature plenty of visuals and shapes. The template includes gallery slides, portfolio slides, history slides, and lots more.

Hexxos – Free Modern PowerPoint Template

Hexxos - Free Modern PowerPoint Template

The vivid and colorful slides in this template give it a truly modern and trendy look. This PowerPoint template is perfect for making a presentation for modern fashion and lifestyle brands. It’s free to use with your personal projects.

Classy – Modern PowerPoint Template

Classy - Modern PowerPoint Template

Classy is a modern PowerPoint template that features a set of 30 unique slides that are available in 5 different color schemes, making it a total of 150 slides. It also includes image placeholders, editable vector graphics, and free fonts as well.

Sneaky – Fashion PowerPoint Template

Sneaky - Sneakers PowerPoint Template

Sneaky is a modern PowerPoint template that comes with a stylish visual slide design, which makes it perfect for creating fashion and apparel related presentations. The template includes 45 unique slides with drag and drop customization features.

Visionare – Modern PowerPoint Presentation

Visionare - Modern Powerpoint Presentation

Visionare is a beautiful PowerPoint template you can use to design professional presentations for business and agency meetings and events. The template comes with 50 unique slides in HD resolution and features image placeholders, world maps, icons, and much more.

Zero – Creative PowerPoint Template

Zero - Creative Powerpoint Template

Zero is a modern and creative PowerPoint template featuring a colorful design. This template is most suitable for making marketing and sales related presentations. It includes 30 unique slides in 5 different color schemes, making a total of over 150 slides.

Yoon – Business PowerPoint Template

Yoon - Business Powerpoint Template

Yoon comes with a simple and clean design which allows you to effectively highlight your images and content. The template is perfect for making business profile and product showcase presentation slideshows.

Ashtray – Professional PowerPoint Template

Ashtray - Professional Powerpoint Template

Ashtray PowerPoint template features a creative slide design filled with lots of shapes, colors, and images. The template lets you choose from a total of 150 slides to craft unique business and professional presentations that stand out from the crowd.

Free Portfolio PowerPoint Template

Free Portfolio PowerPoint Template

This modern free PowerPoint template is designed specifically for creating professional portfolio presentations. It includes 12 unique slides filled with lots of icons and shapes.

Free Minimal PowerPoint Presentation

Free Minimal PowerPoint Presentation

If you’re looking for a minimal PowerPoint template for making a portfolio showcase or an agency presentation, this free template is for you. It features 20 unique slides with image placeholders and icons.

Chroma – Modern PowerPoint Template

Chroma - Modern Powerpoint Template

Chroma features a design unlike any other PowerPoint template in this collection. The template has a modern design featuring vibrant gradient colors. It includes 50 unique slides that are most suitable for modern startup and small businesses.

Molex – Dark PowerPoint Template

Molex - Dark Powerpoint Template

Molex is a stylish PowerPoint template that comes with a dark color theme, which effectively highlights text and other content in the design. The template is also available in 5 different color schemes and comes with 30 unique slides.

PRADIC – Creative PowerPoint Template

PRADIC - Creative Powerpoint Template

Pradic is a creative PowerPoint template you can use to design business and corporate presentations. It comes with slides full of colorful shapes, charts, graphs, image placeholders, and much more.

Gholem – Minimal PowerPoint Template

Gholem - Minimal Powerpoint Template

Gholem PowerPoint template features 30 unique slides that can be easily customized to your preference. The slides are also available in 5 different color variations and include a handcrafted infographic and gallery slides as well as image placeholders.

Rekxa – Clean PowerPoint Template

Rekxa - Clean Powerpoint Template

Rekxa is a clean and minimalist PowerPoint template most suitable for designing startup and business-related presentations. The template includes 150 slides with editable designs and 5 color schemes to choose from.

Pop – Free Colorful PowerPoint Template

Pop - Free Colorful PowerPoint Template

This is a free demo of a premium PowerPoint template. It features a set of modern and colorful slide designs you can use to create a stylish slideshow to showcase your personal designs, artworks, and portfolios.

GMTRY – Free Geometric Presentation Template

GMTRY – Free Geometric Presentation Template

This modern PowerPoint template features a unique style of design filled with creative geometric shapes. You can use it for free with personal projects.

Hanobi – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Hanobi - Powerpoint Template

Hanobi is a modern and elegant PowerPoint template that features a professional design for making slideshows for business and creative presentations. It includes a total of 150 slide designs that are also available in 5 different color schemes.

Anada – Agency Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Anada - Agency Powerpoint Template

Anada is a PowerPoint template most suitable for making marketing and sales related presentations. It comes with 30 unique slides featuring infographics, charts, graphs, and icons. The template s also available in 3 different colors as well as light and dark themes.

Space – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Space Powerpoint Template

Space is a minimalist and professional PowerPoint template that includes a set of gorgeously designed slides featuring portfolio slides, infographics, vector graphics, image placeholders, and much more.

Laforest – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Laforest - Modern Powerpoint Template

Laforest PowerPoint template comes with 12 different files featuring the slideshow in 3 premade color schemes and in light and dark themes. It includes 30 professionally designed slides featuring timelines, mockups, image placeholders, and more.

Pastel – Free PowerPoint Template

Pastel - Free PowerPoint Template

Pastel is another great free PowerPoint template you can use to design a colorful and attractive presentation to showcase your portfolio. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Free Corporate Powerpoint Template

Free Corporate Powerpoint Template

This free PowerPoint template comes with 15 unique slide designs you can use to design various business and corporate presentations. It includes lots of shapes, infographics, and illustrations as well.

Mochica – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Mochica - Powerpoint Template

Mochica features a minimalist design with lots of clean and white space. The PowerPoint template lets you choose from 5 color schemes and a total of 150 slides to design professional presentations.

Project Proposal – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Project Proposal PowerPoint Template

With this professional PowerPoint template, you’ll be able to create attractive presentations for project proposals and meetings. The template is available in 4 different color themes and it features lots of unique slides for describing pricing, project scope, budget, and more.

Cella PitchDeck Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Cella PitchDeck Template

This PowerPoint template will definitely come in handy for startups and businesses for making powerful pitch decks to promote and present their ideas and startups to investors. The template includes a total of 120 slides.

MINIMAL PROPOSAL – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

MINIMAL PROPOSAL - Powerpoint

Another modern and professionally designed PowerPoint template for making attractive proposal presentations. This template comes with 50 unique slides that feature 3D infographics, icons, vector illustrations, and more.

Yellow Bussiness – Modern Professional PowerPoint Template

Yellow Bussiness - Powerpoint Template

Create unique and persuasive marketing and sales presentations using this PowerPoint template. It features 50 unique slides you can easily edit to change colors, text, images, and shapes.

Free Fashion PowerPoint Presentation Template

Free Fashion PowerPoint Presentation Template

Another great free PowerPoint template for crafting slideshows related to photography and fashion design. The template includes 10 unique slides you can customize to your preference.

Motagua – Free Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Motagua - Free Multipurpose PowerPoint Template

Motagua is a modern and attractive free PowerPoint template that can be used to design all kinds of design, business, and creative presentations. It comes with 12 unique slides based on master slide layouts.

Latte PowerPoint Presentation Template

Latte is a professional PowerPoint template that comes with a minimal and a modern design. The template features lots of space for showing off images with a beautiful color scheme. It includes over 50 unique slides based on master slides with vector graphics and portfolio slides.

Marketing Plan 2.0 PowerPoint Template

This is a PowerPoint template designed specifically for creating marketing-related presentations. It includes 30 unique slides that come in 10 different color schemes. The slides are also available in white and dark background versions. The slideshow is also fully animated and print-ready as well.

Modev Professional PowerPoint Template

This professional PowerPoint template is most suitable for creating slideshows for design agency and freelancer presentations. It features an elegant color design, which is available in Green, Blue, and Pink versions. Each template consists of 30 unique slides.

Minimal Presentation PowerPoint Template

Just as the title suggests, this is a minimalist PowerPoint template that comes with a total of over 300 slides. The template features a modern design that makes it ideal for SaaS and small business related presentations. It’s also available in 10 different color schemes as well.

Visionary – Attractive PowerPoint Design

Visionary is a professionally designed PowerPoint template that includes 80 unique multipurpose slides with vibrant colors. The template is available in 30 different color schemes and it comes with 98 master slide layouts for creating your own unique slides.

MUNINE PowerPoint Template

Munine is a PowerPoint slideshow template with a feminine design. It’s perfect for designing slideshows for fashion and clothing brand related presentations. The template features 60 unique slides in 50 different premade color schemes. Each template is also available in dark and light color versions as well.

iDea – Creative Company PowerPoint Template

Idea is a PowerPoint template designed specifically for marketing related presentations. It’s also perfect for making presentations for creative and design agencies as well. It includes 30 unique slides in 3 different color schemes.

Kalium Corporate PowerPoint Presentation

Featuring a professional design, Kalium PowerPoint template is most suitable for creating presentations for corporate businesses, brands, and agencies. It includes 50 unique slides that are easily customizable and featuring lots of vector graphics and elements. The slides also come equipped with animations as well.

SPLASH – PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is ideal for design agencies and other creative businesses. It features slides with a modern design for easily highlighting your portfolio, case studies, team, and galleries. The template includes 32 unique slides that are available in 5 premade color schemes.

SIMPLY – PowerPoint Template

Simply is a creatively designed PowerPoint presentation template that includes 32 unique slides. It’s also available in 5 different color variations and features plenty of vector elements, such as infographics, charts, graphs, and more. You can easily edit it to customize the slides to your preference.

Oxygen PowerPoint Presentation

Oxygen is the perfect PowerPoint template for creating marketing and creative presentations. It comes with an attractive slide design and a drag and drop editing environment. The template includes 50 unique slides featuring infographics, maps, charts, and graphs.

SKETCH 1 PowerPoint Template

This creative template includes 40 unique slides that feature lots of sketch-based illustrations and icons. The template is also available in 50 different color variations and with hundreds of vector graphics, icons, and shapes.

Exotic Project Presentation Template

Featuring a minimal and a modern design, this PowerPoint template is best for showcasing your projects and products in your presentations. It’s also great for making presentations for corporate and small business presentations as well. The template includes 62 multipurpose slides in 20 different color schemes.

NEXT PowerPoint Template

Next is a highly visual PowerPoint template that comes with a set of slides with a modern design. It includes 20 unique slides in 50 different color styles, including dark and light themes. The slides are also filled with lots of vector graphics and icons as well.

Rising Sun PowerPoint Template

If you’re working on a presentation for a creative agency or a small business, this PowerPoint template will come in handy. This template includes 20 master slides featuring lots of vector elements, gradient colors, and icons.

Real Estate PowerPoint Template

This is a PowerPoint template designed specifically for making presentations related to real-estate agencies. The template features 20 unique slides with plenty of space for highlighting properties with large images. It also includes charts, diagrams, graphs, and vector icons as well.

Lean PowerPoint Template

Lean is a professionally designed PowerPoint template that’s ideal for creating business and corporate presentation slideshows. The template includes 20 master slides featuring lots of vector graphics, icons, and shapes.

Add Color PowerPoint Template

This colorful PowerPoint template is perfect for creating presentation slideshows for all types of occasions, including schools, colleges, marketing, fashion, and more. The template comes packed with vector charts and graphs as well.

Mapped PowerPoint Template

Mapped is a PowerPoint template with a modern design. It’s best for making slideshows for eCommerce businesses and startups. The template includes slides based on 20 master slides and animations.

Ruby PowerPoint Template

Featuring a set of 50 unique slides, this PowerPoint template is made specifically for creating presentations for business and corporate projects. It includes resizable vector graphics and gallery slides as well.

Express – Freestyle PowerPoint Template

Express is a unique PowerPoint template with a modern and a creative design that will certainly make your presentations stand out. It includes 30 slides featuring attractive brush-strokes, vectors, icons, and graphics. The template is also available in 3 different color schemes.

Modern Real Estate PowerPoint Template

Another PowerPoint slideshow template for creating presentations for real-estate businesses. The template includes 30 clean and modern slides that are available in 5 premade color schemes. It comes with resizable graphics, vector illustrations, portfolio slides, and lots more.

Timeline 2.0 for PowerPoint

This is a massive bundle of PowerPoint templates that includes 50 unique templates of timeline slides. You can use them to create business projections charts, product-related graphs, and more. The templates are also available in 10 different premade color schemes.

Tidama – Modern Business PowerPoint Template

PowerPoint template

This is one of the most elegant PowerPoint templates in this collection. If you’re looking for a theme to design a presentation for a luxury brand or high-end product, this template is perfect for you. It includes 39 slide layouts with fully editable designs.

Bakooh PowerPoint Template

PowerPoint template

With a confident look and clean, creative slides, this is a versatile, flat design PowerPoint template. It’s got a modern style that blends plenty of colorful graphics, powerful charts, and minimal design elements.

Doros PowerPoint Template

PowerPoint template

Need a PowerPoint presentation design template with a modern style? One that’s easy to customize? And comes packed with the right slide designs to communicate your message effectively? Look no further than Doros.

Mokka PowerPoint Template

PowerPoint template

If you like minimal PowerPoint design templates, check this out. This is a minimal PowerPoint presentation design with plenty of template options built-in. If you’ve got important information to present, this set delivers. It’s perfect for personal or corporate use. And comes with a ton of easy-to-edit features that are 100% customizable.

Rising PowerPoint Template

PowerPoint template

Think big and get ready to go bold with this modern PowerPoint design theme. It’s got a powerful set of unique PPT slide designs that’ll help your message stand out. It mixes striking images with compelling layouts and a confident type. It also includes quick to work with components that pack a creative punch.

5 Tips for Creating a Modern PowerPoint Presentation

If you’re new to designing PowerPoint presentations, these tips will help you create a more professional looking slideshow to win your audience.

1. Use Minimal and Professional Slide Designs

Let’s face it, all of the default templates included in PowerPoint are terrible and have outdated designs. They’ll never help make your presentation stand out from the crowd.

Libre - Powerpoint Template

So start your process by finding a better and professionally designed PowerPoint template to make your slideshow look more creative and original. You’d be surprised to see the amazing designs on some of the templates you can download from third-party websites. They’ll make your old presentations look like something from the 1980s.

2. Find and Use Better Custom Fonts

Fonts take a major role in presentation slideshows as they help attract attention to each of your slides. Consider using custom fonts in your presentations.

Expand - Powerpoint Template

With the right combination of a big bold title font and a body font with an easy to read design, you can create presentations to deliver a great user experience that shows off professionalism.

3. Write Shorter Sentences

In most cases, a PowerPoint presentation should focus on highlighting the key points of a speech and to visualize data. And you should keep it that way and avoid making your presentation look like a novel filled with long paragraphs.

Pancja - Powerpoint Template

You can achieve this goal by creating a content layout for including shorter sentences and paragraphs. Use bullet points and icons as well.

4. Add Shapes, Images, Charts, and Graphs

Modern PowerPoint presentations are usually very visually appealing and it’s beautiful to look at. You can make similar presentations by including lots of shapes and large images to make each slide look more creative.

Sureprise Powerpoint Template

You can also use charts and infographics to visualize data from studies, show projections, summarize reports, and even make strong statements.

5. Use a Modern Color Palette

While using minimal designs is always a great approach to designing professional PowerPoint slideshows, many modern presentations feature colorful designs as well.

Lamia - Modern PowerPoint Template

Create a color palette that matches your brand and your industry. Use it to add a stylish look to each of the slides in your presentations while maintaining a persistent design.

25+ Best Athletic Fonts for Energetic Designs

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Athletic fonts are all about power, speed, and performance. With strong lines, sharp angles, and bold weights, these fonts are designed to stand out and make an impact.

They’re perfect for capturing the adrenaline of competition and the intensity of physical activity, making them ideal for sports-related logos, apparel, and marketing campaigns. These fonts convey strength and action, helping your designs come to life with a sense of urgency and vitality.

In this post, we’ve curated a selection of the best athletic fonts that will bring high-energy style to any design. From sleek, modern sans-serifs to rugged, vintage-inspired typefaces, you’ll find a range of options that work perfectly for everything from team jerseys to fitness magazine covers.

Borex – Athletic Font

Borex - Athletic Font

Ideal for sports-themed projects, the dynamic and bold Borex athletic font is customizable with four unique styles including regular, slant, and taper. It adds exceptionally creative touches with alternate characters and unique ligatures, ensuring your designs stand out. The font package includes OTF, TTF, WOFF and more.

Tekrot – Athletic Energetic Font

Tekrot - Athletic Energetic Font

Tekrot is an athletic and robust font inspired by current design trends, infusing each sturdy letter with a soul that can elevate your brand. Ideal for sports-related designs or projects requiring strength, this font comes with various files (OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2), alternates, ligatures, and multilingual support.

Defen Sport – Athletic Block Font

Defen Sport - Athletic Block Font

Defen Sport is an athletic block font designed to enhance sports designs with its bold, dynamic characters. Perfect for creating team logos, posters, or athletic apparel, it injects a burst of energy into your designs and commands attention. With its versatility, Defen Sport is suitable for any sports-related projects, promising consistency and impact across all platforms.

Brockies – Sport Display Font

Defen Sport - Athletic Block Font

Brockies is a uniquely crafted sports display font distinguished by its athletic style. This creative asset, provided by a third party, has a dynamic and energetic flair that’s ideal for sports-oriented projects or any design requiring a sense of motion or strength. Engaging and versatile, Brockies would make an impactful addition to your font library.

Champione – Modern Athletic Sport Font

Champione - Modern Athletic Sport Font

The Champione font is a versatile, futuristic typeface that boasts unique and stylish characters. Perfect for sports events branding, jerseys, logos, and even wedding designs or social media posts, its bold, sans-serif style ensures high legibility. Packaged in a variety of formats (OTF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2), this font is a must-have for all designers.

MREYBOLL – Athletic Font

MREYBOLL - Athletic Font

MREYBOLL is an exciting athletic font perfect for sports design and more. This unique typeface comes in various styles with contemporary corner cutouts for added dynamism. Its superiority among sports fonts and manly, crisp feel offers a strong impact. The package includes OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2 files, alternate, ligature, and all glyphs.

BAMEN – Bold Athletic Font

BAMEN - Bold Athletic Font

The BAMEN is a dynamic, modern addition to any sports-oriented design. Offering boldness reminiscent of a fast-paced sporting environment, this font’s wide strokes and cool cuts add speed and power to your titles. The BAMEN typeface is perfect for vehicle commercials, headlines, and other athletic imagery, infusing each design with strength, speed, and a distinct beauty.

Runner – Athletic Sport Font

Runner - Athletic Sport Font

Check out Runner, a vibrant, athletic sports font ideal for vivifying your sports titles, racing, cycling, game logos, and other dynamic texts. The wide, italicized font style with modern cutouts and a dynamic slant gives an impactful depiction of speed and power. It’s not only bold and dynamic but also legible and versatile in terms of size, making it truly unique.

Boldye – Sports Athletic Font

Boldye - Sports Athletic Font

Boldye is a sports athletic font reminiscent of the Reebok logo’s style. Characterized by strong curves and sharp edges, it’s ideal for sports-themed branding, logos, and posters. With the Open Type feature, you can explore a range of unique alternative letters and ligatures. Boldye also offers seamless integration with a variety of design tools.

Sutixo – Athletic Font

Sutixo - Athletic Font

Sutixo is an athletic font crafted for speed lovers and firmly grounded in a sports racing theme. This unique font offers four different styles, handy alternate characters, and ligatures to enhance your designs. Be it sprucing up graphics for a motorsport event or injecting excitement into your brand, Sutixo is your go-to font.

Sport Maniac – Sport & Athletic Font

Sport Maniac - Sport & Athletic Font

The Sport Maniac font is a distinctive athletic typeface ready for diverse creative uses such as logos, album covers, movie titles, posters and labels. It comes with OTF, TTF and WOFF files, readily available for your design projects. Its unique style captures the spirit of sports, making it the perfect choice for all your athletic-themed designs.

Yankees Classic – Athletic Script Font

Yankees Classic - Athletic Script Font

Check out the Yankees Classic, an athletic font with a vintage feel. It features both uppercase and lowercase letters, numerals, extensive punctuation, alternate characters, stylistic sets, extruded font, and ligatures. This font is easy-to-use, accommodating a variety of designs, and comes in OTF and TTF formats.

KUNEX – Athletic Block Font

KUNEX - Athletic Block Font

The athletic display font, KUNEX, is perfect for creating a masculine aesthetic with a sense of strength and speed. Crafted specifically for outdoor sports and other contemporary occasions, this modern slab-shaped font has a unique vitality, creating bold impressions while maintaining a natural feel. The comprehensive package includes OTF, TTF, WOFF files, and more, complete with alternate, ligature, and multilingual support.

Gridiron Glory – Sport Athletic Font

Gridiron Glory - Sport Athletic Font

Gridiron Glory is an elegant athletic font designed as a nod to sports. Its bold and dynamic design mimics the energy of the sports world, embodying an air of power and competitiveness. Perfect for use in team logos, jerseys, or sports event promotions, this font carries an element of excitement and anticipation within its sharp, gridiron-inspired lines.

Rockas – Modern Sport Display Font

Rockas - Modern Sport Display Font

Rockas is an exciting modern sports display font that features wide italic fonts, contemporary cutouts, and a dynamic slant. It’s perfect for sprucing up sports titles, football match posters, gaming logos, or any text that requires a powerful, modern aesthetic. With optimal legibility and sizing, Rockas is a great resource for your next project.

Croser – Athletic Energetic Font

Croser - Athletic Energetic Font

Check out Croser, a dynamic athletic font designed to embody both speed and power. With its wide italic letters, modern cutouts, and slanted lines, it’s perfect for eye-catching sports titles, automobile game logos, or any text that needs a touch of energy. Known for its legibility and scale, Croser is not just your average fast font, it brings uniqueness in its design.

Runking – Modern Sport Font

Runking - Modern Sport Font

Runking offers a bold, genuine display font perfect for various branding projects, from logos to product design. It impressively stands out in numerous contexts. Available in both uppercase and lowercase versions, variants include .otf and .ttf, supports multiple languages, and comes in regular and semi-bold weights.

Sport Solid – Athletic Block Font

Sport Solid - Athletic Block Font

Sport Solid is a bold and unique font that brings an athletic vibe to any branding project. Ideal for sports-centric creations like logos, t-shirts, and esports visuals, this display font can make a striking impact in diverse contexts. Provided in both OTF and TTF formats, it features substantial, impactful uppercase characters.

RAVERIST – Stylish Athletic Font

RAVERIST - Stylish Athletic Font

RAVERIST is a modern sports display font featuring a natural, textured style. Available in OTF and TTF formats and as a web font, this stylish athletic font exhibits distinctive clarity and dramatic flair. Ideal for enhancing logos, quotes, invitations, product packaging, and headers, it impeccably complements creative tasks that require a handwriting touch.

Fastrun – Sport Athletic Font

Fastrun - Sport Athletic Font

Fastrun is a dynamic, bold font designed to give your sports-related projects a strong character. Available in regular, italic, and outline styles, it includes uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, and multilingual support. This versatile font, provided in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, even features options for alternate characters and ligatures.

SPORT NEWS – Athletic Font

SPORT NEWS - Athletic Font

SPORT NEWS is a dynamic and bold typeface that instantly captures attention. This font, with its modern letter cutout and italicized wide letters, exhibits a sense of power and speed, making it perfect for sports headlines, automotive game logos, and high-energy magazine monograms. It is extremely readable and offers both uppercase, lowercase, punctuation and numbers, along with multilingual support.

Sport Play – Athletic Block Font

Sport Play - Athletic Block Font

Check out the Sport Play font, a cool new typeface with a bold and authentic look. It’s perfect for any branding project, whether it’s for logo design, t-shirt printing, or esports. The font shines in numerous contexts and comes in OTF, TTF, WOFF, uppercase, alternative, and ligature options. With its modern feel, this font will excite and inspire your creativity.

Goball – Athletic Script Font

Goball - Athletic Script Font

Goball athletic font, inspired by the dynamism of baseball, is perfect for all your sports-themed design needs. Boasting a unique, modern touch, it adds a sporty feel to print, merchandise, and more. The package includes Goball Font in various formats, all characters from A-Z, numbers, punctuation, and more.

Free Athletic Fonts

Hyper Oxide – Free Athletic Font

Hyper Oxide - Free Athletic Font

This is a stylish font featuring a set of modern letters. It has the ideal look for crafting energetic titles and headings for athletic designs. The font includes stencil-style bold characters and it’s free to use with personal projects.

Stander – Free Athletic Font

Stander - Free Athletic Font

Stander is another free font you can use to craft attractive titles for athletic-themed projects. The font includes a stylishly futuristic letter design that’s perfect for sports brands, teams, and even merchandise design.

Travax – Free Athletic Font

Travax - Free Athletic Font

This font comes with a unique and futuristic letter design that adds a very energetic and sporty look to typography. The font is free to download and you can use it to craft bold titles for your personal projects.

Aguante – Free Athletic Font

Aguante - Free Athletic Font

Aguante is another creative font you can use to design modern titles and headings for your projects. This font also has an athletic vibe along with bold characters. It’s free to use with commercial projects.

Promesh – Free Athletic Font

Promesh - Free Athletic Font

This font will allow you to design attractive typography for your sports and fitness designs. It includes tall and narrow letterforms with an athletic look and feel. The font is free to use with personal and commercial projects.

Healthcare Transformed The Role of Technology in Revolutionizing Patient Care

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The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by rapid advancements in technology. These innovations are reshaping how patient care is delivered, making it more personalized, efficient, and accessible. From artificial intelligence and telemedicine to wearable health devices and advanced data analytics, technology is revolutionizing every aspect of healthcare. Here’s an exploration of how …

The post Healthcare Transformed The Role of Technology in Revolutionizing Patient Care first appeared on Lucid Softech.

Text and Image to Video Generation using Diffusion Models in Hugging Face

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The AI wave has introduced a myriad of exciting applications. While text generation and natural language processing are leading the AI revolution, image, and vision-based technologies are quickly catching up. The intersection of text and vision applications has seen a rapid surge recently.

In this article, you'll learn how to generate videos using text and image inputs. We'll leverage open-source models from Hugging Face to bring these applications to life. So, without further ado, let's dive in!

Installing and Importing Required Libraries

We will use the Hugging Face diffusion models to generate videos from text and images. The following script installs the libraries you will need to import these models from Hugging Face.

!pip install --upgrade transformers accelerate diffusers imageio-ffmpeg

For text-to-video generation, we will use the CogVideoX-2b diffusion model. For image-to-video generation, we will use the Stability AI's img2vid model.

The following script imports the Hugging Face pipelines for the two models. We also import some utility classes to save videos and display images.


import torch
from diffusers import CogVideoXPipeline
from diffusers.utils import export_to_video

from diffusers import StableVideoDiffusionPipeline
from diffusers.utils import load_image
Text to Video Generation with Hugging Face Diffusers

The first step is to create a Hugging Face pipeline that can access the CogVideoX-2b model. You can also use the CogVideoX-5b model, but it requires more space and memory.

The following script creates the pipeline for the CogVideoX-2b model. We also call some utility methods such as enable_model_cpu_offload(), enable_sequential_cpu_offload(), enable_slicing(), and enable_tiling() to improve the model performance.


text_video_pipe = CogVideoXPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "THUDM/CogVideoX-2b",
    torch_dtype=torch.float16
)

text_video_pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()
text_video_pipe.enable_sequential_cpu_offload()
text_video_pipe.vae.enable_slicing()
text_video_pipe.vae.enable_tiling()

Next, we define our text prompt and pass the prompt and other video configurations to the text_video_pipe pipeline that we created in the previous script. You can play around with the configuration settings to see how they affect the output.

The pipeline returns video frames you can export to video using the export_to_video() utility, as the following script shows.


prompt = "A white dog running on a Caribbean beach."

video = text_video_pipe(
    prompt=prompt,
    num_videos_per_prompt=1,
    num_inference_steps=50,
    num_frames=49,
    guidance_scale=6,
    generator=torch.Generator(device="cuda").manual_seed(42),
).frames[0]

export_to_video(video, "text_to_video.mp4", fps=8)

Output:
text-to-video.gif

Note: I intentionally reduced the output video dimensions.

The above output shows the video generated based on our input prompt. Amazing, isn't it?

But the magic doesn't end here. You can also pass an image as input to a diffusion model and get an animated video in response. This is what you will see in the next section.

Image to Video Generation with Hugging Face Diffusers

We will use Stability AI's img2vid model for image-to-video generation.

The script below imports the corresponding pipeline from the Hugging Face library.


image_video_pipe = StableVideoDiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "stabilityai/stable-video-diffusion-img2vid",
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    variant="fp16"
)
image_video_pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()

We will generate a video using the following image as input. You can use any other image if you want.


## Image link: https://www.brookhavenanimalhosp.com/site/blog/2022/11/15/15-cute-dog-breeds-that-stay-small-forever
image = load_image("/content/image-73073-800.jpg")
image = image.resize((1024, 576))
image

Output:

input-image-for-video-generation.png

To generate video from the image, you must pass the image object and the number of total frames to generate to the image_video_pipe pipeline you created in the previous script.

frames = image_video_pipe(image, num_frames=28).frames[0]
export_to_video(frames, "image_to_video.mp4", fps=7)

Output:

image-to-video.gif

Conclusion

Video generation from text and image inputs is a fascinating application. In this article, you saw how to generate videos from text using open-source diffusion models from Hugging Face. I encourage you to play around with these models to generate your own stunning videos using text prompts and image inputs.

Press This: Accessibility, Inclusive Design, and Debunking Myths

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Welcome to Press This, a podcast that delivers valuable insights and actionable tips for navigating the ever-evolving world of WordPress.  In this episode, host Brian Gardner and Ryan Bracey, director of web UX at Second Melody, explore accessibility in web design, breaking down what it is and debunking common myths about it. Powered by RedCircle

The post Press This: Accessibility, Inclusive Design, and Debunking Myths appeared first on WP Engine.

Two CSS Properties for Trimming Text Box Whitespace

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The text-box-trim and text-box-edge properties in CSS enable developers to trim specifiable amounts of the whitespace that appear above the first formatted line of text and below the last formatted line of text in a text box, making the text box vertically larger than the content within.

This whitespace is called leading, and it appears above and below (so it’s two half-leadings, actually) all lines of text to make the text more readable. However, we only want it to appear in between lines of text, right? We don’t want it to appear along the over or under edges of our text boxes, because then it interferes with our margins, paddings, gaps, and other spacings.

As an example, if we implement a 50px margin but then the leading adds another 37px, we’d end up with a grand total of 87px of space. Then we’d need to adjust the margin to 13px in order to make the space 50px in practice.

The word incendiary showing its text box and whitespace above and below it.

As a design systems person, I try to maintain as much consistency as possible and use very little markup whenever possible, which enables me to use the adjacent-sibling combinator (+) to create blanket rules like this:

/* Whenever <element> is followed by <h1> */
<element> + h1 {
  margin-bottom: 13px; /* instead of margin-bottom: 50px; */
}

This approach is still a headache since you still have to do the math (albeit less of it). But with the text-box-trim and text-box-edge properties, 50px as defined by CSS will mean 50px visually:

The word incendiary with its text box flush against its top and bottom edges.

Disclaimer: text-box-trim and text-box-edge are only accessible via a feature flag in Chrome 128+ and Safari 16.4+, as well as Safari Technology Preview without a feature flag. See Caniuse for the latest browser support.

Start with text-box-trim

text-box-trim is the CSS property that basically activates text box trimming. It doesn’t really have a use beyond that, but it does provide us with the option to trim from just the start, just the end, both the start and end, or none:

text-box-trim: trim-start;
text-box-trim: trim-end;
text-box-trim: trim-both;
text-box-trim: none;

Note: In older web browsers, you might need to use the older start/end/both values in place of the newer trim-start/trim-end/trim-both values, respectively. In even older web browsers, you might need to use top/bottom/both. There’s no reference for this, unfortunately, so you’ll just have to see what works.

Now, where do you want to trim from?

You’re probably wondering what I mean by that. Well, consider that a typographic letter has multiple peaks.

There’s the x-height, which marks the top of the letter “x” and other lowercase characters (not including ascenders or overshoots), the cap height, which marks the top of uppercase characters (again, not including ascenders or overshoots), and the alphabetic baseline, which marks the bottom of most letters (not including descenders or overshoots). Then of course there’s the ascender height and descender height too.

You can trim the whitespace between the x-height, cap height, or ascender height and the “over” edge of the text box (this is where overlines begin), and also the white space between the alphabetic baseline or descender height and the “under” edge (where underlines begin if text-underline-position is set to under).

Don’t trim anything

text-box-edge: leading means to include all of the leading; simply don’t trim anything. This has the same effect as text-box-trim: none or forgoing text-box-trim and text-box-edge entirely. You could also restrict under-edge trimming with text-box-trim: trim-start or over edge trimming with text-box-trim: trim-end. Yep, there are quite a few ways to not even do this thing at all!

Newer web browsers have deviated from the CSSWG specification working drafts by removing the leading value and replacing it with auto, despite the “Do not ship (yet)” warning (*shrug*).

Naturally, text-box-edge accepts two values (an instruction regarding the over edge, then an instruction regarding the under edge). However, auto must be used solo.

text-box-edge: auto; /* Works */
text-box-edge: ex auto; /* Doesn't work */
text-box-edge: auto alphabetic; /* Doesn't work */

I could explain all the scenarios in which auto would work, but none of them are useful. I think all we want from auto is to be able to set the over or under edge to auto and the other edge to something else, but this is the only thing that it doesn’t do. This is a problem, but we’ll dive into that shortly. 

Trim above the ascenders and/or below the descenders

The text value will trim above the ascenders if used as the first value and below the descenders if used as the second value and is also the default value if you fail to declare the second value. (I think you’d want it to be auto, but it won’t be.)

text-box-edge: ex text; /* Valid */
text-box-edge: ex; /* Computed as `text-box-edge: ex text;` */
text-box-edge: text alphabetic; /* Valid */
text-box-edge: text text; /* Valid */
text-box-edge: text; /* Computed as `text-box-edge: text text;` */

It’s worth noting that ascender and descender height metrics come from the fonts themselves (or not!), so text can be quite finicky. For example, with the Arial font, the ascender height includes diacritics and the descender height includes descenders, whereas with the Fraunces font, the descender height includes diacritics and I don’t know what the ascender height includes. For this reason, there’s talk about renaming text to from-font.

The word incendiary written in two variations with accents showing how the test box is affected.

Trim above the cap height only

To trim above the cap height:

text-box-edge: cap; /* Computed as text-box-edge: cap text; */
The word incendiary with the D character slightly outside the top of the text box boundary.

Remember, undeclared values default to text, not auto (as demonstrated above). Therefore, to opt out of trimming the under edge, you’d need to use trim-start instead of trim-both:

text-box-trim: trim-start; /* Not text-box-trim: trim-both; */
text-box-edge: cap; /* Not computed as text-box-edge: cap text; */

Trim above the cap height and below the alphabetic baseline

To trim above the cap height and below the alphabetic baseline:

text-box-trim: trim-both;
text-box-edge: cap alphabetic;
The word incendiary with no whitespace.

By the way, the “Cap height to baseline” option of Figma’s “Vertical trim” setting does exactly this. However, its Dev Mode produces CSS code with outdated property names (leading-trim and text-edge) and outdated values (top and bottom).

Figma screenshot of text settings.

Trim above the x-height only

To trim above the x-height only:

text-box-trim: trim-start;
text-box-edge: ex;
The word incendiary with slight spacing along the bottom edge of its text box.

Trim above the x-height and below the alphabetic baseline

To trim above the x-height and below the alphabetic baseline:

text-box-trim: trim-both;
text-box-edge: ex alphabetic;
The word incendiary with no whitespace.

Trim below the alphabetic baseline only

To trim below the alphabetic baseline only, the following won’t work (things were going so well for a moment, weren’t they?):

text-box-trim: trim-end;
text-box-edge: alphabetic;

This is because the first value is always the mandatory over-edge value whereas the second value is an optional under-edge value. This means that alphabetic isn’t a valid over-edge value, even though the inclusion of trim-end suggests that we won’t be providing one. Complaints about verbosity aside, the correct syntax would have you declare any over-edge value even though you’d effectively cancel it out with trim-end:

text-box-trim: trim-end;
text-box-edge: [any over edge value] alphabetic;
The word incendiary with slight whitespace along the upper edge of its text box.

What about ideographic glyphs?

It’s difficult to know how web browsers will trim ideographic glyphs until they do, but you can read all about it in the spec. In theory, you’d want to use the ideographic-ink value for trimming and the ideographic value for no trimming, both of which aren’t unsupported yet:

text-box-edge: ideographic; /* No trim */
text-box-edge: ideographic-ink; /* Trim */
text-box-edge: ideographic-ink ideographic; /* Top trim */
text-box-edge: ideographic ideographic-ink; /* Bottom trim */

text-box, the shorthand property

If you’re not keen on the verbosity of text box trimming, there’s a shorthand text-box property that makes it somewhat inconsequential. All the same rules apply.

/* Syntax */
text-box: [text-box-trim] [text-box-edge (over)] [text-box-edge (under)]?

/* Example */
text-box: trim-both cap alphabetic;

Final thoughts

At first glance, text-box-trim and text-box-edge might not seem all that interesting, but they do make spacing elements a heck of a lot simpler.

Is the current proposal the best way to handle text box trimming though? Personally, I don’t think so. I think text-box-trim-start and text-box-trim-end would make a lot more sense, with text-box-trim being used as the shorthand property and text-box-edge not being used at all, but I’d settle for some simplification and/or consistent practices. What do you think?

There are some other concerns too. For example, should there be an option to include underlines, overlines, hanging punctuation marks, or diacritics? I’m going to say yes, especially if you’re using text-underline-position: under or a particularly thick text-decoration-thickness, as they can make the spacing between elements appear smaller.


Two CSS Properties for Trimming Text Box Whitespace originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

35+ Best Credit Card Mockup Templates 2024

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Credit card designs are now much more creative than they used to be. Thanks to talented designers, every bank now has its own unique credit and debit card designs with colorful and wild designs.

If you’re a designer working on a brand new credit card design, you will also need the perfect mockup to showcase your designs to your clients and on your portfolio. We handpicked this collection of credit card templates just for that purpose.

In this post, you’ll find some beautiful credit card mockups that highlight your designs in a professional way. These mockups are also ideal for showcasing other types of card designs, including membership cards for various businesses.

Check out the credit card mockup templates below and be sure to download them all. There are a few free templates in there too.

Modern Credit Card Mockup Template

Modern Credit Card Mockup Template

A simple and minimal mockup is the best way to show off professionalism through your design presentations. This mockup is perfect for achieving that goal. The template features a simple tilted credit card with lighting effects and editable background. It has smart objects for changing the card design as well.

Hand Holding Credit Card Mockup

Hand Holding Credit Card Mockup

Adding a bit of human touch can greatly improve your credit card presentation. With this mockup, you can show off your card design being held by a hand. It not only makes your credit card look more realistic but also offers a clear look at the design. There are 4 different mockups included in this pack.

4 Minimal Credit Card Mockup Templates

4 Minimal Credit Card Mockup Templates

If you want to make your credit card appear in a more realistic and creative environment, this mockup is perfect for you. It comes with a modern background design and with 4 different mockup scenes. You can also customize the background and effects to your preference.

Credit Card Mosaic Mockup Template

Credit Card Mosaic Mockup Template

This mockup template allows you to showcase multiple credit card designs at the same time. It’s perfect for showing off your skills in a portfolio. Or you can use it to make a nice single credit card design presentation as well. The template features well-organized layers and smart objects for easy editing.

Credit Card with Hand Mockup Template

Credit Card with Hand Mockup Template

A very useful credit card mockup that can be used for various purposes. The realistic way the hand is holding the credit card gives it a very professional look. You can use it to create advertisements, promote membership cards, social media campaigns, and more. It comes in a fully editable PSD file.

Free Credit Card PSD Mockup

Free Credit Card PSD Mockup

This beautiful credit card template is free to download and use. It comes as a fully customizable PSD file with smart object layers. The template is perfect for showcasing your designs on a portfolio.

Free Credit Card Mockup Template

Free Credit Card Mockup Template

With this mockup template, you can show off your credit card being held by a human hand. This template is also free to use. And it features editable backgrounds and smart objects.

Credit And Debit Card Mockup

Credit And Debit Card Mockup

This credit card mockup features a simple layout and allows you to show two card designs at the same time. The template comes in high-resolution PSD format with organized layers. It has an adjustable shadow effect too.

Smartphone with Credit Cards Mockup

Smartphone with Credit Cards Mockup

This mockup is ideal for showcasing privacy and security alongside your credit card designs. It features a phone and a lock with a credit card mockup. The template is easily customizable and has editable colors.

Credit Cards Scene Mockups

Credit Cards Scene Mockups

This is a collection of credit card mockups that includes multiple scenes featuring the credit cards. They all have fully customizable layouts with changeable backgrounds and smart object layers.

Dark Debit, Credit, and Membership Card Mockups

Dark Debit, Credit, Membership Card Mockups

This credit card mockup kit includes 5 different mockup scenes for you to choose from. They are ideal for showcasing and presenting your designs to clients in a stylish and professional way.

Free Plastic Credit Card Mockup

Free Plastic Credit Card Mockup

This is a free credit card mockup template you can use to show off both sides of your credit card designs. You can also change its background to your preference.

Credit Card with Security Concept Mockup

Credit Card with Security Concept Mockup

If you’re working on an app or service related to payment security, this mockup template will definitely come in handy. It will allow you to create a cool scene depicting security and safety with custom credit card designs.

Modern Credit Card & Membership Card Mockup

Modern Credit Card & Membership Card MockUp

Use this mockup to show off your credit card designs in style. It includes mockups for showing the front and back sides of the credit card as well. The template is available in a high-resolution, fully layered, PSD file.

Smartphone with Bank Card Mockup

Smartphone with Bank Card Mockup

This mockup template features two credit card mockups alongside a smartphone. You can easily customize this mockup to create an amazing scene showcasing your credit card designs. The design of the smartphone is also customizable.

Plastic Discount & Membership Card Mockups

Plastic Discount Card Mockups

There are 5 unique credit card-style mockups in this bundle. They can be used to showcase many different types of membership cards, discount cards, and more. Each mockup has a different scene with editable shadows and backgrounds.

Free Creative Credit Card Mockup

Free Creative Credit Card Mockup

This mockup is also free to download and use. It has changeable backgrounds with a plastic card mockup that shows your designs in a slightly angled view.

Realistic Credit Card Mockup Template

Realistic Credit Card Mockup Template

This mockup template comes with a realistic look and feel that will help make your designs appear more natural and professional. The template features 3 credit cards overlapping one another. You can edit each card mockup using smart objects to place your own designs. It’s ideal for showcasing different variants of a credit card.

Stylish Credit Card Mockup Template

Stylish Credit Card Mockup Template

Another elegant and stylish credit card mockup for showcasing your modern card designs. This mockup comes with a stacked card set that you can also customize using smart object layers. The background can be changed to your preference. And it comes as a PSD file with organized layers.

Creative Credit Cards Mockup Set

Creative Credit Cards Mockup Set

This mockup is most suitable for showcasing your credit card designs on websites and social media. It includes a fully customizable mockup design where you can even change the color of the card and change the background. You can also place your own design in the mockups using smart objects.

Smartphone Screen & Credit Card Mockup

Smartphone Screen & Credit Card Mockup

A useful credit card mockup for banks, small businesses, and eCommerce platforms. With this mockup, you can promote your mobile apps and the payment options available on your app at the same time. The mockup comes in two different styles and they are both easily customizable.

Balanced Credit Card Mockup Templates

Balanced Credit Card Mockup Templates

Want to show how to balance expenses with your bank’s credit card? Then this mockup will help you spread your message more effectively. This is a collection of creative credit card mockups that shows a credit card being balanced on various objects. There are 5 different mockup designs in this bundle that come in PSD format.

Free Credit Card Mockup with Hand

Free Credit Card Mockup with Hand

You can download and use this template free of charge. It comes with a realistic design featuring a human hand holding a credit card. You can easily change the background and replace the card design as well.

Free Modern Credit Card Mockup

Free Modern Credit Card Mockup

This is a computer-generated card mockup that is ideal for showcasing your credit card in a technology-themed environment. The mockup is available in 5 different scenes and in 4K resolution. All free to download.

5 Simple Bank Card Mockup Templates

5 Simple Bank Card Mockup Templates

A collection of minimal and simple credit card mockups. You can use these mockups to showcase any type of credit or debit card design in a very creative way. There are mockups with multiple views and angles to choose from. And they are all easily customizable as well.

Plastic Credit Card Mockup Templates

Plastic Credit Card Mockup Templates

This bundle also comes with several different styles of credit card mockups. There are 9 unique mockups included in this pack that is designed for showcasing all kinds of credit cards. Each mockup comes with editable effects, smart objects, changeable backgrounds, and much more.

Credit Card with Wallet Mockup Template

Credit Card with Wallet Mockup Template

With this mockup template, you can showcase your credit card alongside a wallet. The hand removing the credit card from the wallet makes this mockup look more realistic and appropriate for various business promotions as well. You can also easily place your design in the mockup using smart objects.

Credit Card and iPhone Mockup Template

Credit Card and iPhone Mockups

This mockup template allows you to show off your card design next to an iPhone. It’s actually ideal for showcasing credit cards as well as membership cards. The iPhone device also works as a mockup so you can place your own designs in the device as well. Both mockups can be customized using Photoshop.

Luxury Credit Card Mockup Template

Luxury Credit Card Mockup Template

If you’re working on a high-tier credit card design, this mockup will help create the appropriate atmosphere for your card. It features a high-end luxury background that gives it a classy look. You can also customize the background color and easily replace the design using smart objects.

Free Realistic Credit Card Mockup

Free Realistic Credit Card Mockup

Believe it or not, this high-quality credit card mockup is actually free to download. It features a realistic and professional design that will surely make your credit card presentation more effective.

Free Debit Card Mockup Sketch Template

Free Debit Card Mockup Sketch Template

The dark and stylish look of this mockup gives it a certain elegant feel. It’s perfect for showing off your credit and debit card designs in websites and portfolios. The template comes in Sketch format and it’s free to download.

Professional Credit & Membership Card Mockups

Professional Credit & Membership Card Mockups

The effects used in this mockup design give it a very realistic-looking plastic look and feel. This makes it perfect for presenting your credit card design in a way that will win over your clients. There are 6 different mockup templates in this pack with fully customizable backgrounds and colors.

Front & Back Credit Card Mockup

Front & Back Credit Card Mockup

This mockup template comes with a design that allows you to showcase the front and back sides of your credit card design at the same time. It features smart objects, editable floor and wall colors, as well as organized layers.

Debit Card Mockup Templates

Debit Card Mockup Templates

You can use this simple and minimal mockup template to showcase your credit, debit, and membership cards in style. It’s great for presenting designs to clients as well as showcasing them in portfolios. The mockup comes in 4 different styles as well.

Multipurpose Credit Card Mockups

Multipurpose Credit Card Mockups

This mockup template allows you to show off multiple credit card designs at once. It also includes mockups for showcasing both the front and back sides of your designs. There are 3 unique PSD mockup templates in this pack.

Be sure to check out our best business card mockup templates collection as well.

Product Management vs. Program Management vs. Project Management: Key Differences

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

I started my career as a Designer before transitioning into Project Management, and I’ve now been in this field for over 15 years in which 10 of them I worked as a Program Manager. It’s amazing to reflect on how much the landscape has evolved and matured, with new roles and responsibilities along the way.

Download Now: Free Project Management Template

When I moved to the United States and was building my career in this new country, I spent a lot of time searching for jobs, interviewing, and reading job descriptions, of course. Two things really surprised me during that process.

First, although I had been doing Project Management for quite some time and understood what a Product Manager was, I had never encountered the term “Program Management.”

When I came across it in job descriptions, I thought, “Wait a minute, I’ve been doing this for years — I just didn’t call it program management.” It was eye-opening to realize that the terminology was new to me, but the work itself wasn’t.

The second discovery that caught me off guard was noticing that some companies were hiring for “Product Manager” roles, but after interviews with them, it seemed like they were actually looking for a Program Manager.

It was surreal — almost as if companies were hiring for one title but expecting the responsibilities of another. This raised an important question for me: Are companies clear on what they want? Or is there confusion about these roles?

Product Management vs. Program Management vs. Project Management: Key Differences

With that in mind, I wanted to write about this experience since I think it’s essential to clarify the differences between Product, Program, and Project Management. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Product Management

A product is anything that can be offered in the market to solve a problem or satisfy a need. The Product Manager focuses on the “why”, defines the value proposition, determines how the product differentiates itself in the market, and ensures it meets customer needs while aligning with business goals.

Read more:

Program Management

Programs consist of multiple interconnected projects that contribute to long-term business objectives. A Program Manager leads the overall program strategy, sets objectives, and evaluates its business impact, ensuring alignment across projects.

Project Management

A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end, and therefore a defined scope and resources. Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.

Read more:

Tips to Apply for the Right Role in Product, Program, and Project Management

In today‘s dynamic job market, a lot of us are seeking new opportunities. To help you navigate this, I’d like to offer guidance to help you make sure you’re applying for the right role and that you understand the distinctions between Product, Program, and Project Management roles.

It’s important to recognize what’s expected from each role so you can better align your skills with the expectations of the position. Look for:

Product Management Roles

  • Do they ask you for an example of a successful product launch you've led?
  • Are they curious about how you create a product vision and strategy?
  • Do they ask how you handle product-market fit or customer feedback to improve the product?
  • Are they looking for insights on how you prioritize product features and balance user needs with business goals?

Program Management Roles

  • Do they focus on your experience working with multiple teams managing different projects concurrently?
  • Are they asking how you ensure cross-functional teams are aligned with overall program goals?
  • Are they interested in your approach to balancing competing priorities and managing risks across the program?
  • Do they ask how you ensure the program meets long-term business objectives?

Project Management Roles

  • Are they asking if you can deliver projects on time and within scope?
  • Do they ask about how you manage project budgets and resources effectively?
  • Are they concerned with how you communicate progress and manage stakeholder expectations?
  • Are they asking for examples of how you've handled changes in project scope or unforeseen challenges?

Product Management vs. Program Management vs. Project Management Roles

If they ask about risk management:

Program Management

  • Are they asking about how you manage risks across multiple projects?
  • Are they asking questions about alignment with the program’s overall strategy?

Project Management

  • Are they asking how you identify and mitigate risks within a specific project?
  • Are they focused on schedule and budget requirements?

Product Management

  • Are they asking how you assess customer-related risks when defining the product roadmap, such as feature prioritization or competitive threats?

If they ask about communication:

Program Management

  • Are they interested in how you communicate across various projects and teams to keep stakeholders aligned and informed at the program level?

Project Management

  • Do they expect you to provide project-specific updates, manage team communication, and ensure everyone is on the same page about milestones and deadlines?

Product Management

  • Are they asking about your ability to communicate the product vision and strategy to different departments to ensure successful development and launch?

This article is meant to guide your conversations with potential employers. It won’t provide definitive answers. Use this information to spark meaningful discussions that can deepen your understanding of the company’s expectations.

It's important to keep in mind that different industries and companies often use varied terminologies and role descriptions.

A PM role is more than its title.

As I reflect on this, I’d like to recognize that some companies may understand the distinctions between these roles but choose not to label them correctly.

For instance, a Product Owner might take on the responsibilities of a Product Manager, while in other cases, a Program Manager can handle project management tasks. Other organizations would treat the Product Manager role as equivalent to a Project Manager.

The goal here isn’t to discourage you or make you the “PM police” during interviews. Rather, it’s about empowering you to make informed decisions about your career, enabling you to ask the right questions and secure a fulfilling work experience.

60+ Core Company Values That Will Shape Your Culture & Inspire Your Employees

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No matter how much I love my job, at the end of the day, it’s still a job. It will and should never replace the things about life that bring me the most joy — my loved ones, exercise, travel, a glass of Pinot Noir, or my parents' home-cooked food.

Download Now: 50 Examples of Company Core Values

However, there are some ways to make a job feel more meaningful. Apart from great colleagues and exciting projects, company values can help direct team members toward a common goal and align groups around a bigger purpose.

Companies need something their teams can get behind and understand to maintain growth.

This search has led many people to The HubSpot Culture Code — and the original 2013 deck has almost 6 million views online. The main focus around our culture code is “Creating a company we love,” which all companies should work towards to add structure to goals and retain employees who believe in those goals.

Table of Contents

Why are company values important?

1. Give your team a shared purpose to rally around.

One of our Nickelodeon company values is that we put kids first in everything we do. This value reminds me that, even when work gets busy or trying, I work here because I believe in educating and entertaining kids and helping them be their best and truest selves.

Core company values give employees purpose, which is undeniably critical for employee satisfaction. A McKinsey & Company survey found 70% of employees said their sense of purpose was largely defined by work. However, that number dropped significantly to 15% when non-executive participants were asked if they were living their purpose at work.

This is why your core values must be embraced at every level, not just by the executive team. Purpose doesn't just improve employee satisfaction — it also increases your bottom line and builds trust with customers.

Professor and author Ranjay Gulati explains in his book Deep Purpose that “to get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it.”

Gulati calls this process “deep purpose,” which furthers an organization's reason for being in a more intense, thoughtful, and comprehensive way.

2. Increase team well-being and motivation.

As much as I may try to “leave my baggage at the door,” stresses and tribulations can sometimes weasel their way into my workday.

At times like this, it helps me to know that, whatever is happening outside of my company, this is a place where I can be happy about and proud of the work I get to do.

WifiTalents data found that 56% of employees cite company culture and values as having a significant impact on their happiness, which is crucial since companies with higher employee happiness levels were shown to have approximately 23% higher revenues.

3. Go public with an aligned message.

What you do should be just as important as why and how you do it.

While your main goal for your company may be increasing sales, awareness, retention, or another key business metric, many consumers nowadays care immensely about purchasing from brands that align with their values.

An MIT Sloan Management Review article references a B2B customer study that asked tens of thousands of consumers how much it mattered if a company was less aligned with its social or environmental values than one of its competitors.

The study found that once buyers become aware of these differences between companies, a lack of alignment in values could reduce sales by as much as 30%.

This risk means it is essential to proudly share public-facing communications about your company values to be authentic about your company’s purpose while drawing in consumers who align with those values.

Ultimately, core values are critical if you want to create a long-lasting, successful, and motivating workplace, whether you work for a new company in need of core-value inspiration or an older company requiring a value revamp.

Elements of Company Core Values

1. Clear and Concise

Having too many values (that may not make sense or contradict each other) or using a lot of unnecessary jargon can make them feel inaccessible to new or younger employees.

Thus, it is essential to keep your company values clear so that they can be understood and embraced by all employees, regardless of their level or position.

For instance, Nickelodeon’s value of putting kids first in everything we do might mean something different to each person, but it’s easy to grasp and something I can easily keep in mind on every campaign.

2. Brief and Memorable

Don't over-explain your company values — keep them brief, instead. Having bite-sized values will make them easier to remember, making it more likely that they will be internalized and adopted as part of your company culture.

Plus, having short and catchy values can help create a distinctive brand identity, giving your company a competitive advantage.

It will be easier to differentiate your company from others in the market when the values are memorable and unique.

3. Action-Oriented

It’s easy to use attractive, vague words like “Authenticity” and “Diversity” without actually thinking about how those terms can and should apply to your company’s work. To create a significant impact, your values should be action-oriented.

One of The HubSpot Culture Code tenets is “We work to be remarkably transparent.”

The action-oriented aspect of this comes in its proof; the Culture Code states that HubSpot shares (almost) everything with its 4,000 employees, including financials and diversity goals, and everyone has equal access to the same data.

This proves that HubSpot isn’t just stating values that sound nice but has taken actionable steps toward exemplifying that value. This helps establish accountability among employees and empowers us to do our best work.

4. Reflective

Your core values establish the foundation of your company's culture, which is why they must be unique to your company and accurately reflect your mission, vision, beliefs, and objectives.

For instance, one of the Culture Code tenets is, “We solve for the customer.”

While other companies may be able to state this same value, it has a unique meaning for HubSpot, since we continuously develop and market new software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service designed to increase customers’ efficiency and efficacy.

Keeping your values consistent with your objectives can help create an authentic brand image and foster trust among your customers, partners, and employees. It will also help attract and retain employees with the same beliefs, resulting in a more cohesive and effective staff.

5. Adaptable

While core values should always be consistent with an overall mission, don't be afraid to make adjustments as your company grows.

Your company may not look like it did when it first started out, and your original values may not be as relevant or effective as they were then.

For instance, HubSpot has updated its Culture Code over 30 times since its founding. As your business evolves, regularly obtain feedback from employees and other stakeholders, and re-assess your core values when necessary.

Examples of Companies with Inspiring Core Values

1. Google

  1. Focus on the user, and all else will follow.
  2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
  3. Fast is better than slow.
  4. Democracy on the web works.
  5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
  6. You can make money without doing evil.
  7. There's always more information out there.
  8. The need for information crosses all borders.
  9. You can be serious without a suit.
  10. Great just isn't good enough.

On Google's philosophy page, they don't just list their core values — they also provide examples.

Google’s “Ten things we know to be true” company philosophy page header.

For instance, consider their value, “You can make money without doing evil.”

While many companies likely tout the benefits of integrity, Google references strategic efforts it has made to avoid “evil” business, including “Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a 'Sponsored Link,' so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results.”

Expedia Sponsored link in search results when Googling “Flights LA to NYC.”

Fulfilling values like “don't be evil” can be complicated. As Google grows and develops more products, there is more tension and scrutiny.

Ultimately, a core value is powerless if your company can't list intentional, calculated decisions it has made to put values ahead of profit.

2. Coca Cola

  1. Leadership: The courage to shape a better future
  2. Collaboration: Leverage collective genius
  3. Integrity: Be real
  4. Accountability: If it is to be, it's up to me
  5. Passion: Committed in heart and mind
  6. Diversity: As inclusive as our brands
  7. Quality: What we do, we do well

Coca-Cola demonstrates its diversity core value with its public Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page, which lists the company's current efforts and future goals under this larger strategy. I appreciate that the company doesn’t just highlight what it’s already doing but also how it can improve and grow in years to come.

Coca-Cola’s three long-term ambitions towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Additionally, Coca-Cola's Sustainability page exemplifies its commitment to climate. This page includes reports about water usage, packaging, climate, and more.

Coca-Cola’s Business & Sustainability Report, which promises to stay true to the company’s purpose of refreshing the world and making a difference.

By acknowledging both its efforts and its shortcomings, Coca-Cola is able to show its desire to live up to its values, while taking responsibility for any mismatch between its ideals and reality.

3. Whole Foods

  1. We sell the highest quality natural and organic foods.
  2. We satisfy and delight our customers.
  3. We promote team member growth and happiness.
  4. We practice win-win partnerships with our suppliers.
  5. We create profits and prosperity.
  6. We care about our community and the environment.

Underneath each of its values on its core value page, Whole Foods provides an in-depth, yet easy-to-understand, explanation. There are also some links, such as “Learn more about how we support communities and our environment,” which share more resources, such as the Whole Foods Market Foundation.

Brief description of Whole Foods Market Foundation with a link to Read more.

Ultimately, their page demonstrates their ability to walk the walk. For instance, to exemplify their commitment to local communities, Whole Foods created a Local Producer Loan Program, which has provided over 365 loans, representing roughly $28 million in capital, for small-scale, local, and emerging producers.

Additionally, Whole Foods provides a list of environmentally friendly efforts they've practiced since 1980, including being the first U.S. grocer to ban plastic grocery bags at checkout (2008) and plastic straws (2019).

I hadn’t even known they had paved the way for both these efforts, so your core values can also be an opportunity for a humble brag.

Whole Foods claim that states, “Every year, we reduce 1 million pounds of plastic.”

Amazon's acquisition of the grocery chain in 2017 caused some loyal shoppers to question the brand’s authenticity, but Whole Foods brought in a new CEO in 2022 who is more dedicated to the company’s core values.

A Yahoo Finance article states that CEO Jason Buechel recognizes Whole Foods customers “... care about where the product was grown, raised, and produced, which comes at a higher cost, raising a challenge for the company.”

He is working to invest in technology, with Amazon’s help, to strike a balance between providing that same product value to customers while still growing the company’s sales and profits. This is partially why so many customers are brand loyalists: they support these efforts, too.

4. Airbnb

  1. Champion the Mission — We’re united in partnership with our community to create connection, which enables belonging.
  2. Be a Host — We're caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with.
  3. Embrace the Adventure — We’re driven by open curiosity, hopeful resilience, and the belief that every person can grow.
  4. Be a Cereal Entrepreneur — We’re determined and creative in transforming our bold ambitions into reality.

Airbnb’s continued commitment to being by and for the people sets it apart. People like me use Airbnb to stay in real homes that embrace the culture of the region you’re visiting, so it makes sense that its values are rooted in kindness, connection, and growth. The company’s About Us section reads:

“Airbnb was born in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home and has since grown to over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 1.5 billion guest arrivals in almost every country across the globe.

Every day, hosts offer unique stays and experiences that make it possible for guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way.”

Airbnb “What defines us” section with three distinct messages true to the brand.

Co-founders Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk, and Joe Gebbia are famed for their iconic origin story. They launched Airbnb at SXSW in 2008 and were met with uncertainty.

To create their own investment dollars, they sold self-designed cereal boxes featuring then-presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain at $40 a box.

This venture made them $30,000 but, more importantly, it caught the eye of Paul Graham from tech startup accelerator Y Combinator, who told the trio, “If you can convince people to pay $40 for $4 boxes of cereal, maybe, just maybe, you can convince strangers to live with each other.”

Obama and McCain cereal boxes designed by Airbnb co-founders around the 2008 presidential election.

As a brand rooted in travel, opportunity, determination, and connection, it makes sense that its core values and mission tie around these same beliefs. Airbnb makes it clear that it prizes its company culture and wants employees who fit into those values.

5. Gusto

  1. Embody a service mindset. — Never stop advocating for the needs of others.
  2. Dream big, then make it real. — Be ambitious. Show and do is greater than tell and talk.
  3. Be proud of the how. — Ensure deep integrity in everything you do.
  4. Embrace an ownership mentality. — Take initiative to leave things better than you found them.
  5. Debate, then commit. — Share openly, question respectfully, and once a decision is made, commit fully.

This popular payroll app supports more than 300,000 businesses in the United States. Gusto doesn't just talk about supporting the needs of employees and customers; leaders at this company make it happen with radical transparency.

Gusto About Us page, with the statement, “We’re making work meaningful for everyone, everywhere.”

Gusto was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in human resources this year. One of the reasons behind this recognition is how Gusto continues to expand its opportunities and technologies to meet the needs of small-business customers — something that slots into several of its values.

By integrating with Chase Payment Solutions and adopting new AI technologies, Gusto shows that it will continue to make change that meets the needs of customers, is willing to strive for more, takes the initiative to keep growing the brand’s capabilities, and commits to change.

All of these tick boxes in its core values and proves the leaders’ accountability.

6. Adobe

  1. Create the future. — Creativity is in our DNA. We constantly look around the corner to see what is possible. But we don’t wait for the future; we create it. We are builders, makers, and inventors, driven by a deep empathy for our customers and users. We are open-minded and celebrate new ideas. We have the courage to disrupt the market and ourselves through bold bets and ideas we turn into reality.
  2. Own the outcome. — We think and operate like owners. We take initiative, have a bias toward action, and assume ownership for end results, not just our part. We are reliable and have clear points of view. We’re decisive and learn from our mistakes,
  3. Raise the bar. — We aim high, and we play to win. We relentlessly focus on execution, celebrate excellence, and are intellectually honest about where we must do better. We deliver both speed and quality by doing fewer things better. Our success is measured by the success of our customers and users.
  4. Be genuine. — The ability to be yourself is core to who we are. We embrace and respect diversity. We support and challenge each other by being honest and direct. We always act with sincerity, integrity, and the highest of ethics. We do this for our employees, partners, customers and communities.

These values were shared last year in an internal memo from Adobe chairman and CEO Shantanu Narayen to employees globally.

The memo’s goal was to share how the company would evolve its values and cultures to bring in new decades of growth.

Adobe graphic incorporating the brand logo and employees used in an internal memo from the CEO.

What I love about this memo is the immediate transparency of the values to the entire company, so everyone can read, understand, and align with them. Along with this information, Narayen shared his personal thoughts on the four company values, including the following blurb about being genuine.

“Being genuine is a hallmark of Adobe and something that always comes up when people talk about our culture. Ensuring that we reflect the diversity of the world around us — where everyone feels included, respected, and has the opportunity to make an impact — has been a core value since our founding.

It underscores how we support each other while being honest and direct. It also speaks to where we want to go and who Adobe should continue to be for our employees, partners, customers, and communities.”

While these values are relatively new for Adobe, they represent the idea that companies can evolve and update their core values with their growing businesses. Taking responsibility to adapt and share them with employees is a hallmark of a dedicated workplace.

7. American Express

  1. WE DELIVER FOR OUR CUSTOMERS — We're driven by our commitment to deliver exceptional products, services and experiences to our customers. We value our strong customer relationships, and are defined by how well we take care of them.
  2. WE RESPECT PEOPLE — We are a diverse and inclusive company and serve diverse customers. We believe we are a better company when each of us feels included, valued, and able to trust colleagues who respect each of us for who we are and what we contribute to our collective success.
  3. WE CARE ABOUT OUR COMMUNITIES — We aim to make a difference in the communities where we work and live. Our commitment to corporate social responsibility makes an impact by strengthening our connections.
  4. WE MAKE IT GREAT — We deliver an unparalleled standard of excellence in everything we do, staying focused on the biggest opportunities to be meaningful to our customers. From our innovative products to our world-class customer service, our customers expect the best —and our teams are proud to deliver it.
  5. WE NEED DIFFERENT VIEWS — By being open to different ideas from our colleagues, customers, and the world around us, we will find more ways to win.
  6. WE DO WHAT'S RIGHT — Customers choose us because they trust our brand and people. We earn that trust by ensuring everything we do is reliable, consistent, and with the highest level of integrity.
  7. WE WIN AS A TEAM — We view each other as colleagues – part of the same team, striving to deliver the brand promise to our customers and each other every day. Individual performance is essential and valued but never at the expense of the team.

American Express doesn't just hit the bare minimum with polite, helpful customer service. They go above and beyond to solve for their customers, even without strict protocol.

 what are company values? Header on American Express company mission page.

For instance, Raymond Joabar, group president of American Express’ global merchant and network services, told this story in a Forbes interview.

Joabar recalled a hotel café manager who alerted Joabar’s team that he sold a display cake with harmful chemicals. The manager needed to track down the customer before they ate it.

“Obviously, there's no procedure for that, but our team took ownership of the problem,” Joabar told Forbes. Joabar’s team gathered all the information they could and found 21 card members who used their cards at the café during that time frame. They were able to track down the customer before the cake was served at an anniversary party.

“The important point here,” Joabar says in the interview, “other than that everybody ended up safe and sound — is that there isn't a script for every situation, so we empower our care professionals to do what's right for the customer.”

This anecdote exemplifies American Express‘s commitment to its customers, even when it’s not easy, and demonstrates the company's dedication to living by its values and recognizing employees who do the same.

How to Develop Business Values

Now that you've seen what core values look like at other companies, you can use the following steps to create your own.

1. Check in with your team.

A quick way to get started is to consult your founders or executive team. They'll often already have a mission statement or vision for the company values.

If not, I recommend setting up a few brainstorming sessions with your team. Company values can also come up as your team solves problems together.

As you start your business, jot down ideas as they come up, and keep them somewhere that‘s easy to find. This way, you have a go-to place for inspiration when you draw a blank.

Once you have that framework, you can work on fleshing out your organization’s core values.

If you're having a hard time getting started, this company culture code template can help.

How HubSpot completed this step: HubSpot was operating for three years before co-founder Dharmesh Shah started work on HubSpot's culture code. He started the project by asking questions and sending surveys to the team.

This took several rounds because one of the common themes was that employees love working at HubSpot because of the people. It took more time and effort to discover why and how that feeling could translate to a set of company values.

2. Solicit feedback.

The level of feedback you need for a project like this isn't a one-and-done sort of effort. For instance, if I was asked, “Why do I value writing for the HubSpot Blog?” I could list dozens of amazing things, from the flexible hours to the ability to incorporate my personal experience into my writing.

However, if I was also asked, “What other values would I like the HubSpot Blog to embrace?” I might share some thought-provoking answers that can be taken into consideration. Building on your existing values is the best way to create a lasting company culture.

It‘s also important to key into informal conversations and non-verbal signals. Let your team know what you’re doing and why. Then, practice active listening. It may be tempting to argue or defend your point of view during these conversations. But interrupting in this way could mean that you'll lose valuable insights.

These are some useful resources for gathering feedback from your team:

How HubSpot completed this step: HubSpot's core employee values were initially outlined in the acronym HEART:

  • Humble.
  • Effective.
  • Adaptable.
  • Remarkable.
  • Transparent.

While getting feedback for HubSpot's culture code update, co-founder Dharmesh Shah realized that something was a bit off. He found that the acronym was missing one integral part of how HubSpot does business: empathy.

Slide from The HubSpot Culture Code, defining “Empathetic.”

In response, Shah proposed replacing “Effective” with “Empathy” and encouraged employees to submit feedback via an internal wiki page.

3. Implement feedback.

Part of creating a set of company values is ensuring employees buy into those ideas. If collecting feedback is an essential step, the next step is putting that feedback into action.

While not every piece of feedback will be useful, it‘s important to recognize these contributions. As you review updates from your team, you’ll want to compare these insights and start to look for patterns.

Once you have some clear ideas of what you want to add or update, outline your next steps to put these changes into place.

Then, share the plan with your team and thank them for their insights.

How HubSpot completed this step: In HubSpot's case, the team decided to update our culture code and the HEART acronym changed to Humble, Empathetic, Adaptable, Remarkable, and Transparent.

Slide from The HubSpot Culture Code, defining the HEART acronym.

This process took several years of refining. After this change and many rounds of feedback, the culture code was shared globally.

4. Make your core values unique to your brand.

Many industries have catchy phrases or jargon that are central to the business.

But those phrases probably aren‘t the best way to communicate the unique values of your brand.

Your company values aren’t just a blueprint for what your business does and what your employees believe in. It's about what separates your team from everything else out there.

One of Nickelodeon-parent-company Paramount’s core values is “Optimism & Determination — We share a positive belief that we can navigate and thrive in the landscape ahead.”

This is foundational to our industry, which constantly embraces changes from the fall of cable to the rise of streaming and is core to how we approach these changes with excitement and resilience.

We learn from each other and develop tactics and strategies every day. These habits come from a foundation of shared values. So, your goal during this step is to bring those distinct values to light.

This may mean collecting quotes that inspire your team. It could arise from offsite meetings or impromptu conversations. No matter your creative process, you'll need to think about what you want your values to do to make them unique.

Ask yourself:

  • How can my team act on these ideas?
  • What will make these ideas easy to remember?
  • Do these ideas inspire me to do my best?
  • Are these ideas inclusive and relevant for everyone on the team?
  • Are they specific enough to guide us when making tough decisions?

As you refine your core values, make sure that they embody the spirit of your business and team.

How HubSpot completed this step: Core values often relate to the problems your business wants to solve and how that relates to your personal values.

For example, in a talk at Stanford University, Dharmesh Shah shared the quote, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

He told a story of how he interpreted this Louis Brandeis quote and then explained how it came into conversations that he and co-founder Brian Halligan were having about transparency.

You can hear the full story in the video below:

Company values often use short sentences and declarative phrases. Because of this, it can also be useful to explain how your team interprets a simple phrase within your values. For example, the culture code explains what transparency is and what it isn't at HubSpot.

Slide from The HubSpot Culture Code, explaining the difference between transparency and democracy.

5. Continue to evolve when necessary.

Change is the only constant. Your business will change over time. Societal norms, values, and trends will change too. To keep your company culture in line with the times, you'll want to revisit your values regularly.

First, spend some time with your core values. These will often stay the same. That said, the way your business applies or interprets these values may have shifted.

In my earlier Paramount example, navigating and thriving in the landscape ahead could have meant something entirely different 30 years ago.

It could have meant coming up with fresh and exciting content to attract new audiences, whereas today, it may look more like embracing new platforms to broaden the reach of our content.

Next, add or remove values in line with changes to your culture. Make thoughtful updates and bring in a group of engaged employees to offer early feedback. Once the group feels satisfied with your updates, share them with the full team for another round of feedback.

Staying open throughout the process is important for keeping your team engaged. Your company values should consistently reflect the core of your business. This means that how you write and edit them will impact every person connected to the company.

As you make changes, start with leadership and ask them to model these updated values. Find ways to encourage employees to embrace updated values and engage them to ensure your company's culture stays top of mind, fresh, and current.

How HubSpot completed this step: As HubSpot continues to grow, there are new ideas to consider. For example, the culture code covers concerns about time off, remote work, and more with a simple phrase – use good judgment. Leaders at HubSpot talk constantly about the culture, and HEART comes up in both tactical and strategic conversations.

In many ways, the team built HubSpot‘s culture code in the same way they create HubSpot’s products — thoughtful updates, regular feedback, and continuous investment.

This slide from the culture code deck emphasizes the importance of updates to company values:

Slide from The HubSpot Culture Code, highlighting the importance of hiring based on culture, as well as skills and experience.

As of now, HubSpot's culture code has seen more than 33 revisions. Updates undergo a beta testing process that collects quantitative and qualitative data. And HubSpot employees work with HEART & SOUL.

Slide from The HubSpot Culture Code, defining the HEART and SOUL acronyms.

How to Implement Core Values

Creating the core values is one thing — implementing them into your everyday business is another. I’ve included some tips on how you can ensure your values resonate and become pillars to live by.

1. Encourage discussion as a step toward acceptance.

In 2023, Nickelodeon introduced a rebrand. It was successful for many reasons, but I believe one of the main reasons was that it was a topic of discussion amongst employees, which helped exponentially grow our excitement for it.

The more discourse employees can have — in meetings and 1:1 — the more they will remember, recognize, and accept the core values as something new but important to learn and adapt to.

2. Hire and onboard based on the values.

You may have gotten your current employees on board, but the key is ensuring future generations also want to abide by these values.

Embolden recruiters and hiring managers to incorporate these values into interviews to discover candidates who resonate with these basic company beliefs.

For example, if one of your values is “We take responsibility for our actions and mistakes,” you can ask candidates how they have owned up to errors in the past to gauge their willingness to continue observing this tenet.

2. Continuously mention and act on the values from a leadership perspective

As a senior coordinator at my job, I feel incredibly distant from some of our executive leadership. Wanting to impress leaders can be a daunting task, especially if you feel unable to relate to their day-to-day, and vice versa.

By relentlessly explaining and exemplifying company values, leaders can show that the values are for everyone — no matter your title.

This can help bridge hierarchical gaps and make employees more excited to follow the same guidelines maintained by their executives.

3. Urge employees to consider these values when reflecting on their performance.

It can be difficult to try to sum up six or twelve months of performance in a review with your manager. I try to align my projects and accomplishments around key business goals to prove how what I do every day has a company-wide impact.

Similarly, you can encourage employees at your company to consider the company values when preparing their performance reviews.

This works in duality — it provides a structure for employees when writing their reviews and helps them conceptualize how they already support company values.

4. Incorporate new activities and programs that reflect your values.

Some company values go beyond deskwork and meetings.

For instance, Whole Foods' core value, “We Care About our Community and the Environment,” can be proven through high-level strategic decisions, as well as employee community service.

Think outside the box to find ways for employees to get involved in your core values, in and out of the office.

If one of your core values centers around ambition and resilience, host a biannual meeting where any employee can sign up to present an idea, no matter how outlandish. If one of your core values is sustainability, organize a local beach or park clean-up for employees.

The key is to show employees, in more ways than one, that these values aren’t just words on paper that sound nice. They are principles to live by and actions to take in everything your company does.

The Value in Company Values

As I grow older and have deeper thoughts about the world I live in, I care more about aligning myself with businesses that are working towards a positive impact.

One of the easiest ways to tell if a company cares about its employees, customers, and the larger world is through its values.

It’s not easy to articulate what your company cares about and is striving towards, but being able to do so can make a huge difference in the people you partner with.

Being able to explain in words what your business values can empower others to advocate for you. And, most importantly, it can return some much-needed purpose and vision to the company you care about.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

9 Simple Ways to Write a Good Introduction Sentence

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When I started my journey as a freelance writer, I struggled with writing introductions. I’d often find myself diving into the main body of the article and even wrapping up the conclusion before circling back to the beginning.

→ Download Now: 6 Free Blog Post Templates

The pressure to craft an attention-grabbing opening was overwhelming, and I’d spend days trying to figure out the right angle. The reason is that intros have to be compelling enough to make readers continue.

They have to make a good first impression.

Compelling readers to read the article is an art form in itself. And if you don‘t do it well, you’re missing out on potential subscribers, leads, and customers.

In this post, I'll share some simple techniques that helped me write powerful introductions that turn casual browsers into readers. Article introductions matter, and here’s how you can make yours count.

Table of Contents

How to Start an Introduction

Writing a compelling introduction is crucial for grabbing your reader’s attention and setting the tone for your entire article.

While there are many approaches you can take to your introduction, here are three common but effective ways to start an intro that captivate your audience from the very first sentence:

1. Using Quotes

Starting with a quote can immediately engage your readers by introducing a voice or perspective that resonates with the theme of your article.

Whether it’s a famous quote, a line from a relevant book or movie, or a statement from an industry expert, a well-chosen quote can lend authority and context to your topic. It can also spark curiosity, encouraging readers to think about how the quote connects to the content that follows.

In the article, The Hidden Costs of Hobbies and Side Projects, the author, Sam, starts with an anonymous quote: “You have to sacrifice in life, or your life will become the sacrifice.”

good intro sentence example - using quotes: “you have to sacrifice in life, or you life will become the sacrifice.”

While the article's title is somewhat worrying, the quote does intensify the ominous feeling readers will likely develop as they examine their own lives to see what their hobbies and side projects might be costing them and how detrimental these costs are to their overall well-being.

Another example of how quotes multiply the impact an article intro has on readers is this one in an article about the three deep books that rewired his mind.

good intro sentence example - using quotes by famous people: “we question all our beliefs, except the ones we really believe in” - orson scott

While the quote is not the first sentence in the intro, it does appear quite early: “We question all our beliefs except the ones we really believe in” by Orson Scott.

This quote carries emotional weight, provoking thought and stirring curiosity in readers. It makes them want to find out the titles of these books, how exactly they rewired the author’s worldview, and if the books can help them question their own deeply held beliefs.

2. Setting a Scene

Setting a scene at the beginning of your article can draw readers into a specific moment, place, or situation. This method is particularly effective for creating a vivid mental image that makes the topic more relatable and engaging.

By painting a picture with your words, you invite your readers to step into the scenario and experience it alongside you, which can make your content more impactful and memorable.

Here’s an article titled Your OKRs Aren’t OKRs. While business-related articles can be boring and monotonous, the author of this one infuses life and color into the piece by starting with a scenario.

good intro sentence example - setting a scene: “Picture this: A new quarter is upon you, and your team is grudgingly setting OKRs. Eyes roll, sighs echo, and you hear someone mutter (or yell) ‘why do we even bother?’”

This scenario activates readers’ imagination, allowing them to “see” the context of the piece before consuming the main content.

It’s also written in a way that readers will likely be able to relate, especially as the author discusses their own former dislike for Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), showing that it’s something of a universal experience for managers.

When you set a scene, you’re not just describing a situation — you’re creating an atmosphere that evokes emotion.

Whether it’s tension, excitement, nostalgia, or calm, the scene you set can influence how readers feel as they begin reading. This emotional connection makes them more invested and more likely to continue reading.

Pro tip: Whenever I have a relevant personal or work experience to share (that relates to my article topic), I like to use my experience as the intro (as I did in this article). But instead of swapping one for the other, you can combine a fictional scenario with an anecdote to create a stronger impact.

3. Using Statistics or Fun Facts

Starting your introduction with a statistic or fun fact is a powerful way to grab attention by surprising your readers or providing them with a piece of information they might not have known.

This approach can quickly establish relevance and credibility, especially when the statistic or fact directly relates to the problem or topic your article addresses. It also encourages readers to think critically about the subject, making them more invested in learning more.

In this article about the benefits of eye contact, the author referenced a study by Intelligent.com that shows that over 50% of employers interpret a struggle to make eye contact as nervousness or a lack of confidence.

good intro sentence example - using statistics: “According to a recent survey from Intelligent.com, more than half of employers… interpret [struggle to make eye contact] as a lack of confidence or nervousness.”

This statistic achieves two things in this article. First, it educates readers who were not aware of this fact. Those who struggle to make eye contact, especially in interviews, will want to read the article till the end to figure out how to fix this issue and increase their chances of finding a job.

Second, it lends credibility to the piece and, by extension, the author. Instead of the author simply saying that not making eye contact can lead others to think one is nervous or lacks confidence, they find and reference an actual study to prove their point and emphasize the importance of eye contact in conversation.

Readers will more readily believe the study and other articles by the same author as they’ve seen that the author doesn’t pull claims out of thin air.

Fun facts might not be based on surveys, but using them in your intros is a, dare I say, fun way to quicken readers’ interest in your piece. The caveat is they have to be relevant to the topic you’re discussing.

Take, for example, this fun fact in the intro of an article titled, How Writing Makes The Invisible Visible (And Using This to Connect to Things Far Bigger).

good intro sentence example - sharing fun facts: “imagine being able to taste with your arms or feet. Sounds like science fiction, but for an octopus, it’s reality.”

The author uses the fact that octopuses can taste things (and thus, sample their environment) with their tentacles to draw a parallel to how writing can help folks “turn our complex worlds into structured language.”

Sure, this fun fact is great to learn, but it also provokes curiosity and helps readers think critically about the topic.

1. Keep it short.

I’m a big fan of short sentences. I love them because people can understand them easily. There's great value in short sentences that are readable, digestible, and punchy.

how to start an introduction, example of short sentences

Writers often get so caught up in the pressure of a good intro that they deliver long, run-on sentences. The problem with these sentences is that they make readers work hard, which isn’t a great incentive to keep reading.

While the length of an introduction can vary, it’s best to aim for brevity with up to three short paragraphs. Using AI tools like our Paragraph Rewriter tool can help make your paragraphs more impactful and concise.

Readers are impatient to get to the meat of the article, so don't bury the lede deep in your article — cut to the chase.

A good example of a short intro is this one by Pablo Srugo for his article titled “I Was Supposed To Be a Millionaire at 25 … Instead, I Went Bankrupt.” The intro is just three sentences long and adequately complements the attention-grabbing headline, prompting readers to continue.

good intro sentence example - use short sentences: “Startups are supposed to be about an innate drive to change the world. But not for me. I’m 22 and I have one goal: become insanely rich.”

Another one is this listicle explaining the top 15 software development trends. The intro quickly explains why software developers must be aware of these trends and segues right into said trends.

good intro sentence example - use short sentences: “As we step into 2024, the landscape of software development continues to evolve exponentially, driven by technological innovations and changing market needs.”

2. Say something unexpected.

You‘ve probably heard advice like "Create a hook" and "Grab the reader’s attention." But what kind of stuff actually grabs someone's attention?

The trick is to say something unexpected — something that catches the reader off guard.

This could be a personal story that’s relatable yet surprising, a question that challenges assumptions, compelling data that shifts perspectives, or a scene-setting sentence that transports the reader into a different context.

Think about it — your reader has already clicked on the headline. So, they’re interested in your topic. But now, you have to reel them in a little further.

If your very first sentence is interesting enough to make people want to read the next one, then you've done a good job.

For example, this intro for an article titled “Absurdism: The Philosophy That Changed My Mindset starts off with a thought that many people struggle with: Nothing good is going on in my life.

good intro sentence example - express shocking thoughts or opinions: “Nothing good is going on in my life.”

While this is a shocking way to start an article, it does communicate to readers that the author has been in their shoes and understands what they’re going through. And so, people who had never heard of absurdism before would be interested in continuing the article to see if there’s anything in it for them.

Here’s another example of a great intro, except this one sets the scene with a fictitious character named George, a recruiter whose job is to sort through thousands of resumes for new job openings.

good intro sentence example - describe a scenario: “Meet George, a friendly, dedicated recruiter at a bustling tech company in sunny California.”

This scene helps readers picture an environment in which they’re key players. In this case, the character they’re relating to isn’t George but the candidates whose resumes get stuck in the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and who wait for a response that will never come.

George’s character provides the necessary context for candidates to understand what goes on at the other end of their application once they’ve sent it.

3. Don’t repeat the title.

You only have a few seconds to make a strong impression in your introduction, so use that time wisely.

While repeating the title of your article in the opening sentence might seem like a natural way to start, it’s actually a wasted opportunity. Your reader has already seen the title and clicked on it because it intrigued them. Now, they’re looking for something more.

Instead of reiterating the headline, use your introduction to reinforce the promise made by the title and set the stage for the rest of the article.

This is your chance to expand on the topic, provide context, and highlight the value your content will bring.

4. Use the word “you” at least once.

how to start an introduction example - use the word “you”: “Why would you need a script for making a phone call?”

The word “you” is a powerful word.

It tells the reader that you, the author, are writing the article with them in mind. You empathize with them, you care about them, and you want your piece to resonate with them.

It's a simple trick that establishes a crucial connection with your reader. It can transform a piece of writing from a distant, impersonal narrative into a conversation that resonates with the reader on a deeper level.

I’m using this technique in this article itself.

After discussing my experience struggling to write introductions, I explained to you, my readers, why knowing how to write compelling introductions is important and how these techniques will help you write better intros.

5. Tell readers what's coming next.

As you craft your introduction, guide your readers by letting them know what they can expect from the rest of your article. What will you be covering? What will the reader learn? How will this help them?

how to start an introduction example - tell readers what’s coming next: “In this post, I share how Steve Jobs managed to sway the world using simple yet powerful persuasion strategies that you can apply in your own life.”

By answering these questions in your intro, you set clear expectations and help your audience navigate your content. They might just jump to the section they’re most interested in or read the whole thing. Here are a few examples:

  • “You’re about to find out why sea turtles always lay their eggs on the beach.”
  • “And, if you’ve ever wondered why sea turtles lay their eggs on the beach, here's everything you need to know.”
  • “This article explains the 17 reasons why these amazing creatures lay their eggs on beaches.”
  • “Fascinating, funny, and shocking, these are the reasons why sea creatures lay their eggs on the beach.”

But you don’t always have to be so explicit. Sometimes, a well-placed question is enough to help readers infer that you’re about to give them some good information or tips in the article.

Here’s an example of this from a business article about handling a low performer:

good intro sentence example - ask a question to segue into main content: “So what should you do when faced with an underperforming team member?”

After explaining how managers often inherit team members they didn’t hire, and some don’t meet the company’s expectations, the author asks, “So what should you do when faced with an underperforming team member?”

The presence of this question implies that the author will answer it in the main body of the article, so readers know to look forward to it.

6. Explain why the article is important.

It may be obvious to you why your article is important to your readers, but it’s up to you to emphasize its value and put it in context.

For instance, say you’re writing an article about TikTok written for a marketing audience. You could lead with a surprising TikTok stat about its user base. Here’s an example:

“In the past two years, TikTok’s user base has grown by 15% while other platforms are seeing stagnant or declining engagement. This suggests that marketers may want to pay more attention to this short-form video platform.”

In two sentences, you’ve presented an interesting tidbit and explained why it matters.

Take the introduction to this article. You'll recall the following sentence: “And if you don‘t do it well, you’re missing out on potential subscribers, leads, and customers.

My goal here was to connect the topic of blog post introductions to a business’s bottom line.

This article by Rakia Ben Sassi about starting a YouTube channel does something similar:

good intro sentence example - explain why the article is important: “Whether you’re considering starting your own channel or you already have one but want to take it to the next level, I’ve got you covered.”

She sets the stage by describing the fear, excitement, and uncertainty people feel when starting a YouTube channel. Then, she talks about her credentials and why readers should trust her opinion (she launched her own channel three years ago).

Then, she explains why the article is important: It’s to help readers who are starting a new channel or trying to scale an existing one.

7. Refer to a concern or problem your readers might have.

Everyone in every field has their own set of problems. You should have some listed already from when you created your buyer personas.

Addressing a specific concern or problem your readers face is a powerful way to engage them right from the start.

By acknowledging their challenges, you show empathy and immediately establish the relevance of your content. People want to solve their problems, and articles that explain how to do this will help you earn readership.

how to start an introduction example - refer to a problem or concern your readers have: “The challenges of entrepreneurship can exist well beyond any entrepreneur’s control — but those troubling  roadblocks aren’t insurmountable.”

For example, if you’re writing an article explaining how digital marketers can keep up with the ever-evolving digital landscape, you could say: “Feeling overwhelmed by the constant changes in digital marketing? You’re not alone. In this article, we’ll explore strategies to help you stay ahead without burning out.”

This empathetic approach helps you build trust and credibility, as it demonstrates your understanding of your readers’ needs. When you tap into the reader's problem-solving mindset, they’re motivated to continue reading in search of solutions, making your content more impactful and memorable.

8. Be careful telling stories.

Many people will tell you that you need to write a story in the introduction to captivate your audience. Stories can be a powerful tool to draw readers in, as they naturally spark curiosity and create an emotional connection.

However, there are both good and bad ways to use storytelling in your introductions. The key is to tell a concise, relevant, and compelling story that piques your readers’ interest without overwhelming them with too much detail.

While it’s tempting to delve into a long and intricate story, remember that an introduction aims to grab attention quickly and set the stage for what’s to come. A long-winded story can lose readers along the way, diminishing the impact of your article.

If you choose to begin your article with a story, consider withholding the conclusion of that story until later in the article or even until the very end. By delaying the resolution, you create a narrative thread that weaves through your article, maintaining your readers’ interest as you build up to the story’s conclusion.

For example, say you’re writing an article about overcoming challenges in entrepreneurship.

If you’re an entrepreneur yourself, you might start with a short anecdote about a time you faced a significant setback in your entrepreneurial journey.

Describe the struggle you faced and how it seemed insurmountable at the time, but don’t reveal how you overcame it just yet.

Instead, use the story to illustrate the theme of resilience and promise your readers that you’ll explore how you turned things around later in the article.

9. Use a stat or a fact to convey urgency.

When journalists begin a news story, they often give readers an eye-catching stat or fact about what's going on.

good intro sentence example - use a stat: “48% of marketers say the potential for an economic downturn or recession has affected their company’s hiring plans in 2022.”

As a blogger or any type of writer, a really interesting stat or fact will draw your reader in and show them why your topic is really important.

For example, say you're a plumber writing a blog post on pipe replacement. You might pull in more readers if you start a post by explaining how frequently old pipes burst in the winter.

Or, if you’re writing an article showing folks how to spend more time reading instead of scrolling their phone screens, you can start by sharing statistics on how many hours young people spend on their phones daily. Like this:

 good intro sentence example - use shocking statistics: “Gen Z spends 6+ hours on their phones daily and Baby Boomers 3+ hours daily.”

If readers see that this is a common issue that others face, they might keep reading to learn how they can avoid it.

Using Generative AI to Write Content

ChatGPT’s instant and massive popularity in late 2022 heralded serious discourse about using generative AI to write content.

While there are some polarizing opinions on how generative AI should be used, there’s no denying that AI tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Copy.ai have become valuable tools for content creators, including myself. These tools help writers brainstorm ideas, overcome writer’s block, and generate content drafts.

In my experience, they speed up my writing process by providing a starting point, crafting compelling introductions, and suggesting alternative phrasings.

However, while generative AI can be incredibly helpful, I don’t think you should solely rely on what it generates. AI tools can produce coherent and well-structured content, but the output often lacks the depth and nuance that come from personal experience, deep research, and subject-matter expertise.

Moreover, AI-generated text may include inaccuracies or “hallucinations” — instances where the AI presents false or misleading information as fact.

In this article, the team at IBM detailed a few examples of AI hallucinations, including the time Meta pulled its Galactica LLM (large language model) demo in 2022 after it provided users with inaccurate information that was sometimes rooted in bias and prejudice.

This is why you should always fact-check anything AI generates for you.

That said, you can use AI as a starting point in your writing process and then refine the content with your own (or third-party) expertise to create an engaging and trustworthy piece. If you struggle with intros, here are the steps to using AI to craft article introductions:

  1. Determine the type of introduction you want to create. Are you starting with a fun fact, a quote, or by setting a scene? Each approach requires a different prompt.
  2. Next, write a prompt that instructs the AI on what kind of intro you need. Be clear about the tone, style, and content you’re aiming for.
  3. Once the AI tool generates the text, read it carefully. Look for any inaccuracies or areas that might need clarification, restructuring, or additional detail. The AI’s output is just a draft; it’s up to you to refine it.
  4. Edit the AI-generated content to incorporate your own knowledge, experiences, and voice. Make sure the introduction aligns with the rest of your article and provides an engaging start.
  5. Verify any data, quotes, or facts included in the AI-generated text and personalize the content where necessary to ensure it resonates with your audience and reflects your unique perspective.

Here are a few examples of AI prompts for different intro types.

1. Stating a Fun Fact

Prompt: Write an engaging introduction for an article about the benefits of morning exercise. Start with a surprising fun fact about how exercise impacts mental health.

Possible output: Did you know that just 20 minutes of exercise in the morning can boost your mood for up to 12 hours? In this article, we’ll explore how a simple morning workout can set a positive tone for your entire day.

2. Using Quotes

Prompt: Create an introduction for an article about leadership in the workplace. Start with a powerful quote about leadership from a well-known figure.

Possible output: “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” This quote by Ronald Reagan perfectly captures the essence of leadership. In this article, we’ll discuss how great leaders inspire their teams to achieve extraordinary results.

3. Setting a Scene

Prompt: Write an introduction for an article about the challenges of remote work. Start by setting a scene that highlights a common struggle for remote workers.

Possible output: It’s 7:00 AM, and you’re already answering emails from the comfort of your kitchen table. The line between work and home blurs as you sip your coffee, trying to find focus in a space that was once reserved for relaxation. This is the new reality of remote work, where the challenges are as complex as they are unique.

Note: If you find it difficult or time-consuming to write a whole blog post from start to finish, check out HubSpot’s free blog post templates that help you save time without compromising on quality.

Making a Great First Impression

While setting a scene and/or sharing a relevant anecdote is my favorite way to start an article intro, I learned — and I hope you did, too — that there are several ways to write an introduction that packs a punch and prompts readers to read till the end, including using quotes and sharing fun facts.

However, while these techniques are excellent for creating interest, over the past couple of years, I realized that what really keeps people reading a piece is the empathy I, the author, infuse into it.

Letting readers know that I know and relate to their struggles and that I have a possible solution for them, be it an alternative way of doing things or a contrarian idea to help them broaden their epistemic horizons, is what keeps them engaged.

So now, whenever I write an introduction, I think about what kind of introduction would make me want to read the article. I then use that to inform the approach I take.

Introductions are hard, and writing effective ones takes time and practice. But remember, it's all worth it if it means keeping the attention of a few more of your readers.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

How Can We Make Customer Support More Personal with New Technology?

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Hey everyone,

Ive been thinking a lot about how digital media is changing the way we handle customer support, and Id love to get your take on it. With all the buzz around AI tools, its clear that these technologies are making support faster and more accessible.

I cant help but think about the traditional customer service challenges we used to face. Long wait times, limited support hours, and impersonal interactions were all part of the old school experience. One thing I am specifically looking out for is how important it is to keep a personal touch even when were using these tech tools. For example, answering questions quickly and handling a lot of requests at once is amazing , But how do you ensure that your interactions still feel warm and personal?

Im eager to hear your experiences and thoughts on this topics ! Looking ahead, there are many trends that promise to further enhance customer support. What new trends or technologies are you most excited about, and how do you think well make the most out of these digital advancements.

10 SEO Habits That Will Increase Website Traffic

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

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

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

1. Write for Humans, Not Search Engines

Write for Humans, Not Search Engines

You will come across all kinds of advice, tips, and SEO strategies in your search for improving your website but don’t forget the main purpose of your website—serve people!

When preparing your content strategy, always prepare it with a human-first approach. Research for topics that help solve the problems people are having and aim to fill the gaps and areas that lack quality content. And publish content that you can be proud of, even several years after publishing them.

Even when optimizing your content for keywords, remember not to create keyword-stuffed garbage that serves no one. If a person comes to your website by searching for “how to do an oil change in a car”, make sure to provide the right information with clear instructions. And don’t take 2,000 words to get to the point.

2. Google E.E.A.T

E.E.A.T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is the quality rater guidelines Google uses to analyze the quality and effectiveness of the content available on a website.

google eeat

Google uses this framework to list only the most reliable and high-quality websites on its search results pages for every term people search for. Needless to say, it’s crucial that you also follow this framework when creating content.

It basically means you should stick to your area of expertise when sharing informative content. After all, a food blog sharing advice on how to do an oil change in a car wouldn’t make sense.

3. Keywords vs Key-Phrases

We used to search in very specific and short keywords for a long time. But today, most people search through AI assistants like Siri and Google Gemini by speaking to their phones.

As a result, the old methods of optimizing content for keywords may not work anymore. Instead, aim to optimize your content for key phrases or search phrases.

answerthepublic

AnswerThePublic is a great tool for this task to find effective key phrases.

4. Create Quality Content

SEO

Good search rankings start with quality content. There’s a reason marketers say “content is king.”

Quality content includes text, images, video and elements that users want to interact with. It can be fun or informative, a game or e-commerce, short or long-form. There’s no truly magic formula; they key is that content relates to what your website is about and is well constructed and composed. And then write killer headlines to match, so that users can find this great content.

Quality content includes text, images, video and elements that users want to interact with.

Characteristics of quality content include:

  • Content that is rooted in data or factual information. It should be easy to read – think around an eighth-grade level and free from grammatical errors.
  • Content should relate to your website or brand goals. Don’t write about ponies and unicorns if your website is about baseball. The connection should be obvious.
  • Content is shareable on social media, and users interact with it. While this concept doesn’t help you in the creation of content, it can be a measuring stick as to what types of content work for you and your users.
  • Content should have enough length – the best estimate seems to be about 300 words or more per page – to actually say something of value.
  • Content should establish your credibility and authority in your field. Testimonials, case studies, and reviews are a good place to start.

5. Link to Reputable Sources

SEO

Don’t cram your content with meaningless links just to build a history; use links that are meaningful and add actual value to the story you are trying to tell.

Certain domains have more credibility and authority than others, so opt for those links.

A good set of links includes internal links – you want users to move around within your website – as well as external links. Aim for a mix of both types (where applicable on each page).

And think about the kinds of websites you are linking to. Do they also relate to your type of product, brand or business? Those links are valuable. Unrelated links are a waste of your time.

The authority of those links is equally important. Certain domains have more credibility and authority than others, so opt for those links. Here’s a guideline for authoritative rank:

  1. .gov
  2. .edu
  3. .org
  4. .com
  5. .everything else

Try to include a mix of links from a mix of places. But please, don’t cram the content with too many links; users will abandon the page. (Don’t forget social media. Those links count as reputable sources, too!)

6. Build for Speed

SEO

Websites need to be fast. This applies to renderings on every device type. A website is only as fast as the slowest place it loads.

A big part of optimizing for speed is thinking about how to make the most of file sizes. Don’t overload your website with junk. Use icon fonts rather than images for icons, consider SVG rather than PNG for image files and stop uploading full-size images to your website. That’s just overkill.

Here are a few other things you can do:

  • Consider adding a tool that will help compress images that are too big.
  • Run Google’s PageSpeed Insights to see what issues might be bogging your website down.
  • Use a caching plugin, especially if you are running on WordPress.
  • Opt for asynchronous scripts.
  • Ditch unused plugins, tools and code that can weigh your website down.

7. Use Words for Everything

SEO

Search engines can only read words. (Right now anyway.) That means you have to tell search engines what the other types of content your website contains. What is in that video or photo?

You can do that in two ways. Use the file name to your advantage. Name the file based on what is in the image or video.

Descriptive image file names look like this: <img src=”dog-playing-fetch.jpg” alt=”dog playing fetch”/>. The source is the actual file name (use hyphens between words) and the alt is a similar description without hyphens between words.

Here’s another trick. Tell search engines exactly what is in the video on your website by embedding a video on a page with a transcription of the content in the video.

8. Don’t Duplicate, Update!

SEO

Many websites have a tendency to use the same boilerplate copy over and over and over on multiple pages. Why are you doing that? If the copy needs to be on every page, put it in the footer. Problem solved!

If the copy is popped on pages to boost SEO because it is stuffed with keywords or to add to content, stop. Google is dinging you for all that duplication.

If you have content that is static, or mostly static, just update it and reshare links. Don’t duplicate posts. (This happens more commonly than you might think.)

9. Practice Internal Linking

Internal linking is just as important as linking to other authoritative sites and building backlinks to your website. It’s all about linking to other useful pages on your website through existing pages.

This not only enhances your content for SEO by showcasing authority but also helps retain users on your website for longer periods of time by encouraging them to explore more about the topic.

Experts suggest that building internal links to unpopular pages on your website also helps improve their rankings on search engines.

10. Do Content Audits

Nothing stays the same on the Internet for too long. Even the most ever-green content you create will be outdated after a while. So, it’s a good practice to do a content audit of your website from time to time.

A content audit involves fully analyzing your website and its content to identify outdated content and then developing a strategy to update them. This usually includes everything from updating your website’s user interface, SEO keywords, written copy, images, and more.

Conclusion

If you are starting today with these habits and maybe haven’t been diligent about SEO in the past, consider going back to correct missteps on older pages. Make it a goal to go back and use the proper header, alt and meta tags on pages that you want users to see.

Remember to run Google’s PageSpeed Insights on your website periodically to see what issues might be bogging your website down. And create content that users want to engage with; nothing will boost SEO and drive traffic like stellar information.

Creative Commons photos by Unsplash.

Innovative Solutions for Global Issues How Tech is Making a Difference

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As the world faces a myriad of complex challenges, from climate change and resource scarcity to healthcare disparities and educational inequalities, technology is playing an increasingly vital role in developing innovative solutions. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge technologies, societies around the globe are addressing these global issues more effectively than ever before. Here’s a …

The post Innovative Solutions for Global Issues How Tech is Making a Difference first appeared on Lucid Softech.

Do I need to be very good to make money as a Web Developer?

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I am having a problem understanding the following ...

I am an okay web developer. I am not great. But I want to make money from my skills.
Having said that, when I go to websites like Freelancer to search for a project to work on everyone is asking for an exceptional developer and they pay very little. I don't know how are average joey's make it in this business.

What is your take on this?