Day: October 21, 2024

Showcasing your coffee brand or cafe concept with style requires the right visuals, and that’s where coffee and paper cup mockups come in handy.

Whether you’re designing a new logo, creating packaging for a coffee brand, or crafting marketing materials for a cafe, mockups can help you present your ideas in a realistic and professional way. In this post, we’ve put together a collection of the best paper cup mockups that will elevate your design projects and make your presentations stand out.

These mockups offer a variety of styles, from minimalistic paper cup designs to elegant coffee cup templates, suitable for different branding themes and aesthetics. Whether you’re aiming for a cozy, rustic feel or a sleek, modern look, you’ll find mockups that perfectly match your vision. They’re also easy to customize, allowing you to quickly add your logo, artwork, or branding to create stunning visuals in no time. Go ahead and start downloading!

Stylish Coffee Cup Mockup

This is an easily customizable, well-organized paper cup mockup that lets you design your own coffee cup. The mockup lets you modify every aspect, including logo color and design, to your liking. The file package comes with Photoshop (PSD) files that you can easily edit and customize with just a few clicks.

Editable Coffee Paper Cup Mockup

This is a customizable coffee cup mockup that’s compatible with Photoshop CS6 to CC. It utilizes smart layers to produce a realistic focus blur, enhancing the professionalism and appeal of your designs. With a size of 2560 x 1440px and a resolution of 300dpi, this tool can help elevate your creative process.

Modern Coffee Cup Mockup

A versatile coffee cup mockup with a contemporary feel. It offers high-resolution images (3000 x 2000px, 300 DPI) with realistic shadows and textures. It’s user-friendly with a smart object layer for simple customization. This mockup caters well to different platforms, including social media, brochures, and advertising.

Creative Coffee Cup Mockup Scene

This is a high-quality, easy-to-use coffee cup mockup that allows you to visualize your design ideas in an organized way. Featuring changeable backgrounds and color adjustments at an impressive 5000 x 3500 pixel resolution, it helps refine your design before development.

Spilled Coffee Cup Mockup

Boost your presentation with this realistic coffee cup mockup. This unique package includes 24 PSD files with varied shoots and angles for optimal customization. With features like changeable background, automatic perspective, 15 unique textures, and easy-to-use Smart Objects, it allows for quick and simple adjustments.

Coffee Cup Mockup PSD

A user-friendly coffee cup mockup designed for Photoshop. It encompasses well-structured PSD files offering a changeable background colour, a 3000×2000 px size and 300 dpi. Furthermore, it’s equipped with smart objects for easy use, and a PDF help file for additional guidance.

Trendy Coffee Cup Mockup

This is a highly versatile coffee cup mockup for various branding projects. Boasting a stylish scene and a Smart Object feature, making design adjustments is as easy as dragging and dropping. You can effortlessly recolor with solid color layers, and the high-resolution (300 dpi) makes it perfect for commercial use.

Paper Coffee Cup Mockups

Upgrade your branding with this high-quality coffee cup mockup! Designed for realism and versatility, this creative asset allows you to effortlessly integrate your designs with various display options. With pixel-perfect clarity, customization flexibility, and a user-friendly experience, this mockup is perfect for professionals seeking to impress clients or enhance marketing materials.

Hand Holding Coffee Cup Mockup

A high-resolution coffee cup mockup compatible with Photoshop and Affinity Designer. Its 3000 x 2000 pixel image showcases a hand-held coffee cup template, providing a realistic and relatable canvas for your design projects. It will help yo offer a realistic sneak peek at the product’s potential presentation.

Minimal Coffee Cup Mockup

A simplistic yet adaptable coffee cup mockup that’s perfect for giving your design a realistic showcase. The automated system provided by 3 organized PSDs allows for easy editing and updating of content. It includes editable screen design and background color features. Please note, some images depicted in the preview don’t come with the final file.

Coffee Cup with Doughnut Mockup

This paper cup mockup is perfect for showcasing your logo designs. Its clean, simple set-up, with easy-to-edit Smart Objects, makes customization a breeze. You can conveniently alter the background color to complement your design. Boasting well-structured layers and vibrant RGB colors, this creative asset is both user-friendly and visually splendid.

Simple Coffee Cup Mockup

This mockup presents an elegantly minimalistic design for your brand design presentations. Equipped with a photorealistic style and smart object feature, customization is just a few clicks away. With dimensions of 3000×2000 pixels, organized layers, and easy background color changing feature, it offers great practicality to your design process.

Multiple Coffee Cup Mockups

An incredibly versatile paper cup mockup for all your design needs. It comes with three photorealistic styles for physical design adjustments. Utilizing smart object feature, you can effortlessly replace and alter the mockup within moments. It boasts a 4000×2500 pixel 300DPI resolution, organized layers, adjustable shadow colors, changeable backgrounds, and a helpful user guide.

Unique Coffee Cup Mockup

This paper cup mockup offers an inventive way to showcase your design. This high-quality asset features distinct layers for objects and backgrounds, a smart layer for ease of branding, and isolated shadows. Its detailed 4000 x 3000-pixel display with 300 dpi, ensures crisp outcomes. The pack includes three PSD files and a useful guide.

Kraft Paper Coffee Cup Mockup

An easy-to-use paper cup mockup for crafting your ideal coffee cup design. The high-resolution mockup (4000 x 3000px) lets you customize everything from the cup and cap colors to the background. It’s excellent for both light and dark designs and features organized, named layers for easy navigation.

Woman Holding Coffee Cup Mockup

This is a versatile paper cup mockup available in 3 well-organized PSD files, customizable to your specific needs. With all backgrounds included and a smart object system, you can easily modify this mockup by placing your own design, color, logo and so much more.

Stylish Coffee Cup Mockup Scene

A customizable paper cup mockup, perfect for showcasing your design or branding. This mockup includes a paper coffee cup, a decorative coffee cup, and a cupcake with an editable topper. Beyond just moving the objects around, you can adjust their colors and shadows, and even modify the background.

Organic Coffee Cup Mockup

This is a versatile dpaper cup mockup offering three editable mockups in one PSD file. It’s perfect for showcasing your branding or packaging designs on customizable, organic coffee cups. With changeable background colors and high-resolution imagery (4000 x 3000 pixels at 300 dpi), this kit empowers you to create stunning, realistic presentations for your coffee or tea products.

Customizable Coffee Cup Mockup PSD

A high-quality paper cup mockup that features photorealistic styles, 3000 x 2000 pixel resolution, and the convenience of organized layers and folders. Its unique smart object feature lets you modify your design in mere seconds, while its changeable background color lends extra flexibility.

Realistic Coffee Cup Mockup Scene

This is an excellent paper cup mockup for showcasing your designs in a sophisticated manner. This highly customizable asset includes meticulously designed smart-objects and masks that cater to your design needs, even letting you alter the color for most scene objects, thereby promoting an impeccably eye-catching, photo realistic display of your creativity.

Modern Coffee Cup Mockup Scene

This mockup offers a striking and professional approach to presenting your designs. Rendered in high resolution, this mockup features editable objects, light, and shadow layers, perfect for those seeking quality and precision. Its simplified editing capabilities via smart objects make it user-friendly, while its adaptability for web and print design further enhances its utility.

Take Away Coffee Cup Mockup

Get your hands on this creative paper cup mockup, the perfect tool to showcase your unique coffee cup designs. This high-quality asset not only depicts the cool vibe of takeaway coffee, but also showcases your designs in two unique scenes. Thanks to user-friendly customization features, you can swiftly change designs and adjust takeaway handle colors to suit your brand aesthetic.

Free Coffee Cup Mockups

Free Single Paper Cup Mockup (PSD)

This free paper cup mockup features a very realistic-looking design with a photorealistic background that will add an extra layer of professionalism to your design presentations. It’s free to download and use with your personal projects.

Free Coffee Cup in Hand Mockup

Featuring a real photo and beautiful scenery, this free mockup allows you to showcase your coffee cup designs as it’s being held by a hand. The mockup is easily customizable with Photoshop as well.

Free Paper Espresso Cup Mockup (PSD)

This free espresso cup mockup is perfect for creative design presentations. It allows you to showcase your designs both with and without the lid. The mockup is easily editable and comes in PSD format.

Free Paper Coffee Cup Mockup (PSD)

Showcase your coffee cup design in a realistic look using this free mockup template. It features a fully editable mockup design with smart objects and editable backgrounds.

Free Paper Coffee Cup on Floor Mockup (PSD)

Another free and customizable paper cup mockup for showcasing coffee branding designs. This free mockup is fully customizable. You can change the colors, backgrounds, and place your design in one click using smart objects.

I’m utterly behind in learning about scroll-driven animations apart from the “reading progress bar” experiments all over CodePen. Well, I’m not exactly “green” on the topic; we’ve published a handful of articles on it including this neat-o one by Lee Meyer published the other week.

Our “oldest” article about the feature is by Bramus, dated back to July 2021. We were calling it “scroll-linked” animation back then. I specifically mention Bramus because there’s no one else working as hard as he is to discover practical use cases where scroll-driven animations shine while helping everyone understand the concept. He writes about it exhaustively on his personal blog in addition to writing the Chrome for Developers documentation on it.

But there’s also this free course he calls “Unleash the Power of Scroll-Driven Animations” published on YouTube as a series of 10 short videos. I decided it was high time to sit, watch, and learn from one of the best. These are my notes from it.

---

Introduction

• A scroll-driven animation is an animation that responds to scrolling. There’s a direct link between scrolling progress and the animation’s progress.
• Scroll-driven animations are different than scroll-triggered animations, which execute on scroll and run in their entirety. Scroll-driven animations pause, play, and run with the direction of the scroll. It sounds to me like scroll-triggered animations are a lot like the CSS version of the JavaScript intersection observer that fires and plays independently of scroll.
• Why learn this? It’s super easy to take an existing CSS animation or a WAAPI animation and link it up to scrolling. The only “new” thing to learn is how to attach an animation to scrolling. Plus, hey, it’s the platform!
• There are also performance perks. JavsScript libraries that establish scroll-driven animations typically respond to scroll events on the main thread, which is render-blocking… and JANK! We’re working with hardware-accelerated animations… and NO JANK. Yuriko Hirota has a case study on the performance of scroll-driven animations published on the Chrome blog.
• Supported in Chrome 115+. Can use @supports (animation-timeline: scroll()). However, I recently saw Bramus publish an update saying we need to look for animation-range support as well.

@supports ((animation-timeline: scroll()) and (animation-range: 0% 100%)) {
  /* Scroll-Driven Animations related styles go here */
  /* This check excludes Firefox Nightly which only has a partial implementation at the moment of posting (mid-September 2024). */
}

• Remember to use prefers-reduced-motion and be mindful of those who may not want them.

Core Concepts: scroll() and ScrollTimeline

Let’s take an existing CSS animation.

@keyframes grow-progress {
  from {
    transform: scaleX(0);
  }
  to {
    transform: scaleX(1);
  }
}

#progress {
  animation: grow-progress 2s linear forwards;
}

Translation: Start with no width and scale it to its full width. When applied, it takes two seconds to complete and moves with linear easing just in the forwards direction.

This just runs when the #progress element is rendered. Let’s attach it to scrolling.

• animation-timeline: The timeline that controls the animation’s progress.
• scroll(): Creates a new scroll timeline set up to track the nearest ancestor scroller in the block direction.

#progress {
  animation: grow-progress 2s linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll();
}

That’s it! We’re linked up. Now we can remove the animation-duration value from the mix (or set it to auto):

#progress {
  animation: grow-progress linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll();
}

Note that we’re unable to plop the animation-timeline property on the animation shorthand, at least for now. Bramus calls it a “reset-only sub-property of the shorthand” which is a new term to me. Its value gets reset when you use the shorthand the same way background-color is reset by background. That means the best practice is to declare animation-timeline after animation.

/* YEP! */
#progress {
  animation: grow-progress linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll();
}

/* NOPE! */
#progress {
  animation-timeline: scroll();
  animation: grow-progress linear forwards;
}

Let’s talk about the scroll() function. It creates an anonymous scroll timeline that “walks up” the ancestor tree from the target element to the nearest ancestor scroll. In this example, the nearest ancestor scroll is the :root element, which is tracked in the block direction.

We can name scroll timelines, but that’s in another video. For now, know that we can adjust which axis to track and which scroller to target in the scroll() function.

animation-timeline: scroll(<axis> <scroller>);

• <axis>: The axis — be it block (default), inline, y, or x.
• <scroller>: The scroll container element that defines the scroll position that influences the timeline’s progress, which can be nearest (default), root (the document), or self.

If the root element does not have an overflow, then the animation becomes inactive. WAAPI gives us a way to establish scroll timelines in JavaScript with ScrollTimeline.

const $progressbar = document.querySelector(#progress);

$progressbar.style.transformOrigin = '0% 50%';
$progressbar.animate(
  {
    transform: ['scaleX(0)', 'scaleY()'],
  },
  {
    fill: 'forwards',
    timeline: new ScrollTimeline({
      source: document.documentElement, // root element
      // can control `axis` here as well
    }),
  }
)

Core Concepts: view() and ViewTimeline

First, we oughta distinguish a scroll container from a scroll port. Overflow can be visible or clipped. Clipped could be scrolling.

Those two bordered boxes show how easy it is to conflate scrollports and scroll containers. The scrollport is the visible part and coincides with the scroll container’s padding-box. When a scrollbar is present, that plus the scroll container is the root scroller, or the scroll container.

A view timeline tracks the relative position of a subject within a scrollport. Now we’re getting into IntersectionObserver territory! So, for example, we can begin an animation on the scroll timeline when an element intersects with another, such as the target element intersecting the viewport, then it progresses with scrolling.

Bramus walks through an example of animating images in long-form content when they intersect with the viewport. First, a CSS animation to reveal an image from zero opacity to full opacity (with some added clipping).

@keyframes reveal {
  from {
    opacity: 0;
    clip-path: inset(45% 20% 45% 20%);
  }
  to {
    opacity: 1;
    clip-path: inset(0% 0% 0% 0%);
  }
}

.revealing-image {
  animation: reveal 1s linear both;
}

This currently runs on the document’s timeline. In the last video, we used scroll() to register a scroll timeline. Now, let’s use the view() function to register a view timeline instead. This way, we’re responding to when a .revealing-image element is in, well, view.

.revealing-image {
  animation: reveal 1s linear both;
  /* Rember to declare the timeline after the shorthand */
  animation-timeline: view();
}

At this point, however, the animation is nice but only completes when the element fully exits the viewport, meaning we don’t get to see the entire thing. There’s a recommended way to fix this that Bramus will cover in another video. For now, we’re speeding up the keyframes instead by completing the animation at the 50% mark.

@keyframes reveal {
  from {
    opacity: 0;
    clip-path: inset(45% 20% 45% 20%);
  }
  50% {
    opacity: 1;
    clip-path: inset(0% 0% 0% 0%);
  }
}

More on the view() function:

animation-timeline: view(<axis> <view-timeline-inset>);

We know <axis> from the scroll() function — it’s the same deal. The <view-timeline-inset> is a way of adjusting the visibility range of the view progress (what a mouthful!) that we can set to auto (default) or a <length-percentage>. A positive inset moves in an outward adjustment while a negative value moves in an inward adjustment. And notice that there is no <scroller> argument — a view timeline always tracks its subject’s nearest ancestor scroll container.

OK, moving on to adjusting things with ViewTimeline in JavaScript instead.

const $images = document.querySelectorAll(.revealing-image);

$images.forEach(($image) => {
  $image.animate(
    [
      { opacity: 0, clipPath: 'inset(45% 20% 45% 20%)', offset: 0 }
      { opacity: 1; clipPath: 'inset(0% 0% 0% 0%)', offset: 0.5 }
    ],
    {
      fill: 'both',
      timeline: new ViewTimeline({
        subject: $image,
        axis: 'block', // Do we have to do this if it's the default?
      }),
    }
  }
)

This has the same effect as the CSS-only approach with animation-timeline.

Timeline Ranges Demystified

Last time, we adjusted where the image’s reveal animation ends by tweaking the keyframes to end at 50% rather than 100%. We could have played with the inset(). But there is an easier way: adjust the animation attachment range,

Most scroll animations go from zero scroll to 100% scroll. The animation-range property adjusts that:

animation-range: normal normal;

Those two values: the start scroll and end scroll, default:

animation-range: 0% 100%;

Other length units, of course:

animation-range: 100px 80vh;

The example we’re looking at is a “full-height cover card to fixed header”. Mouthful! But it’s neat, going from an immersive full-page header to a thin, fixed header while scrolling down the page.

@keyframes sticky-header {
  from {
    background-position: 50% 0;
    height: 100vh;
    font-size: calc(4vw + 1em);
  }
  to {
    background-position: 50% 100%;
    height: 10vh;
    font-size: calc(4vw + 1em);
    background-color: #0b1584;
  }
}

If we run the animation during scroll, it takes the full animation range, 0%-100%.

.sticky-header {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;

  animation: sticky-header linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll();
}

Like the revealing images from the last video, we want the animation range a little narrower to prevent the header from animating out of view. Last time, we adjusted the keyframes. This time, we’re going with the property approach:

.sticky-header {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;

  animation: sticky-header linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll();
  animation-range: 0vh 90vh;
}

We had to subtract the full height (100vh) from the header’s eventual height (10vh) to get that 90vh value. I can’t believe this is happening in CSS and not JavaScript! Bramus sagely notes that font-size animation happens on the main thread — it is not hardware-accelerated — and the entire scroll-driven animation runs on the main as a result. Other properties cause this as well, notably custom properties.

Back to the animation range. It can be diagrammed like this:

Notice that there are four points in there. We’ve only been chatting about the “start edge” and “end edge” up to this point, but the range covers a larger area in view timelines. So, this:

animation-range: 0% 100%; /* same as 'normal normal' */

…to this:

animation-range: cover 0% cover 100%; /* 'cover normal cover normal' */

…which is really this:

animation-range: cover;

So, yeah. That revealing image animation from the last video? We could have done this, rather than fuss with the keyframes or insets:

animation-range: cover 0% cover 50%;

So nice. The demo visualization is hosted at scroll-driven-animations.style. Oh, and we have keyword values available: contain, entry, exit, entry-crossing, and exit-crossing.

The examples so far are based on the scroller being the root element. What about ranges that are taller than the scrollport subject? The ranges become slightly different.

This is where the entry-crossing and entry-exit values come into play. This is a little mind-bendy at first, but I’m sure it’ll get easier with use. It’s clear things can get complex really quickly… which is especially true when we start working with multiple scroll-driven animation with their own animation ranges. Yes, that’s all possible. It’s all good as long as the ranges don’t overlap. Bramus uses a contact list demo where contact items animate when they enter and exit the scrollport.

@keyframes animate-in {
  0% { opacity: 0; transform: translateY: 100%; }
  100% { opacity: 1; transform: translateY: 0%; }
}
@keyframes animate-out {
  0% { opacity: 1; transform: translateY: 0%; }
  100% { opacity: 0; transform: translateY: 100%; }
}

.list-view li {
  animation: animate-in linear forwards,
             animate-out linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: view();
  animation-range: entry, exit; /* animation-in, animation-out */
}

Another way, using entry and exit keywords directly in the keyframes:

@keyframes animate-in {
  entry 0% { opacity: 0; transform: translateY: 100%; }
  entry 100% { opacity: 1; transform: translateY: 0%; }
}
@keyframes animate-out {
  exit 0% { opacity: 1; transform: translateY: 0%; }
  exit 100% { opacity: 0; transform: translateY: 100%; }
}

.list-view li {
  animation: animate-in linear forwards,
             animate-out linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: view();
}

Notice that animation-range is no longer needed since its values are declared in the keyframes. Wow.

OK, ranges in JavaScript.:

const timeline = new ViewTimeline({
  subjext: $li,
  axis: 'block',
})

// Animate in
$li.animate({
  opacity: [ 0, 1 ],
  transform: [ 'translateY(100%)', 'translateY(0)' ],
}, {
  fill: 'forwards',
  // One timeline instance with multiple ranges
  timeline,
  rangeStart: 'entry: 0%',
  rangeEnd: 'entry 100%',
})

Core Concepts: Timeline Lookup and Named Timelines

This time, we’re learning how to attach an animation to any scroll container on the page without needing to be an ancestor of that element. That’s all about named timelines.

But first, anonymous timelines track their nearest ancestor scroll container.

<html> <!-- scroll -->
  <body>
    <div class="wrapper">
      <div style="animation-timeline: scroll();"></div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Some problems might happen like when overflow is hidden from a container:

<html> <!-- scroll -->
  <body>
    <div class="wrapper" style="overflow: hidden;"> <!-- scroll -->
      <div style="animation-timeline: scroll();"></div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Hiding overflow means that the element’s content block is clipped to its padding box and does not provide any scrolling interface. However, the content must still be scrollable programmatically meaning this is still a scroll container. That’s an easy gotcha if there ever was one! The better route is to use overflow: clipped rather than hidden because that prevents the element from becoming a scroll container.

Hiding oveflow = scroll container. Clipping overflow = no scroll container. Bramus says he no longer sees any need to use overflow: hidden these days unless you explicitly need to set a scroll container. I might need to change my muscle memory to make that my go-to for hiding clipping overflow.

Another funky thing to watch for: absolute positioning on a scroll animation target in a relatively-positioned container. It will never match an outside scroll container that is scroll(inline-nearest) since it is absolute to its container like it’s unable to see out of it.

We don’t have to rely on the “nearest” scroll container or fuss with different overflow values. We can set which container to track with named timelines.

.gallery {
  position: relative;
}
.gallery__scrollcontainer {
  overflow-x: scroll;
  scroll-timeline-name: --gallery__scrollcontainer;
  scroll-timeline-axis: inline; /* container scrolls in the inline direction */
}
.gallery__progress {
  position: absolute;
  animation: progress linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll(inline nearest);
}

We can shorten that up with the scroll-timeline shorthand:

.gallery {
  position: relative;
}
.gallery__scrollcontainer {
  overflow-x: scroll;
  scroll-timeline: --gallery__scrollcontainer inline;
}
.gallery__progress {
  position: absolute;
  animation: progress linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll(inline nearest);
}

Note that block is the scroll-timeline-axis initial value. Also, note that the named timeline is a dashed-ident, so it looks like a CSS variable.

That’s named scroll timelines. The same is true of named view timlines.

.scroll-container {
  view-timeline-name: --card;
  view-timeline-axis: inline;
  view-timeline-inset: auto;
  /* view-timeline: --card inline auto */
}

Bramus showed a demo that recreates Apple’s old cover-flow pattern. It runs two animations, one for rotating images and one for setting an image’s z-index. We can attach both animations to the same view timeline. So, we go from tracking the nearest scroll container for each element in the scroll:

.covers li {
  view-timeline-name: --li-in-and-out-of-view;
  view-timeline-axis: inline;

  animation: adjust-z-index linear both;
  animation-timeline: view(inline);
}
.cards li > img {
   animation: rotate-cover linear both;
   animation-timeline: view(inline);
}

…and simply reference the same named timelines:

.covers li {
  view-timeline-name: --li-in-and-out-of-view;
  view-timeline-axis: inline;

  animation: adjust-z-index linear both;
  animation-timeline: --li-in-and-out-of-view;;
}
.cards li > img {
   animation: rotate-cover linear both;
   animation-timeline: --li-in-and-out-of-view;;
}

In this specific demo, the images rotate and scale but the updated sizing does not affect the view timeline: it stays the same size, respecting the original box size rather than flexing with the changes.

Phew, we have another tool for attaching animations to timelines that are not direct ancestors: timeline-scope.

timeline-scope: --example;

This goes on an parent element that is shared by both the animated target and the animated timeline. This way, we can still attach them even if they are not direct ancestors.

<div style="timeline-scope: --gallery">
  <div style="scroll-timeline: --gallery-inline;">
     ...
  </div>
  <div style="animation-timeline: --gallery;"></div>
</div>

It accepts multiple comma-separated values:

timeline-scope: --one, --two, --three;
/* or */
timeline-scope: all; /* Chrome 116+ */

There’s no Safari or Firefox support for the all kewword just yet but we can watch for it at Caniuse (or the newer BCD Watch!).

This video is considered the last one in the series of “core concepts.” The next five are more focused on use cases and examples.

Add Scroll Shadows to a Scroll Container

In this example, we’re conditionally showing scroll shadows on a scroll container. Chris calls scroll shadows one his favorite CSS-Tricks of all time and we can nail them with scroll animations.

Here is the demo Chris put together a few years ago:

That relies on having a background with multiple CSS gradients that are pinned to the extremes with background-attachment: fixed on a single selector. Let’s modernize this, starting with a different approach using pseudos with sticky positioning:

.container::before,
.container::after {
  content: "";
  display: block;
  position: sticky;
  left: 0em; 
  right 0em;
  height: 0.75rem;

  &::before {
    top: 0;
    background: radial-gradient(...);
  }
  
  &::after {
    bottom: 0;
    background: radial-gradient(...);
  }
}

The shadows fade in and out with a CSS animation:

@keyframes reveal {
  0% { opacity: 0; }
  100% { opacity: 1; }
}

.container {
  overflow:-y auto;
  scroll-timeline: --scroll-timeline block; /* do we need `block`? */

  &::before,
  &::after {
    animation: reveal linear both;
    animation-timeline: --scroll-timeline;
  }
}

This example rocks a named timeline, but Bramus notes that an anonymous one would work here as well. Seems like anonymous timelines are somewhat fragile and named timelines are a good defensive strategy.

The next thing we need is to set the animation’s range so that each pseudo scrolls in where needed. Calculating the range from the top is fairly straightforward:

.container::before {
  animation-range: 1em 2em;
}

The bottom is a little tricker. It should start when there are 2em of scrolling and then only travel for 1em. We can simply reverse the animation and add a little calculation to set the range based on it’s bottom edge.

.container::after {
  animation-direction: reverse;
  animation-range: calc(100% - 2em) calc(100% - 1em);
}

Still one more thing. We only want the shadows to reveal when we’re in a scroll container. If, for example, the box is taller than the content, there is no scrolling, yet we get both shadows.

This is where the conditional part comes in. We can detect whether an element is scrollable and react to it. Bramus is talking about an animation keyword that’s new to me: detect-scroll.

@keyframes detect-scroll {
  from,
  to {
     --can-scroll: ; /* value is a single space and acts as boolean */
  }
}

.container {
  animation: detect-scroll;
  animation-timeline: --scroll-timeline;
  animation-fill-mode: none;
}

Gonna have to wrap my head around this… but the general idea is that --can-scroll is a boolean value we can use to set visibility on the pseudos:

.content::before,
.content::after {
    --vis-if-can-scroll: var(--can-scroll) visible;
    --vis-if-cant-scroll: hidden;

  visibility: var(--vis-if-can-scroll, var(--vis-if-cant-scroll));
}

Bramus points to this CSS-Tricks article for more on the conditional toggle stuff.

Animate Elements in Different Directions

This should be fun! Let’s say we have a set of columns:

<div class="columns">
  <div class="column reverse">...</div>
  <div class="column">...</div>
  <div class="column reverse">...</div>
</div>

The goal is getting the two outer reverse columns to scroll in the opposite direction as the inner column scrolls in the other direction. Classic JavaScript territory!

The columns are set up in a grid container. The columns flex in the column direction.

/* run if the browser supports it */
@supports (animation-timeline: scroll()) {

  .column-reverse {
    transform: translateY(calc(-100% + 100vh));
    flex-direction: column-reverse; /* flows in reverse order */
  }

  .columns {
    overflow-y: clip; /* not a scroll container! */
  }

}

First, the outer columns are pushed all the way up so the bottom edges are aligned with the viewport’s top edge. Then, on scroll, the outer columns slide down until their top edges re aligned with the viewport’s bottom edge.

The CSS animation:

@keyframes adjust-position {
  from /* the top */ {
    transform: translateY(calc(-100% + 100vh));
  }
  to /* the bottom */ {
    transform: translateY(calc(100% - 100vh));
  }
}

.column-reverse {
  animation: adjust-position linear forwards;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root block); /* viewport in block direction */
}

The approach is similar in JavaScript:

const timeline = new ScrollTimeline({
  source: document.documentElement,
});

document.querySelectorAll(".column-reverse").forEach($column) => {
  $column.animate(
    {
      transform: [
        "translateY(calc(-100% + 100vh))",
        "translateY(calc(100% - 100vh))"
      ]
    },
    {
      fill: "both",
      timeline,
    }
  );
}

Animate 3D Models and More on Scroll

This one’s working with a custom element for a 3D model:

<model-viewer alt="Robot" src="robot.glb"></model-viewer>

First, the scroll-driven animation. We’re attaching an animation to the component but not defining the keyframes just yet.

@keyframes foo {

}

model-viewer {
  animation: foo linear both;
  animation-timeline: scroll(block root); /* root scroller in block direction */
}

There’s some JavaScript for the full rotation and orientation:

// Bramus made a little helper for handling the requested animation frames
import { trackProgress } from "https://esm.sh/@bramus/sda-utilities";

// Select the component
const $model = document.QuerySelector("model-viewer");
// Animation begins with the first iteration
const animation = $model.getAnimations()[0];

// Variable to get the animation's timing info
let progress = animation.effect.getComputedTiming().progress * 1;
// If when finished, $progress = 1
if (animation.playState === "finished") progress = 1;
progress = Math.max(0.0, Math.min(1.0, progress)).toFixed(2);

// Convert this to degrees
$model.orientation = `0deg 0deg $(progress * -360)deg`;

We’re using the effect to get the animation’s progress rather than the current timed spot. The current time value is always measured relative to the full range, so we need the effect to get the progress based on the applied animation.

Scroll Velocity Detection

The video description is helpful:

Bramus goes full experimental and uses Scroll-Driven Animations to detect the active scroll speed and the directionality of scroll. Detecting this allows you to style an element based on whether the user is scrolling (or not scrolling), the direction they are scrolling in, and the speed they are scrolling with … and this all using only CSS.

First off, this is a hack. What we’re looking at is expermental and not very performant. We want to detect the animations’s velocity and direction. We start with two custom properties.

@keyframes adjust-pos {
  from {
    --scroll-position: 0;
    --scroll-position-delayed: 0;
  }
  to {
    --scroll-position: 1;
    --scroll-position-delayed: 1;
  }
}

:root {
  animation: adjust-pos linear both;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root);
}

Let’s register those custom properties so we can interpolate the values:

@property --scroll-position {
  syntax: "<number>";
  inherits: true;
  initial-value: 0;
}

@property --scroll-position-delayed {
  syntax: "<number>";
  inherits: true;
  initial-value: 0;
}

As we scroll, those values change. If we add a little delay, then we can stagger things a bit:

:root {
  animation: adjust-pos linear both;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root);
}

body {
  transition: --scroll-position-delayed 0.15s linear;
}

The fact that we’re applying this to the body is part of the trick because it depends on the parent-child relationship between html and body. The parent element updates the values immediately while the child lags behind just a tad. The evaluate to the same value, but one is slower to start.

We can use the difference between the two values as they are staggered to get the velocity.

:root {
  animation: adjust-pos linear both;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root);
}

body {
  transition: --scroll-position-delayed 0.15s linear;
  --scroll-velocity: calc(
    var(--scroll-position) - var(--scroll-position-delayed)
  );
}

Clever! If --scroll-velocity is equal to 0, then we know that the user is not scrolling because the two values are in sync. A positive number indicates the scroll direction is down, while a negative number indicates scrolling up,.

There’s a little discrepancy when scrolling abruptly changes direction. We can fix this by tighening the transition delay of --scroll-position-delayed but then we’re increasing the velocity. We might need a multiplier to further correct that… that’s why this is a hack. But now we have a way to sniff the scrolling speed and direction!

Here’s the hack using math functions:

body {
  transition: --scroll-position-delayed 0.15s linear;
  --scroll-velocity: calc(
    var(--scroll-position) - var(--scroll-position-delayed)
  );
  --scroll-direction: sign(var(--scroll-velocity));
  --scroll-speed: abs(var(--scroll-velocity));
}

This is a little funny because I’m seeing that Chrome does not yet support sign() or abs(), at least at the time I’m watching this. Gotta enable chrome://flags. There’s a polyfill for the math brought to you by Ana Tudor right here on CSS-Tricks.

So, now we could theoretically do something like skew an element by a certain amount or give it a certain level of background color saturation depending on the scroll speed.

.box {
  transform: skew(calc(var(--scroll-velocity) * -25deg));
  transition: background 0.15s ease;
  background: hsl(
    calc(0deg + (145deg * var(--scroll-direction))) 50 % 50%
  );
}

We could do all this with style queries should we want to:

@container style(--scroll-direction: 0) { /* idle */
  .slider-item {
    background: crimson;
  }
}
@container style(--scroll-direction: 1) { /* scrolling down */
  .slider-item {
    background: forestgreen;
  }
}
@container style(--scroll-direction: -1) { /* scrolling down */
  .slider-item {
    background: lightskyblue;
  }
}

Custom properties, scroll-driven animations, and style queries — all in one demo! These are wild times for CSS, tell ya what.

Outro

The tenth and final video! Just a summary of the series, so no new notes here. But here’s a great demo to cap it off.

---

Unleash the Power of Scroll-Driven Animations originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

The prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) has many concerned about job security.

AI writing, AI images, AI videos — while the final products are far from perfect, they raise the question of what jobs AI could eventually replace, even if we don’t want them to.

But, heck, if AI can create a marketing plan for me, I say, "Welcome to the team!"

A marketing plan is a foundational piece of any marketing strategy. It keeps businesses organized and focused on their goals. However, with all the details it should consider and capture, it can be extremely time-consuming and tedious to put together.

That’s where I’ve discovered AI can help.

After years of researching and compiling documents by hand, I recently used AI to create a marketing plan to see what it could deliver. Let’s break down the steps I took, how the plans turned out, and how you can replicate them.

Why use AI to create a marketing plan?

We at HubSpot probably sound like a broken record by now, but AI can help marketers work smarter, not harder.

Don’t get me wrong — plagiarism, bias, data insecurity, and poor quality are all concerns when generating content with AI. But when it comes to planning and research? The tools can save massive amounts of time and money.

In fact, one of our recent studies found that 75% of marketers say AI and automation help them spend less time on manual tasks like research.

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, and even HubSpot’s Breeze perform research and optimization in real time.

The speed at which they can pull information from multiple data sources just isn’t humanly possible. Add in tasks like data analysis, calculations, and formatting, and it’s no wonder marketers report getting 12.5 hours back weekly.

By using AI to create, or at least draft, your marketing plan, you can spend less time and money planning and more actually executing.

Now, speaking of spending less time on planning, enough of this background info. Let’s get to the real action.

How to Create a Marketing Plan with AI

I tested two AI tools and approaches for creating a marketing plan: a chatbot and a generator.

Below, I’ll break down my process into specific steps and share my thoughts on how they did, along with some tips I learned along the way.

Creating a Marketing Plan with a Chatbot

A few months back, HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan and CMO Kipp Bodnar used ChatGPT to create a marketing plan for the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.

I used this as my jumping-off point.

As they discussed, the quality you get from a chatbot or AI assistant like ChatGPT depends on the quality of your prompt. It’s like your creative brief.

You can’t talk to AI like a search engine with incomplete sentences and keywords.

Instead, you want to speak to it like you would another person. Give your chatbot the same detailed information you would give your intern or freelancer to complete a task.

Most of the steps described below are focused on doing just that.

1. Summarize your business (i.e., Your product, company, unique selling points).

To quote one of my favorite Bollywood movies, “Who are you?”

Before AI could develop my marketing plan, it needed to know what it was marketing and who exactly my company was.

What I included: Following Bodnar and Flanagan’s lead, I kept it simple, including being “head of marketing for a technology company that sells a SaaS product for Sales Teams.”

But this is really the bare minimum a tool needs to know about your company to craft a marketing plan. To get the best results, you’ll want to dive into:

• Your product/offering
• What makes it different (specific features, capabilities, etc.)
• Company mission
• Company values

Pro tip: You may even want to provide a SWOT analysis or competitive analysis so the AI knows the full scope of what you’re dealing with. No information is too much.

For example, I borrowed this market information from Flanagan to include in my prompt:

“The market is getting crowded; there are a lot of apps with similar features. I also have to be concerned that the CRMs we integrate with will build the feature when they see its popularity grow. This means I need to scale demand and the product fast to take advantage of the opportunity.”

2. Outline your business goals.

What is your marketing team working on? What is it trying to achieve? Document these goals so your AI tool knows what all its suggestions need to work toward.

Use the SMART framework for goals — in other words, make sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This leaves less room for ambiguity in whether you accomplished what you were supposed to.

For example, in the past, I’ve seen clients try to set vague goals like “Increase my presence on TikTok.” But a SMART version could be, “Increase my TikTok following by 30% by June.”

Notice the difference?

In the first, “presence” could mean posting more videos, attracting more followers, or even getting more views. The SMART version makes it clear the focus is follower count.

What I included: “The goal of the marketing plan is to close 5000 new customers in the next 12 months.”

Pro tip: Including your average conversion rates and buyer behavior can help AI better understand your sales cycle and determine which strategies will be more effective for you.

For example, I added this line, “Assume the conversion rate from traffic to customer will be 5%, which means I'll need roughly 100,000 website visits. “

3. Describe your target audience.

Who is your buyer? Who does your marketing plan need to reach? AI needs to know this information to ensure its strategic suggestions align.

You can share a full buyer persona with your AI tool, but at the least, you want to include the following in your prompt:

• Age
• Location
• Company, job title, industry (if B2B)
• Goals
• Personal challenges
• Pain points you solve

What I included: “Our audience is primarily sales reps at small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their teams are usually small, with 2-4 reps on the team total. They are concerned with meeting their sales goals, prioritizing the right prospects, and streamlining their sales process. Our CRM offers automation and data enrichment tools to make this easier.”

4. Define your marketing budget.

This point is pretty straightforward — How much can your company spend on your marketing plan to achieve your goals? Defining your market budget in your prompt gives the chatbot parameters to work with.

You know, so it doesn’t suggest running a Super Bowl commercial or recruiting Beyonce as a celebrity ambassador.

What I included: “Our marketing budget is $10,000 for the year. Cost-effectiveness is a top priority.” I added the second line to clarify that while I have this total to spend, I want it to be distributed in proven areas.

5. Establish your timeline.

Like your budget, your timeline gives your chatbot further direction on what suggestions are plausible and which aren’t.

For example, if your timeline is only one month, it wouldn’t make sense to suggest leaning into SEO and blog articles, as those can take months to gain traction.

What I included: My timeline of “12 months” was established in my goal and referenced throughout my prompt.

6. Set key performance indicators (KPIs).

How will you track and report on your success? Some company stakeholders expect to see specific data. If so, your prompt is your chance to loop your chatbot in on this expectation.

But if you don’t include them, it’s not make or break.

Usually, KPIs are linked to your tactics and strategies. So, if you’re waiting to see what our marketing plan suggests to set metrics, no worries.

Pro tip: You can also ask the chatbot to suggest KPIs based on its proposed strategy.

What I included: I left KPIs out of my prompt so ChatGPT would focus on tactics and strategy.

7. Share examples and “extras.”

Do you have specific campaigns you admire? How about marketing frameworks like StoryBrand or thought leaders like Ann Handley or Neil Patel?

Once again, sharing these examples with your chatbot in your prompt helps it understand what you’re looking for from your marketing plan.

What I included: I added to my prompt: “I want your answers to be heavily influenced by marketing greats:

• Seth Godin's approach to branding
• Gary Vaynerchuk's approach to social media marketing
• Andy Crestodina’s approach to web and digital strategy”

You can also take this time to add what I call “extras” to your prompt.

For instance, Flanagan made it a point to tell ChatGPT that he didn’t want to see best practices. You can mention if there are specific channels you want to include or exclude, or maybe even global holidays.

8. Compile information into a prompt.

Once you’ve got all the pieces from steps 1-9, compile them into one prompt. Make sure that it’s conversational, and each sentence is short and precise.

9. Enter the prompt into a chatbot.

10. Review and refine.

Once you get your results (like mine below), you can use this as a first draft to elaborate on or ask for edits.

Flanagan asked ChatGPT to flesh out specifics about the suggested campaigns and tactics and make them more actionable. Remember, ChatGPT is like your intern or freelancer. Refine and clarify until the finished product meets your needs.

Honestly, I wasn’t super impressed by the results I got from my initial prompt.

The answers were quite similar to what Flanagan and Bodnar got which goes to show you, how generic your results can be if you don’t give specific details about your business.

But perhaps if I made follow-up requests like they did in the podcast episode, I could have uncovered some unique gems.

What did I like about this AI marketing plan?

• Easy to skim through the ideas
• Clearly considered my examples and requests
• The conversational nature of the chatbot made it easy to use.

What could be improved?

• Suggestions were fairly generic
• It takes iterations to get more detailed and specific results
• Putting together the creative brief is very time-consuming
• Formatting is informal

Who is this best for?

Small-to-medium-sized marketing teams that need help brainstorming strategies but don’t necessarily need anything cutting-edge.

By the way, marketing plans aren’t the only things ChatGPT can do with the right prompt.

Our free guide, “How to Use ChatGPT at Work,” talks through some of the most effective use cases and shares over 100 prompts you can use immediately.

Marketing Plan Generator

After ChatGPT, I tried HubSpot’s AI-powered Marketing Plan Generator.

Try our free Marketing Plan Generator here.

Here, I still needed all the information we discussed above ready to go, but this tool did a great job of simplifying the compilation process and formatting it into a neat little document.

Rather than putting together an instructional prompt, all I had to do was ask a few questions. (I was essentially copying and pasting the details from earlier.)

Then, the tool delivered a one-page document with a yearly marketing plan along with priority and strategy suggestions based on the goal I entered.

The document (shown in the image below) makes it easy to review the marketing plan at a glance and share it with teammates and stakeholders.

Pro tip: This AI marketing plan generator does a lot of formal formatting for you, but the quality it delivers is only as good as the information you give it to work off.

Before you use the generator, sit down and flesh out your:

• Marketing mission statement: This is what your marketing is focused on for the year.
• Strategy: What are you doing to reach your goals?
• Marketing Initiatives (i.e., brand awareness or building a high-quality pipeline)
• Target Goals (i.e., generating 100 leads per week)
• Metrics

The tool will ask you about these things, and it’s better to consider them before making them up at that moment.

What did I like about this AI marketing plan?

• Easy to skim one-page document
• Form eliminates the stress of knowing how to write a good prompt

What could be improved?

• More detailed strategy/suggestions

Who is this best for?

Businesses short on time or those new to creating marketing plans who want a starting point. It’s also great for those who haven’t mastered the art of chatbot prompts. (I’m still working on this, too.)

Final verdict: Treat AI like a running start.

These are just two of the ways you can create a marketing plan using AI. In fact, there are many other tools dedicated specifically to this need. However, no matter which you choose, remember to treat any results as a first draft.

Artificial intelligence only knows as much about your company, product, and audience as it’s been told. It doesn’t have your team’s first-hand experience or knowledge.

So, treat any results as a brainstorming tool and something to elaborate on.

Right now, AI can only give you a running start; it can’t take you to the finish line.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Jade Walters is, easily, the Queen of Gen Z LinkedIn. And if you want to know why, taking a glance at the array of content on her early career resource platform, The Ninth Semester (also accessible through Instagram, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, and LinkedIn), will corroborate this claim.

Jade has spent the last year independently building up her LinkedIn following, making early career opportunities more visible for young professionals, specifically first generation students of color.

I had the honor and privilege of chatting (and gabbing, really) with her about pretty much everything LinkedIn-related, from developing the Ninth Semester to how Gen Z students of color can easily utilize LinkedIn as their secret weapon for securing jobs and connections.

In this article, I’ll share my takeaways from Jade’s playbook and suggestions for how emerging professionals can overcome the daunting landscapes of internships, networking, and rejection.

Let’s get into it.

Table of Contents:

• How Jade Walters Helps Gen Z Get Hired
• How to Find Early Career Opportunities Through LinkedIn
• How to Use LinkedIn for Networking and Internship/Job Hunting

How Jade Walters Helps Gen Z Get Hired

“I wanted a seat at the table… and no one would give me a seat, so I created my own table.”

When Jade and I hopped on Zoom for our conversation, one of the first things she said was that “helping Gen Z get hired” has always been the core of her mission, vision, and brand as an early career and recruitment specialist.

Of course, this authentic and steadfast commitment comes from adversities she’s faced — and overcome — all on her own.

Like much of Gen Z, Jade started on an untraditional, non-linear career path. She got her Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University in Maternal and Child Health, but once her undergrad concluded, she found herself experiencing a career pivot.

Eventually, that limbo period led to an unexpected union between personal reflections she’d already been sharing (via her personal blog) and her affinity for early career recruiting.

Although Jade graduated a few years ago, much of Gen Z’s attitudes around jobs, post-grad life, and overcoming the competitive job market, has not changed. If anything, anxieties have heightened, making Gen Z’s race to the finish line even more frenzied.

According to the Class of 2025 Big Dreams, Bigger Challenges Report from Handshake, 63% of upcoming graduates revealed that competition for employment contributes to feelings of pessimism.

Additionally, of students who are pessimistic about starting their careers, 54% cite concerns about job security and 45% cite concerns about insufficient benefits and compensation.

Source: Handshake

The Big Dreams, Bigger Challenges Report also revealed that going to college is (shockingly) not enough to stand out in today’s job market; students must go above and beyond to get noticed by the right employer.

62% of students are working part-time during their senior year and 61% are pursuing an internship during it, too.

Source: Handshake

Nevertheless, Walters has seen the impact of all of this data with her own eyes, specifically via her LinkedIn audience which has a (very calm) 90,000 followers. “I realized there weren’t a lot of resources for early career professionals,” she told me.

When Jade started out, she was applying to roles related to recruitment, but because of her educational and professional background, did not hear back about most of those roles.

She eventually carved her own lane in this space and has now paved the way for other early career content creators (e.g., Taylor Falls, Morgan Young) to do the same.

“I wanted to be the solution for a problem that I was having. I wanted to help others that were in my same shoes not have to struggle the way that I did,” she said.

Now, Jade dedicates most of her LinkedIn presence to sharing ways that Gen Z, specifically young professionals of color, can secure internships, grow their skill sets, and eventually get hired full-time.

How to Find Early Career Opportunities Through LinkedIn

When I asked Jade about the best ways for Gen Z to discover and acquire internships, externships, jobs, and networking opportunities, she put her answer plainly:

“I was that person who just used to log into LinkedIn to update my job experiences, talk about new accomplishments. But within the last year, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of value in the [additional] content that people share [outside of just those things].”

These days, if you want to make the most of LinkedIn, per Jade’s advice, you’ve got to do more than just post a new job update and keep your work experiences fresh.

Here are a few of Jade’s recommendations for growing a strong community on LinkedIn:

1. Post as much as you scroll.

Jade says that you should post on LinkedIn just as often as you scroll through your feed.

“You can no longer just show up and post about your new job. You need to spend at least 15 minutes scrolling through, seeing what people are talking about, and catching up with industry facts and feelings,” she affirmed.

And she’s right. When Jade mentioned this, I was quickly reminded of my own progression on LinkedIn. When I first started taking the platform more seriously, I was simply sharing things that I thought should live on LinkedIn.

If I got a new internship? I’d post about it. If I completed a large-scale project for my college org? I was drafting an announcement as if it were a press release. It all made sense… until I saw another side of LinkedIn (aka “cool LinkedIn”).

You see, on cool LinkedIn, young people like me were talking about viral trends and sharing their one-of-a-kind perspectives on their internship experiences and all things Gen Z.

When I found this out, I was not only astounded but motivated to start doing the same. Even more so, seeing Jade’s content inspired me to start platforming my own gospel.

Now, I’m gradually working towards building a following based on creating content that speaks to all of me: my passions, humor, even what I’ve learned thus far in my (very early) career.

So, if you’re looking for ways to keep your timeline fresh and connections strong on LinkedIn, be sure to interact and engage with the app in a meaningful way. What you put in is what you get out.

Pro tip: Translating your experiences and/or advice into various kinds of content creation — whether that be short-form video content or social media design – will definitely catch eyes on LinkedIn. You just need to find your personal branding “sweet spot” and run with it. Since starting my own journey, this has looked like offering '#jeanius' advice to my followers. 

2. Take advantage of self-paced education resources.

When it comes to filling in the gaps of experience or getting free learning, Jade suggests to get it in where you can fit it in.

“When I wanted to learn about early career and university recruiting, LinkedIn Learning was one of the first places I went. I was like, ‘Let me learn some realistic stuff, like, vetted by professionals.’”

Also, LinkedIn Learning is just a starting point. I cannot stress how resourceful companies like Extern and Parker Dewey are, especially for young Black/Brown professionals and students of color seeking to build up robust, real-world work experience.

Both Extern and Parker Dewey offer free access to paid short-term programs and micro-internship opportunities for college students across the country, for those enrolled in four-year institutions, community colleges, even historically Black colleges/universities (HBCUs).

All you have to do is ensure that you meet a program’s criteria and apply.

Pro tip: HubSpot is partnered with Parker Dewey for its very own AI Bootcamp Program and LinkedIn Ambassador Program. As a Caribbean-American first-generation college graduate, this program (and anything offered through Parker Dewey) was extremely instrumental in helping me secure multiple internships and, eventually, my first full-time job.

3. Don’t be afraid to niche down, folks.

“I have mixed feelings and emotions about the different softwares coming up where you can send, like, 200 applications in one click. There’s always this question about whether or not it's a numbers game, and I do agree, it is a numbers game when it comes to applying for jobs but … it also needs to be strategic,” Jade says.

When applying for jobs, internships, or any sort of early career role, Jade recommends that folks figure out two things: exactly what opportunities they’re looking for and what opportunities suit their current background.

She told me: “For example, sometimes people just apply to things [that have ‘marketing’ in title]. They’re applying to campus marketer roles, email marketer roles, influencer marketing roles… but their resumes don’t reflect that.”

Jade says that looking for the right job/internship is simply like going to a restaurant: “You don’t just go like, ‘I want a burger.’ You pick something from the menu. You have to be intentional. So, let’s say you want to work in marketing. Okay. But what type of marketing? Influencer marketing? Copywriting? Social strategy? Once you narrow it down, you have a dream wish list.”

How to Use LinkedIn for Networking and Internship/Job Hunting

At the end of our conversation, Jade and I got into a rich discussion about the ways in which young people like me can use LinkedIn exclusively for networking and internship/job-hunting purposes.

As the job market gets heated and applicant tracking systems (ATS) become increasingly more difficult to surpass, Gen Z can’t just apply to their dream roles and hope for the best. Instead, Gen Z must now lean on alternative techniques to succeed, both in their hunt for employment and in interviews.

Thankfully, Jade knows exactly what to do, and here’s what she proposes (along with a small sprinkle of my own guidance):

1. LinkedIn has tons of free game for Gen Z.

If you’re wondering if it’s okay for you to start randomly connecting with people on LinkedIn, the answer is yes. Yes. Yes. In fact, this casual approach to LinkedIn can be incredibly fruitful.

“One of the biggest benefits of LinkedIn is that you can just, like, connect with people you don’t know or people that you want to work with. And it’s okay. Like, it’s normal,” Jade urged.

“Nine times out of ten, like, someone will probably accept your invitation to connect, and you could follow from their journey. And if they have the time, you can have a coffee chat. LinkedIn is a place where you could be connected with, like, the VP of Marketing at your dream company. And it’s not like you met them in an exclusive place… you met them on LinkedIn.”

In my own experience (as a former student of color turned young Black professional), Jade’s advice has worked out pretty well.

In the last three months alone, I’ve set-up several coffee chats — some with folks who work at companies I’ve always wanted to know more about, others with fellow young people of color who’ve found me and wanted to simply learn about my journey — and those conversations have been some of the most meaningful discussions I’ve had the pleasure of having.

However, they never would’ve if I wasn’t open to using LinkedIn for its sole purpose: community building.

At the end of the day, LinkedIn is a social networking platform, so don’t hesitate to use it for what it was made for.

2. Lean on your tribe while you need them.

When in doubt about your future job prospects, Jade reinforced that one of the best ways to get early access to internships or full-time role opportunities is, without fail, to talk to your people (especially your LinkedIn friends and followers).

“Befriend your professors, connect with them. Speak to your community about what you're looking for. That’s one of the best ways [to hear about opportunities before they go live online],” she said.

You may not know it now but folks you already know – professors, former managers, even faculty/administrators at your university – could have those coveted, close-knit connections to companies or leadership that you may have been looking to get in touch with for a while.

It’s all about maintaining your relationship with that person and, of course, how you approach the conversation you have.

3. Follow recruiters and early career content creators.

Finally, what better way to know what’s tea about job opportunities than to reach out to the very people who have a say in who gets hired?

Jade and I agree that connecting with recruiters on LinkedIn, especially those that specialize in early career talent acquisition, is the easiest way to go when searching for your next professional endeavor.

By reaching out to recruiters, you're essentially tapping into a hidden job market.

They can truly provide you with valuable information about companies, industries, and specific roles that might be a good fit for you.

When you do reach out, be sure to introduce yourself, inquire about the specific department you’re looking into, and ask for personalized guidance on your job search, from resume writing and interview preparation to networking strategies.

The Future of Gen Z Success Starts with LinkedIn

Clearly, LinkedIn has emerged as a powerful tool for Gen Z professionals, especially young professionals of color.

By embracing the scary unknown of the LinkedIn sphere and utilizing it strategically, Gen Z professionals, particularly students of color seeking an entryway into their next career opportunity, can unlock a world of possibilities and uniquely position themselves for success.

And just as Jade has so eloquently demonstrated, with determination, creativity, and a willingness to adapt, even the most unconventional career paths can lead to extraordinary outcomes.

As a video marketer, you know there’s no cookie-cutter approach to crafting engaging videos, but you should always ensure you‘re using the best video format for your content, regardless of the kind of video you’re creating.

There is no one-size-fits-all video format— not every computer, video platform, or website browser supports every video format.

Fortunately, we've rounded up the best video formats and listed their pros and cons so you can learn which video format to use in different situations.

Once you know the best format for your videos, check out HubSpot's Clip Creator, our free AI-powered video maker, so you can easily make high-quality videos.

Table of Contents

• Best for Long-form Video
• Best for Editing on Apple Devices
• Best for Copyright Protection
• Best for Streaming Online
• Best for Television
• Best for High-End Videos

6 of the Best Video Formats for 2025

1. MP4

Most digital devices and platforms support MP4, making it the most universal video format. MP4 can also store video, audio, text, and still images. Additionally, it can retain high video quality while maintaining relatively small file sizes.

Best for: MP4 formats are best for long-form video formats because MP4 files are relatively small but still of high quality.

“For my YouTube channel, I usually use the MP4 video format because a lot of the YouTube videos I made were as long as 20 minutes,” HubSpot Marketing Manager Erica Santiago says.

“MP4s are such small files that it would make rendering and uploading long-form videos a lot easier and more efficient. Plus, MP4s typically only experience a slight quality loss when uploaded to platforms like YouTube or TikTok.”

• Pros: MP4 files are fairly small, making them quick to upload and easy to save without clogging up space on your device.
• Cons: Because MP4 files are so straightforward and common to work with, they're also easy to pirate, which poses a concern for creators.

2. MOV

Developed by Apple, MOV is a video format specifically designed for QuickTime Player. However, since there’s a version of QuickTime Player for Windows, MOV is also compatible with Windows.

The MOV video format can store audio, text, and video effects, but since its quality is usually so high, it’ll take up significantly more space on people's computers.

Best for: The MOV format is best for editing on Apple devices since they're specifically formatted for QuickTime Player.

Pros: MOVs are loved by filmmakers because they contain audio, text, and video effects and can be separated into multiple tracks. Their high quality makes MOVs easy to edit and is the professional standard in video editing.

Cons: Unlike MP4s, MOV formats are not widely playable across different devices, and their super high quality also leads to large file sizes.

“I rarely use MOV formatting for my videos because, in my opinion, the high quality doesn't make up for how much file space they consume and how long they take to upload,” Santiago says.

3. WMV

Microsoft developed WMV, so your audience can play these types of videos on Windows Media Player. They can download a WMV player to play WMV videos if they have a Mac. Just like the MOV format, the WMV format boasts high video quality, but it's at the expense of a small file size.

Best for: WMVs are best for creators who want to ensure copyright protection for their work. The format contains copyright and licensing functions that check whether uses have the right to use them.

Pros: WMV files are so small they can even be played via Google Drive.

Cons: “While I like the small file size for editing, WMV files often lose image quality when they're getting uploaded and compressed, so I avoid using this format as well,” says Santiago.

4. FLV

Specifically designed for Adobe Flash Video Players, FLV is one of the most versatile and popular video formats. Every web browser and video platform supports it.

Best for: If your audience streams many videos on online platforms, like YouTube and Google Video, FLV is the video format for you.

Pros: Their file sizes are usually small, so people can quickly download them.

Cons: The only drawback of the video format is that it’s not compatible with iOS devices and many other mobile devices.

5. AVI

One of the oldest video formats, AVI, was developed by Microsoft in 1992. Since then, it has become one of the most versatile, compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux, and supported by most web browsers.

• Best for: AVI is best for short videos and television.
• Pros: AVIs are compatible with most operating systems and boast excellent audio and video quality.
• Cons: The AVI video format file size is large, which is more conducive for people to store on their computers than to stream or download.

6. AVCHD

Panasonic and Sony developed AVCHD, the highest-quality video format, specifically for digital camcorders, so it's perfect for those who regularly shoot high-end videos.

Powered by H.264/MPEG-4 video compression technology, the video format lets you store hours of high-quality video using only a tiny amount of data.

Additionally, the video format has both standard and high-definition variations, and its latest variation, AVCHD 2.0, even supports three-dimensional video.

• Best for: AVCHD is best for creators shooting high-end videos.
• Pros: AVCHD is small in file size and doesn't experience much loss in data quality.
• Cons: This format has very limited compatibility because it's developed for use with Panasonic and Sony products.

Now that you know the best video format for your content, you're ready to create outstanding, engaging videos that will reach your audience.

When it comes to designing for the fitness industry, the right typography can make a powerful impact. Whether you’re creating a logo for a gym, a flyer for a yoga class, or social media graphics for a fitness brand, the right font sets the tone and energizes your design.

In this post, we’ve curated a selection that captures the strength, agility, and calmness associated with these active lifestyles. You’ll find fonts that embody the intensity of a gym workout, the elegance of a yoga studio, and everything in between. Each font is chosen for its ability to communicate a distinct vibe, helping you build a strong visual identity that resonates with fitness enthusiasts.

From bold and dynamic fonts that convey power and movement to sleek, modern styles for a clean and professional look, these fonts offer something for every type of fitness project. Have a look.

Seeker – Wide Gym & Fitness Font

Seeker is an expansive and trendy gym and fitness font encapsulating the spirit of athleticism and urban chic. Designed to invoke a feeling of dynamism, power and modern aesthetics, its broad range of styles and features make it suitable for sports brands, fitness products, trendy packaging labels, distinctive logos, posters, and fashion brands.

NCL Monster Beast – Gym Sport Font

This is a versatile gym sports font, perfect for workout-related projects. Expertly crafted for large and small point sizes, it enhances any project, be it headlines, billboards, or logos. Offering a rich set of 1,340 glyphs in 4 styles, it supports 79 languages.

Gednner – Modern Gym & Fitness Font

Gednner is a bold and authentic gym and fitness font suitable for a variety of branding projects such as logo design, t-shirt printing, or esports. Provided in both otf and ttf formats, this modern Sans Display Font also offers uppercase characters, ligatures, and alternatives, enabling versatility in a wide range of creative contexts.

Boldye – Fitness & Gym Font

Boldye is a fitness-style font inspired by the robust style of the Reebok logo. It offers striking edgy letters with strong curves — perfect for sports-themed branding and logos. The font offers access to a multitude of unique alternatives and ease-of-use ligatures via its Open Type feature.

Spot Light – Bold Gym & Fitness Font

Spot Light is an expressive display sports font known for its visual elegance and smoothness. Its clear curves and distinct ligatures make your work captivating and professional. Versatile for both large and small sizes, it’s perfect for a range of applications from logos to product packaging, for a variety of business sectors.

Gymer – Sport & Fitness Font

Gymer is an innovative typography option dedicated to the fitness and athletic sectors. Perfect for designing logos, badges or any other sport-related visual elements, it includes OpenType Font (OTF) and TrueType Font (TTF) formats. Its sleek design portrays a dynamic and energetic vibe, reflecting the essence of fitness in every character.

Pro Dunex – Gym & Fitness Font

Pro Dunex offers a sleek blend of speed and visual elegance, with clean curves and distinctive ligatures. Optimized for a variety of sizes, this versatile font is ideal for numerous projects, from logos and branding to product packaging and posters. With multilingual support and a range of typographic options included, Pro Dunex is ideal for businesses across a range of sectors.

Kantata Aksara – Ethnic Yoga Font

Kantata Aksara blends the grace of Indian culture into a unique and stylish display typeface. This font is versatile, finding its place in anything from cultural logos and yoga merchandise to product packaging and magazine content. With expansive features including uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, alternates, and multi-language support, Kantata Aksara enhances any project with an ethnic touch.

Uwaisyahm – Elegant Yoga Font

Uwaisyahm is a dynamic and authentic typeface that draws inspiration from Muslim movie posters. Crafted by hand for a natural, handmade feel, the font will catch your eye with its clean lines, and vibrant character set of 205 characters. Ideal for logos, labels, t-shirt prints, product packaging, promotional materials, and more.

KAIVALYA – Clean Yoga Font

KAIVALYA is a clean yoga font by ikiiko that beautifully merges tradition and style. This culturally inspired serif typeface, with its multitude of stylistic alternatives, is perfect for yoga-related uses, beauty products, magazine spreads, and creating elegant logos. It comes with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, and multilingual support in both TTF and OTF formats.

Royoga – Elegant Serif & Yoga Font

Royoga is a striking display font that stands out in various contexts, making it a versatile choice for branding projects. Perfect for creating unique logos, sporty poster designs, and more, this elegant serif and yoga-inspired font comes in three formats: OTF, TTF, and WOFF, catering to all your design needs.

Unalome – Sacred Yoga Font

Unalome yoga font marries spiritual symbolism with the art of typography, creating a unique and meaningful font, perfect for personal and spiritual growth themes. Individual characters are imbued with qualities derived from the Unalome symbol, used in Buddism to represent the path to enlightenment.

Besrage – Groovy & Yoga Font

Imbue your branding projects with authenticity and boldness using the Besrage font. This groovy, yoga-themed display font shines in various contexts, such as posters, logos, sports, and many more. Included formats are: OTF, TTF, and WOFF. The Besrage Font offers the unique blend of grooviness and tranquility, making it an essential creative asset for your toolkit.

Zesant – Modern Yoga Font

Zesant is a stylish and fluid san serif yoga font featuring a multitude of ligatures. This versatile typeface, suitable for creating striking logos and distinctive titles, offers compatibility with a range of other fonts and projects. Zesant supports multiple languages and is PUA encoded. It is wonderfully user-friendly and comes in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats.

Gymans – Bold Gym Font

Gymans is an original and compelling choice for various design projects. From clothing labels to movie titles, album covers, and logos, its distinctiveness can enhance your work. The package includes OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, giving you the flexibility and convenience to utilize it as desired.

Soulder – Gym Font

This is a strikingly unique font perfect for various design requirements. Its versatility lends well to labeling, movie scenes, posters, titles, album covers, logos, and much more. With high accessibility formats like OTF, TTF, and WOFF included, it ensures a user-friendly experience that enhances your design aesthetics.

Grind – Demolished Gym Font

Grind is a striking display typeface that embodies power and resilience. This big and bold font exudes a masculine, rugged charm that instantly captures attention. It’s the perfect choice for striking headlines or to inject a dose of strength and determination into your project.

Sprokice – Gym Font

Sprokice is an innovative, genuine display font perfect for various branding projects, such as logo creation, t-shirt printing, or esport applications. Its contemporary design stands out in numerous contexts, offering uppercase characters in both otf and ttf formats.

Sport Master – Sport & Gym Font

Sport Master is an authentic and robust gym font perfect for diverse branding projects, from sports logos to other designs. Its confident display stands out in multiple contexts. The package offers regular and italic styles, available in .OTF, .TTF, and .WOFF formats, ensuring a perfect fit for various usage scenarios.

Madrisc – Gym & Sport Font

Madrisc is an assertive gym and sport font that brings any sport-inspired project to life with its striking appeal. Ideal for sports designs, jerseys, logos, movie titles, game covers, and more, it makes any work stand out. Its features include uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, and multilingual capabilities.

Body Shape – Fitness & Gym Font

Body Shape is a distinct typography style for use in various designs like clothing labels, movie scenes, posters, album covers, and logos, among others. It’s ready-to-use and comes in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, allowing for flexibility and creativity in your design endeavors.

Vaghiro – Gym & Sport Font

Vaghiro is a versatile and unique typeface that’s perfect for a range of uses including labeling, movie titles, posters, album covers, and logos. This font, available in OTF, TTF and WOFF formats, brings a fresh and edgy aesthetic that’s particularly suited to gym and sports-themed designs.

Free Fitness & Yoga Fonts

Metashift – Free Fitness Font

This free font features a stylishly bold and creative letter design that will help you design attractive logos, titles, and headings for your fitness and gym-themed design projects. The font includes both uppercase and lowercase characters. And it’s free for personal use.

Hafespace- Free Sports & Gym Font

Hafespace is a bold and modern font that’s perfect for designing all kinds of typography related to sports and gym centers. The font has all-caps letters with a stylishly unique design. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Menseal – Free Fitness Font

This font is also free to download and it comes with a simple and clean letter design. This font is most suitable for fitness-related branding designs, especially for masculine titles and headings. The font is free for personal use.

Yogaclass – Free Script Font

Craft a beautifully elegant title for your yoga class flyer or poster with this free script font. The font features elegantly curved letters with an elegant look and feel. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Yogaday – Free Script Yoga Font

This free font is also made with yoga and wellness typography designs in mind. It’s ideal for making headings, titles, logos, and business cards for your business. The font is free to download and use with personal projects.

In today’s digital age, your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. Consistent website maintenance is essential to ensure your site remains functional, secure, and effective in meeting your business goals. Neglecting regular updates can lead to a range of issues that may impact user experience and your bottom line. …

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