Look at the latest design trends, tools and learn from some easy to follow tutorials. Even if you’re not a pro, you’ll find helpful tips to create and improve your brand identity.
Canva is a very well-known design app that made it possible for hundreds of thousands of users to create nice looking graphic content without hiring a designer. As much as it’s a very intuitive and easy app to use, there’s always some learning curve for newbies. This is why I’m launching my Canva…
It’s always fascinating to see how a product comes together. Let it be a physical or digital product, the way it slowly manifests from a bare idea to a real-life thing that people can buy and use always mesmerized me. But I hardly thought that one day I’m going to…
In this post, I’m going to teach you how to create mockups in Photoshop and use them to present your products, brand or artwork. If you already heard about mockups, you can scroll down to watch the video tutorial and grab the 3 free mockups that come with this post. But if you say “mock whaaat?!” then the next few paragraphs…
Last week I showed you the 3 key rules of choosing the right fonts for your brand. This week, I’m still talking about typography, but we go one step further. We’ll talk about an important and often ignored step in brand identity design: defining your brand typography system. But what is a brand typography system? –…
I’m bit of a font hoarder. I think I mentioned this before, but currently I have more than 500 font families on my iMac and even more that I purchased and not yet installed. As a logo and brand designer, I know that my work depends on high-quality fonts. Why? Because the right font can easily…
We got to the final part of the Brand Colors blog post series. You’ve already learned about the emotions that colors can trigger and the 4 easy steps to build your unique brand color palette. In this last blog post you’ll learn about color codes and how they can help you get the best result when using your brand…
Last week I showed you the effects and psychology of each main color group. If you haven’t read that article, you can find it here. Today, I go a step further: in this article, you’ll learn how to create your brand color palette. This post comes with an inspiring freebie: 50 beautiful color palettes for feminine brands. These color…
Colors have an important role in brand identity. Depending on what brand colors you choose you can affect your audience and customers in different ways: you can cheer them up, calm them down or stir up feelings of nostalgia in them. Your brand colors also build brand recognition. Just think about the red and yellow…
In my previous post, I taught you how to create your own animated GIFs from illustration elements in Photoshop. Now it’s time to put them in use. In this post, I’m going to show you how to add your own GIF stickers to Instagram Stories – which is one of the coolest ways to use animated GIFs. This…
Back in the early years of the internet when we had to type in html codes to design our websites (= horrible IT class memories), there was something that everyone went obsessed with. Animated GIFs. Soon, every page had 100 hundred different animated gizmos jumping and looping around, fighting for attention and aiming to meticulously kill our eyeballs….
You went to watch a movie with your spouse. The theatre is filled with the rich scent of popcorn and the noise of chatting people and arcade games. You find your room and seats, watch all the trailers – and some annoyingly dumb ads – and then it comes. The logo of the movie studio glides into the center of the screen with heroic music…
As a designer, I don’t have a problem when I have to open a new type of design app. After a while they all seem similar and I can easily find the features and tools I’m looking for. But when it comes to newbies, or business owners who want to buy only…
In my previous blog post, I shared 5 money-saving options for obtaining a logo for your new business. It was a good start to show you, that no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, you can have a nice logo and visual identity. However, cheap pre-made logos and logo templates can come with limitations if you don’t purchase them from a trusted…
In today’s post, I’m going to share with you my mood board creation process. First, you’re going to learn about the steps I do to choose the right images for my mood boards. Next come 2 videos, where I’m going to show you how to build your brand mood board in Photoshop or…
I wrote about the importance of mood boards in a previous post, but I thought it’s time to revisit this topic. In that post, I quickly listed what I usually include on my mood boards. Since then, my process evolved a bit and I’m ready to share the improved version. I…
If you’ve ever worked with a designer or design agency, you might have heard about the “creative brief” document. Now tell me honestly: did you think that you definitely need that document, or you started questioning your designer. “Is she just trying to overcharge me for something I don’t need?” No worries, a creative brief is a legit and important document that you need before every…
Back in high school, and even during my university years, I gathered with my besties for some holiday crafting at our friend’s, Anita’s house. This memory is so strong in me, that every time the Halloween decor is switched to Christmas garlands at our local Michaels, I feel like buying…
Do you love drawing, painting or just simply doodling? Have you ever thought that it’s just a hobby and it won’t ever help you make money? I sure did. I always loved drawing but I thought that I could only make money from it if I become a big name…
Have you ever purchased Instagram templates? You know, those packages on Creative Market and similar sites with 50+ layouts for sharing your content in style. I actually sell those products myself and this post is going to be a bit controversial… I don’t recommend you to buy too many of those…
Ten years ago, your two options for creating visual content for your website were the Pro Tools (like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop) and the Annoyingly Incompetent Tools (Like using PowerPoint to create website headers. Have you ever done that? It’s really painful). This is not the case today. We have so…
In this quick blog post I’m going to show you the lightbulb moment and inspiration behind my new Brand Builder product lines and monthly freebies. I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions on how to make these products more useful for you.MY EARLY 2018 FAILURE I started 2018…
When it comes to your brand, photos are everything! You use them on your website, in Instagram, for your webinars, online courses and e-books. Unfortunately not all of us are great with cameras or have the extra time and money to buy props and organize our own photo shooting days…
If I have to choose my costliest designer quirk it’s certainly my hard line addiction for great fonts. I often tell my husband when he sees a new design related expense on our credit card that “Honey, a designer can never have enough fonts!” The situation is a bit different…
Do you feel intimidated when you open Photoshop or Illustrator? I totally understand you. Believe it or not, but I felt pretty lost 10 years ago when I first came across these key design softwares. True story: while I was studying industrial design engineering, I was more capable in AutoCAD…
Design file formats… This does NOT sound like the most glamorous topic, I know. But if you don’t have a basic understanding of file formats, you can waste tremendous amount of time and money. Continue Reading
It has been for a while that I wanted to blog about all the amazing design apps for creating beautiful social media templates from scratch. It seems that new and new tools are introduced every week to address all sorts of design needs and to promise productivity and ease of…
You are scrolling through your Instagram profile and let out a big, overwhelmed sigh. The kind of sigh, that alerts your hubby, who immediately jumps to your side ready to give a big, comforting hug. Or you might sit down to create visuals in Canva for your latest blog post…
