Posts Tagged ‘design’

How to Create Pinterest Images
that People Love to Pin:
7 Pinteresting Tips

Wednesday, February 6th, 2013

How to Create Pinterest Images that People Love to Pin: 7 Pinteresting Tips

As a lot of people do, I love having my blog posts pinned or repinned on Pinterest. Not only does it make me feel great that someone is loving my work, but it also helps to promote our brand and business across a whole new platform. As a blog writer and a Pinterest lover, I’ve learned that the key to getting my work pinned is making sure my images are optimized for Pinterest. An optimized image can draw a user in, entice them to pin my content and, if I’m super lucky, even read my post. Now, what’s the trick to creating the most pin-worthy, optimized images?

Below are 7 tips I’ve learned to create images that Pinterest users will definitely love to pin:

1. Choose Visually Appealing Imagery

The number one thing you can do is use images, videos or infographics that are visually interesting, beautiful, or aesthetically appealing. Pinterest is a place to come to get inspired, so a great looking image will be valuable to a user and will encourage pinning. The most pin-worthy pins use professional-looking photography and smart design. When creating imagery, make sure to use your own original content and/or purchase stock imagery to avoid any copyright issues. Beautiful and original content will always draw users in, enticing them to pin or repin your work.

2. Build Images at an Optimal Size for Pinterest

It is important to build your images based around Pinterest’s image size restrictions. Pinterest scales images to two different sizes:

  1. The thumbnail pins in the Pinterest feed are displayed at 192px wide with a variable height proportionate to the original image. If the pin is smaller than 192px wide, it will remain its original size and will display on Pinterest with gray bars on either side to fill the additional space. Pins can be no smaller than 81 x 81px.
  2. A larger, zoomed-in version of the image is also used on the pin detail page and has a width of 600px, again with variable height. If the image is smaller than 600px, the photo will be stretched to fill the space, which could cause for some unfortunate looking images.

How to Create Pinterest Images that People Love to Pin | How Images are Displayed on Pinterest

To get optimum looking pins, it is best to use a width of 600px and avoid having tiny, stretched or pixelated images. You can create images at any length you would like. Some people choose to use long images to give their pin more presence on the page. However, if your image is too long, people might not want to take the time to scroll all the way back up to repin your content.

3. Use Text on Your Images to Describe Your Content

Using text on images to describe your content makes your images extremely pin-friendly. Your text serves as a reminder to Pinners—when someone sees your pin, they will immediately know what your pin is about. They won’t have to rely on the description. This way, users will always understand what you pin is, even if your text description is changed or deleted.

How to Create Pinterest Images that People will love to Pin  |  Use Text on Your Images to Describe what You are Pinning

Use text on your images to describe what your content is about

4. Make Text Easy to Read

When creating text based images or adding text over a photo, you should make sure the text will be large enough to be legible in Pinterest’s thumbnail format. The text can get quite tiny, so testing the appearance of your images is key.

How to Create Pinterest Images that People Love to Pin  |  Previewing Your Pin before you Post

If your type is legible on the “Create Pin” window, it will look good across the Pinterest image feed.

There are two things you can try depending on your skill level. First, before you save your graphic, temporarily scale it so the width is 192px. If you can still read it, you’re all set to save your image. Second, If you have already created your image, try pinning the image from your preview area before you publish it to your blog or site. If it looks good in the description box, it will look good on the site. If things are hard to read, try enlarging the font or increasing the font weight.

Brand Your Pins

West Elm uses branding to show they are holding the “Pin it to win it” contest

5. Brand Your Images

When something is your own work, it is a good idea to brand your content by adding a logo or url to your Image. This lets users know where the work came from and serves as a way to get more exposure of your brand. People also might be fans of a specific brand, so seeing a logo can engage a user even further. Users will know instantly who created the image and where they can find it online. A great example of this is West Elm’s Sweepstakes Pin. They use their logo at the top of the pin, so users know exactly who is running the contest.

6. Link Your Pin to Something Great

Whether it’s informative, instructive, fun, entertaining or helpful, your pin should always link to something great. Many Pinterest users pin images to learn more, see related items, or just to reference linked content. When someone clicks on an image they generally want to see more great material or learn more about what has been pinned. People get discouraged by a pin that doesn’t have a back-link or takes them to somewhere unrelated to the image. If the URL is missing, you can add it under the edit menu for the pin. Also consider adding the URL in the description area. By providing a link to the pin’s original source, your pin is automatically more valued and more pin-worthy.

7. Create Thoughtful File Names for Your Content

Create Thoughtful File Names for Your Content

Create a thoughtful file name for your image. This will appear as your description when someone pins your content.

Label the images you publish on your site with information about what is contained in your pin. When someone goes to pin your image, this information will appear in the description of your pin. It is a good habit to spend the time to include your business, blog name, web URL and/or blog title within the image name. Descriptions shouldn’t be too long, aim for 200-300 character length to entice users to pin. This description will appear as keywords below your image and make your pins easily searchable.

Put the Tips in Action

It’s time to start making the most out of your imagery. If you follow these tricks of the trade, Pinterest users won’t be able to stop themselves from pinning your content! Have more tips for optimizing your images for Pinterest? I’d love to hear them.

And as always, don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest, and of course, Zoom Creates.

Follow Me on Pinterest

For more pinteresting tips on Pinterest, check out my related post:
How to Increase Your Pinterest Followers: 20 Pinteresting Tips


1978 AMC Pacer Wagon Illustration

Friday, January 4th, 2013

In my last few posts, I have been writing about techniques I use when illustrating cars in Illustrator. I am still doing funky wagons/hatchbacks. My latest is a 1978 AMC Pacer Wagon. During the creation of this car, I took a screenshot every so often. I thought this would help illustrate the technique of drawing the main overall shape and then logically cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces that I mentioned in a previous post.

I really wanted to do a 1977 Pinto Cruising Wagon but could not find a high enough resolution photo to work from so I set my sights on an AMC Pacer. I finally found a large photo of a not just a Pacer but a Pacer Wagon with wood trim on Flickr.

Step 1: Place into Illustrator

Step 2: Trace the body of the car with the pen tool shown here in magenta. I find it easier to omit the wheels from this step as I will do the separately on their own layer(s). On this car, I did not include the roof rack in this step because it helped me create a smooth line for the contour of the roof. I can add the roof rack to the roof later. I always work to make my paths have as few points as possible. Fewer points on your paths make for smoother more flowing lines. I probably should have done that on the back bumper and the front spoiler.

Here it is in Outline Mode showing the 64 of anchor points:

Step 3: Start dividing this large shape into smaller shapes. I started with the front bumper and worked my way around the rest of the car in no particular order. I made an animated .gif from my screenshots showing the method to my madness.

Step 4: Add some color. For all my cars I have tried to limit the number of colors to 5 but for this car I used 6.(I know it looks like 7 but I consider one of the colors is the color of the paper this would be printed on.)

On the Aztek, I experimented  with crosshatched lines in order to add tints and tones to the colors instead of using gradients. For this car, I created a huge concentric circle pattern and used it as a radial halftone to create tints and tones. The pattern is just a series of stroked circle shapes with space in between each circle. By changing the colors of the lines of the pattern and placing them over a solid color, you can create many more color combinations. In this example, I have turned 7 colors into 49. (I did not end up using all 49 combinations in my illustration.)

I filled each shape of my illustration with one of these 7 colors. In the shapes that use the halftone pattern, i add another fill to the shape using the Appearance Palette. For example, the shadow of the car is one shape that has two fills. One fill is black and the other fill is the gray pattern. To create another fill, open the Appearances Palette, make sure Fill is selected and click the New icon at the bottom of the palette. This will give you a new fill that is the same color as the original fill. All you then have to do is select this new fill and click the radial halftone pattern in your Swatches Palette.

 

Speaking of Patterns, they always behaved strangely for me. Sometimes they moved with the shape  and sometimes they did not. In Illustrator Preferences ->General, I found a check box called Transform Pattern Tiles.

When you fill something with a pattern, Illustrator actually fills the entire document with that pattern but uses the object’s shape as a kind of clipping mask. So as you drag the filled object around the artboard, it’s like moving a window around … the pattern is stationary, just different parts of it are revealed as you move the clipping mask around. When you scale an object with the Scale or Free Transform tool, the pattern doesn’t scale. So if you would rather the pattern move and transform with the object, turn on Transform Pattern Tiles.

For this illustration, I made sure the pattern remained stationary so all the lines of the pattern lined up no matter what color they were. Here is detail of the center of the pattern starting just below the front tire. You can see how the lines line up through the shadow, tire, hubcap, and body of the car.

The entire pattern is revealed as a huge moon behind the car.

I created another animated .gif showing the process of me coloring the car.

This illustration was a lot of fun. I learned a lot and can’t wait to get started on the next one.


More Cars with Adobe Illustrator

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

My last post briefly touched on the basic technique I use for drawing cars in Adobe Illustrator. Today, I thought I would share some of the other techniques I use.

It helps me if I give myself some limitations or parameters to help narrow down the realm of possibilities. For some reason, lately, I have decided to do a series of funky wagons/hatchbacks. Before this I did a series of Porsches. I also have decided to limit the number of colors I use per illustration to 6 and not to use any gradients, gradient meshes or any non-vector effects like drop shadow or outer glow, etc.. This will give the illustrations a more poster-like appearance which is the effect I am going for. It is also my dream to one day have these illustrations screen printed which is another reason I have given myself these specific limitations.

In order to include a lot of detail in my illustrations, it is very important to work from a high resolution photo. For the illustration of a 2001 Pontiac Aztek GT, the photo I used was 2048 x 1536 pixels. This allowed me to see the finer details of the car, like the seals around the windows and the grill. I found this photo doing a Google Image search with the filter set to Large.

I have been setting up my file to be 11 x 8.5 inches.

To get smooth paths, it helps to try and use as few points as possible.

As I trace the contour of the car, I use the pen tool with .25 pt stroke and 100% magenta with no fill. This way, I can see my path easily but the stroke is not so thick that it hides the photo on the layer below when you zoom in.

And speaking of layers, of course they are very important. Here is how I set up my layers. I have the original photo on the bottom. Above that, I make a copies of the photo with different blending modes. I turn these on and off while tracing the contour of the car. The screen layer lightens the dark parts of the car in the shadows and the multiply layer darkens the washed out areas. I also make a version of the car in Photoshop that has been Grayscaled and Posterized. This layer is helpful when deciding how you want to break up the larger pieces especially the gray pieces like the wheel and tires. Then there is a background layer which the car will sit on. I like to split the wheels from the body on their own layers. I also have a layer for detail lines and other elements like mirrors or lights or windshield wipers. It is also important to make a copy of the file after you get the entire car outlined. That way, in case you delete a piece or want to do a piece over, you have a copy that you can open, copy and then paste in front.

 

Here are the 6 colors I decided to use for this illustration:

As an experiment, I also created some pattern swatches with some of those same colors:

When I lay a pattern on top of a color, I get the illusion of different tints, tone and colors all from the same 6 colors:

The easiest way to do this for me is to use the Appearance palette. Select a shape, give it a fill. Then in the Appearance Palette, add another fill and fill it with the pattern. Here is the final illustration.

Here is a close-up of the detail:

Here are the outlines of the vector shapes:

Hopefully these tips have helped. Happy drawing!

 


Breaking 960: Responsive Web Design for Wide Screens

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

Responsive Web Design is taking over—resizing, adapting and shifting content so that each visitor gets an ideal viewing experience, regardless of what device they are using. Responsive web design is great for so many devices, from phones to tablets to laptops, but I’ve been noticing that the majority of responsive websites don’t adapt much beyond a 960 pixel width. W3Schools shows that 85% of visitors have a screen resolution higher than 1024, which gives us good reason to start paying more attention to the use and aesthetics beyond 960. Plus, if the whole point of responsive design is to be able to view content on any size of device, shouldn’t we also accommodate wide-width screens? The big question then is, how do we effectively design websites for those higher screen resolutions?

The Problem with 960
The 960 Grid System is based on a 960 pixel width using 12 or 16 columns and 20px gutters. The 960 has become a standard. I’m not going to deny that this system works great, it gives a perfect underlying structure to work with and divides nicely into a variety of column widths for easy use. But, I use a monitor that is 2560×1440 and when I open a standard 960 grid website, it floats in the middle of the browser with wide columns on either side, usually with some type of repeating color or photo that fills the background. On one hand, you’ve got to love the white space. It focuses your attention to the important content and gives a site A LOT of breathing room. But on the other hand, you have so much dead space, why not put it to use?

Breaking away from the standard 960 is tough, and requires a great amount of consideration to keep the site from looking overly cluttered and busy. If we go big, we’ve got to do it right. We shouldn’t just fill the page because we have the space, it needs to have purpose, still look visually appealing, and content should make sense as to not overwhelm the user.

Break it up
On first thought, the obvious answer is to let the text columns expand to fill the extra space. Wrong! If there are really wide columns of text it greatly reduces the readability. In The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst says that a good measure or line length is somewhere between 45 and 75 characters. Any longer than this and your viewer can have a hard time scanning back to find the start of your next line of text and cause misread lines of content. Breaking items into more columns of text may be the answer to utilizing the extra width.

Make it Larger
Next, you’ve got to get the size right. In most cases the larger your device, the further you sit away from it. Example: An average person sits about 18 inches from their laptop, but about 7 feet from their big screen. If you’re further away, the site will need larger text so a viewer can actually read it from a comfortable distance. Also consider a taller line height (more space between lines of text). A sufficient line height will allow the text to be more scannable.

Reorganize and Prioritize
Lastly, content will need to be reorganized for the larger layout. With so much width to play with, why not explore the placement of the content, displaying hidden content, or bringing in additional elements. Maybe the footer becomes a sidebar column or the horizontal navigation becomes another vertical column, allowing the rest of the content to be closer to the top. With all this additional content shown on the page, look out for information overload. The larger content area can make the page look cluttered. You should only be adding content that adds value to the page and still keeps it’s visual appeal. The page should still have strong hierarchy, including a good amount of white-space with elements scaled appropriately.

With the number of large screens growing, there is good reason to start pushing the boundaries and exploring ways to make use of wide-screen environments. To do this right, consideration has to be given to the added space. Elements need to be broken up so that they make most sense. Text and images should accommodate increased viewing distances. And content should be reorganized and prioritized so it remains visually appealing, but still lets users easily find the information they are looking for. With all these considerations in mind, we should be well on our way to creating successful wide-width responsive designs.


​The Web Diet

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

The Web DietIn any diet you need to cut the fat in order to see results. After recently starting a new diet, I’ve realized that I’m no longer eating for taste, but eating for fuel. This means giving up the “fluff” that might taste great, but that also does nothing for my figure.

To get results, sometimes you just have to streamline and give the body what it needs to run at its highest efficiency. The same goes for your website. A healthy site cuts out excess. It should be the site you need, not necessarily the site you want. Remove the bulk and nourish it with stronger, leaner content, a thoughtful design, and a healthy organizational system. If you fueled with all of these “ingredients” it can thrive and achieve a look and feel that will appeal to your target audience.

Looking to get lean? Check out The Web Diet breakdown:

CONTENT:

  • Make it useful. Your content should be helpful and relevant to your audience or potential customer. Always consider your customers’ goals and what they are looking for.
  • Say it well. Make sure your site contains well written, credible, and original content. If you’re not a great copywriter, hire a professional. Keep information updated and fresh to give your audience a reason to come back.
  • Make sure it’s accurate. Use good grammar and spelling, duh!
  • Keep it short. To draw in your visitors, keep your text to a minimum. People have short attention spans—they skim and want to get to pertinent information quickly.
  • Give a call to action. Let users know what to do next—buy, contact, email, or sign-up. Help them make their next decision and get them to do what you want to them to.

DESIGN:

  • Give a good visual impression. You would dress up for an interview, so do the same with your site. First impressions are important, so put your best foot forward and create a design that is clean and visually appealing.
  • Set the tone. The visual appearance of your site will give your audience clues to the type of experience they can expect. White and clean could signal professional and credible, while colorful and textural could read unique and creative. Make sure your tone is in line with your business goals and your audience needs.
  • Design to your audience. Your look and feel should speak to your target audience. Choose photos and graphics that add visual appeal and makes sense for your viewer and your product or service.
  • Keep it simple. Your design should let viewers focus on your message. Let your message breathe with adequate white space. Your color, fonts and imagery should lead the user where you want them to go.
  • Make it readable. Make sure your text size and font is legible and has enough contrast for easy reading.

ORGANIZATION:

  • Logical Navigation. Put navigation where your audience would expect it—generally at the top of the page. Choose navigation language that is logical and makes the most sense for your viewer. Pages should have clear names so users can intuitively move through your site. Limit the number of items in your main navigation—aim for 5-7 links.
  • Create Hierarchy. Content should be arranged to make the most sense. Break information into sections or paragraphs. Group like elements and put information where users would expect to find it. Hierarchy allows viewers to easily scan and absorb your content.
  • Make it easy to find. Don’t bury key information in your site. Users should be able to get what they want within 3 clicks or less.

Diets aren’t always the easiest, but the results are worth it. Remember, don’t do something just because you can—cut out the bulk. Focus on what is most important to fuel your audience and make your site fit their needs. Relevant content, purposeful design and logical organization will keep your site thriving and keep viewers coming back.


Beautiful, Dynamic Words with Aierbazzi, jQuery, and @font-face kit

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Roberto Cecchi created and posted his Aierbazzi (which means “weeds”) font to his web site back in 2008. He has been experimenting with fonts creating illustrations in a simple format, and he has posted creative use of this font for non-commercial applications. The letters in the font are placed one above the other, layering and building a new shape. It’s an interesting concept, and I wanted to re-share it here.

Demo:
Enter a word or phrase in to the box below to see how the illustration begins to emerge. On load, the illustration shows what “ZoomCreates” looks like. Numbers and symbols won’t work, so you must only use upper and lowercase A-Z characters. Also, no spaces allowed.

:ZoomCreates

(more…)


Getting More from Mobile Sites

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Mobile sites are generally designed for the on-the-go user. With this user-type in mind, mobile sites can become overly paired down to just the basic details that a user might need, such as directions, a phone number, and social media links. Yes, a mobile user may most-likely be on-the-go, but I think the mobile audience is shifting. When I’m away from work, I use my phone as my primary method of surfing the web, meaning I’m not just using it on-the-go. It’s the main way I access the internet and I’m now expecting more than the most basic functionality from a mobile site.

Like most people with smartphones or other mobile devices, you can find me using mine everywhere. I’m on it while I’m at lunch, estate saleing on the weekends and definitely on the couch while “watching” TV. Since I’m using my phone as my second computer, I would hope that the mobile site would have the same functionality of a laptop or desktop, but optimized for my mobile device. A mobile site has to accommodate every user, if they are out and about, or just laying in bed before they turn off the lights.

Because of this common over simplification, I often find myself clicking on “view full site” taking me away from the mobile version of the page. I’ll get frustrated when information on a mobile site isn’t intuitive or if a site is so pared down that I can’t find the information I’m looking for. And once I move away from the site, the user experience deteriorates. I have to pinch and zoom to read any text or sit waiting for pages to load. The mobile site experience becomes a missed opportunity. A better experience causes increased engagement, more conversion and a good chance someone will walk away feeling positive about your company or product.

A mobile site should create a focused experience, not a limited experience. To do this:

1. Information needs to be highly prioritized. Present the content that will be most important to the user first. A mobile site should focus on prime information pages upfront, but let you dive deeper if needed. The content users interact with should be adjusted to suit the size of their site— the same information from the full site may need to be presented in a different order from the full site to make more sense for the mobile user.

2. Navigation should be simplified, minimizing the user options. The navigation needs to be clear and intuitive to the user so they can find exactly what they are looking for. If needed, pages should include sub navigation so the user can still access any meaty details.

3. Your site should be touch-friendly. Buttons or links need to be large and easy to hit with a thumb or finger tip, based off of standard finger sizes (Apple suggests 44 pixels) Not only should it be click-able, but it should be in an area it can be easily clicked—buttons shouldn’t be placed too closely together, or you risk taking the user to the wrong link.

4. Images should be limited. Reduce the number of images to limit loading times.

The ultimate goal in having a mobile is to create a platform that is adapted to a device’s size, but mainly to what the user needs. We need to think about what mobile users want when visiting a mobile site, if it is to get things quickly on-the-go, or if they are using it as their main computer. A mobile site should not be limiting, but focused to give the user a valuable and positive experience that keeps them coming back for more.


Tangerine Tango Dream

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Back in December of 2011 Pantone announced the 2012 Color of the Year — Tangerine Tango. It’s always fun to see how and where the color of the year shows up in design, fashion, interiors, product and packaging design, among other places. The general spirit of Tangerine Tango has been showing up in fashion in general, and makeup in particular, throughout the year. I’ve been seeing coral lipstick everywhere and loving it! But now, its really official, Sephora and Pantone have teamed up to create a Color Of The Year makeup collection inspired by Tangerine Tango. I definitely have an eye on the lip gloss set! I’m not wild about the packaging, but I’ll leave that commentary for another day… In the meantime, I’ve collected images showing just a few of the places I’ve seen this bright reddish orange trend showing up. Enjoy!


Whether you need it or not

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

The Zoom Creates team has created six sets of  temporary tattoos, and to share some of our ink-spiration, we’ll be posting a “Tat-A-Day”. The “Tat-A-Day” posts will last throughout the duration of the Rethink Ink contest. So tune in and get ink-spired to create your own!

We’re starting off our “Tat-A-Day” posts with a few from the Zoomer-ific set. It’s full of tattoos referencing the little things that make us laugh, but there are a few of those Zoomer inside jokes that may need a bit of an explanation.

Today being Thursday, otherwise known as Shower Day, we decided to kick this off with “Whether You Need It Or Not”. This tattoo is inspired by Greg, one of our talented designers. Since starting at Zoom he has claimed that he showers only once a week, and always on Thursday. Some think he’s messing with our minds and testing whether we’ll fall for his lies. Robin is known to believe anything and everything she hears, so she’s an easy target! But others are convinced that Greg is just comfortable enough with his coworkers to let us in on his “dirty” secrets. The debate continues…

I asked Greg this morning why Thursday was shower day. He said, after years of shower schedule experimentation, with everything from once a month to twice a week, he found once a week to be the perfect schedule. Thursday, it turns out, is perfect, because its sort of mid week, and yet closer to the weekend. We all know that it’s more important to be looking (and smelling?) your best on Friday than it is on Monday.

So there you have it. Happy Shower Day to all!

Don’t forget to stop by the Zoom Ink web site, check out all the tattoos and score some free downloads!

Think you can do better? Bring it! Stop by our Facebook page and submit your own tattoo idea. Our design team will be designing the concept that inspires us the most!


Rethink Ink

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Your Mom Tattoo

Today we officially launch the Rethink Ink Contest. The Zoom Creates team has created six sets of super fresh temporary tattoos and we want you to dream up the next one.

What’s your inkspiration?

Head over to the Zoom Creates Facebook page and submit your best idea for a tattoo design. The concepts that inspire the Zoom team the most, will win all six sets of our temporary tats. Plus, the grand prize winner will get their idea produced by our graphic design team and will receive a set of their tats and a stylin’ T-shirt to show off their design to all of their jealous buds.

We’re not stopping there

Free Desktop Background and Smart Phone Background DownloadsWe want to make sure everyone’s devices stay rockin’ too. Drop by the Zoom Ink site to spice up your laptop or mobile phone with backgrounds inspired by the tats. You won’t want to hide these from your mom! To see the whole collection and score some amazing free downloads, make sure to hit up the site!

For the duration of the contest we’ll be featuring a “Tat a Day” on the blog to give a little background on where our inspiration came from for the Zoom Ink tats. So, tune in, get inspired and don’t forget to show off your inkspiration!