Warner Bros.

Don’t those two words just spark loads of childhood memories for you? 

Anyone else?

Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Friends, and basically all good movies/shows ever!

I gotta be honest, I really didn’t know how to feel when I heard about the brand new logo and identity that WB was going for.

And after looking at it and letting it sink in, I think I can properly voice my opinion. 

But first, let’s get into a brief history of WB Studios. 

A Brief History of the Warner Bros Studio

Warner Bros has been around since 1923 and is surely one of the most well-known entertainment companies ever.

 With great, recognizable shows and movies like The Big Bang Theory, The DC Universe, Harry Potter, The Lego movie and loads and loads more, the library has more than 100,000, let me say that again, 100,000 hours of programming.

Not only do they have movies and tv shows, but they also have, as you probably know, comics books, video games that we all know and love. 

And now that they’re coming up on their centenary, they are celebrating with a brand new logo. 

Out with the old and in with the new. 

We can thank Pentagram for this new design that will suit all branches of the studio. 

Keeping many of the same, iconic elements of the original logo, we can look at this rebranding as kind of a great make-over, rather than a brand new reinvention of the logo.

Vice president of public affairs and worldwide corporate communications, DeeDee Myers, said that the “visual identity looked a little dated.

And that’s where Emily and her team came in. 

Emily Oberman, who headed up the redesign team, said she wanted to keep the original and iconic shield, but make it “more sleek and clean”. 

Here you can see the process of the redesign.

Instead of looking at the old logo as dated and needing an entirely new look, they kept the original elements and just kind of gave it a pick-me-up. 

By just making some simple changes and tweaking things here and there, a whole new design came out of the process. 

Even though the changes may have been small, they were able to maintain the original identity of the logo and brand, while giving it a whole new look.

The team said that they wanted the new logo to give people a sense of WB Studios moving into the future with us. 

While the shield has suffered a few changes, it was vital to the team and WB Studio that it was still easily recognizable to all fans and viewers. 

And I truly believe they were able to do just that.

It is more sleek and clean, just like they wanted. 

The shield was put into a golden ratio and thinned out a bit, and the letters were redrawn to give it a better sense of balance.

The iconic blue color of the WB Studios Logo was made more modern by brightening it just enough.

With this new logo came room for variation. 

This new logo needed to fit across all platforms and needed to look natural. 

The new logo can be modified to fit any occasion, or as DeeDee Myers liked to call it, logo soup. 

This logo comes in two different variations. A flat version, and a more dimensional version. 

This logo needs to fit any movie, show, comic book, etc, and that’s why it is so important that it can be easily modified to fit any occasion, while simultaneously keeping that originality and recognizability. 

Myers told us that “There is a tremendous ability to play with it and bring it to life.”. 

And that’s what Emily Oberman and the team were going for when they said, they wanted the logo to be “contemporary, while also being able to be used as a sponge for any story they wanted to tell,”. 

Amongst the two new design variations of this logo is also a new font. 

Warner Bros Sans is an original font that came from the original shield of the logo and was inspired by the 1920s Art Deco. 

By doing this, Oberman said that the brand would still be present through the custom font, even if the shield was not there. 

“We’re excited about refreshing the brand,” says Myers, “connecting it to the past, but with eyes firmly ahead.”

This project that took 3 years to complete is finally here, and it’s here to stay. 

The new logo is on the iconic water tower located on the WB Studio lot, and will soon be everywhere, from literature to social media, to big screens and on the sides of trucks.

We’re curious what you think about the new logo redesign that Warner Brothers Studio went through.

Are you a fan? Will you be missing the old logo? 

Let us know all of your opinions in the comment section below.

Until next time,

Stay creative, folks!  

With Christmas coming up very soon, you might be swamped with Christmas-themed designs.

Everyone wants to get their job done as efficiently and quickly as possible. 

That’s why I collected loads of free Christmas design resources for you.

Everything from free Christmas icons to free Christmas PNGs, vectors and images, I’ve got you covered. 

You’ll be “sleigh-in’” it this winter season with all these free Christmas design resources, let’s get right into it.

Free Christmas Icons

Last week I wrote The Ultimate Collection of Design Resources that you should definitely check out for your day to day use. 

But today, we’re talking all about free Christmas design resources.

Having some free Christmas icons will surely save you lots of time, so you don’t have to start from scratch. 

3Here is my pick of free Christmas icons that you can use. 

Flaticon

Flaticon has lots of free Christmas icons for you to use for any of your Christmas projects that are coming up.

 It’ll save you lots of time, and the fact that hundreds of these icons are free will help you save a buck as well! 

Upgrade to premium in order to get thousands of icons! 

Freepik

Freepik will help you spread tons of Christmas cheer with their hundreds of free Christmas elements. 

They have flat designs and 3D designs alike in their Christmas icons. You don’t want to miss out! 

Vecteezy

Vecteezy has lots of color and happy icons for you to use for free. 

Just choose the ones you like, download, and use to your liking! 

Free Christmas PNGs

Make your clients happy with the best Christmas PNGs out there. 

Here are my top favorite free PNG websites that will certainly help you out this season. 

Pngtree

Pngtree is great for everyday use but especially has some great Christmas PNGs. 

Their quality has never once disappointed me.

The only downside to their site, in my opinion, is that you only get 2 free PNGs a day.

So choose wisely, or consider upgrading to a premium account! 

Pngfly

Pngfly has over 20,000 free resources for you to use this Christmas. That’s definitely not an offer you want to miss out on.

Pngmart

Pngmart has tens of pages for you to browse through when looking for the perfect free Christmas PNGs. 

Check em out!

Free Christmas Vectors

Vectors are a huge part of graphic design, so it’s only right that we go over the best websites with the best free Christmas vectors that the internet has to offer.

Let’s do it.

Vexels

Vexels has some of the best vectors I’ve laid my eyes on. Colorful, cheerful, perfect for Christmas. 

If you’re looking for great free Christmas vectors, then you definitely need to check them out!

Vectorstock

But wait—there’s “myrrh”. Vectorstock has over 13,000 free Christmas vectors for you to use!

Vector4free

Vector4free is a great choice for using in your everyday designs, but not only.

They have lots of Christmas vectors for you to choose from, so I recommend you get to it! 

Free Christmas Images

Christmas images will give a warm, homey feel to any project. 

If you don’t have a camera or time to take any Christmas pictures, definitely give these free Christmas stock images websites for your work! 

Pexels

Pexels is definitely one of my personal favorite stock images websites. 

They have lots of high-quality images from great individual photographers.

 And if you want to, you can support the artist, by donating to them! 

Pixabay

Pixabay has loads of photo choices for you to choose from.

With over 20,00 free images solely dedicated to Christmas time, you’re bound to find the photo you’re looking for.

Unsplash

And finally, we have Unsplash. 

Unsplash has tons of Christmas photos for you to choose from, that are extremely festive.

Check out their site and find all your Christmas photo needs there! 

“Wrapping” up

Well, you guys snow the drill. This is the end of our time together.

I hope you found these design resources helpful! 

Until next time,

Stay creative, folks!

When establishing a brand, you should never put your logo on the back burner. 

If your logo doesn’t represent you well or it looks unprofessional, then your customers are going to bounce, leaving your business to plummet. 

We’re going to go over the 10 elements of every great logo, that you can implement into your logo design. 

Let’s get straight into it. 

1. Memorable

The first, most important element of every great logo is that it’s memorable. If your logo isn’t memorable, then you’ve got a huge problem. Because people won’t remember who you are, what you offer, and you won’t come to mind in the future when they need the product you have to offer. 

Being memorable is key. Make an original first impression on people so that they’ll always remember you when they need to. 

2. Simple

A good logo is simple. If you have a great design, then it doesn’t need to be super intricate. Yes, get all the little details and hidden images in there. That’s amazing, but it should still, in its essence, be simple and easy to grasp.

3. Easy to understand

This goes hand-in-hand with simplicity. If your logo is so complicated that no one understands it, then you’ve done something wrong. Your logo shouldn’t need a huge in-depth explanation of what it represents and means. Of course, your logo can have some subliminal messages and hidden images, but it shouldn’t be so hidden that people awkwardly say “oh… okay”.

So make sure your logo comes across well, is creative and original, but also is easy to understand.

4. Recognizable

You want to be easily recognized. On the street, in the store, online- people should see your logo and go “Hey! I know that brand.” This is just as important as memorability. If people don’t remember who you are and don’t recognize you, then your company is going to die. That’s that. 

So make sure you’re recognizable, make a statement, and are memorable.

5. Timeless

How terrible if you work months and months on your logo and company, and you fall into some crazy fads, and next year your company logo looks a little bit crazy. You definitely want to follow some great trends, but make sure that your company logo will look just as good this year as it will the next five. 

6. Scalable

Your work should look good, big or small. Whether you’re being displayed on a tiny little RDA or a giant billboard in your town. This also means that you need to have a high-quality logo design, so when you blow it up or scale it down, it looks just as good, quality-wise. 

7. Relevant

Ask yourself when designing your logo, “Why this logo design? What does it represent for me?” If your logo doesn’t describe what you’re doing and isn’t relevant to your brand… then you may be doing something wrong. You want to make sure people understand why your logo is the way it is, and you want to make sure that your target audience will vibe with it. 

8. Attention-grabbing

You’ll want your logo to turn heads. When some3one is walking by and sees your logo, you’ll want them to stop for a minute and dedicate their full attention to you. For this, you can have a cool geometrical design or some bright colors. As long as your intricate design is memorable, relevant and attention-grabbing. 

9. Be Different Than Your Competition

The worst thing you can be classified as, if you want to be a reputable company, is a knock-off. If you’re trying to have your own company, then for the love of all things good, don’t copy your competition. Yes, be inspired by them, but don’t try to be exactly like them. Look at them, take some notes, and move forward and do better. You’ve got this! 

10. Don’t be afraid of change

Everything evolves, and that means your company logo will evolve as well. Maybe not this year or the next, but somewhere down the road, you’ll need to make adjustments to make your customers happy. So don’t be set in stone, afraid to change. Change is good and should be embraced. 

And Finally

Be yourself and have some fun when designing your company brand and logo. 

Let us know in the comments what some of your personal tips are when it comes to designing a logo.

Until next time,

Stay creative, folks! 

Your product could be the most amazing and useful product in the world, but if your packaging is not on point, then your entire business could be in some major trouble.

Imagine this scenario: You’ve designed the best product in your field, invested all of your funds into creating the product, and put packaging design on the back burner. You get on a free mock-up website, make something in an hour, call it day, and show it to your investors. 

Terrible idea. 

In my personal opinion, you should put just as much effort into the packaging design of your product as you put into the product itself.

According to science, it only takes a person 1/10th of a second to create or form an opinion about someone or something. That gives you literally not even one second to give someone a great first impression. 

The first thing your potential customer is going to see is your packaging. And you better hope to goodness that you’ve aced your first impression and wowed your target audience with your packaging design.

Best Packaging Design Ideas for 2019

I’ve rounded up 20 of my favorite packaging designs for you to be inspired by for your next design project.

Let’s check em out!

1. Mint

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This face wash for men is so simplistic in its design that it’s easy and enjoyable for the eye to look at. The black color of the face wash gives off tones of luxury and the pastel colors on the box, combined with flat design, simply works for this packaging. 

2. Care Market

Continuing on with the pastel trend, we have Care Market packaging design. The palette they chose here is lovely, as pastels have been all over the place this year. The consistency in font usage is just perfect, using only two different fonts and using dividing lines between each new phrase. 

This packaging design shows us that you don’t need elaborate graphic designs to exude elegance and professionalism. All you need is a great color palette, and nice, coinciding fonts. 

3. Botany

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Less is more, as the saying goes, and botany nailed it. Minimalist, flat design is the key here and with three different color schemes that all complement each other, I can wholeheartedly say, I believe this design will catch the eye of anyone who is looking for a high-quality serum. 

4. Roji

When someone is looking for a healthy drink, they’re going to be looking for sleek, professional fonts that look organic. My favorite part of this packaging design is that the designer thought through the choice of font colors. 

Since the bottle is made of glass, you’ll be able to see its contents and the yellow font matches the beverage inside the bottle. The yellow-colored font perfectly complements the contents of the bottle. A simple, well-thought-out packaging design overall.

5. Sophia’s Tea

Stepping out a little bit from the pastel color palettes and into something a little bolder, we have Sophia’s Tea packaging design. Flat design really has taken the lead in 2019. We see it all over the place. And luckily for us designers, it makes our job a little easier. 

What I appreciate about this design is that the name of each drink matches the design of each recipient. The color scheme on each bottle matches each other, making a buyer recognize the brand, if they were to see each bottle on a shelf in a store. 

6. Juice.

Since we’re on a drink roll, check out this summery packaging design for juice. Again, we’re hit with flat design and beautiful colors. The font sticks out perfectly on the foreground of the design. Juice. Simple, clean, clear, and to the point. 

7. Brightland

I’ve never seen an olive oil packaged quite like this. At first glance, you would wonder what this beautiful bottle is doing in the oil section. 

You’re inclined to pick it up, you read that it’s olive oil, you’re shook, you compare prices between this and another oil, you realize it’s the same price, and naturally you buy the more beautiful packaging design of the two products. Hit people with original, innovative designs and you’re sales will skyrocket. 

8. Mayberry Spirit Co.

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This bottle makes me want to have a nice, classy night at home with all my friends. The vintage font works beautifully with the design of the bottle, and I love that the color schemes match the rich color of the whiskey itself. 

9. Gatorade

Here are some rebranding sketches for Gatorade. Simple design that gets across, yet still embraces the originality of the Gatorade logo. You won’t lose any brand recognizability, and it looks more modern.

10. The Restored 

The packaging design for these vitamins is everything. The manly, muted earth tones will remind a person of organic produce, making them trust your brand even more. Color association is very important when it comes to designing your packaging and establishing your brand, so choose wisely! 

11. The Restored

Here’s a second version to Restored vitamins. This packaging design is a touch more feminine, using a more pastel green, and creating more dimension in the background by using two different colors. The pop of orange in the corner brings the eyes to the directions.

12. American Crew Fragrance

This simplistic design is one way on the box and reversed on the bottle. By using one font, they really had to play with the scaling and spacing of letters and words to make it interesting and captivating. Again, packaging design can be simple and just as engaging as a super complicated design.  

13. Roys Morning Serum

Roys morning serum has two beautiful colors: a muted pink and a relaxing gold. Color association is everything. If you can convince your customers that your product is what they need and you really sell your product by having a luxurious packaging, you’ll have clients talking about you for days. 

14. Zinus

You can recognize an eco-friendly package design from a mile away, and most people are becoming very concerned and aware of their consumerism and trash contribution to the world. Using a bio-degradable packaging or using recycled material will help you loads when it comes to sales. And you’ll be helping the world. It’s a win-win.

15. Mapuche Maqui

Sometimes, making healthy choices isn’t the easiest or most fun, so presenting a fun looking health product can be key in your sales. This berry powder packaging design looks fun and friendly, used flat design, a beautiful color palette, and bold font. With all these elements combined, surely it’ll catch the eye of a customer. 

16. Botanical Coffee Co

This coffee design is so relaxing to look at. The intricate design on the sides, the simplicity on the front, and the choice of font combinations are just lovely. Again, going with flat design and pastels. See the pattern? 

17. Publix Cereal Line

Did you know that the color red increases your appetite significantly? The designer here for kids cereal certainly knew what they were doing. By combining real-life elements and flat design, kids will surely be intrigued by this design and be inclined to beg their parents for the cereal. 

18. Coffee

This coffee packaging is so bright and captivating, yet still has colors that are easy on the eyes. When choosing your color palette, you need to be sure that you’re choosing colors that soothe and colors that people want to look at. And of course, brand colors that represent you and that your audience will enjoy. 

19. Tesco Fish

Check out these “fishy” illustrations! What I really enjoyed about this packaging design was the fish. I love the very finely defined, cut-off design of the fish, and then the can and text. Each fish is design to represent its kind, and I find this design very creative, colorful, and appetizing. 

20. Moon 

And finally, we have Moon Night Cream. Notice how to colors and graphic designs represent the night. So simple, clean, and fresh-looking that you actually can’t wait to use this cream tonight before bed.

Wrapping things up 

As we all know, packaging is everything when it comes down to actually selling your product. Make sure your design represents you, your brand, and your product, and is creative and makes people feel like they need what you have to offer, in their lives. 

I hope you found this article inspiring and you’re more than ready to jump into your next design project.

Until next time,

Stay creative! 

How To Learn To Code Without Losing Your Mind

Knowing how to program is one of the most valuable skills you can have in today’s world, regardless if you’re doing it for career purposes or for the sole reason of practicing your brain. Coding is just like any other language, so it can be troublesome for you if you’re just starting but once you get good at it – you’ll be able to write it without even thinking about it. Today, there are tons of books and resources that can teach you to code, but doing it without stress and negativity is the sole purpose of this guide. So if you’re looking to get positive about your coding skills, read on.

Choose Your Language

For starters, you should decide on one coding language you’ll invest your time into learning. A simple fact that you should be aware of is that there are no best coding languages, but there are languages that are friendlier for beginners. Once you’ve wrapped your mind around one language and learned it, it’ll be fairly easy to pick up another one and learn it much quicker than the first one. Your choice of language also might depend on what you want to do with it – whether it’s software development for which you might want to pick up Java, or iOS app coding for which you’ll need Swift.

Whichever you choose, don’t jump on another until you’re confident that you’ve mastered it.

Figure Out a Learning Method That Works Best For You

There is no one recipe for learning to code, so you need to know what works best for you. It’s always good to have a primary method and supplement it with secondary ones. So for example, if you’re a good listener and want to learn from Youtube videos, you might want to supplement your knowledge with a book about coding. Here are some of the methods you can use to learn to program.

• Online Coding Courses – some people just work best when they’re told what to do and checked upon regularly, so if you’re having problems with self-discipline signing up for a course like this might be a good idea, as you’ll get more motivated than by trying to go through it on your own.

There’s an abundance of these courses online, and some of them are even free. Just check the reviews before signing up, just to be sure.

• Youtube videos – Today, you can learn just about anything just from watching various videos from the people already skilled at the craft. It’s a good and free way to learn to code, just as long as you can sit, watch and repeat all day long.
• Books – even though it’s the old fashioned way, coding hasn’t changed much and all the books that cover it are still pretty much viable even today. They tend to cover the logic aspects of coding a bit better than watching the videos, so you might actually figure out why you’re doing something – which is extremely important. When it comes to coding, you want to avoid doing anything that you don’t understand, because once you are in front of the same problem again – you’ll just be stuck again.

• Figure It Out Yourself – many of the best programmers out there are self-taught. They were presented with a problem and tried to bypass it, after which they moved on to a bigger problem. You should always be learning while doing it anyway, but if you’re the kind of person who likes to do it their own way – you might want to try to just manage your way through.

It’s important that you listen to yourself when it comes to choosing a method because only you know what style suits your needs.

Record Your Results

You must be aware by now that learning to code will be a long process, which is why it’s important to record everything that you’ve done. People often find themselves losing motivation because they can’t feel their progress. This is why you need to remind yourself from time to time just how far you’ve come when it comes to programming – and looking at your first lines of code will do just that, tell you how awesome you are right now. You may think this is a minor thing, but it’s actually extremely important to keep you motivated throughout the process.

Staying Motivated

Motivation is the key to learning just about anything and it’s imperative to know for what reasons you’re learning it. If your reason is that you want to make a career out of it, maybe you should take a step back and set yourself some lower goals for the beginning. Sure, making a career out of it can be your final goal, but for starters, you should just take one step at a time and try to learn as much as possible. Best motivation comes out of successfully completing objectives and that’s the main reason why you’ll want to start thinking small. If you just started out and want to code an AAA video game, you’ll fail miserably and give up. Take smaller steps, improve your skills, and one day you might just be a part of something like that.

Set Strict Deadlines and Respect Them

When it comes to coding, many beginners will just try to do a bunch of projects and drop-out in the middle in favor of another project. Trying things out is fine, as long as you finish everything you started. Do one project at a time and set yourself some deadlines. Imagine if you were already employed, you’d have a deadline for each of the projects you work on. And while deadlines can be a pain when you’re employed, they are a great thing to teach you some self-discipline, a skill you’ll need plenty of when it comes to programming. Not to mention that if you don’t finish your projects, you might miss out on some valuable knowledge you’ll need for other projects as well.

Read Error Messages

While computer users quickly get away from error messages whenever they see them, programmers should actually read them because they contain valuable input that will help you fix the errors. A lot of times these messages will tell you exactly what’s wrong, so always take the time and read any new ones you run into. This is also a great practice for your problem-solving skills – you always need to know what the problem is before trying to fix it. Error messages aren’t your punishment, they are your friends and they are trying to help you do things the right way.

Socialize With Other Programmers

Having someone you can talk to about the code you’re trying to write can be invaluable. Just talking about programming can get you to think about it in a more positive light, so find a friend you can share your thoughts with. It will also help you to know that they’re struggling with certain problems as well, and if you’re able to help them – this will motivate you even further to keep at it. That’s why even companies like Webdel WordPress Developer Sydney encourage their employees to socialize with each other even outside of work.

The Right and the Wrong Approach

Beginners often try to copy parts of the code from another source while they’re trying to do random things in order to complete the project. This is bad, not because you’re copying the line of code, but because you won’t figure out what’s the purpose of it without doing it yourself. This will lead to gaps in your knowledge, and you’ll be likely to give up once you come to a problem that requires knowledge that you skipped on. Always take the time and analyze the problem at hand, and if you can’t come up with a solution – read about it and find out how and why. By doing this, you’ll make sure you understand everything that you’re doing, which in itself is invaluable when it comes to programming.

Play Games for Programmers

The fact is, no matter what you’re learning, there’s no better and quicker way to do it than through playing games. Same goes for coding, and you can use many of these games to practice your skills and get better at it.

• CheckiO – a game you can play in your browser, it requires you to solve problems in JavaScript or Python in order to advance through the game.
• CodeMonkey – this one’s mostly used for kids, but if you’re a beginner you can actually learn some code by playing this game.
• Codewars – this isn’t really a game, more like collaborative challenge solving for programmers. It’s a great way to master the art and it supports many of the languages.
• Code Combat – A community-based platform, it’s all about learning how to code while playing through a real game.

There are many other games that you can use, it all depends on which ones suit you and your preferred language best. Playing these games will help you start thinking like a programmer and you’ll be able to practice your brain all while keeping yourself entertained.

Find a Mentor

Having a mentor is a great way to pick up on their way of thinking and replicate it, but only through understanding. Contrary to the popular belief, coding is almost always done by more than one person so you’ll want to learn to work with someone and share your methods and insights. Today, programming community is very open and willing to help out the beginners, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who’d mentor you through the process. And once you’ve mastered the language, you should mentor someone else – because it’s a great way for retaining information.

Break Someone Else’s Code

This is one of the best techniques to learn to code, it’s basically reverse-engineering an existing code in order to better understand how it works. Like with coding games, the key here is to change one thing at a time and checking what actually changes when you do it. There’s plenty of open code on the web you can practice on and when you reach a point where you can improve it – you’ll know you’ve made it.

Conclusion

Some people will learn to code faster, some slower, but everyone can do it. Don’t get depressed if you’re in the latter group because it’s only natural and it won’t really matter once you reach a certain point. If you really want to learn to code, the time you’ve invested will definitely pay off if you just keep at it and push your own boundaries. It’s a long journey and you’ll have your doubts while you’re learning, but always keep in mind that there’s no right or wrong way to code – and the best way is your own way.    

Be sure to check out WeGraphics for more high-quality design resources, like vectors, brushes, textures, icons, and more.

Here’s a preview of the kit:

Download Retro Website Headers

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About this Partner

WeGraphics is the definitive solution for designers who need high-quality resources but don’t want to be obliged to spend hundreds of dollars for them.

Be sure to check out WeGraphics for more high-quality design resources, like vectors, brushes, textures, icons, and more.

Here’s a preview of the kit:

Download Vintage Inspired Infographics

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About this Partner

WeGraphics is the definitive solution for designers who need high-quality resources but don’t want to be obliged to spend hundreds of dollars for them.