It’s the Detroit-Croydon connection. But for innovative electronic dance sounds, you really don’t want to miss James Ruskin – either his new EP or the refreshed Bandcamp page for Blueprint Records. First, out today, you get a new James Ruskin EP – and it’s brilliant, worth the five year wait from the last one. This […]

The post Techno lovers, don’t miss James Ruskin’s new EP and updated Blueprint catalog appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Zack Wood, developer of Monster Garden, shared some of their design thoughts about their monster-befriending game, and how play and imagination can bring about personal healing and care. What got you interested...

The post ‘Monster Garden’ Developer Talks About the Healing Power of Play appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

I have let my people down. When our miserable band of misfits and refugees stumbled upon a dangerous warlock and his heavily-armed band of marauders, we didn’t fight them. Instead, I chose...

The post ‘Nowhere Prophet’ Creates Emotional Attachment to Your Card-Based Warriors appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

From beautiful sand-scapes to a glimmering vision of a tall stag, Summer Catchers is ready to amaze you with its vibrant colors. While stunning, these roads will also be wrought with dangers...

The post Drive a Long, Beautiful Road to Warm Seasons in ‘Summer Catchers’ appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

One Tree ID, by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, transforms the ID of a specific tree into a perfume that can then be applied to the human body

Brand your business with amazing color combinations to ensure a positive reaction from your potential customers. Consider the fundamentals of color perceptions, which we will mention ahead, and get your colors on!

 

When you brand your business with pleasing color palettes, you make your target feel comfortable enough to do business with you! It starts from the moment your create your logo whether you decide to use color pantones or hex codes. A Logo Creator for example, gives you template options which you can work on if you don’t feel like starting from zero. Color your brand with your personality and your values!

 

Colors Impact People Emotionally

 

Color schemes have a psychological impact you need to consider while you build a brand. This is why picking your colors is such an important task! You can create the perception you’re after in order to attract the specific market you want. People are very visual, so colors can impact them emotionally. To understand this better, let’s take a look at general meaning behind the most commonly used colors:

 

Get Inspired with These Color Combinations

 

We have gathered the best color combinations for different business industries so you don’t have to break your head coming up with a harmonious mix. First, determine your brand’s personality by asking yourself:

 

• Is my brand masculine or feminine?
• Is my brand playful or serious?
• Is my brand luxurious or affordable?
• Is my brand modern or classic?
• Is my brand youthful or mature?

 

This will help you decide which colors best represent your business personality and which will attract the kind of customers you want. Now let’s get to it by industry and get some color palette ideas that are on point!

 

Colors of Technology

 

Most tech businesses want to look innovative and bold, like they will be the next big thing. Because you are trying to appear innovative, don’t be afraid to step out of the typical blue or green. You can use other great colors like purple, yellow, orange, etc.

 

As you build your tech business, colors are an entirely personal decision. You should be informed on color psychology plus your brand's personality in order to make a more informed decision. Consider things like, is your business related to social media? Is it an app?

 

Colors of Healthcare

 

You trust healthcare businesses with your life and this is why their branding should evoke that feeling of security. Because these kinds of businesses have a huge responsibility with the community, their image should be professional, authoritative, and peaceful at the same time. Most healthcare businesses rely on mainly blue tones, but you can definitely get inspired by these colors and try something fresh!

 

Colors of Legal

 

Legal businesses should have a minimalist logo. Most legal businesses choose sober colors to appear professional and keep it basic. They usually decide to use only one or two colors.

 

Colors of Marketing

 

Marketing brands usually want to appear as young, modern, and creative! They want to dazzle their clients while still keeping it professional. The challenge for these kinds of businesses is to have branding colors that are both cool while classic. I mean, they still need to be taken seriously. Among the industry, most leaders opt to use purples and they see their brands as feminine.

 

 

Colors of Real Estate

The real estate competition is fierce! Clients need a brand that they sense they can rely on. If your business is in real estate, just like in healthcare or legal businesses you want your colors to say: trust me. This is why most businesses go with a blue color. Remember you can use awesome color combinations to give your customers the whole message! Try these:

 

Using a Logo Maker

 

Inspired by a huge library of templates in combination with helpful information on color perceptions, you can design your logo easily using the best colors for it! The rest of your branding is a piece of cake once you have your logo and your branding colors (fonts are huge too by the way). If you decide to create your logo design with an online tool, look for one that allows you to input your exact hex codes for your brand colors.

 

So now you know! Start creating that unique experience for your customers with a totally fabulous color palette!

 

Authors Bio:

Valeria Santalla is a multi-disciplinary marketer and content writer that loves to create branding assets for local business. She currently collaborates at Placeit.net, one of the largest logo maker and design template libraries on the internet.

Brand consistency is one of the most important aspects of making your store memorable to consumers. Every time customers interact with your brand, online or offline, they should be reminded of who you are, which requires using the same images, logo, colors and message.

Experts estimate it takes five to seven impressions before someone remembers a brand. That number may increase as more and more brands go online and clamor for the attention of a limited pool of customers. If you want to be memorable, you must present your brand in a similar way over and over using a variety of methods.

Using your brand colors in every interaction, including in your storefront location, is a great way to create a memorable impression. However, integrating brand colors into a storefront isn't always easy. You may be limited by the construction and colors already present in a rented space, for example. Fortunately, there are some features business owners have control over when it comes to storefront branding.

1. Create Display Windows

Creating window displays that draw people inside is a bit of a challenge. You have to highlight some of your more popular or recent items. However, your display windows are also a great place to integrate some of your brand colors, either through signage or selected products. Think about what might catch the eye of passerby as they walk past your store. What colors surround your windows and what will pop out to potential customers?

2. Change the Wall Colors

If you are in a location where you're allowed to paint, change up the wall colors so they coordinate with your brand colors. Think about the colors in your palette and what compliments them. If your colors are vivid, you may only want to use the brand colors as an accent and stick with trendier neutral tones for the background. Different types of colors have a different impact on your audience. For example, you can use black as a neutral color and to create a sense of mystery or stick with light greens and sandy browns for a sense of tranquility.

3. Add Signage

Signage is a way to incorporate the colors you want without changing the walls or altering more permanent store features. Using signage is particularly useful if you're still developing your brand colors or testing out colors before making a change. Signage is relatively inexpensive, but still makes an impact on store visitors. Use vinyl signs in the color of your choice or add color elements over a white vinyl sign. You can also use signs to point customers toward your register, sale items or to highlight new arrivals in your store. Don't be afraid to incorporate both brand colors and accent colors for attention.

4. Invest in Bags

What color are the bags you put purchased products in? Using customized bags is a great way to add additional branding that utilizes your company colors. Whenever the person leaves your store and others see the bag, the bag should be immediately recognizable as a company standard. Using a signature color boosts brand recognition by about 80 percent, so business owners should look for every opportunity to do so.

Think about the last time you visited a local mall. You may have seen someone walking out of Victoria's Secret with a pink and black striped back. You immediately knew what brand they purchased from. Perhaps you noticed a black back with white letters from Hot Topic. What colors scream your brand identity, and how can you put that on a bag so everyone sees the visualization?

5. Employee Uniforms

Depending upon what kind of store you run, employee uniforms might be a good idea. Keep in mind that uniforms allow store visitors to readily identify who works there in case they need assistance. The uniform should match the overall branding of your business. If pink is your signature color, invest in pink shirts with your logo or black shirts with a pink logo. Think about what type of uniform best represents your brand and how to add your company colors to the outfit.

If you've ever gone to Best Buy, you know employees are easy to spot because of their shirts with the bright Best Buy logo. Go out to eat somewhere like Hooters, and the orange shirts of the servers pop and grab your attention. No matter what your brand colors may be, your employee outfits should highlight them and make the store memorable.

6. Floor Signage

Adding signage to your floor draws customers in for sales and other events and directs traffic through your store. You can even use three-dimensional signage to draw them into a sensory experience. Signage can be used both outside your store, such as in a shopping mall (if the mall allows it) and inside the store to direct customers down a planned path. Think about footprints in your primary brand color that lead the way to a new, featured product.

Brand Colors Matter to Storefront Locations

Adding in brand colors gives your store a unique identity. Keep in mind, though, that the overall aesthetic of your store is much more important than simply throwing up certain colors. It's okay to limit how much you use your brand color, but there are some places you shouldn't shy away from it, such as a sign for your storefront. With a little attention to color and how it impacts your store visitors, you should find a balance between branding and usability.

 

 

Lexie is a graphic designer and typography enthusiast. She spends most of her time A/B testing websites and creating style guides. Check out her blog, Design Roast, and follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

The design of your website is important. When most think about what makes a good website design, they think of something that is visually appealing or stunning. However, good website design should also be practical and provide a straightforward path for its visitors.

 

If a potential customer were to land on your website, would it be immediately apparent to them what you offer and what they should do? Does it convey the right message and the right action you want them to make?

 

A confused customer always says no and will soon be off onto the next site, which could be your competitor.

 

Crafting a design that converts well should be the foundation of your website’s design. For beginners, this may sound difficult, but it doesn’t have to be and should only take a day or two, with the right guidance. In this article, I’ll share 7 advanced attributes to keep in mind when designing a small business website.

 

 

1.    Simpler is Better

The first rule of thumb is to keep it simple. Have you ever landed on a web page that is so busy it is confusing? Do you stay around long enough to figure it out and try to find what you are looking for on that site?

 

Of course not! You leave because you are busy and do not want to waste your time.

 

Your website visitors will have the same reaction. Make sure their user experience on your site is easy to navigate, clear, and simple.

 

Also keep in mind that when people are faced with too many options, they experience information overload and will more than likely choose nothing at all.

 

Do not overwhelm your website visitors with too much information or give them many options.

 

Look over your website pages. Do you have information that either is not necessary or you do not need? If so, remove it.

 

Your goal should be to move from this:

 

To this:

 

There is no need to cover every inch of space on each page. It is better to make sure you do have empty or what is also known as white space on your site.

 

Effective web design includes using this "white space" (that does not have to be white; it just needs to be empty) to draw more attention to your content.

 

It makes your site less confusing and cluttered and helps it look clean and professional.

2.    Map Out the Buyer’s Journey

Moving forward and putting together a website without a plan will lead to a confusing and less than stellar user experience.

 

Your goal is to meet the needs of your visitors and to convert them into paying customers.

 

Understanding the pages, content, and offers they will see will help you design a website that better nurtures your leads and takes them down your sales funnel.

 

Look at your analytics to get an idea of where users are landing, how long they are staying, and what they do next.

 

Are they leaving your website or moving onto the next step? If you find there is a specific page where you lose visitors, make changes and test them out to optimize the page.

 

Another way to understand your buyer's journey is to look at the information you already know about your current customers.

 

How do they get to your site? Which pages are they landing on and which steps lead to more conversions?

 

You can even send out questionnaires or ask them directly about how they made their decision to purchase your services.

3.    Why Should They Buy from You?

No matter what industry you are in, there will be competitors vying for the same clients. What is it about your services that is unique?

 

This is also known as your unique value proposition, or UVP.

 

Visitors to your website need to be able to quickly and clearly see precisely why they should hire you and how it will benefit them.

 

The number one influencing factor that determines whether or not a visitor will stay on your website is your value proposition, according to ConversionXL.

 

Make good use of your website visitor's time and your online real estate by making it very clear in just a few seconds, what makes you different.

4.    Be Consistent

Being consistent with your design elements on your website (and other places your brand lives online such as advertisements) helps build trust with your website visitors.

 

Improve the user experience on your website by keeping the core framework of your site consistent and logical.

 

Some examples of which parts of your site that should be consistent are:

 

• Header
• Footer
• Sidebar
• Navigation
• Font color and type
• Link color
• Content tone
• How external links open (in a new or the same window)

 

People like to do business with those they know, like, and trust. Design your website so that it is recognizable and user-friendly to help your potential customers want to hire your company.

5.    Get Found Online

You can have the most user-friendly, consistent, and unique website, but if no one finds it, what good is it?

 

You need to create and follow an SEO strategy that will attract those most likely to be interested in your services.

 

This includes doing keyword research to identify the search terms your target audience is using when they perform a search query.

 

Ranking in search takes time and does not happen overnight. See a few suggestions below on how to get started:

 

• Optimize your web pages
• Get listed on Google My Business
• List your website in relevant local directories and be consistent
• Fix your technical SEO
• Create images and videos for competitive keyword phrases
• See what your competitors are doing online and do it better

 

Set goals for yourself and take one step at a time to increase your online rankings and improve your SEO.

6.    Fix Broken Links

It is not uncommon for a link to break on your website without your knowing about it. When someone visits your site, they expect links to take them to a new page to get more information.

 

If they end up nowhere, it will negatively affect their user experience and could affect your rankings.

 

Google is paying more attention to the user-experience when ranking web pages. Broken links lead to a bad user experience. Identify and fix your broken links.

7.    Calls to Action

When a potential client lands on your website, what do you want them to do next? If you do not clearly tell them, they will not know.

 

A call-to-action is the website element that guides your visitors to the next step. Examples of effective calls-to-action are:

 

• Watch this video
• Sign up for our webinar
• Request a demo
• Download our eBook
• Click here for more information
• Request a proposal
• See a list of our services

 

Now that we have shown you some elements to increase your conversions, you should start by analyzing your current website design.

 

Do you have enough "white space"? Are you doing what your competitors are doing and doing it better?

 

Remember, your goal is to convert more leads into paying customers. Modify your existing site to attract, retain, and convert your target audience.

 

Image MaxPixel CC0 License

Wondering whether if a player’s shot improves over the course of his career,…

Tags: basketball, time series

New exhibition REAL WORK opens at FACT on 12 July 2019, including artworks by Liz Magic Laser and Candice Breitz. Continuing FACT’s year-long exploration into issues of identity and representation, the exhibition highlights the often-unheard voices of real people working in precarious situations across the globe.

The post “REAL WORK”: Liz Magic Laser and Candice Breitz at FACT appeared first on Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture.

The main goal of AWMAS conference is to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences emerging from the intersection of science and applied art. Emphasis is placed on the various aspects of the mutual benefits of the integration and interaction between science and media arts.

The post Alliance of Women in Media Arts and Sciences Conference 2020 appeared first on Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture.

3CD – Fylkingen

Åke Hodell was a Swedish composer, poet and author, whose personal history resembles that of the artist Joseph Beuys. While young, both men were victims of serious aviation war accidents, Hodell in 1941, Beuys in 1944. Hodell →

Anna Alpatieva                                                                                                     Anna Alpatieva’s Website … Continued

Karen Hackenberg                         Karen Hackenberg’s Website Karen Hackenberg on Instagram

In this edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at database vendors going all in with open source, Facebook and Uber's latest open source releases, City of London's homebuilding app, and more!

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Recently, I bought and started using a Tuxedo Book BC1507, a Linux laptop computer. Ten years ago, if someone had told me that, by the end of the decade, I could buy top-quality, "penguin-ready" laptops from companies such as System76, Slimbook, and Tuxedo, I probably would have laughed. Well, now I'm laughing, but with joy!

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HackMD.io is an open source, collaborative Markdown editor. It allows people to share, comment, and collaborate on documents. As open source software, users can choose between using the online platform or installing it as a local service using the upstream project CodiMD.

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"The brain does not simply represent the world in a disembodied way as an intellectual construct... Our mind is body-bound. We think, feel, and act with our body in the world. All experience is embedded in this body-related being-in-the-world."

The idea that human beings might not only fly to the moon, but land on its puckered surface and walk around, seemed like an absolute fantasy for nearly all of human history. In the exactly fifty years since that that very thing happened, "moon shot" has become an almost commonplace reference for grand, historic gestures. “Fifty […]

Every Harrowing Second of the Apollo 11 Landing Revisited in a New NASA Video: It Took Place 50 Years Ago (July 20, 1969) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Michel Houellebecq's third novel Platform, which involves a terrorist bombing in southeast Asia, came out the year before a similar real-life incident occurred in Thailand. His seventh novel Submission, about the conversion of France into a Muslim country, came out the same day as the massacre at the offices of Islam-provoking satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. His […]

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Prediction of How American Democracy Could Lapse Into Despotism, Read by Michel Houellebecq is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

I wish I had more sense of humor Keeping the sadness at bay Throwing the lightness on these things Laughing it all away                             - Joni Mitchell, “People's Parties” Joni Mitchell has been showered with tributes of late, many of them connected to her all-star […]

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imagined as Pulp Fiction Book Covers & Vintage Movie Posters is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

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