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Miriam Suzanne’s in the middle of a redesign of her personal website. It began in August 2022. She’s made an entire series out of the work that’s worth your time, but I wanted to call out the fifth and latest installment because she presents a problem that I think we can all relate to:

But the walls got in my way. Instead of minimal renovation, I got just far enough to live with it and then started a brand new Eleventy repo.

The plan was to prototype […] and bring back well-formed solutions. To echo Dave Rupert, prototyping is useful. It’s easier to play with new ideas when you’re not carrying a decade of content and old code along with you.

But prototyping evolved into what I would call tinkering (complimentary). Maybe I mean procrastinating (also complimentary), but it’s a wandering process that also helps me better understand what I want from a website. I might not make visible progress over two years, but I start to form a point of view […]. Keeping things easy is always where things get complicated. And it brings me back to where my redesign started – a desire to clarify the information architecture. Not only for visitors, but for myself.

Don’t even tell me you’ve never been there! Jim Neilsen blogged along similar lines. You get a stroke of inspiration that’s the kernel of some idea that motivates you to start, you know, working on it. There’s no real plan, perhaps. The idea and inspiration are more than enough to get you going… that is until you hit a snag. And what I appreciate about Miriam’s post is that she’s calling out content as the snag. Well, not so much a snag as a return to the founding principle for the redesign: a refined content architecture.

• Sometimes I do events where I speak, or teach a workshop, or perform. Events happen at a time and place.
• Sometimes I create artifacts like a book or an album, a website, or specification. Artifacts often have a home URL. They might have a launch date, but they are not date-specific.
• Some of my projects are other channels with their own feeds, their own events and artifacts.
• Those channels are often maintained by an organization that I work with long-term. A band, a web agency, a performance company, etc.

These boundaries aren’t always clean. A post that remains relevant could be considered an artifact. Events can generate artifacts, and vice versa. An entire organization might exist to curate a single channel.

So, Miriam’s done poking at visual prototypes and ready to pour the filling into the pie crust. I relate with this having recently futzed with the content architecure of this site. I find it tough to start with a solidified design before I know what content is going into it. But I also find it tough to work with no shape at all. In my case, CSS-Tricks has a well-established design that’s evolved, mostly outside of me. I love the design but it’s an inherited one and I’m integrating content around it. Design is the constraint. If I had the luxury of stripping the building to the studs, I might take a different approach because then I could “paint” around it. Content would be the constraint.

It’s yet another version of the Chicken-Egg dilemma. I still think of the (capital-W) Web as a content medium at least in a UA style sense in that it’s the default. It’s more than that, of course. I’m a content designer at heart (and trade) but I’m hesitant to cry “content is king” which reminded me of something I wrote for an end-of-year series we did here answering the question: What is one thing people can do to make their website better? My answer: Read your website.

We start to see the power of content when we open up our understanding of what it is, what it does, and where it’s used. That might make content one of the most extensible problem-solving tools in your metaphorical shed—it makes sites more accessible, extracts Google-juicing superpowers, converts sales, and creates pathways for users to accomplish what they need to do.

And as far as prioritizing content or design, or…?

The two work hand-in-hand. I’d even go so far as to say that a lot of design is about enhancing what is communicated on a page. There is no upstaging one or the other. Think of content and design as supporting one another, where the sum of both creates a compelling call-to-action, long-form post, hero banner, and so on. We often think of patterns in a design system as a collection of components that are stitched together to create something new. Pairing content and design works much the same way.

I’d forgotten those words, so I appreciate Miriam giving me a reason to revisit them. We all need to be recalibrated every so often — swap out air filters, top off the fluids, and rotate the ol’ tires. And an old dog like me needs it a little more often. I spent a few more minutes in that end-of-year series and found a few other choice quotes about the content-design continuum that may serve as inspiration for you, me, or maybe even Miriam as she continues the process of aggragating her distributed self.

This sounds serious, but don’t worry — the site’s purpose is key. If you’re building a personal portfolio, go wild! However, if someone’s trying to file a tax return, whimsical loading animations aren’t likely to be well-received. On the other hand, an animated progress bar could be a nice touch while providing visual feedback on the user’s action.

Cassie Evans, “Empathetic Animation”

Remember, the web is an interactive platform — take advantage of that, where appropriate (less is more, accessibility is integral, and you need to know your audience). Whether that’s scrollytelling, captioned video, and heck, maybe for your audience, now’s the time to start looking into AR/VR! Who knows. Sometimes you just need to try stuff out and see what sticks. Just be careful. Experimentation is great, but we need to make sure we’re bringing everyone along for the ride.

Mel Choyce, “Show, Don’t Tell”

Your personal site is a statement of who you are and what you want to do. If you showcase your favorite type of work, you’ll get more requests for similar projects or jobs — feeding back into a virtuous cycle of doing more of what you love.

Amelia Wattenberger, “Exactly What You Want”

And one of my favorites:

But the prime reason to have a personal website is in the name: it is your personalhome on the web. Since its early days, the web has been about sharing information and freedom of expression. Personal websites still deliver on that promise. Nowhere else do you have that much freedom to create and share your work and to tell your personal story. It is your chance to show what you stand for, to be different, and to be specific. Your site lets you be uniquely you and it can be whatever you imagine it to be.

So if you have a personal site, make sure to put in the work and attention to make it truly yours. Make it personal. Fine-tune the typography, add a theme switcher, or incorporate other quirky little details that add personality. As Sarah Drasner writes, you can feel it if a site is done with care and excitement. Those are the sites that are a joy to visit and will be remembered.

Matthias Ott, “Make it Personal”

That last one has the added perk of reminding me how incredibly great Sarah Drasner is.

Aggregating my distributed self originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Every year we see new trends emerge in the world of design. While most of these new trends fade away with time, some remain to change and influence the industry for the better.

In this post, we explore the ever-evolving world of illustration trends and designs. From the rise of AI-assisted drawings to the resurgence of retro and psychedelic art, these are the trends you can expect to see more of this year.

Let’s take a look at some of the top upcoming illustration trends and how you can apply them in your own designs and projects. Some of these trends will not only be popular but also groundbreaking by bringing in new advancements and innovations.

1. AI-Assisted Illustrations

Designers have different opinions about the advancements of AI and how it’s impacting the industry. However, AI has clearly made work much easier for us. And that’s the main goal of using AI. It should not be used to replace designers but to enhance your workflow and make you more efficient.

Adobe understood this concept better than most other AI startups. During the Adobe MAX 2023 event, Adobe showed how they have improved Adobe Illustrator to help artists and designers create art more easily.

You can now generate vectors with text prompts, find exact matches for fonts, create icons, get variations of your illustrations, copy art styles, and more. These new tools will save you a ton of time and supercharge your process of finding inspiration, coming up with different concepts, and experimenting with different ideas.

2. Representation of Diversity

One of the trends that we hope to see more of this year is illustrations that represent diversity, culture, and traditions. We saw many brands and companies use these beautiful illustrations on their marketing campaigns, websites, and social media platforms to promote inclusiveness and diverse representation.

This trend is not just about representation, it’s also about celebrating different cultures, expanding the boundaries of perspectives, and bringing people together. It’s a mission that we will always promote with an open heart.

3. Colorful Abstract

Abstract illustrations have been a powerful visual form that amplifies storytelling for many years. This year, we expect to see this art trend continue to grow.

These beautiful illustrations excel at captivating audiences with colorful visuals and communicating ideas, moods, and messages much more effectively. Whether it’s for branding design or packaging design, colorful abstract illustrations fit perfectly for many types of projects as well.

4. Retro and Psychedelic

We all have a soft spot for those classic and groovy illustrations full of vibrant colors and weird shapes. Last year, we saw many artists combine this retro style from the 70s and 80s with psychedelic-style art to create very uncommon and trippy illustrations.

We’ve been seeing these retro and psychedelic illustrations on everything from product packaging designs to website designs and even branding designs. It seems to be getting more popular with casual and lifestyle brands that target younger audiences as well.

5. Art Deco

The Art Deco design trend is commonly used in various types of packaging designs, brand identities, and graphic designs as a way of showing off elegance and sophistication. It’s a trend that’s been around for decades but over the past few years we saw this trend being used more commonly by modern brands.

This trend will likely continue to be popular in the world of design and illustrations thanks to its ability to combine vintage aesthetics with futuristic vibes. Especially when it comes to luxury and high-end illustrations, Art Deco is unmatched for creating unique nostalgic feels.

6. Comic Book Art

The illustrations done in comic book art style are another new trend that’s slowly gaining momentum in the design world. This trend helps add a playful, humorous, and exaggerated look to your illustrations to create a bold retro aesthetic for various types of designs.

Whether it’s website design, poster design, or packaging design, comic book-style art blends perfectly with many different types of mediums as well. It’s also quite effective for brand storytelling and creating designs that communicate with the audience more effectively.

7. Doodle Art

No matter how old we get, we all have childhood memories that we always long for. Doodle art is a trend that’s designed to take you back to that wonderful childhood while evoking a sense of playfulness and free spirit. It’s one of the reasons why this trend has been around for such a long time and it will continue to be as effective as ever before.

Many popular brands have been using doodle art and illustrations as a way to create a more relaxed vibe and also bring out a sense of joy in the audience at the same time. The quirkiness and the imperfections of this art style allow any business or brand to strip away the formalities and create a close connection with its target audience.

8. Surrealism

The unreal, bizarre, and nightmare-ish surrealism illustration trend continues to surprise us every year by maintaining its popularity across many different industries. When it comes to creating designs that spark curiosity and imagination, nothing comes close to surrealist illustrations.

The distorted human figures, weird manipulations, and the weird elements used in surrealist illustrations often have hidden meanings and tell a story that explores controversial topics. And it opens up new doors for artists, media, and brands to share their narratives in mesmerizing ways.

9. Textured Illustrations

We went through several different illustration trends over the years from flat design to minimal artwork and the latest to join this lineup is the textured illustrations trend. This new trend sees illustrations getting a much-needed texture upgrade that adds more depth to the overall look and feel.

Textured illustrations will be one of the most popular illustration trends this year for two main reasons. First, they add an authentic and hand-crafted look to digital illustrations. Second, they create a more rugged and tactile vibe for the illustrations, replacing the overly smooth, artificial look of ordinary digital art.

10. Line Art

The great thing about line art illustrations is their versatility. Line art drawings can be as simple as a few lines or complex artwork but they will always maintain an overall simple and minimal look. This gives line art illustrations a classic yet timeless look.

Especially when designing illustrations for digital platforms, minimalist line art is an obvious choice as it reduces file sizes and helps improve performance. They are also quite effective in conveying ideas and creating adaptable art across different platforms and mediums.

11. Realistic 3D Art

3D art generation tools like Blender and Unreal Engine received significant updates last year that expanded their capabilities beyond our imagination. Designers have been using these tools to generate ultra-realistic 3D art and illustrations and the results were mind-blowing.

We will surely see more of these realistic 3D art and illustrations this year as well. Especially since the demand for this art is increasing as more industries seem to be embracing this new trend.

12. Nostalgia

When it comes to creating art and illustrations that connect with the audience on a personal level, nostalgic art is the perfect way to go. These illustrations excel at evoking emotions and good memories from the past and go a long way to establishing a strong connection with the audience.

Many brands have been using this trend to create emotional connections with their customers while also celebrating the history and good times from the past.

13. Geometric Art

There were many interesting art and design trends over the years that were inspired by the geometric style of art, including the popular Bauhaus style. And now, they are slowly influencing illustrations as well.

Illustrations inspired by geometric art styles have their own unique styles and we love how artists keep reinventing this trend while putting their own unique spins to create cool artworks.

14. Cartoon and Comic

Caroon and comic-themed illustrations do two things perfectly: They are great at adding a sense of whimsy to your creations and also conveying emotions more effectively.

When it comes to educational projects, casual and fun designs, and even creating mascots, and characters that represent brands, cartoon-style illustrations have been the ideal choice for decades.

Even though it’s not a new trend, we will surely see more cartoon and comic-style illustrations this year. Because it simply works wonders!

15. Outline Drawings

This is an illustration trend that will never go out of style. Because it’s the perfect style for creating art and illustrations that exude elegance and simplicity.

Outline drawings and illustrations have a particular way of creating a minimalist vibe for any other project. It helps create that subtle, fine art-style look that you can’t achieve with any other illustration style. And that’s why it will always be a trend you can rely on.

16. Brave and Bold

Recently, designers have been creating some radical and bold creations, much more than they used to. Mainly because modern brands and businesses now seek to create more open and authentic identities. And these brave and bold illustrations help achieve that goal.

This is a trend we would love to see more of this year. We are particularly curious how designers and artists will handle this experimental illustration style.

Conclusion

There will also be many other new trends this year, possibly ones we couldn’t even imagine. So be sure to keep an eye out for those. You can always check out our Trends category to stay on top of your game.

Many of you — perhaps most of you — have been sitting on the sidelines while WordPress and WP Engine trade legal attacks on one another. It’s been widely covered as we watch it unfold in the open; ironically, in a sense.

These things can take twists and turns and it doesn’t help that this just so happens to be an emotionally charged topic in certain circles. WordPress is still the leading CMS after all these years and by a long shot. Many developers make their living in the WordPress ecosystem. All of those developers need hosting. WP Engine is still the leading WordPress-flavored host after many years. Many developers host their agencies there and use it to administrate their clients’ sites.

And I haven’t even gotten to the drama. That’s not really the point. The point is that there’s a bunch of heated words flying around and it can be difficult to know where they’re coming from, who they are aimed at, and most importantly, why they’re being said in the first place. So, I’m going to round up a few key voices contributing to the discussion for the sake of context and to help catch up.

Editor’s Note: Even though CSS-Tricks has no involvement with either company, I think it’s mentioning that Automattic was a looooooong time sponsor. This site was also once hosted by Flywheel, a company acquired by WP Engine before we moved to Cloudways following the DigitalOcean acquisition. Me? My personal site runs on WP Engine, but I’m not precious about it having only been there one year.

Prelude to a tweet

We had fair warning that something was coming up when WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg sent this out over X:

I know private equity and investors can be brutal (read the book Barbarians at the Gate). Please let me know if any employee faces firing or retaliation for speaking up about their company's participation (or lack thereof) in WordPress. We'll make sure it's a big public deal and…

— Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) September 19, 2024

There’s the ammo: Don’t let private equity bully you into speaking up against the company you work for when its contributions to WordPress are on the slim side of things.

Private equity. Lack of participation in the WordPress community. Making a big public deal of it. Remember these things because this is one day before…

WordCamp US 2024

Matt spoke at WordCamp US (WCUS) 2024 in Portland, OR, last week. September 20 to be exact. Making big, bold statements at WCUS isn’t a new thing for Matt, as many of us still have “Learn JavaScript deeply” tattooed on the brain from 2016.

Matt’s statements this year were less inspirational (instructional?) as they took direct aim at WP Engine as part of a presentation on the merits of open-source collaboration. You can watch and listen to where the first jab was thrown roughly around the 10:05 marker of the recording.

Let’s break down the deal. Matt begins by comparing the open-source contributions to WordPress from his company, Automattic, to those of WP Engine. These things are tracked on WordPress.org as part of a campaign called “Five for the Future” that’s designed to give organizations an influential seat at the table to form the future of WordPress in exchange for open-source contributions back to the WordPress project. Automattic has a page totaling its contributions. So does WP Engine.

Before Matt reveals the numbers, he goes out of his way to call out the fact that both Automattic and WP Engine are large players in the neighborhood of $500 million dollars. That’s the setup for Matt to demonstrate how relatively little WP Engine contributes to WordPress against Matt’s own company. Granted, I neither have absolutely no clue what factors into contributions, nor how the pages are administrated or updated. But here’s what they show…

Quite the discrepancy! I’d imagine Automattic dwarfs every other company that’s pledged to the campaign. Maybe it would be better to compare the contributions of another non-Automattic pledge that has a fairly strong reputation for participating in WordPress community. 10up is one of the companies that comes straight to my mind and they are showing up for 191 hours per week, or roughly five times WP Engine’s reported time. I get conflicting info on 10up’s revenue, valuation, and size, so maybe the comparison isn’t fair. Or maybe it is fair because 10up is certainly smaller than WP Engine, and no estimate I saw was even close to the $500 million mark.

Whatever the case, bottom line: Matt calls out WP Engine for its lack of effort on a very public stage — maybe the largest — in WordPress Land. He doesn’t stop there, going on to namecheck Silver Lake, a ginormous private equity firm bankrolling the company. The insinuation is clear: there’s plenty of money and resources, so pony up.

That’s bad enough for attendees to raise eyebrows, but it doesn’t end there. Matt encourages users and developers alike to vote with money by not purchasing hosting from WP Engine (11:31) and seems to suggest (23:05) that he’ll provide financial support to any WP Engine employees who lose their jobs from speaking up against their employer.

I think I can get behind the general idea that some companies need a little prodding to pull their weight to something like the Five for the Future campaign. Encouraging developers to pull their projects from a company and employees to jeopardize their careers? Eek.

“WP Engine is not WordPress”

This is when I believe things got noisy. It’s one thing to strongarm a company (or its investors) into doing more for the community. But in a post on his personal blog the day after WCUS, Matt ups the ante alleging that “WP Engine isn’t WordPress.” You’d think this is part of the tough-guy stance he had from the stage, but his argument is much different in this post. Notice it’s about how WP Engine uses WordPress in its business rather than how much the company invests in it:

WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. It also means if you’re trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database. This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.

WP Engine turns this off. They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content.

OK, gloves off. This is more personal. It’s no longer about community contributions but community trust and how WP Engine erodes trust by preventing WordPress users from accessing core WordPress features for their own profit.

Required reading

That’s where I’d like to end this, at least for now. Several days have elapsed since Matt’s blog post and there are many, many more words flying around from him, community members, other companies, and maybe even your Great Aunt. But if you’re looking for more signal than noise, I’ve rounded up a few choice selections that I feel contribute to the (heated) discussion.

Reddit: Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP

Matt responds to the requisite calls for him to step down, starting with:

To be very clear, I was 100% cordial and polite to everyone at the booth, my message was:

* I know this isn’t about them, it’s happening several levels above, it’s even above their CEO, it’s coming from their owner, Silver Lake and particularly their board member Lee Wittlinger.

* Several people inside WP Engine have been anonymously leaking information to me about their bad behavior, and I wanted to let them know if they were caught or faced retaliation that I would support them in every way possible, including covering their salaries until they found a new job.

* That *if* we had to take down the WP Engine booth and ban WP Engine that evening, my colleague Chloé could print them all new personal badges if they still wanted to attend the conference personally, as they are community members, not just their company.

This was delivered calmly, and they said thank you, and their head of comms, Lauren Cox, who was there asked that they have time to regroup and discuss.

Automattic’s Actionable Misconduct Directed to WP Engine

WP Engine issues a cease and desist letter designed to stop Matt from disparaging them publicly. But hold up, because there’s another juicy claim in there:

In the days leading up to Mr. Mullenweg’s September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, Automattic suddenly began demanding that WP Engine pay Automattic large sums of money, and if it didn’t, Automattic would wage a war against WP Engine.

And yes, they did issue it from their own site’s /wp-content directory. That’s easy to lose, so I’ve downloaded it to link it for posterity.

Open Source, Trademarks, and WP Engine

Just today, Matt published a cease and desist letter to the Auttomatic blog where he alleges that WP Engine’s commercial modifications to WordPress Core violate the WordPress trademark. Again, this has become about licensing, not contributions:

WP Engine’s business model is based on extensive and unauthorized use of these trademarks in ways that mislead consumers into believing that WP Engine is synonymous with WordPress. It’s not.

This is trademark abuse, not fair competition.

This is no longer WordPress vs. WP Engine. It’s more like Automattic vs. WP Engine. But with Matt’s name quite literally in the name Automattic, let’s be real and call this Matt Mullenweg vs. WP Engine.

WP Tavern coverage

WP Tavern is still the closest thing we have to an official WordPress news outlet. Nevermind that it’s funded and hired by Automattic (among others). I respect it, though I honestly have been less attentive to it since the team turned earlier this year. It’s still a great spot to catch up on the post-event coverage:

• Highlights from Matt Mullenweg’s Spiciest Word Camp Presentation at WordCamp US 2024 (Sep. 24)
• Automattic Responds to WP Engine’s Cease and Desist with Legal Action (Sep. 24)

There’s another more recent WP Tavern article I want to call out because it’s a huge development in this saga…

WP Engine Banned from Using WordPress.org Resources

Dang. This is the point of no return. It not only affects WP Engine proper, but the Flywheel hosting it also owns.

WordPress.org has blocked WP Engine customers from updating and installing plugins and themes via WP Admin. 

I was able to update plugins on my site as recently as yesterday, but let’s see as of this morning.

Maybe I can still see details about my installed plugins…

This is a bad, bad situatiuon. I have thoughts about it and neither side looks good. Using real people with no dog in the fight to make a point is never gonna be a good look. Then again, both sides have valid points and I can see where they’re coming from. I just hate to see it come to a head like this.

Catching Up on the WordPress 🚫 WP Engine Sitch originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

A new tool from Eric Meyer, Brian Kardell, and Stephanie Stimac backed with Igalia’s support. Brian announced it on his blog, as did Eric, describing it like this:

What BCD Watch does is, it grabs releases of the Browser Compatibility Data (BCD) repository that underpins the support tables on MDN and services like caniuse.com.  It then analyzes what’s changed since the previous release.

Every Monday, BCD Watch produces two reports. The Weekly Changes Report lists all the changes to BCD that happened in the previous week — what’s been added, removed, or renamed in the whole of BCD.  It also tells you which of the Big Three browsers newly support (or dropped support for) each listed feature, along with a progress bar showing how close the feature is to attaining Baseline status.

Browser support data is at MDN. There’s also plenty at Caniuse.com. The two share data, in fact, though not all of it. We now have Baseline, which is also cited in MDN and Caniuse alike. It’s nice to see an effort at cracking a central spot for all this — organized by date, no less.

Oh, and hey, there’s a feed. Even better.

You can also poke at its repo. Thanks a bunch, Eric, Brian, Stephanie, and Igalia! This is super helpful and already part of my toolkit.

BCD Watch originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Vouchers and coupons are a key part of any marketing strategy, offering customers special discounts and incentives to drive engagement and sales. But to truly catch the eye, these vouchers need to look polished and professional.

In this blog post, we’ve gathered the best voucher and coupon mockup templates to help you present your designs in a realistic and appealing way. Whether you’re designing for a restaurant, retail store, or online brand, these mockup templates allow you to showcase your voucher or coupon designs with style.

From clean and modern layouts to more elaborate, creative designs, these templates are perfect for visualizing how your final product will look in the real world. Have a look.

Modern Voucher Mockup Template

This is a modern and customizable mockup template for showcasing your voucher and coupon designs. This kit offers four high-resolution PSD files that you can easily edit to place your designs. You can also alter the contrast, design, or even the background color and textures according to your needs.

Gift Voucher Mockup Template

This voucher mockup template is fully customizable and integrates seamlessly with Smart-Objects for easy replacement of designs. The high-quality resolution of 3000 x 2000 px at 300 DPI ensures stunning visuals. A comprehensive help file is included for your convenience.

Natural Voucher Mockup Template

A versatile voucher mockup template for showcasing food and nature-themed product vouchers. It provides 4 different templates, all customizable via smart objects for easy editing. It features high-resolution (4500x3000px, 300 DPI) well-layered PSD files with adjustable light, capable of accommodating both bright and dark designs.

Voucher Coupon Mockup Template

This is a crisp, easy-to-use voucher mockup template ideal for showcasing your voucher designs. This template features smart objects for hassle-free editing, well-organized layers for speedy adjustments, and the capacity to modify the background color to match your designs. It offers a realistic photo quality along with a fully layered PSD, well-structured layers, and 300 DPI optimisation.

Stylish Gift Voucher Mockup Template

A customizable voucher mockup template for creating engaging gift vouchers or tickets. It’s ideal for social media posts and presentations to clients. This template features four high-resolution PSD mockup scenes, easy-edit smart objects, variable light settings, and a changeable background. Plus, all objects and shadows are fully separated and editable.

Discount Voucher Mockup Templates

A set of voucher mockup templates that are ideal for professionally displaying your unique coupon designs. Comprised of five different gift voucher Photoshop mockups, the templates offer smart-object features for effortless design replacement, adjustable background colors, and impressive high-resolution imagery (3000×2000 px, 300 dpi). Suitable for anyone with Photoshop CS4 and up.

Creative Voucher Mockup Templates

This collection of voucher mockup templates can make your voucher designing process effortless and quick. These templates, provided in a neatly organized and high-resolution PSD file, incorporate smart-object features for easy and fast editing. They can handle all designs, bright or dark, and allow customization like background color tweaking, separate shadows, and light adjustment.

Elegant Coupon Voucher Mockup Template

A versatile, professionally designed voucher mockup template kit. Perfect for displaying business logos, discount vouchers, and promotional designs, it captures attention and elevates your brand’s visibility. Easy to edit with Photoshop, these high-resolution mockup files come in an RGB color mode. Brilliantly crafted for showcasing branding design, the set includes three files, a user guide, and enables customizable background colors and designs.

Simple Gift Voucher Mockup Template

This is an efficient tool for crafting gift coupons. It features 4 items within a well-layered PSD file. Utilizing the smart-object feature, you can swiftly personalize the existing design effortlessly. The template comes with organized layers and folders, customizable background colors, and both bright and dark design options.

Dark Voucher Mockup Template

A versatile voucher mockup template for showcasing your gift voucher designs professionally. This creative asset includes 4 PSD Photoshop format files, features a high resolution of 4500x3000px, and a customizable background. The included smart-object features make editing quick and easy, catering to both bright and dark designs.

Colorful Voucher Mockup Template

This is a vibrant and user-friendly voucher mockup template ideal for showcasing your promotional designs. The template features a photorealistic mock-up with a high resolution of 5000×3000 pixels, smart object background, and is easy to maneuver. It also comes with built-in photo filters, enhancing the visual appeal of your vouchers.

Bold Voucher Mockup Template

This is a professionally designed voucher mockup template perfect for displaying your brand’s coupon design. With four easy-to-use Photoshop mockups, it offers smart-object features for quick design replacements. Moreover, it allows background color alterations, boasts a high-quality resolution of 3000x2000px at 300 dpi, and includes a helpful guide file.

Stylish Voucher Mockup Template

An excellent voucher mockup template for presenting your designs with a professional and realistic edge. It comes as a high-resolution, easy-to-use PSD file, compatible with Photoshop CS4 or higher. Among its key features, the template offers a changeable background color, convenient smart-object attributes, and a helpful PDF guide.

Unique Coupon Mockup Templates

This is an expertly designed voucher mockup template kit perfect for showcasing your business logos, coupons, and discount vouchers. The high-resolution, fully-editable PSDs can be tailored to your preference using Photoshop’s smart objects, allowing you to effortlessly change designs and colors. With three files included, these templates are ideal for presenting your branding and heightening your brand’s visibility.

Minimal Coupon Mockup Templates

A valuable voucher mockup template pack for those seeking sleek, structured coupon designs. With 05 high-resolution (4500x3000px, 300 DPI) PSD files included, the bundle allows for easy and speedy editing via smart objects and organized layers. Features such as customizable background colors and adjustable lighting cater to both bright and dark design preferences.

Modern Gift Voucher Mockup Template

This voucher mockup template provides a sleek and efficient solution for crafting gift vouchers. It comes with two PSD styles, featuring a high-resolution design (4500×3000 pixels, 300dpi), and a certificate size of 7×3″. Its organized layers and folders and simple editing via smart objects make personalizing your vouchers a breeze.

Basic Coupon Mockup Templates

This is an effortless way to professionally present your unique voucher designs. Comprising of five easily customizable Photoshop mockups, these templates have a smart-object feature that lets you swiftly insert your designs. They also offer changeable background-colors and come in a high-resolution, 300 DPI, 3000×2000 pixel format.

Classy Voucher Mockup Template

This voucher mockup template boasts a refined and elegant design, perfect for those aiming to showcase their products professionally. Featuring four PSD files with a high-resolution of 4500×3000 and 300 dpi, this template is easily editable and well-organized. It’s a fantastic and efficient tool to preview whether your design vision will translate successfully before execution.

Free Coupon & Voucher Mockup Templates

Free Coupon Cards Mockup (PSD)

This is a free mockup you can use to showcase all types of coupon and voucher designs. It features a very realistic-looking mockup scene that will make your designs look much more alive and real in presentations.

Free Voucher Card Mockup (PSD)

This mockup template is also free to download and it features a unique nature-inspired mockup scene. It’s perfect for all sorts of vouchers, coupons, and other types of card design presentations.

Free Gift Voucher Mockup

This is a simple gift voucher mockup scene that you can fully customize to your preference. The template includes easily editable smart object layers and changeable backgrounds as well.

Free Ticket & Coupon Mockup

This is a collection of 5 creative coupon mockup templates that come in multiple variations and arrangements. You can use these to showcase your tickets, coupons, and vouchers like a pro.

Free Discount Voucher Mockup

Another free voucher mockup with a stylish design. This mockup features a beautiful scene with lots of editable elements. Placing your designs in the mockup is also easy thanks to smart object layers.

The <select> element is a fairly straightforward concept: focus on it to reveal a set of <option>s that can be selected as the input’s value. That’s a great pattern and I’m not suggesting we change it. That said, I do enjoy poking at things and found an interesting way to turn a <select> into a dial of sorts — where options are selected by scrolling them into position, not totally unlike a combination lock or iOS date pickers. Anyone who’s expanded a <select> for selecting a country knows how painfully long lists can be and this could be one way to prevent that.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

It’s fairly common knowledge that styling <select> in CSS is not the easiest thing in the world. But here’s the trick: we’re not working with <select> at all. No, we’re not going to do anything like building our own <select> by jamming a bunch of JavaScript into a <div>. We’re still working with semantic form controls, only it’s radio buttons.

<section class=scroll-container>
  <label for="madrid" class="scroll-item">
      Madrid 
      <abbr>MAD</abbr>
      <input id="madrid" type="radio" name="items">
  </label>
  <label for="malta" class="scroll-item">
      Malta 
      <abbr>MLA</abbr>
      <input id="malta" type="radio" name="items">
  </label>
  <!-- etc. -->
</section>

What we need is to style the list of selectable controls where we are capable of managing their sizes and spacing in CSS. I’ve gone with a group of labels with nested radio boxes as far as the markup goes. The exact styling is totally up to you, of course, but you can use these base styles I wrote up if you want a starting point.

.scroll-container {
  /* SIZING & LAYOUT */
  --itemHeight: 60px;
  --itemGap: 10px;
  --containerHeight: calc((var(--itemHeight) * 7) + (var(--itemGap) * 6));

  width: 400px; 
  height: var(--containerHeight);
  align-items: center;
  row-gap: var(--itemGap);
  border-radius: 4px;

  /* PAINT */
  --topBit: calc((var(--containerHeight) - var(--itemHeight))/2);
  --footBit: calc((var(--containerHeight) + var(--itemHeight))/2);

  background: linear-gradient(
    rgb(254 251 240), 
    rgb(254 251 240) var(--topBit), 
    rgb(229 50 34 / .5) var(--topBit), 
    rgb(229 50 34 / .5) var(--footBit), 
    rgb(254 251 240) 
    var(--footBit));
  box-shadow: 0 0 10px #eee;
}

A couple of details on this:

• --itemHeight is the height of each item in the list.
• --itemGap is meant to be the space between two items.
• The --containerHeight variable is the .scroll-container’s height. It’s the sum of the item sizes and the gaps between them, ensuring that we display, at maximum, seven items at once. (An odd number of items gives us a nice balance where the selected item is directly in the vertical center of the list). 
• The background is a striped gradient that highlights the middle area, i.e., the location of the currently selected item. 
•  The --topBit and –-footBit variables are color stops that visually paint in the middle area (which is orange in the demo) to represent the currently selected item.

I’ll arrange the controls in a vertical column with flexbox declared on the .scroll-container:

.scroll-container {
  display: flex; 
  flex-direction: column;
  /* rest of styles */
}

With layout work done, we can focus on the scrolling part of this. If you haven’t worked with CSS Scroll Snapping before, it’s a convenient way to direct a container’s scrolling behavior. For example, we can tell the .scroll-container that we want to enable scrolling in the vertical direction. That way, it’s possible to scroll to the rest of the items that are not in view.

.scroll-container {
  overflow-y: scroll;
  /* rest of styles */
}

Next, we reach for the scroll-snap-style property that can be used to tell the .scroll-container that we want scrolling to stop on an item — not near an item, but directly on it.

.scroll-container {
  overflow-y: scroll;
  scroll-snap-type: y mandatory;
  /* rest of styles */
}

Now items “snap” onto an item instead of allowing a scroll to end wherever it wants. One more little detail I like to include is overscroll-behavior, specifically along the y-axis as far as this demo goes:

.scroll-container {
  overflow-y: scroll;
  scroll-snap-type: y mandatory;
  overscroll-behavior-y: none;
  /* rest of styles */
}

overscroll-behavior-y: none isn’t required to make this work, but when someone scrolls through the .scroll-container (along the y-axis), scrolling stops once the boundary is reached, and any further continued scrolling action will not trigger scrolling in any nearby scroll containers. Just a form of defensive CSS.

Time to move to the items inside the scroll container. But before we go there, here are some base styles for the items themselves that you can use as a starting point:

.scroll-item {
  /* SIZING & LAYOUT */
  width: 90%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding-inline: 20px;
  border-radius: inherit; 

  /* PAINT & FONT */
  background: linear-gradient(to right, rgb(242 194 66), rgb(235 122 51));
  box-shadow: 0 0 4px rgb(235 122 51);
  font: 16pt/var(--itemHeight) system-ui;
  color: #fff;

  input { appearance: none; } 
  abbr { float: right; } /* The airport code */
}

As I mentioned earlier, the --itemHeight variable is setting as the size of each item and we’re declaring it on the flex property — flex: 0 0 var(--itemHeight). Margin is added before and after the first and last items, respectively, so that every item can reach the middle of the container through scrolling. 

The scroll-snap-align property is there to give the .scroll-container a snap point for the items. A center alignment, for instance, snaps an item’s center (vertical center, in this case) with the .scroll-container‘s center (vertical center as well). Since the items are meant to be selected through scrolling alone pointer-events: none is added to prevent selection from clicks.

One last little styling detail is to set a new background on an item when it is in a :checked state:

.scroll-item {
  /* Same styles as before */

  /* If input="radio" is :checked */
  &:has(:checked) {
    background: rgb(229 50 34);
  }
}

But wait! You’re probably wondering how in the world an item can be :checked when we’re removing pointer-events. Good question! We’re all finished with styling, so let’s move on to figuring some way to “select” an item purely through scrolling. In other words, whatever item scrolls into view and “snaps” into the container’s vertical center needs to behave like a typical form control selection. Yes, we’ll need JavaScript for that. 

let observer = new IntersectionObserver(entries => { 
  entries.forEach(entry => {
    with(entry) if(isIntersecting) target.children[1].checked = true;
  });
}, { 
  root: document.querySelector(`.scroll-container`), rootMargin: `-51% 0px -49% 0px`
});

document.querySelectorAll(`.scroll-item`).forEach(item => observer.observe(item));

The IntersectionObserver object is used to monitor (or “observe”) if and when an element (called a target) crosses through (or “intersects”) another element. That other element could be the viewport itself, but in this case, we’re observing the .scroll-container for when a .scroll-item intersects it. We’ve established the observed boundary with rootMargin:"-51% 0px -49% 0px".  

A callback function is executed when that happens, and we can use that to apply changes to the target element, which is the currently selected .scroll-item. In our case, we want to select a .scroll-item that is at the halfway mark in the .scroll-container: target.children[1].checked = true.

That completes the code. Now, as we scroll through the items, whichever one snaps into the center position is the selected item. Here’s a look at the final demo again:

Let’s say that, instead of selecting an item that snaps into the .scroll-container‘s vertical center, the selection point we need to watch is the top of the container. No worries! All we do is update the scroll-snap-align property value from center to start in the CSS and remove the :first-of-type‘s top margin. From there, it’s only a matter of updating the scroll container’s background gradient so that the color stops highlight the top instead of the center. Like this:

And if one of the items has to be pre-selected when the page loads, we can get its position in JavaScript (getBoundingClientRect()) and use the scrollTo() method to scroll the container to where that specific item’s position is at the point of selection (which we’ll say is the center in keeping with our original demo). We’ll append a .selected class on that .scroll-item. 

<section class="scroll-container">
  <!-- more items -->
  <label class="scroll-items selected">
    2024
    <input type=radio name=items />
  </label>

  <!-- more items -->
</section>

Let’s select the .selected class, get its dimensions, and automatically scroll to it on page load:

let selected_item = (document.querySelector(".selected")).getBoundingClientRect();
let scroll_container = document.querySelector(".scroll-container");
scroll_container.scrollTo(0, selected_item.top - scroll_container.offsetHeight - selected_item.height);

It’s a little tough to demo this in a typical CodePen embed, so here’s a live demo in a GitHub Page (source code). I’ll drop a video in as well:

That’s it! You can build up this control or use it as a starting point to experiment with different layouts, styles, animations, and such. It’s important the UX clearly conveys to the users how the selection is done and which item is currently selected. And if I was doing this in a production environment, I’d want to make sure there’s a good fallback experience for when JavaScript might be unavailable and that my markup performs well on a screen reader.

References and further reading

• A Few Functional Uses for Intersection Observer to Know When an Element is in View (Preethi Sam)
• An Explanation of How the Intersection Observer Watches (Travis Almand)
• Practical CSS Scroll Snapping (Max Kohler)
• The Current State of Styling Selects in 2019 (Chris Coyier)
• CSS Flexbox Layout Guide (CSS-Tricks)
• CSS flex property (CSS-Tricks)
• CSS Scroll Snap Properties (MDN)
• scrollTo() (MDN)

How to Make a “Scroll to Select” Form Control originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

In modern web applications, scalability is crucial for handling increasing traffic and data efficiently. Laravel’s job queues offer a powerful way to manage tasks that need to be processed asynchronously, helping your application stay responsive and performant. In this blog, we’ll explore how Laravel’s job queues work and how you can implement them to unlock …

Continue reading "Unlocking Scalability with Laravel’s Job Queues A Practical Approach"

The post Unlocking Scalability with Laravel’s Job Queues A Practical Approach first appeared on Lucid Softech.

Korean typography holds a unique aesthetic appeal that can transport your designs to an entirely different cultural dimension. Their unique blend of boldness and simplicity brings a distinct visual appeal that’s perfect for a variety of creative projects.

In this post, we’ve compiled a collection of the most stunning and versatile Korean fonts, each designed to bring a sense of sophistication and cultural richness to your designs. From sleek modern typefaces to more traditional, handwritten styles, these fonts are perfect for making your designs stand out while adding a subtle international flair.

Their clean lines, balanced shapes, and minimalistic style are ideal for creating logos, posters, packaging, or even social media content that requires a unique and stylish touch. Be sure to download them all.

Korean – Modern Korean Font

This font masterfully combines traditional Korean writing with a modern, sleek design for a visually engaging typeface. Ideal for various design projects, it provides a blend of elegance and cultural depth, ensuring your designs stand out. With a full set of Hangul characters, Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, and specialty characters, its versatility is unmatched.

Waom – Korean Style Font

Waom is an exquisite Korean style font that brings a dash of Asian elegance to your designs. Each letter intricately portrays beauty and delicacy, encapsulating Korea’s cultural richness. Perfect for branding, logos, and events, this unique font adds a timeless charm to your projects.

Kirame – Korean Style Font

Elevate your designs with the innate beauty of the Kirame font, which effortlessly marries Korean elegance with modern style. Exuding an enchanting Asian charm, every character of Kirame resonates tenderness, making it an ideal choice for branding initiatives, logo typography or any project that seeks to capture the rich allure of Korean culture.

Itaewon – Korean Modern Font

Itaewon is a compelling display typeface inspired by Hangul, the symbol of the lively Itaewon nightlife. Efficient in providing a unique twist to Korean-themed projects such as branding and restaurant menus, it supports uppercase/lowercase variants and multiple languages. Formats available are OTF, TTF, and WOFF.

Seoul – Authentic Korean Font

The Seoul font is an impressive, robust display font that captures the essence of traditional Korean letters. Perfect for a multitude of uses, it can enhance travelogues, poetry, movie titles, food-related content, quotes, brand identities, and more! The Seoul font package includes OTF, TTF, and WOFF versions, along with basic Latin alphabets, numbers, and punctuation.

Namra – Korean Style Display Font

Namra is an appealing typeface inspired by Korean text, perfect for jazzing up your posters. Apart from posters, it’s also ideal for logos, stickers, jerseys, invitation cards, brochures, and more. It comes as one Otf file, though please note it doesn’t include a thumbnail cover.

Korean – Futurstic Helvetica Font

This is a stunning and dynamic Korean font that merges elegance and minimalism. Its unique curves at the end of each letter ornament signify it’s ready for both present and future designs. Ideal for branding, invitations, posters, brochures and more, this versatile font ensures clarity while attracting attention. Its blend of serif and sans styles promise distinct, visually appealing results.

Kpop Vibes – Korean Style Font

Kpop Vibes is a creative, Korean-style font that mirrors the vibrant culture and growing impact of Korea on the global scene. This sans-serif typeface, in both regular and italic styles, brings together bold, unique graphic design trends. Its versatile features include uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation, and multi-lingual support.

Kinserim – Korean Style Font

Kinserim is a captivating Korean font that enriches your branding, logos, and various design pursuits with its enchanting Asian allure. It’s more than just a font—it is a salute to Korean culture, enveloping your projects with the timeless elegance of Eastern charm.  It’s the perfect blend of functionality and aesthetic mastery that supports multilingual content.

Seoul – Modern Korean Font

This is a modern Korean font that artfully merges elegance with a contemporary style. Ideal for design projects needing a touch of sophistication, “Seoul” offers a sleek and clean aesthetic with a full set of Korean and Latin characters, numerals and punctuation. Perfect for everything from branding to digital media, it adds a professional and unique touch to any design project.

Hyunso – Creative Korean Font

Hyunso, a creative Korean style display font, draws its inspiration from the title series, All of Us Are Dead. Worthy of your posters and suitable for designing logos, stickers, invitations, jerseys, and brochures, this new offering from IHDSTD is a single Otf file that doesn’t include a thumbnail cover. Embrace Hyunso for a unique, stylish touch to your creative projects.

Annyeong – Cute Korean Font

Annyeong is a vibrant Korean font that embodies the dynamism and allure of Korean design, providing a unique touch of cultural richness to your designs. Its generously sized characters ensure a powerful visual impact while its bold weight brings solidity to your creative projects. Perfect for headlines, logos and more, Annyeong offers multi-lingual support, stylish sets, numerals and punctuations in OTF, TTF and WOFF formats.

Bosan Mirull – Korean Style Font

Bosan Mirull is a Korean-style font that beautifully captures the essence of Korea’s rich culture in its design. Ideal for branding projects, logo typography, and special events, it adds a unique Asian flair to your work. This font comes with OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2, CSS, HTML file fonts, all glyphs, variations and multilingual support.

Hello Seoul – Korean Font

Hello Seoul is a sleek and modern Korean font, known for its crisp rectangular shapes and sharp corners that symbolize Seoul’s dynamic spirit. This non-heavy display font offers a fresh, structured aesthetic ideal for various design needs like logos, headlines, posters, and branding materials. Features include multilingual support, alternates, and encoded numerals and punctuations.

Konijhipa – Korean Textured Font

Check out Konijhipa, a beautifully textured, flowing Korean font that’s sure to elevate your next design project. This font’s blend of unique ligatures and modern swirly embedding lends an elegant flair, backed by features like multilingual support, compatibility with both PC and Mac, and simple installation. Available in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats, Konijhipa is a creative addition to your design toolkit.

Yeongest – Korean Style Font

Yeongest is a captivating Korean style font that adds an Asian charm to every project. Each letter shines with elegance, embodying the richness of Korea’s culture. Offering flexibility across numerous formats, from OTF to HTML, Yeongest has all glyphs and variations. With multilingual support and fully accessible PUA Encoded Characters, Yeongest is an excellent choice for branding, logo typography, and special events that aim to embody a timeless beauty.

Busan Garden – Korean Font

Busan Garden is a Korean font with a bold, immersive style that channels the spirit and aesthetics of Busan. With its sturdy, confident letterforms and sharp angles, it’s a font that commands attention. It’s versatile and supports multiple languages, numerals, and punctuations. Perfect for headlines, logos, and other design projects, Busan Garden isn’t just a font—it’s a journey through the streets of Busan.

Gonggi Notes – Cute Korean Font

Gonggi Notes is a captivating Korean font with modern appeal. Its rich and sturdy lettering delivers a strong presence, while maintaining a delightful roundness for approachable charm. This font brings a touch of Korean culture to your designs, and supports alternate characters, multiple languages and includes various punctuations and numerals. Ideal for headlining, branding, and various print applications, the Gonggi Notes font offers versatility in creative design.

Daebak Mrow – Korean Style Font

Embrace the allure of Korean culture with Daebak Mrow, a font styled in the spirit of Asian elegance. With its soft, warm curves, this unique Korean style font greatly enhances the charm of your design projects. Effortless to grasp, Daebak Mrow brings out the calming, mesmerizing, and timeless beauty of Korea in branding, logos, and events.

Chaewon – Korean Style Display Font

Chaewon is a remarkable Korean font that can add a stylishly ethnic touch to your projects. It’s not just for posters but also works beautifully for logos, stickers, jerseys, invitation cards, brochures, and more. You get 1 OTF file in this package.

Moncbla – Korean Style Font

The Moncbla brings a touch of Asian elegance to your designs. This charming, yet modern, font features a distinctively Korean flair, adding beauty and tenderness to each character. Ideal for brand projects and events where a unique Asian aura is desired. The package includes OTF, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2, CSS, HTML file fonts and multiple glyph variations.

Bocan – Korean Calligraphy Font

The Bocan is a creative font inspired by Korean movie posters and cover designs, offering a stylish and unique element for your design projects. It serves as a great tool to incorporate a Korean aesthetic into various contexts, including posters, sale signs, advertisements, and social media campaigns. Provided in both regular and outline styles, the Bocan font features a comprehensive character set, including numerals, punctuations, and ligatures, supporting multilingual use.

Free Korean Fonts

Jonyock – Free Korean Style Font

This free font comes with a stylish Korean-style letter design that will allow you to craft beautiful typography that fits perfectly with various types of design projects. It’s especially great for restaurant and food packaging designs. It’s free to use with personal projects.

Utonaf  – Free Korean Font

This free font features a creative square-shaped letter design with Korean-themed letterforms. The font is ideal for fun and casual designs including social media posts, T-shirts, flyers, and more. It’s free for personal use only.

Wefumi – Free Korean Font

You can download this font for free to craft attractive titles and headings for your cute and fun designs. The font has a cute Korean-themed letter design that will fit perfectly for packaging and branding designs. It’s free for personal use.

Hangul – Free Korean Style Font

Hangul is a stylish Korean-style font that comes with a modern and futuristic-style letter design. This font is ideal for technology and traditional-themed designs. You can use it freely with personal and commercial projects.

Tenada – Free Korean Font

Tenada is another creative font with a set of Stencil-style letters. It takes inspiration from Korean-style typography and features stylistic elements that give each letter a unique identity. The font is completely free to use with commercial projects.

Mixing colors in CSS is pretty much a solved deal, thanks to the more recent color-mix() function as it gains support. Pass in two color values — any two color values at all — and optionally set the proportions.

background-color: color-mix(#000 30%, #fff 70%);

We also have the relative color syntax that can manipulate colors from one color space to another and modify them from there. The preeminent use case being a way to add opacity to color values that don’t support it, such as named colors.

background-color: hsl(from black h s l); /* hsl(0 0% 0%) */
background-color: hsl(from black h s l / 50%); /* hsl(0 0% 0% / 50%) */

We can get hacky and overlay one opaque element with another, I suppose.

Same general idea maybe, but with mix-blend-mode?

Another roundabout way of getting there is something I saw this morning when looking over the updates that Ryan added to the animation property in the Almanac. Now, we all know that animation is shorthand for about a gajillion other properties (the order of which always eludes me). One of those is animation-composition and it’s used to… well, Ryan nails the explanation:

Defining a property in CSS also sets what is considered the underlying value of the property. By default, keyframe animations will ignore the underlying value, as they only consider the effect values defined within the animation. Keyframes create a stack of effect values, which determines the order in which the animation renders to the browser. Composite operations are how CSS handles the underlying effect combined with the keyframe effect value.

Manuel Matuzović and Robin Rendle also have excellent ways of explaining the property, the former of which sparked us to update the Almanac.

OK! We have three values supported by animation-composition to replace the underlying property value in favor of the effect value defined in keyframes, add to them, or accumulate for combining multiple values. The add value is what’s interesting to us because… oh gosh, let’s just let Ryan take it:

[I]nstead of replacing an underlying background-color property value with the keyframe’s effect value, the color type values are combined, creating new colors.

A-ha! The example goes like this:

See that? The add value blends the two colors as one transitions to the other. Notice, too, how much smoother that transition is than the replace value, although we wind up with a completely new color at the 100% mark rather than the color we declared in the keyframes. What if we pause the animation at some arbitrary point? Can we extract a new color value from it?

Ryan made this so that hovering on the elements pauses the animation. If we crack open DevTools and force the :hover pseudo on the element, maybe we can head over to the Computed tab to get the new color value.

Interestingly, we get some RGB conversions in there. Probably because updating color channels is easier than converting one hex to another? Browsers do smart stuff.

Now I want to go update my old color interpolation demo…

Hmm, not any different to my untrained eye. Maybe that’s only because we’re changing the HSL’s hue channel and it’s super subtle. Whatever the case, animation-composition can produce new computed color values. What you need those for and what you’d do with them? I dunno, but go wild.

Color Mixing With Animation Composition originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

The landscape of video and motion graphics is evolving at an exhilarating pace, all fueled by artificial intelligence (AI). And it will continue to revolutionize the industry throughout this year.

In this post, we dive into the future of video and motion graphics, to explore the trends that will likely grow, change, and evolve this year. Naturally, most of these trends involve AI and whether you like it or not, it will be a part of your process too.

In motion graphics, the trends have stayed consistent over the years. We expect to see some of the timeless trends getting more popular while making way for new concepts that enhance visual storytelling.

Without further ado, let’s dive in and explore the video trends and motion graphic trends to keep an eye out for this year.

1. Effortless Editing With AI

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom:20px; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

Editing videos became effortless with the help of AI. Adobe Premiere Pro and many other popular video editing software introduced cool new AI-powered editing systems last year, including text-based video editing.

Instead of having to scan videos manually to find and edit clips, you can now generate a transcript and edit using the text. Generating clips and scenes is also easier with AI. Enhancing audio and video quality became as simple as clicking a single button.

Things will only get bigger and better this year with Premiere Pro taking the lead on impressive AI-powered tools and features. But many other software are also introducing unique and advanced AI tools that will make video editing easier than ever.

2. AI Voiceovers Replace Voice Actors

.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom:20px; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

Recording voiceovers for videos has always been a frustrating experience. Even when you manage to get everything right in the first take, there will be some issues with the audio or the mic. Not to mention the costs of hiring voice actors for professional videos.

This is part of the reason why AI voiceovers became so popular last year. Now, all you have to do is copy and paste the script into an app and have it generate the voice track.

These AI voiceover tools are surprisingly realistic and accurate and it’s very difficult to make these AI-voiced videos apart from real voices. In fact, there are now tools that allow you to synthesize your own voice so you don’t have to record voiceovers for your videos ever again.

3. AI Avatars To Replace People

While you’re replacing your voiceovers with AI this year, why not replace yourself with an AI avatar? That way, you can completely automate your video production and even reduce the costs that go into hiring actors as well.

There are already many tools that allow you to generate AI avatars for videos. Even though they are not perfect right now, it won’t be too long before they get more accurate. Tools like HeyGen are already doing a great job of cloning your personality and likeness to generate AI videos.

Soon, there will be AI tools that will let you create videos or even movies with AI actors, reducing production costs and making things way easier to create content with nothing but a laptop.

4. Rise Of Short-Form Videos

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Popularized by TikTok, Shorts became a phenomenal new addition to social media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. According to statistics, YouTube Shorts get more than 50 billion views per day.

Shorts and short-form content are much easier to consume, especially on mobile platforms. The vertical video format fits perfectly on mobile devices and they are just easier to scroll through than watching full-length videos.

Short-form videos appear to be the future of video and content creation. And marketers are slowly adopting this trend into their campaigns as well.

5. AI-Generated Videos Are Here

People laughed at the AI-generated videos. They were hilariously bad at generating realistic scenes, humans had way too many fingers, and they often looked nightmare-inducing. That all changed when OpenAI revealed its AI model for generating videos, Sora.

Sora does an incredible job at generating AI videos from text prompts. If someone were to show you the Sora introduction video without telling you it’s AI-generated, it would probably take you a long time to realize it.

There are many other AI video models out there and people are already using them to create wild and weird videos. As fun as they are to look at, it’s important to realize how fast AI-generated videos have improved over the course of a few months. And they will only get even better this year.

Marketers will be able to use AI videos to highlight their businesses, content creators will use AI to generate unique stock footage, and filmmakers will use it to create beautiful scenic shots without having to visit the locations. The opportunities will be endless.

6. Storytelling Is Still King of Marketing

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Every year, people around the world watch the Super Bowl for two reasons: Some watch it for the game and others watch it for the adverts. If you look at some of the most popular Super Bowl ads that generated more views and discussions, you’ll notice that they all have one thing in common—Storytelling!

Storytelling is still the key to creating more memorable, emotional, and impactful content. Whether it’s a TV commercial, social media video, or even a behind-the-scenes video, storytelling gives your content an identity that makes your brand stand out from the crowd. As long as humans have emotions, you can use storytelling to tap into their souls and minds.

7. Liquid-style Animations Takes Over

Motion graphics with liquid-style animations have been popular for quite a while. Their ability to create mesmerizing visuals with fluid animations often brings out a sense of energetic and whimsical vibe in people. This is why we’ve been seeing more and more businesses and marketers use liquid animations in their promo videos.

The fluidity and smoothness of the liquid animations make them more effective at grabbing the attention of the viewer. And using bright and vibrant colors makes them even more attractive. For these reasons, we can expect to see more motion graphic designs using liquid animations this year and probably throughout next year as well.

8. Episodic Videos Boost Retention

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When creating content on similar topics, consider turning it into a video series rather than creating one long-form video. Many creators have found episodic content to be much more effective than publishing individual videos apart from one another.

This is especially effective for YouTube channels. Many users on Reddit confirm that episodic content and videos made as a series work better for discoverability. And it’s also the best way to get your viewers to come back for more.

The key, however, is to create episodic content that stands on its own. Rather than creating a series with numbers like “episode 34”, you need to create interesting episodes that can be enjoyed by anyone who finds them without needing to watch the entire series from the beginning.

9. Long-Form Videos Still Works

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Even though short-form videos are the go-to choice among the younger generations, there is still good demand for long-form videos. The recent growth of podcast channels on YouTube is a good example of that. Even on TikTok, the long-form 10-minute videos have been quite popular over the past few months.

In-depth videos and content offer a bigger opportunity for you to engage with your audience on a much deeper level. If you can maintain the attention of your viewers throughout an hour-long video, you won’t have trouble convincing them to join your tribe.

10. Neo Brutalism Making a Comeback

There’s something about the raw and vibrant aesthetic of the Neo Brutalism trend that makes it hard to look away. The popular graphic design trend someone made its way over to motion graphics and now they are taking over the world of media as well.

The Neo Brutalism vibe is most effective for business and brand content. They help brands stand out with a more authentic look to connect with the audience on a personal level. Of course, the simple color schemes and the creative shapes also help create mesmerizing animations.

11. Silent Videos Making A Comeback

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In 2023 we saw a rise in silent videos on social media platforms. These are videos that don’t have any voiceovers and only consist of captions and subtitles. And they are slowly becoming the standard format for videos that target mobile audiences.

Most people who watch videos on mobile devices watch while traveling, standing in a queue, or crowded places. They prefer to keep volume muted while watching videos and that’s why they prefer these new captioned videos.

This is one of the trends that have a positive impact, allowing you to tap into a new group of audience this year.

12. Realistic 3D Motion Graphics

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Realism is the new theme of motion graphics. Especially with the advancements in AI, it’s getting much easier to generate brilliant motion graphics with realistic 3D visuals.

3D VFX tools like Blender also received significant improvements last year making them capable of producing life-like and ultra-realistic 3D motion graphics. Needless to say, we can expect to see more of those this year as well.

13. Retro Effects Are Still Popular

Reto-style visual effects and motion graphics will only continue to grow in popularity this year and we are not complaining. They are the ideal choice for creating a sense of nostalgia and evoking feel-good emotions.

Seeing cool retro filters, VHS-style distortions, and cyberpunk-themed glitching effects never gets old. These cool effects get featured on everything from YouTube videos to promotional adverts and even wedding videos. And we hope this retro motion graphics trend will never go out of style.

14. Grunge Visual Effects On The Rise

One of the new trends that’s slowly growing in motion graphics is the use of grunge-style visual effects. These effects add a gritty and urban feel to various types of videos, especially for intros and title scenes of videos, and add a raw and unpolished aesthetic.

Today, most content, adverts, and videos look too perfect, smooth, and unrealistic. And that’s part of why this grunge visual effects trend is getting more recognition. It adds imperfections, hand-drawn animations, grainy filters, and texture overlays to deliberately make videos look raw and realistic.

15. Dynamic Transitions To Grab Attention

Video transition effects used to be simple, minimal, and subtle. But that’s going away. Now, videos use more dynamic transition effects to attract the viewer’s attention and maintain it throughout the video.

Dynamic transitions are more than just about connecting two clips, they are also about creating fluid scenes that blend perfectly while also adding a sense of flow to the overall look of the video. Don’t be surprised if you see more videos that use dynamic transitions this year.

16. Histrionic Visuals

This is a motion graphics trend that we didn’t see coming and we certainly didn’t expect it to be this popular. Histrionic visuals are all about creating more expressive and dramatic videos.

This trend involves using rough textured overlays, old-school vintage color palettes, and distorted VHS-style effects to create scenes that evoke strong emotional responses. As a result, this effect is popularly used in videos related to serious topics, such as documentaries.

We also saw a different take on this trend where video editors and animators use histrionic visuals to create pop art and digital futurism-style looks for videos as well.

What’s Next?

We didn’t expect AI to make such a big impact on the way we work and now, somehow, we can’t imagine our lives without it.

It’s hard to guess what kind of an impact AI will have in the video industry this year. It will likely be as mind-blowing as the last year. However, we can be sure of one thing: it’s an exciting time to be working in this industry.