Tag: Tips and Tricks

5 Graphic Design Essentials for 2022

Interactive Elements & Animations

Engaging consumers through motion and animation. Static graphics don’t always cut through the noise. With the increase in digital platforms, brands can use motion in design to better the way they approach storytelling and deliver memorable experiences to customers.

Accessible Designs

Have you ever increased the font size on your phone or in your browser? You’re benefiting from an accessibility feature. Accessibility design fundamentals such as color contrast, font size and defined heading structures have been around for years. Now, brands and their agencies must focus on improving digital accessibility further. Designers should ensure elements are available for screen readers through adding image descriptions, determining the tab navigation order, and enabling text scaling to name just a few. Flexitive has each of the features built-in, so you can easily ensure all of your designs meet accessibility requirements.

Reusable ‘Global Assets’

Global brands operating across the world often have a huge number of design elements and lock-ups to meet certain market requirements. One of the best ways to avoid repeating work and to ensure consistent brand experiences is to develop reusable components or ‘Global Assets.’ When you make updates to a Global Asset, the asset will instantly update across other designs where it is embedded. Now just think of those extra hours you’ll have back!

Expandable Designs

Busy lives, shorter attention spans and information overload has made it more difficult for marketers to compete for people’s attention. Expandable designs provide the opportunity for designers to communicate a message in a more interactive format. Clearly display the key information on the part of the design visible and allow your audience to click to expand either within a design or outside of the fixed size.

Illustrations and Colorful Icons 

Illustrations allow an audience to interpret their own meaning, while icons convey a message quickly and clearly. Both act as powerful visual communication tools for designers and marketers. Icons and illustrations are also vital for accessibility as they provide visual cues for disabled visitors.

If you’re ready to start incorporating some of these design essentials, request a Flexitive Enterprise Demo and our solutions team will contact you to arrange a time.

Want to learn more about design automation? Visit flexitive.com
Questions? Contact us to get in touch!

Choosing the Best File Types for Web Image Optimization

It’s super important to consider web image optimization when creating designs, and choosing the best file types to use for individual elements. Even though Flexitive makes this process easier with automated image resizing and smart compression, we’ve put some tips together to help designers identify the best file types to use when building static, or animated designs that are both high quality, and load quickly on all devices.

JPG

  • Best for realistic photo compression (i.e. mountain landscapes), or complex static designs
  • Images with solid color bands (illustrations) can also be exported as JPG if they have many colors and are complex.

PNG-24

  • Best for images with transparency that also have your asset sitting above various colors. Great for product images that have transparent backgrounds, within HTML5 content.
  • PNG-24 is also a good alternative to assets that would otherwise be in SVG format since they offer more compression. However, the downside is that you have to make sure the image resolution is high enough for your purposes.

PNG-8

  • Best for images with fewer colors and solid color bands.
  • PNG-8 is also a good alternative to assets that would otherwise be SVG format since they offer more compression. However, the downside is that you have to make sure the image resolution is high enough for your purposes.
  • Is similar to GIF in that you must have a “matte” around your asset if there is transparency, but it greatly reduces file size.

GIF

  • Great for animated images within emails, or for memes!
  • The best way to create and showcase simple, short animations. Keep in mind, the file size may escalate quickly!
  • Best for images with solid color bands (illustrations), not for images with many colors eg. gradients.
  • GIFs are also a potential alternative to assets that would otherwise be SVG format since they offer more compression; however, the downside is that you have to make sure the image resolution (pixel size) is high enough for your purposes.
  • Like PNG-8, requires a “matte” around your asset if it is transparent, but you can achieve smaller file sizes.

SVG

  • The best format for vector shapes/illustrations/text/ because it offers infinite scaling without loss of quality. Use SVGs for high-resolution screens such as 4K+, if the image will be within HTML5 content.
  • If your vector is too complex (too many curves/vertices) and requires transparency then it would be best to save a large-resolution PNG-24.
  • Keep in mind that SVGs do not compress – they are one file and file size regardless of their physical dimensions. If there is a lot of text in your SVG or you are creating a button for a CTA and are worried about file size – consider using an auto-resizing text element within Flexitive rather than uploading an SVG.

To learn more about design automation visit flexitive.com or if you have any questions contact us to get in touch. 

If you work for a brand or agency, request a Flexitive Enterprise demo and our solutions team will contact you to arrange a time.

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Using The Right Click Menu

You can use the right-click menu in Flexitive to quickly and easily adjust element settings on your design, allowing for a quicker and more efficient workflow.

With the right-click menu you can;

  • Reorder the elements position in the layers,
  • Change the size and position of an element on a certain size,
  • Hide, show, and delete elements,
  • Flip an element,
  • Snap to All Edges,
  • Add animations,
  • Add click-through URLs,
  • Replace elements.

Simply right-click on any element to view the right-click menu.

Flexitive Desktop Apps

Flexitive for Desktop is the best way to use the Flexitive Design Cloud on Windows and Mac.

Multitasking is Easy

With Flexitive for Desktop on Windows and Mac, you can view and edit multiple designs at the same time. An overview of multiple designs is particularly useful when working with embedded pages, copying and pasting text from one design to another, and when comparing different versions of designs.

Speed up your Workflow

Quickly access Flexitive for Desktop from your dock or taskbar. Now you can easily switch between Flexitive and other design tools to speed up your workflow.

Download Flexitive for Desktop Now!

Download for Windows. 

Download for Mac.