Design a killer logo in Illustrator

The killer logo design will be different every time, depending on the brand's overall identity. Each identity project is unique. They all have their own issues to overcome and challenges to conquer. But you should still approach each brief in a similar way: develop a workflow that allows maximum creativity and is productive.

This tutorial will walk you through the core stages of creating a new identity for the ultra-modern HabiGym. I'll show you how this identity was conceived, explaining each stage of the process from when the ideas were born through to the final presentation. As well as demonstrating some of the essential tools and skills that you can learn to help streamline your workflow in Illustrator, I'll also share a few best-practice rules of thumbs for working smarter.

01. Always start on paper

Everyone knows they should start with a plan, but with deadlines looming it's all too easy to forget this stage – don't. A major part of identity design involves solving a problem with a concept. For many, this happens much more fluidly on paper, as your mind bounces off each thing you sketch out.

02. Mobile scanner

If you have a scanner, use that for the best results. If you don't have one to hand, take photos of your sketches. You can then use them as guides for digital recreation. When it comes to logos, precision is essential. Therefore, Live Trace needs to be ditched and the work needs to be done manually.

03. Practice makes perfect

The Pen tool is probably the most frequently used – but remains one of the trickiest to master. It's a very powerful tool and learning it will not only benefit your ability to create images in Illustrator, the skills you acquire will also boost any Photoshop Pen work you do.

04. Utilise the Shapes panel

Create this logo by combining rectangles using the Rectangle tool. When building the vectors, try using the Shape panel for better accuracy. Hold Shift to draw shapes with equal proportions. Select any element, and its width and height are shown in the Control bar. You can type in sizes here too.

05. Duplicate elements and combine

To compare variants, duplicate a master copy to edit (hold Alt and drag). Create shapes to align objects and use Smart Guides (View>Smart Guides). Use the Pathfinder tool to combine shapes and create new ones. You can combine rectangles to make the 'H' element: select both elements and hit Merge.

06. Tweak the type

Alter the tracking and kerning of words to change the tone of a logo. Add character to the logotype by opening up the shapes into the native paths that make up the letters, altering the paths of each letter directly to make your type unique. To quickly convert the font to outlines (paths) hit Cmd/Ctrl+Shift O.

07. Keep changes subtle

Use the Direct Selection tool to rearrange the anchor points and alter the appearance of the letters. Keep changes small and subtle. Careful scaling of the logo mark with the type is crucial to achieve cohesion between the two. Hold Shift to keep everything in proportion as you scale elements up and down.

08. Time to add colour

In CS4 and higher, you can integrate Adobe's Kuler app into your workspace to view colour palettes. Go to Window > Extensions > Kuler. Try to avoid gradients in logos, but don't take that as an absolute rule. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+F9 to access the Gradient dialogue. Try the logo on a variety of background colours and shapes.

09. Create delivery templates

Go to File > Save As > Illustrator Template. Choose fonts that work well with the brand. Create style guides for designs: add CMYK colour breakdowns, Hex codes or Pantone codes, and font names – this is useful for designers and ensures brand consistency. Also give examples of the brand on various materials.

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Launch your web dev career with this expert bundle

Web developers are the skilled professionals who build and maintain the apps and services that people count on every day. If you want to be one of the people who help keep the digital world turning then you need to check out the Full Stack Web Development Bundle. You can get it now for a price you pick.

The Full Stack Web Development Bundle is the perfect starting point for any aspiring web developer. This impressive collection of courses is one that you won’t want to miss and is guaranteed to fit your budget, thanks to this deal where you can pick the price.

You'll learn how to work with the most important languages in web development, including front-end development standards such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery. There are eight courses in this bundle with over 122 hours of content that will get you up to speed in no time.

The eight courses are:

• The Full Stack Web Development Course (Handle Every Facet of An App's Development)
• Projects In ReactJS: The Complete React Learning Course
• Projects in JavaScript & JQuery
• ReactJS and Flux: Learn By Building 10 Projects
• Projects in MongoDB: Learn MongoDB Building 10 Projects
• Projects Using PHP Frameworks
• Learn NodeJS by Building 10 Projects
• Projects in HTML5

You can get the Full Stack Web Development Bundle on sale right now for a price you pick. Beat the average to unlock all the courses, get on the leaderboard, or just pay what you want. You can't go wrong, so grab it today.

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Beware the cutting edge of web design

Progress in web design techniques shows no signs of slowing down. As the proponents of the early web are staggering around with thousand-yard stares, you can't help but feel a little over-awed by the plethora of techniques and frameworks available nowadays.

People are championing the new approaches that are about to change the way we work once again, such as Flexbox and CSS Grid. Rachel Andrew and Jen Simmons have been encouraging developers to look at these technologies now, in readiness for their arrival.

Recently, some of the current web industry's founders – such as Andy Clarke and Jeffrey Zeldman – have asked if it really needs to be this complicated, and whether the web is losing its soul or becoming reliant on a standard output (three-column layouts, hero blocks and the like). Have we all become enslaved to the frameworks and tools available to us?

Although they make a good argument, I don't think there has been a time where there has been more choice (or opinion) about how to build digital projects. We are long past 'HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript'. Now there are CSS preprocessors and JS frameworks, and the components that make up a web project encompass a load of new elements – optimisation, CDN delivery and SEO, to name a few.

Pioneering web tech

The talks and conferences advocate best practices and cutting-edge tech – why we should be using X, Y and Z. This is 100 per cent necessary. After all, the web industry is relatively young and we are still defining the standards of the industry to an extent.

The problem is, those not using these technologies day-to-day in their work can be left feeling inadequate or somehow lacking. It is a lucky few who get to make their living pushing those boundaries and telling us all about them. Don't get me wrong, it is essential to have these people pushing the bleeding edge, but it can result in an urge to jump into new methods too early, which can be the worst thing to do on live client work.

You want long, productive relationships with clients. Changing how you build sites means having to readjust and remember more skills. As much as good commenting and a README file will help, you need to make sure what you're delivering will remain effective and usable for as long as possible.

Educating junior web developers

Many junior developers have a real thirst for knowledge. It is often an inspiration to more senior team members when they arrive in the studio, eager to show a new method or technique that is emerging and explore how it might be used on a project.

You want your staff to grow, to develop and to be able to work on things together, so again it's important to make sure that you're only taking on board advancements that are an improvement on what went before. But when the churn of technology is so quick that we have interns and junior designers who have never had to use a float and do not know life before Bootstrap, it becomes a real balancing act.

A good example of this is the move from LESS to SCSS and also from Grunt to Gulp. Both these technologies are similar, but different enough to mean returning to a project using LESS/Grunt becomes an exercise in re-learning – or in the case of juniors or interns, learning a new (old) technology from scratch.

Website layout gambles

Flex and CSS Grids are the current darlings of frontend talk. CSS Grid has the potential to revolutionise the way we will lay websites out in the future. At the moment it is still hidden in the latest browsers, although you can access it if you enable experimental features on the likes of Chrome. We can't use it in live work for this reason, though with an imminent launch date, Grid could bring about as big a shift in web development practice as the shift from tables to divs and floats.

We are using Flexbox on live work now, but only in ways that are a benefit – for example for ordering content in responsive layouts or vertically centring items. To try to use Flexbox for a full site at the moment, with iOS and Safari's flaky support, would be a challenge that just may not be financially viable.

Embracing the old browsers

Clients, especially within larger companies, likely won't be running the latest browsers. They could also have restrictions on their web access that could affect your build. And if it turns out the main stakeholder is using IE on an old laptop, the site better work on it or the project just won't get signed off.

Sometimes a client will have a good idea of what they want, or specify an incumbent system or technology that you need to work with. A key point for us as an agency is to be adaptive to these needs and to work with them, rather than dismissing what the client has and trying to force them down the route we would prefer. Sometimes this may mean having to extend an existing codebase in order to keep within the technology required.

Although you can make workarounds and shims, there often isn't budget to do this. And when a client doesn't have the right resources then you need to go with the solution that will please everyone.

When it comes down to it, the main aim of the studio is to produce great, forward-thinking work, which means being fully open to new methods but also picking the right time and project to use them. It is a tricky balancing act, but one that gives me a great feeling of satisfaction, especially when a new process finally becomes 'the standard' on live projects.

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Are you prepared for life after jQuery?

When jQuery was first introduced, it changed the world. It gave us all the ability to refer to elements on the page from JavaScript, like we could in CSS. Not only that, but it gave us an API for these elements that was miles ahead of what the browser had. We could hide them, add and remove classes, and even write our own plug-ins to do unprecedented things.

It also hid much of the complexity of dealing with that era of browsers from us. Through painstaking fixes, all of the various bugs that those browsers included were worked around, until you could be confident that if something was done with jQuery, it would work.

Before too long, jQuery became the vernacular of the internet. Scores of people learned it before they learned the DOM itself: it became an implied dependency in every library and tool out there. jQuery was ever-present.

But things have moved on since then. jQuery thrived in a time when browsers were broken and slow to change, but that itself is changing.

Since IE8, browsers have included the document.querySelector method, which gives us all jQuery's killer features right out of the box. IE9 gave us addEventListener, freeing us from onclick and onmouseover. In IE10, JavaScript programmers were granted the classList object, enabling us to add and remove classes without tricky string manipulation.

And this is without touching on all of the amazing things that CSS can do without any JavaScript at all. CSS is finally getting powerful enough to truly facilitate the separation of the JavaScript logic from its presentation. In modern browsers, classes can represent the state things are in and the CSS can define what that means visually – but you can't do that if your code is littered with calls to .hide().

And beyond all that, there are new, powerful APIs that you can't access through jQuery on its own: things like the new MutationObserver and WebRTC require you to talk to the browser itself. And, it turns out, that's not all that bad.

Use it: don't depend on it

We may not need jQuery any more, but what's the harm in using it if it makes your job easier? There isn't any! Keep using jQuery to build your sites and apps. But if you're building a library, consider not making it into a dependency.

Why? Because jQuery is a big, monolithic library. It includes Ajax, DOM manipulation and selection, events, promises, effects and a whole bunch of utilities. Having all of this in a single package locks us all into the jQuery way of doing things – which is also the 10-year-old way of doing things.

Alternative solutions

So what can we use instead? Q does brilliant things with chaining promises and exception-handling. CSS animations are much smoother than anything you could do with JavaScript. Soon, custom elements are going to provide the best possible way of building reusable components. If we live in a world where you can pick and choose which DOM manipulation library you want, or whether you want to use RSVP.js or Q for promises, we can end up with better open-source solutions to all of these problems.

Beyond all this, the jQuery plug-in style puts every library you include in the same, ever-growing namespace. Everything is $(el).colorPicker(), or $(el).chosen(). This doesn't play nicely with a future in which we have real modules. Modules will enable us to cleanly seperate our dependencies, and create optimised builds more easily. Whether you use Browserify, RequireJS or the modules added with ECMAScript 6, it's the future. A single, global namespace isn't.

So how do we reach this brave new world? The first step is for all the libraries we need to release their death grip on jQuery. If they become dependency-free, we can begin to imagine building a modern web app without it.

There is one important caveat: if you're targeting older browsers, including IE6 and 7 or Android 2.3, you aren't ready for this brave new world just yet. Enjoy jQuery to its limits and dream of a future when you can finally speak the browser's language.

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How to use an HTML boilerplate: A guide

Although websites are all unique from a content and design perspective, the underlying foundations of the vast majority of sites are very similar. Using an HTML boilerplate for the initial work is a great way to save time and effort, and here we'll show you how you can use one to kick-start your website projects.

Typically, site designers and developers want to deal with the quirks of individual browsers, stripping out any proprietary styling that such software might add to specific website layout elements. Additionally, they may use scripts to deal with the shortcomings of older browsers and drop in basic default styles for horizontal rules and elements that are supposed to be hidden.

Doing this again and again for every project is a massive waste of time and energy. Not only will you mostly be repeating yourself, you might also make unique errors during every attempt to start afresh. An HTML boilerplate gives you something ready-made to work with, thus avoiding the horror of staring at a blank document and trying to figure out where to begin.

What is an HTML boilerplate?

Boilerplates are similar to templates, but more helpful, in that they often contain text and graphics to start you off rather than just layouts that include these elements. An HTML boilerplate is a set of downloadable files that provide a foundation for any website you might want to create. Typically, they have been built by industry professionals but freely released to the community. Adapting them for your own projects helps speed things up and ensure the basics of your site are sound.

Note that the term 'HTML boilerplate' doesn't mean you just get an HTML document or even a bunch of them. Boilerplates may contain a range of file types, including HTML documents, but also add CSS, JavaScript, placeholder images, and documentation on how to use what you've just downloaded.

Popular boilerplates

HTML5 Boilerplate is a good place to start. The self-described "web's most popular frontend template", is a sleek and simple HTML5 template that's the result of the pooled knowledge of hundreds of developers. It provides the basic scaffolding or framework for building an entire website.

We're on version 7 at the moment, but you can get a gist of how this works by watching the introductory video designed for v5. The latest version is mobile-friendly, with an optimised Google Analytics snippet and minified versions of jQuery and Modernizr included.

Another popular option to explore is Bootstrap. This calls itself a 'frontend component library', and offers more comprehensive options than the HTML5 Boilerplate framework. Some argue that the industry's reliance on Bootstrap has led to increasing homogeneity in web design over recent years.

Whether you opt for a simple HTML5 boilerplate, or something that offers more control, will depend on your level of ability, confidence and needs.

Using HTML5 Boilerplate

When downloaded, this free, open-source boilerplate provides you with documentation and licensing information, some CSS, placeholder images in various aspect ratios, two HTML files, some JavaScript, and some server config files.

On downloading the archive, it's a good idea to make a copy and keep it clean and untouched. It can then serve as reference for any changes you make.

For your new site, first replace the favicon.ico and icon.png files with your logo – these will appear as your site's favicon and the icon when your site is saved to someone's iOS homescreen. An online generator can help you create new images.

In the HTML, there might be some things that you're not familiar with. The majority of these additions deal with issues relating to legacy browsers. The final script element is for Google Analytics and can be removed entirely if you don't use that. Leave the other script elements that are found towards the end of the file, because they load jQuery.

Add content to the body of the document after the 'Add your site or application content here' comment. You'll also need to give the page a title and fill the 'content' value in the 'description' meta tag.

Note also that all links are relative in this document, and so you may need to change them to root-relative or absolute links if you start nesting web pages in folders.

You can add comments if you make any major changes to the HTML, to remind yourself later.

CSS edits

Of the two CSS documents included with HTML5 Boilerplate, there's no need to touch normalize.css. This is the reset document that ensures all browsers start on a level playing field when it comes to your website. By contrast, main.cssincludes what the document terms "opinionated defaults", including some basic styles for selections, horizontal rules, images, and forms, helpers for item visibility, and @media rules for responsive web design and print.

Everything here is fair game for updating, although carefully consider whether you should do so. There's an area set aside for the author's custom styles (ie, yours) or you could create an entirely separate CSS document and attach that to your HTML as well.

Whatever your choice, be mindful of how you'll deal with subsequent updates to HTML5 Boilerplate itself. If you edit any of the default main.css styles, changes made in future versions of HTML5 Boilerplate (which would either be added by replacing files, or replacing parts of files) won't necessarily come across to your site, or will override your own edits. Therefore, again make use of comments for any changes, thereby making later comparisons much easier.

Advanced boilerplates

Once you gain experience, it's worth considering a custom build using Initializr, retaining the components you need and ditching those you don't. Also, if you're creating a WordPress site, explore a WordPress-specific blank theme, such as HTML5 Blank.

These downloads and services are all free, so you can check out and experiment with them at your leisure.

Still, whatever you do, a little work and investigation now should save you a whole lot of time later, when you just pull out your boilerplate to get cracking on a new website.

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4 Amazing design concepts we wish were real

A design concept is arguably more important than the design or even the ultimate product. A good design concept contains the logic, reasoning and (you hope, at least) the research behind an idea. And, more than just a good idea, a good design concept doubles as a kind of visual elevator pitch. It should tell you all you need to know about how and why something does what it does.

We know there are graphic design portfolios out there simply bulging with bright ideas and in this post you’ll get to read about five design concepts we really wish had come to fruition. In fact, we’re hoping some of them still will.

01. Oceanix Floating City

It’s a floating city! What’s not to love? Obvious excitement aside, this incredible concept from bjarke ingels group (BIG) is for a floating city situated offshore from major coastal cities that can be towed to other locations in the event of a disaster. The structures are designed to withstand floods, tsunamis, and cat-5 hurricanes and the islands are made from self-repairing biorock, which has a limestone coating formed by exposing underwater minerals to an electric current, becoming stronger over time. The imagined villages boast an environmentally friendly habitat with no high emissions and an efficient recycling system. Sounds like paradise.

02. Bookmarks rack

Books on hangers? It’s either genius or ludicrous. We’ve gone with genius on this occasion. Sometimes the best design ideas really are the simplest. Not only does this clever, mobile and space-saving invention by Qi Beichen keep your books tidy, it also marks where you stopped reading, perfect if you have a tendency to linger over seven books at once. This design won a Red Dot Award in 2018 and the moment this gets made, we’re buying it.

03. The New Public Convenience: Hull's Bath House and Lady Garden

Designed by University of Westminster graduate, Ruth Pearn, The New Public Convenience: Hull’s Bath House and Lady Garden’ is a brilliant reimagining of Hull’s public toilets to benefit us all month-long. The building would include a launderette (praise be!), salon and clothes hire, as well as public toilets, baths, and showers. The public convenience would be open and accessible to every one to break down menstruation stigma.

In this dream public toilet, organic cotton tampons are recycled into compost to fertilize the plants. The composting process would also be used to heat up water for the building, with filters siphoning off wastewater for plants. These plants would be cultivated to produce essential oils for soap-making which can then be sold, with profits being reinvested into the building. Pearn’s design bagged her the AJ Student Prize in 2018 and the applause of plenty of women. We’re booking a one-way ticket to Hull with a pair of white trousers forthwith.

04. Circle Life

Devised by Taiwanese designers Chia-Yu Yeh and Yi-Xiang Lin, Circle Life is a sleek, wearable device for people with diabetes. The smart wristband integrates insulin patches with micro-needles and a non-invasive blood glucose sensor, allowing patients to monitor and manage their health on the go while reducing the need for (and pain from) injections.

The data gathered by the wristband is uploaded to the cloud, where it can be accessed by medical professionals or family members. Its charging stand also functions as a box to store insulin patches. The concept won the Red Dot Best of the Best award in 2016 and it’s not hard to see why. There are currently over 400 million diabetes sufferers worldwide, so we think this simple design deserves to be in on the world’s wrists pronto.

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The best memory cards for your camera

Finding the best memory card for your camera can be confusing. Memory cards are the common standard media cameras use to store what they record. While most of us aren't loading films into our cameras anymore, in their place we have an almost dizzying array of options when it comes to memory cards, including capabilities such as speed and performance. We're here to help you find the best memory card for your needs (and the best deals on it).

Luckily, perhaps, physical formats of memory cards don’t change all that often – postage stamp-sized Secure Digital (SD) cards have been with us for most of the past two decades, in turn spawning the microSD variant still used by most smartphones and tablets.

What has improved over time is how many image files they can store and how fast they can do so, in line with innovations in the world of stills photography (bigger resolutions) and video (not only higher resolutions but also faster frame rates).

How to choose the best memory card

Obviously, you’ll have a budget in mind and will also want to go for the highest capacity card with the quickest read and write speeds you can afford. The advice here used to be to opt for several cards rather than one giant capacity option, in case the latter became corrupted in some way and images lost. But, in truth, such occurrences are rare, especially these days. If you do go for a one-size-fits-all high capacity card, you’ll obviously be paying more money for more memory, but it may be worth it in the long run.

Another recent development is toughened memory cards for power users. Examples include the aptly named Sony Tough, an SDXC format card that’s dust-proof, waterproof, can resist pressures up to 16kg – as well as being super-fast.

Your own particular needs may be very different though, so we’ve chosen a variety of memory cards to suit differing requirements – and budgets! Read on to find the best camera memory card for you…

01. SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-I

The best all-around SD memory card
Card type: SDXC | Capacity: Up to 512GB | Read Speed: Up to 90MB/s | Write Speed: Up to 95MB/s | Warranty: Lifetime limited warranty | Suitable for: Both photography and/or video (including 4K)

Power users are advised to check out the Extreme PRO SDXC card from long-standing card manufacturer SanDisk. Available in capacities from 32GB up to an impressive 512GB, this option offers a speed class 3 rating. 

The real practical advantage here is not only written speeds up to an impressive 90MB/s – which means that it is able to deal with rapid-fire sequential shooting and in both JPEG and Raw – but also has a extremely fast transfer speed of up to 95MB/s, which will speed up the workflow of enthusiasts and pros. Aside from making it easier to capture a sequence of Raw photographs, the data crunching on offer here also makes it suitable for 4K video shooting. To sum up, this is one capable contender.

02. Lexar Professional Class 10 UHS-II 2000X Speed

The best SD card for professional photographers
Card type: SDHC and/or SDXC | Capacity: Up to 128GB | Read Speed: Up to 300MB/s | Write Speed: Up to 260MB/s | Warranty: Lifetime limited warranty | Suitable for: Both photography and video (including 4K)

Lexar has long been the go-to card for photography enthusiasts and professional shooters, and, despite disappearing from the market for a little while, it has bounced back with plenty of Lexar options still available. A solid choice for us is the Lexar Professional 16GB Class 10 UHS-II 1000x Speed, which deploys UHS-II tech to enable transfer speeds up to 300 MB/s and write speeds up to 260 MB/s.

This ensures that, whether you’re recording full HD, 4K video, or shooting high-resolution Raw files, this card delivers the goods, even if maximum data capacity is 128GB, rather than the maximum 512GB offered by some rivals. A close alternative in terms of specification and performance would be SanDisk’s Extreme PRO SD UHS-II (also featured here), but we feel you can't really go wrong with this one.

03. SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II

An even faster card than the UHS-I Pro version
Card type: SDXC | Capacity: Up to 128GB | Read Speed: Up to 300MB/s | Write Speed: Up to 260MB/s | Warranty: Lifetime limited warranty | Suitable for Pros wanting to shoot swift bursts of high res stills and video

Missing that essential shot if you’re working as a pro photographer can be an expensive mistake, and is especially irritating if it’s because your card can’t keep up. Try and avoid the latter ever happening by investing in this ultra-speedy, inevitably costlier, the example from industry stalwart SanDisk – the SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II. In offering read speeds of up to 300 MB/s and write speeds of an equally impressive 260 MB/s, it's a class leader among memory cards.

The above specification makes it a must-have option for reportage, sports, and wildlife photographers, shooting bursts of rapid-fire stills, or videographers wanting the clarity of 4K resolution video, with the inevitable data hungriness that comes with it. As this is an SDXC (‘Extended Capacity’) card too, storage is impressive. Available card offerings are from 32GB up to 128GB, but truly the accent is on speed here.

04. Sony SF-G Tough SDXC

A super-robust new breed of memory card
Card type: SDXC | Capacity: Up to 128GB | Read Speed: Up to 300 MB/s | Write Speed: Up to 299 MB/s | Warranty: Manufacturer’s | Suitable for: High-speed burst photography and video (including 4K)

The bigger the card’s data capacity, the higher the potential worry of losing hundreds, possibly thousands of precious image files should anything untoward happen. Purporting to eliminate some of that stress is the Sony Tough range, supplied in common-use SD format. While arguably no card can claim to be 100% destruction–proof, there come with the boast of being dustproof and waterproof, while possessing ‘bend proof’ strength into the bargain – namely being able to withstand 18KG of exerted pressure (that’s18x greater than standard SD).

If you need more convincing still, Sony’s Tough has also been tested against drops from 5 meters in height, while the card can simply be washed clean of any grime that gets on it. Speed wise, a further bonus is the card’s ability to cope with the sequential capture of 241-compressed Raw or 362 JPEGs in 20fps burst shooting mode on the Sony A9. If you’re a pro shooter and have the budget, you’ll definitely want to check these out.

05. Transcend SDXC UHS-II U3

Great for shooting Raw files or high-resolution video
Card type: SDXC | Capacity: Up to 64GB | Read Speed: Up to 285MB/s | Write Speed: Up to 180MB/s | Warranty: Five-year limited warranty | Suitable for Pros shooting rapid fire high res Raw stills and high-quality 4K video

If it’s Raw files you primarily need to capture, then you’ll want a card that can cope with the highest quality imagery in sequential bursts – as well as one that provides a sufficient storage capacity to avoid having to swap out the media in use at that decisive moment. 

While the Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3's 64GB maximum capacity (the alternative being 32GB) may initially appear a little small when compared with other options here, the performance is anything but, via commendably quick read and write times of 285 MB/s and 180 MB/s respectively.

Obviously, you will need UHS-II compatible DSLR or camcorder to be able to use this one – so check – but speeds of up to 3x faster than standard UHS-1 SD memory cards can be delivered. These Transcend branded cards are also shock and X-ray proof, thereby providing a degree of certainty for photo and video enthusiasts and pros.

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Amazon Prime Day 2019: everything you need to know

Amazon Prime Day 2019 is fast approaching. And if the past couple of years are anything to go by, we expect to see some incredible savings for artists and designers on Prime Day 2019. So whether you've had your eye on some new creative software, sought-after hardware or a gadget to make your design life easier, it might just be worth holding out for this mega shopping event before making your purchase.

It's obvious, but we'll say it anyway: in order to get all the best Amazon Prime Day deals, you need to be an Amazon Prime member. It's simple and free to sign up, with no strings attached, so you can grab all the Prime Day deals you want and cancel your subscription at any time without charge. Note the free trial only lasts for 30 days, so make sure to time when you sign up to take advantage of the full Prime Day event.

When is Amazon Prime Day 2019?

Amazon still hasn’t confirmed the exact date for Prime Day 2019, but an accidental email from an Amazon PR appears to reveal that the event it will fall start on Tuesday 16 July. Despite the name, Amazon Prime Day isn't a 24-hour thing. Last year it lasted 36 hours, and we're expecting Prime Day 2019 to run for a full two days (48 hours).

None of this has been confirmed by Amazon as yet so there's still a chance it could start a week earlier, and kick off on Tuesday 9 July 2019. Our money is on the 16 but as soon as we hear, either way, you'll be the first to know.

Will there be an Amazon Prime Day 2019 in Australia?

Yes. Amazon.com.au already has a holding page in place, and we’d expect Prime Day Australia to be a bigger event in 2019 than its 2018 debut. Last year Australian shoppers were only offered 340 deals, compared to 2,800 in the US, and the focus was very much on smart home and gaming devices. In 2019 we’d expect a wider range of products and many more offers.

Amazon Prime Day 2019: laptops and computing

Prime Day can be a good day to get the laptop you’ve been promising yourself: last year there was a whopping 34% off the Microsoft Surface Pro 12.3”, with discounts of around 20% on other models. For example, Dell’s Inspiron 7000 17s dropped from $1,299 to a much more affordable $899. If convertibles are your kind of tool, you could get 33% off the Acer Chromebook R11 Convertible – or if you’d rather just have a dedicated tablet to scribble on, the Samsung Galaxy S3 tablet – which includes the useful S Pen – was 27% off.

There were decent deals on a wide range of peripherals too: Logitech’s comfy MX Anywhere 2 AMZ was 60% off, down to £27.99 from the usual £69.99. Keep an eye out for discounted monitors too: while Amazon tends to focus on gaming monitors we saw decent discounts on more sober models too.

If you’ve been hanging on for an iPad Pro, don’t expect massive discounts on the newest ones – but keep your eyes peeled for deals on the outgoing model and for lightning deals on the current line-up. Last year Amazon briefly dropped the iPad 2018 model from £319 to £289. Not a huge saving, we know, but more than you can usually get off Apple kit.

Amazon Prime Day 2019: software and apps

Last year we saw 20% discounts on Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions: the Creative Cloud Photography Plan, which includes Lightroom CC, Photoshop CC, Spark Premium, Adobe Portfolio and 20GB of cloud storage, was down to $95.95 / £79.99 for a year’s subscription. It’s currently back at full price, so fingers crossed for another deep discount on Prime Day 2019.

Amazon Prime Day 2019: cameras

There were some massive discounts on high-end cameras on Prime Day last year. One of our favorites was 54% off the Sony A7 28-70mm OSS lens kit, which plummeted in price from £1,549 to £719. Elsewhere on Amazon, you could get $1,000 off a Sony A9, $740 off an A7 II and $300 off the Canon EOS M50. There were really good deals on bundles too: in one Canon EOS 80D bundle, you could get a combined discount of $750 across the camera, memory card and external mic.

Amazon Prime Day 2019: stuff for your studio

Art supplies can be extremely pricey, so it was good to see deals such as 44% off the cost of a 120-pencil tin of Faber-Castell Polychromos color pencils. That brought the price down to just under £80 compared to the usual £144.

Fancy some smart lighting to get you in the creative mood? Amazon went big on smart home deals last year, with 1/3 off Philips Hue kits and bulbs. And if you like to listen to music while you create you can expect big discounts on Amazon’s own Echo speakers as well as on Bluetooth speakers and headphones. If you travel a lot for work (or for pleasure!) or just need to tune out the ambient sound while you work we’d strongly recommend a set of noise-canceling headphones: they’re brilliant on trains and planes. Last year Amazon dropped the price of Bose noise-cancellers by $50 and JBL ones by a whopping $140.

How to get the best Amazon Prime Day 2019 deals

Sticking with us is a good strategy: we’ll spend the days up to and including Prime Day scouring Amazon for the best genuine deals for creatives.

We’d also recommend doing your homework before the day itself, deciding on what you want and what you want to pay for it, and ignoring any deals that aren’t on your shopping list: a deal is hardly a bargain if it ends up gathering dust in a corner of your studio.

Beware stunt pricing, too. To see if a deal is really a good deal, we’d recommend using CamelCamelCamel.com to check its Amazon price history and PriceSpy.co.uk to see what other retailers are selling it for: while many deals are genuine, some sellers increase their prices just before big events so that the discounts appear to be much bigger than they actually are.

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The best computer for video editing in 2019

If you're searching for the best computer for video editing, we can help. In this guide, you'll find our pick of the best video editing computers right now – at a range of different price points – to help make your footage sing, whatever your skill level.

If you're editing videos, you'll need a powerful computer so that it doesn’t lag when dragging audio and video clips, exporting, rendering and finalizing the mountain of footage that you’ll accumulate. This is especially true when working with high-definition video.

We’ve picked out some of the top Windows PC and Mac computers for video editing, with a focus on both some of the most powerful workstations on the market today, as well as some options if your budget is more limited. Read on for the best computers for video editing...

01. 21-inch Apple iMac with Retina display (2019)

The best computer for video editing
CPU: 4-6 core Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 | Screen: AMD Radeon Pro 555X / 560X / Vega 20 | Graphics: 8GB - 64GB | RAM: 8-64GB | Storage: Hard Disk / Fusion Drive / 256GB - 1TB SSD | Ports: 4x USB-C (Thunderbolt) , Ethernet | Size: 52.8cm (w) x 45.0cm (d) x 17.5cm (h) | Weight: 5.66kg | OS: MacOS

We think the best computer for video editing right now is the 21-inch Apple iMac with 4K Retina display (2019). Now sporting six and eight-core 9th-generation Intel processors, the 2019 iMac has received the most significant update since Apple added a Retina display to the specification, making it a video editing powerhouse.

Of the two available screen sizes, the 21.5-inch Retina iMac represents a better overall combination of value and performance than the larger 27-inch model. You get an extremely high quality, bright 4K Retina (4,096 x 2,304) display with a quad-core processor and AMD Radeon Pro 555X graphics card, that’s absolutely great for video editing. Choice upgrades would include adding some more memory and swapping the 1TB hard disk for an SSD, while a six-core processor is also available.

02. Microsoft Surface Studio 2

A brilliant Windows all-in-one
CPU: Intel Core i7-7820HQ | Screen: 28-inch 4500x1300 resolution IPS display | Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB -GTX 1070 8GB | RAM: 16-32GB | Storage: 1-2TB SSD | Ports: 4xUSB 3.0; 1xUSB-C; SD card slot; Gigabit Ethernet; 3.5mm headphone jack | Size: 63.7cm x 1.3cm x 43.9cm x 1.3cm (WxDxH) | Weight: 9.56kg | OS: Windows 10

Unlike Apple’s iMac all-in-one, a touch-sensitive 28-inch display (4,500 x 3,000) display is the centerpiece of Microsoft’s Surface Studio 2, letting you drag and drop video clips with a finger as well as a mouse. It comes with a hinge that lets you flip the screen all the way down to edit video and it can be used with a pen for drawing too.

Microsoft needs to update the Surface Studio with more modern CPUs, but it makes up for it with some serious graphics grunt powered by Nvidia, with a GeForce GTX 1070 available that will provide some serious visual power.

03. Mac Mini (2018)

Powerful, small and great for video editing

CPU: 4-6 core Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 | Screen: Not included | Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 630 | RAM: 8-64GB | Storage: 128GB-2TB SSD | Ports: 4x USB-C (Thunderbolt) , 2x USB 3, Ethernet, HDMI | Size: 19.7cm (w) x 19.7cm (d) x 3.6cm (h) | Weight: 1.3kg | OS: MacOS

We love the Mac Mini’s flexibility and diminutive form factor, so we’re really pleased to see Apple updated it with a modern specification and a new 'space grey' color late last year. It is still one of Apple’s most affordable computers (relatively speaking) and now it’s capable of a lot more, including video editing. Pair it with one of the best monitors for video editing for a great setup.

The base model features a quad-core processor, 8GB of memory and a (paltry) 128GB SSD. All of these can be upgraded, with an optional six-core processor and a larger SSD for even high-end video work. But with a bit of tinkering, you can upgrade the memory yourself for less money than Apple charges, and there are six expansion ports at the back for either USB or Thunderbolt external storage.

04. HP ENVY 795

HP’s slick micro-desktop has the guts to edit video
CPU: 3.5 GHz six-core Intel Core i7 - 3.3GHz 10-core Intel Core i9 | RAM: 8GB - 64GB | Ports: 6 x USB 3, 1x USB-C, 2x USB 2, DVI, HDMI Ethernet, SDXC | Size: 37cm (w) x 15.4cm (d) x 36.5 (h) | Weight: 8.86kg | OS: Windows 10

With an 8th-generation Intel processor, HP’s silver-fronted Envy desktop PC is a box with more than a few tricks up its sleeve. The range is absolutely great for mid-range video editing, as the Nvidia GeForce graphics card can help out with various processing tasks, such as applying visual filter effects, while the main six-core CPU does much of the hard work.

We’d pick the slightly pricier 16GB option (or perform a memory upgrade) for more demanding video editing tasks, but as it carries an asking price that won't break the bank, this is a great all-rounder family computer with enough performance to cope with video editing well.

05. Dell XPS 27 AIO

A powerful all-in-one PC for video editing
CPU: Intel Core i5-7400 – Core i7-7700 | Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 630; AMD Radeon RX 570 | RAM: 8GB – 32GB | Storage: 1TB HDD – 2TB SSHD; 512GB SSD | Display: 27-inch 4K (3,840 x 2,160) display.

The Dell XPS 27 AIO is another PC that may stretch the budget, but hear us out. This astonishing all-in-one from Dell comes with a mighty 27-inch 4K Ultra HD touchscreen display and an ear-busting set of six speakers. That makes for the ideal platform from which to view – and hear – what you've shot and got the best from it in post-production.

The Dell XPS 27 performs admirably against industry-standard graphics-based benchmarks, no doubt thanks to the pacey 3.6GHz Intel Core i7-7700 processor under the casing. And this premium machine also gets premium peripheries in the form of a sleek and stylish wireless mouse and keyboard.

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The best home design software in 2019

If you're looking for the best home design software in 2019 to plan your workspace or studio, you've come to the right place.

Home design software is designed to enable anyone to plan their own home or workspace without having to study to become an architect. They should be easy to use, with a clear and concise interface that gives you all the tools you need to design the perfect studio for your creative work. You can then export your plans to give to architects and builders – who will turn your designs into reality.

There are plenty of reasons why a creative would want to buy the best home design software. You may want to design a studio or workspace that gives you the room you need to take your creative work to the next level while complementing your existing building or home. Of course, you may also want to use the tools we've included on this page to extend your home or build a dream house from scratch.

01. Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design

The best overall home design software
Features: Digital interior design, surface design, kitchen build wizard | Operating system: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista

Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design is our pick for the best overall home design software thanks to its easy-to-use interface and sample plans that will get you designing your home, studio or workspace in no time at all. 

It's incredibly simple to use thanks to a number of wizards that take you step-by-step through the process of designing each room, and it has a large object library for you to add to your design. It also automatically calculates what materials you need – and there's a price calculator as well which gives you an idea of how much it will cost to build your designs.

02. TurboFloor Plan Home & Landscape Deluxe

The best value home design software
Features: QuickStart feature, Floor Plan Trace, Training Center with 100+ videos | Operating system: Windows 10, 8, 7

TurboFloor Plan Home & Landscape Deluxe is our pick for the best value home design software due to the fact that it is almost half the price of the other entries in this best home design software list, yet it still comes with almost all of the features its more expensive competitors offer. 

So, you've got 45 sample plans to get you started, as well as the QuickStart feature which lets you jump right in and begin designing your buildings. It has a huge library of video tutorials that can help you if you get stuck, but there are no step-by-step wizards to help you create rooms – unlike Virtual Architect Ultimate Home Design above. However, it still offers fantastic value for money and is perfect for people on a budget.

03. Home Designer Suite by Chief Architect

The best home design software for Macs
Features: Automated building tools, smart objects, 3D models and rendering | Operating system: Windows 10, 8, 7, macOS High Sierra, Mojave

Macs are very popular with digital creatives, however, they don't have the same breadth of choice when it comes to home design software. If you use a Mac, it means you're limited to only a few software suites – and Home Designer Suite by Chief Architect is by far the best. 

It comes with a huge selection of features for designing the inside and outside of your building and it's compatible with SketchUp and Trimble 3D Warehouse, which host ready-made 3D models which you can include in your designs. It's also easy to export your designs into formats used by architects and builders. Oh, and it's also available for Windows PCs as well.

04. DreamPlan

The best home design software for small projects and studios
Features: A3D, 2D and blueprint views, landscape and garden design, interior and room design | Operating system: Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, XP, Mac OS X 10.5 and above

If you're just designing a small project, then you don't want to spend a fortune on a complex suite of design applications that include features you'll never use – which is why DreamPlan is an excellent choice. 

It gives you all the tools you need to quickly whip up designs for small projects, without overwhelming you. Of course, if you're going for a large project - like a total renovation of your home - then this isn't the tool for you, due to a lack of cost calculator, only one sample plan and a small object library. For small projects, that should be more than enough.

The best free home design software

If you think the tools in our main list of the best home design software are all overkill for your needs, we'd like to highlight our pick for the best free home design software: RoomSketcher Home Designer. This is the perfect home design application for people who just want to dip their toes into the home design waters and test out the software before spending any money.

It's basic, but it does the job and allows you to make a quick and easy floor plan with windows, walls, stairs, and doors. You can also add objects to get an idea of how the building your designing will look.

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The best Web hosting services in 2019

Welcome to Creative Bloq's guide to the best web hosting services in 2019. Whether you're a web designer or developer looking for the best web hosting deals, or an illustrator who has finally decided to sort out their online presence with a dedicated website, this guide is here to help. Figuring out the best web hosting service for your needs can be confusing, so we've reviewed all the leading providers to give you a clear view of your options.

We've considered a range of situations here. Whether you're a freelancer looking for a website on a budget and just need shared web hosting, if you're after more flexible VPS hosting, or are a bigger operation that needs all the bells and whistles that dedicated servers provide, there's a service here for you. If you're not sure which is the best level for you right now (or for where you want to be in the future) – you’ll find a detailed explanation of the different tiers at the bottom of this guide.

Or read on for our pick of the best web hosting services, no matter the size of your website or budget.

01. InMotion Hosting

The best overall shared web hosting
Domains: 1 | Number of sites: 2-unlimited | Bandwidth: Unlimited | SSL: Included | Email addresses: Unlimited

The best web hosting service right now is InMotion Hosting, thanks to excellent performance, great features, and helpful tech support. InMotion has been around since 2001 and is one of the world's largest independent web hosting companies. It offers several shared hosting plans, with prices starting at a very attractive monthly cost.

To sweeten the deal, all of InMotion's plans come with a ton of great free features that other services might charge extra for – think malware and DDoS protection, basic backups, 'spam-safe' email and a WordPress-based website builder (if you're looking at WordPress options specifically, take a look at our dedicated guide to the best WordPress hosting services).

InMotion offers both cPanel and Softaculous-powered hosting. In testing, InMotion’s overall performance levels ranked well above average. That’s great news for anyone who wants to see fast-loading websites (which is all of us, let's face it).

02. Bluehost

The number one preferred partner of WordPress
Domains: 1 | Number of sites: 1-unlimited | Bandwidth: Unmetered | SSL: Included | Email addresses: 5-unlimited

WordPress is still the most popular website builder, and Utah-based web hosting company Bluehost is WordPress’ preferred partner. Bluehost does a good job of balancing price and features for less experienced businesses while offering lots of options for more advanced users. Its shared hosting packages start with a very reasonable 'basic' plan, targeted at home users.

WordPress plans are naturally more expensive, but there are discounted introductory rates available. With those, you get automated setup for WordPress, as well as other popular apps via a Mojo Marketplace-powered system. Plus, there’s a cPanel-based area, so if you know what you’re doing, you can tweak things.

Bluehost also gives you a free domain and provides a free Weebly-based website builder to create a site up to six pages, although website templates aren’t included. And bear in mind that none of the plans include SSL, but certificates are available as an add-on.

03. HostGator web hosting

The best cheap web hosting option out there
Domains: 1-unlimited | Number of sites: Not specified | Bandwidth: Unmetered | SSL: Included | Email addresses: Unlimited

When it comes to cheap web hosting, HostGator’s Hatchling plan is our top choice. The well-known Dallas-based company offers an impressive amount of unrestricted features in its basic Hatchling plan: there are no limits on bandwidth, web space, subdomains, MySQL databases, FTP and email accounts.

There's also one-click WordPress installation, cPanel-based site management and a 99.9% 'uptime' guarantee covering both server and network failures; plus 24/7 customer support, and $100 (around £75) worth of Google and Bing Ads credits.

As you might expect with a cheap hosting plan, you can only operate one website on the Hatchling plan. And you won’t get a free domain name for a year, either. But we like the super-low pricing and the free transfers for new accounts within the first month after you’ve signed up. A 45-day money-back guarantee means that if you’re not happy with the service, you can cancel it.

04. GoDaddy

A good all-around service that's well-known, respected and trusted
Domains: 1-unlimited | Number of sites: 1-unlimited | Bandwidth: Unmetered | SSL: Higher plans only | Email addresses: 1, for the first year.

US-based GoDaddy is one of the largest web hosting companies around. As one of the few that’s done television advertising, it’s probably the best known, too. Even its cheapest web hosting package comes with 100GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, and a free domain – with plenty of options due to GoDaddy's vast domain name repository. GoDaddy also boasts a guaranteed 99.9% uptime, free backup and restore, and expert hosting support available 24/7, all year round.

One feature we particularly like is that on every package you can increase hosting capacity on demand directly from your account – handy if you experience a sudden surge in traffic.

05. tsoHost

The best UK-based shared hosting service
Domains: 1 | Number of sites: 3-20 | Bandwidth: Unlimited | SSL: Included | Email addresses: 100-unlimited

UK-based tsoHost offers flexible plans at very reasonable prices. You can choose from WordPress hosting, cPanel hosting or cloud web hosting. The cheapest 'Startup' plan is a bargain, and although it only offers 500MB storage, you also get access to unlimited bandwidth, Let’s Encrypt SSL and 10 mailboxes.

tsoHost's site proclaims 24-7 support – but actually, if you run into problems between the hours of midnight and 7am that support comes in the form of the ability to raise a problem ticket. The rest of the time there are people on phones and at the end of the instant chat. Performance levels are solid, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee if you're not happy with the service.

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8 Of the best free logo design tools

Here are eight of the best online tools that can help you create a full-blown logo, or at least build some concept that can later be worked up into a finished design. All of them are free to use and most will let you download a low-resolution version of your logo for free. However, if you need a scalable vector version of your logo then you'll usually have to pay, but thankfully the prices are all pretty reasonable.

01. Hatchful

Shopify's Hatchful is one of the easiest free logo makers we've seen; simply feed it a few useful facts about the business you need a logo for, decide on the style of logo you need and how you'll want to use it, and it'll generate a stack of potential logos for you to browse through. Once you've found one that hits the spot, you can adjust the font, palette, icon, and layout until everything's just right, and then download your logo in all the forms you're likely to need.

02. Ucraft Logo Maker

For a more hands-on approach, Ucraft's Logo Maker gives you just enough tools to create your own logo from scratch in short order. It's basically a bare-bones vector editor that gives you a big selection of icons to play with and supplement with text, shapes, and colour until you achieve the look you're after. You can download your finished logo as a PNG for free; if you'd prefer a scalable SVG you can have it for just $12.

03. LogoMakr

A slightly more sophisticated option comes in the form of LogoMakr. It offers the same basic tools as Ucraft, but with a friendlier front end and a few more options and fonts to play with; the only thing we'd like to see is the option to use gradients as well as flat fills. Again it's a matter of finding a suitable icon and bringing in all the text and shape elements you need to build your logo design; once you're done you can download a free PNG version, or for $19 you can get it in SVG and PDF flavors.

04. Designhill Logo Maker

Designhill's Logo Maker is another easy way to quickly come up with a fantastic-looking logo for practically any company. It starts you off by getting you to provide all the basic information it needs – company name and the nature of the business, plus preferred symbols and color schemes – and then it uses this to generate a collection of professional-looking logos that you can then customize. This part's completely free; once you've hit the right look you'll have to pay to download your logo, with prices starting at £15 for a basic low-resolution file.

05. DesignEvo Free Logo Maker

Whether you want to build a logo from scratch or work from a ready-made template, DesignEvo's Free Logo Maker can help you out. It has a searchable selection of over 6,000 templates to choose from, enabling you to quickly find a good starting point for your logo, but if you prefer to do it yourself you can start with a blank layout and build a logo using symbols, shapes, and fonts. When you're done you download a free low-resolution logo; for scalable vector versions prices start at $24.99.

06. Tailor Brands Logo Maker

Using an AI-powered system to generate a suitable logo for your brand, Tailor Brands' Logo Maker is the perfect tool for anyone who can't face scrolling through hundreds of templates to find the perfect logo design. Instead, it asks for the name of your business and a description of what it does, as well as getting you to choose between an icon, text or initial-based logo, then it uses a 'This or That' tool to get a handle on the design style you're after. With all that information to hand it goes to work on creating a logo that you can then customize if you want; when you're happy with it you can download a low-resolution for free, or pay for high-resolution files.

07. Canva Logo Maker

Canva's online design tools cover a whole lot more than logos, but if a logo's all you're after then it's ready and waiting to help you out with its Logo Maker. Like many online logo creators, it'll ask you about your company and get you to select a handful of templates you like the look of before it comes up with a design that you can customize using its intuitive tools. There are plenty of free elements to play with; if you need more choice you can pay to use a larger selection of premium elements. Once you're done, you can download your finished logo as a PNG or print-ready PDF for free.

08. MarkMaker

MarkMaker uses a simple, clever approach to creating the right logo: type in a company name and it'll start generating suggestions, and by clicking on the ones you like it'll create ever more designs informed by your preferences. You can further influence the process by adding information about what your company does. Keep on scrolling and clicking until something crops up that you love, then hit the edit button to fine-tune it; there are loads of options and sliders to play with until you hit that sweet spot, then you can download your logo as a PNG or SVG; both are free, but you can throw in a little donation if you like.

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The new Firefox logos have officially arrived

Mozilla has officially revealed its new Firefox logo, part of a new icon family for the browser. The launch of the designs, which have been more than 18 months in the making, coincides with a shift in brand positioning for Mozilla. Whereas before Firefox was often used to refer the browser, Mozilla wants to reposition the word to cover the entire family of Firefox apps and services.

The road to these logos has been a long one. Mozilla previously invited the public to share their thoughts on potential ideas as part of the logo design process. We got a tantalizing sneak peek of the designs last week when Firefox's communication design leader Sean Martell tweeted a picture of a box of stickers that appeared to leak one of the final designs.

This design appears in the new branding system (below) as the logo for the Firefox browser. Alongside this logo are three line-based graphics for other services including Send, Monitor, and Lockwise. The whole system comes under a general Firefox logo umbrella, which relies on the motif of a circular, swooshing fox tail.

In a video that traces the evolution of the Firefox brand (below), the creative team reveals how the umbrella logo for Firefox was a major step away from what has gone before.

Having run two design systems by audiences, they concluded that "we got a very clear signal that we didn't actually have to show a fox for people to know that it was Firefox".

In a blog post announcing the designs, Mozilla also says that the new brand "is about more than logos". To be specific, it's based on four key word pillars, namely 'Radical', 'Kind', 'Open' and 'Opinionated'.

This also ties into Mozilla's aim to create a design system that has what it takes to last long into the future. Included in this system is a new and expanded color palette that makes it possible to use gradients. A modern and rounded typeface that reflects the logos completes the rebrand.

And seeing as all of these elements were developed with an emphasis on accessibility standards in mind, it looks like the new Firefox is set to deliver user-friendly products. The brand's focus on privacy only sweetens the deal.

Notable designers have been linked to the development of these logos. Michael Johnson provided early inspiration, while the designer of the original Firefox logo, Jon Hicks, was on hand to give advice. Meanwhile, Ramotion's Michael Chu has been credited as a driving force behind the new brand.

Mozilla also adds that we can expect more from the rebrand: "We have to stretch our brand guidelines even further in the months ahead, so we’re interested in hearing your reaction to what we’ve done so far."

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