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No design experience?
No problem! Let's start from scratch and get familiar with the basic Canva tools that will help you create amazing designs.
Design Essentials will guide you through simple tools and techniques that will help you create designs you can proudly share with the world.
Fonts bring your words to life. Learn how to easily choose fonts that emphasize your message and make your designs look beautiful.
Color can be used to convey moods and create emphasis in your designs. We show you how to build meaningful color relationships to create visually stunning graphics.
Whether you upload your own, or choose from our library of over a million, images are a vital component of eye-catching designs. Learn how to use simple Canva tools to compose and enhance your images for greater visual impact....
While we appreciate it in the abstract, few of us pause to grasp the miracles of modern life, from artificial light to air conditioning, as Steven Johnson puts it in the excellent How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World (public library), “how amazing it is that we drink water from a tap and never once worry about dying forty-eight hours later from cholera.” Understanding how these everyday marvels first came to be, then came to be taken for granted, not only allows us to see our familiar world with new eyes — something we are wired not to do — but also lets us appreciate the remarkable creative lineage behind even the most mundane of technologies underpinning modern life....
Science edged closer on Sunday to showing that an antioxidant in chocolate appears to improve some memory skills that people lose with age.
In a small study in the journal Nature Neuroscience, healthy people, ages 50 to 69, who drank a mixture high in antioxidants called cocoa flavanols for three months performed better on a memory test than people who drank a low-flavanol mixture.
On average, the improvement of high-flavanol drinkers meant they performed like people two to three decades younger on the study’s memory task, said Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center and the study’s senior author. They performed about 25 percent better than the low-flavanol group.
Steve Jobs, John Sculley, Steve Wozniak at Apple
John Sculley, formerly CEO of Apple, recently visited our office to do a Q&A.
Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. We talk about what really happened at Apple with Steve Jobs in the 80s, what it's like to be fired, and why entrepreneurs should buy his new book.
Business Insider: So let’s just start at the most famous moment. You’re known probably best for firing Steve Jobs, right? What was the thinking there? Is that something that’s been mis-remembered pretty horribly through history?
JS: Yeah, well, first of all there’s no accuracy to it at all. It’s one of those things that became a myth.
BI: Okay.
JS: The reality is that I was brought into Apple to bring consumer marketing to Apple, because Steve was getting ready to launch the Macintosh in a few years, and to turn around the Apple 2 because it was the only source of cash flow the company would have for three more years....
Design is hot. Design executives are being tasked with being design driven, but don't have the tools or processes to sustain this effort.
... In some ways, designers and design managers have shot themselves in the foot — design thinking neither negates nor replaces the need for smart designers doing the work. And because design thinking has many paths through parallel phases, it seems fuzzy compared to the process of creating code. Compared to analytical thinking or science, our industry still doesn't have a consensus on what design thinking means. Most designers couldn't tell you what it means
.It's been 20 years since I was ingrained with the concept that the designer mind could think much differently than a marketer, engineer or the guy in a suit-and-tie. Yet, for all its power and inspiration, I still don't completely understand the meaning of design thinking.
Should we abandon the concept? Absolutely not. I use the methods and ideas that it espouses daily. I believe we just lack some of the tools necessary for the practical application of these methods to stick within organizations....
San Francisco artists Ransom & Mitchell blend photography, digital painting and 3D CG to produce portraits of sideshow acts seen in traveling Carnivals from long ago.
These pieces were created by Jason Mitchell & Stacey Ransom for The Rough and Ready Sideshow, a group show at the Bash Contemporary. The show also includes artwork by Stephanie Vega, whose work I shared with you last Halloween, Alexandra Manukyan and Aunia Kahn.
Director/photographer Jason Mitchell and set designer/photo illustrator Stacey Ransom create highly detailed and visually lush portraits and scenarios by combining their talents with elaborate costumes, hair and make-up, props, hand-painted backdrops and set design. Then they add their own unique style of digital illustration and 3D computer generation.
An Ohio man has become infected with misinformation about the Ebola virus through casual contact with cable news, the Centers for Disease Control has confirmed.
Tracy Klugian, thirty-one, briefly came into contact with alarmist Ebola hearsay during a visit to the Akron-Canton airport, where a CNN report about Ebola was showing on one of the televisions in the airport bar. “Mr. Klugian is believed to have been exposed to cable news for no more than ten minutes, but long enough to become infected,” a spokesman for the C.D.C. said. “Within an hour, he was showing signs of believing that an Ebola outbreak in the United States was inevitable and unstoppable.”
Once Klugian’s condition was apparent, the Ohio man was rushed to a public library and given a seventh-grade biology textbook, at which point he “started to stabilize,” the spokesman said....
Six months ago, 276 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram. The handful who escaped that night have never told the full story of their ordeal — until now.Near the classrooms in the dusty schoolyard of the Chibok Government Secondary School, the Whuntaku girls hold court beneath the green lele mazza tree. There is no sign on the tree, no discernible markings; everyone just knows it’s their spot — where they gathered in the mornings, between classes, and after school to hang out, talk about boys, whatever....
"More isn't always better: no more in information design than in poetry..."
Nate Silver, the author of The Signal and the Noise, considers the two factors that make an infographic compelling — providing a window into its creator’s mind and telling a story that “couldn’t be told in any other way.”
He writes: Design has traditionally been seen as a field for “right-brained” types: those who think visually and spatially rather than with symbols like words and numbers. But modern information design is equal parts art and science, form and function, architecture and engineering. It combines the best of at least three fields of achievement: aesthetics, technology, and journalism.
By aesthetics, I mean all the usual things, but especially proportionality. For information designers, this quality is not so abstract as it might be in other mediums. Their goal is tangible: to convey as much information as possible given some set of constraints....
Frivolous entertainment is taking over news, readers don't know what they want, and native ads really work—just as George Gallup predicted, nearly nine decades ago.
...George Gallup, the man synonymous with modern political polling, was a University of Iowa student who didn’t think that open broadsheets strewn across the floor of street trolleys made for particularly good data. In 1928, he wrote a thesis proposing a new scientific method for measuring audiences. Don’t stalk your readers, he said, and don't snoop through their train trash, either. Meet your readers.
Shared exclusively with The Atlantic, Gallup's 1928 thesis, "An Objective Method for Determining Reader Interest in the Content of a Newspaper," is an eerily prescient work, which reflects on today's discussions about viral media, news analytics, and even native advertising, all while showing that we've been having the same debates in this business for the last 80 years....
For as long as many of us can remember, Stonehenge has been a mystery. Located in the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, this stone arrangement has puzzled people for hundreds of years. The world’s earliest archeologists were intrigued by Stonehenge and what it could possibly mean, and in the centuries that followed there are still many questions left to be answered.
Even though plenty of educated guesses and analyses have been conducted on the Neolithic landmark, questions are still being asked about it every day. Though the monument is approximately 5 000 years old, there is still much to learn about it. Thankfully, recent discoveries have been made that could answer these questions, as well as inspire even more questions to be asked.
Researching StonehengeFor the past four years, a team of researchers has been mapping Stonehenge and the surrounding area in hopes of answering some questions about it. Thanks to ground-penetrating radar and GPS-guided magnetometers, these archeologists have discovered there’s far more to Stonehenge than meets the eye. Nearly 3,000 acres of land have been mapped out thanks to this new technology....
How do top business leaders spend their time?
Being fascinated by this topic, I collaborated with Chris Stowell, vice president of the International Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness in Sandy, Utah, to survey 267 C-level executives (all at the vice president level or higher) at Fortune 500 companies.The respondents to the email survey, completed over the past two months, came from 163 companies including Adobe, American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, BP, Delta, DHL, Federal Express, GE, Google, HP, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, Kelloggs, Motorola, Rio Tinto, and Twitter.
The survey research showed that the typical corporate leader wakes up at about 6:15 a.m., exercises for 45 minutes, and commutes 25 minutes each way. Every workday, he or she spends two hours and 25 minutes on email and texting, 25 minutes on strategy and planning, and 30 minutes on personal development. The infographic below, created by Stowell, my friend and a leadership-training consultant, summarizes the findings....
It’s well known that cartoonists have very fertile imaginations. Case in point: this cartoon by Joe Dator, which appears in the current issue.
Yet, as it turns out, the surreal scenario envisioned by Joe owes less to his imagination than you might think. I’ll let Joe tell you about it. Take it away, Joe.
“The gondola is based on one I saw at a stoop sale in Queens. They had some nice sweaters, too.”...
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Some Internet memes rely on added sugar and mysterious ingredients to extend their shelf lives, as we discussed yesterday. Others, such as “Alex from Target,” are like French black truffles — not only are they wild, rare and out of the reach of most of us but they also require highly sensitive snouts to root them out.
Let’s get to the nut graf: “It turns out that Alex from Target is not a marketing ploy and he’s an actual, genuine person and bagger,” who just happened to be “fangirled” for his “super hot” looks while doing his job on the line in Texas, TMZ reported with all due exuberance yesterday.
In fact, according to TMZ’s blurb accompanying its video report, “Little Al's employer tells TMZ the Internet phenomenon is 100% genuine grassroots.”Lest you think this story is strictly for the tabloids, consider this revelation from the New York Times’ Leslie Kaufman: “The Alex phenomenon became the subject of news articles on the websites of Time, the Washington Post and CNN over the last two days. TheDallas Morning News tried furiously to confirm just which Target he worked for.”
And that’s nowhere near the half of it....
While working for publications like National Geographic, Time, and Newsweek, and for NGOs like UNICEF and Oxfam, photographer Ami Vitale has found herself shooting in some of the most beautiful, diverse, and dangerous places in the world.
A highly experienced professional, she still finds it something of a challenge to describe herself: Conflict photographer? Photojournalist? Documentarian? Travel photographer? At various times her work could fit into any of these categories. To her, it’s not the label that’s important; it’s the stories. And it’s the people and their cultures that she wants to reveal, with the ultimate goal of bringing people closer together. “Understanding that we are more alike than we are different…that’s important,” she says....
There are two paths in life: Should and Must. We arrive at this crossroads over and over again. And each time, we get to choosme.
Over the past year I’ve chosen Must again and again. And it was petrifying. And at times it was dark. But I would never, ever, trade this past year for anything. This essay is my three biggest takeaways from the experience. It’s for anyone who is thinking of making the jump from Should to Must. Anyone looking to follow the energy deep within their chest but aren’t quite sure how....
When Hatsune Miku comes on stage, she can't hear the crowd cheering. Nor can she see her fans swinging their green glowsticks to the beat. That's because Hatsune Miku isn't a person; she's an animated character.
Despite the Japanese superstar's lack of humanity, the crowd reacts to "her" like any of the other (human) acts that come through New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. The audience, a mixture of teenagers and middle-aged men in plaid shorts, sings along, squeals at the first notes of their favorite tunes, and dances to Hatsune Miku's movements, which are about as complex as a bar mitzvah line dance, thanks to the fact that she's projected onto a screen.
The electric-blue pigtailed 16-year-old--yes, she has an official height, weight, and age--can work a crowd, nevertheless. Check out this call and response at a 2011 performance in Tokyo....
Looking for an innovative business card for yourself? Check out these 32 ingenious examples that are sure to leave a lasting impression. It’s interesting to see not just creative businesses like agencies, design firms and photographers using unconventional cards but also lawyers, doctors, finance professionals, etc. If cost is a concern, you can also create two sets – one conventional/economical and the other radical (in lesser quantity). Use the appropriate one depending on the type of client, budget, etc.
Dear LinkedIn Member,
People are looking at your LinkedIn profile, and they’re laughing at what you, in a public forum, have decided to present as your professional identity. Last week, five people (who chose to remain anonymous) scrolled through your hobbies and skills and broke into fits of laughter at each one.
When they looked at your employment history, noting the various part-time jobs and internships you thought it would be a good idea to include, they were almost in tears. I mean, come on—you like playing racquetball and you list “social media” as a skill? What does that even mean? You know what Twitter is and you own those weird-looking goggles?
Somebody give this man a job! Seriously, we hope that you have actually found a job and are not, in fact, starving to death because you are incompetent
The 10 best designs of the year include a soccer cleat, a campaign to end gun violence, and much more.Fast Company hosted its annual Innovation By Design Awards and Conference in downtown New York today.
It culminated this evening at our awards celebration, where we revealed the 10 best designs of the year.It was long road getting here. We received 1,587 submissions from around the world. From that, we pared entries down to 53 finalists. And from there, our esteemed panel of judges fiercely debated, voted, stalemated, and debated again to reach a consensus on the top 10 designs of the year....
Even the most lazily prepared home offices have more character and warmth than the sun starved, lowest-common-denominator melamine clad shame cubicles so many of us inhabit for half of our conscious hours these days.
One of the toughest aspects of building a mobile-first business is trying to get customers to use your app (downloads) and get them to come back to it again and again regularly (retention).Marrying the two, I’ve got some awesomely inspiring quotes from some of the best entrepreneurs and marketers to help you with inspiration while marketing your mobile app....
This week, corporate word abuse was taken to a new level. As Fast Company senior editor Jason Feifer notes in this week's episode of The 29th Floor, yogurt slingers Chobani and a consultant named Dov Seidman are battling in court over who owns the word “How.”
Brands are trying their hardest to rewire the way you speak--renaming products, what we call ourselves at work, and even how we think about ourselves as customers. And you shouldn't play along. Jason tells you why in the above video. You'll never order your Starbucks coffee the same way again....
Insider information about the most enduring animated clichés, from the identity of the Grim Reaper to the true location of people stranded on desert islands.
I guess I’m in a metaphysical mood today. Thinking about writing for the internet, how it’s different, and finding your own style.
So, let’s set the scene…
Seth Godin, Lao-Tzu and I walk into Hemingway’s Bar & Grill. Godin says, “I’ll have a Purple Cow.” I say, in my best Homer Simpson salutation, “Beer me.” Lao-Tzu says, “Ommmmm.”
Drinks with Seth Godin
That’s me channeling Seth Godin, echoing Lao-Tzu.
Except I’m not a bald guy and I don’t wear saffron like either of these wise men....
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Canva has created a wonderful set of free design tutorials using their superb design tool. From an educational and learning point of view, the way they have simplified the training and tutorials is in itself a set of best practices. Highly recommended for bloggers, PR, content marketing, and even design pros. 10/10