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Learn about the influence of traditional Japanese prints on the painter's art The fascination of the western world for eastern tradition is not new. At the end of the XIX century, the western art community showed a growing interest in anything oriental. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a great lover of Japan's aesthetic and traditional art, which had a big influence on his work.
The NASA “Worm” logotype will not be forgotten, and neither will its creators If you’re a millennial, when you hear the word NASA, it’s likely that the first image to pop into your head is the logo known as the “Meatball” (you might even be wearing a sweatshirt with it on as you read this). It’s the logo that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration used during its greatest accomplishments, including the Apollo moon landings, and still uses today. Designed by James Modarelli in 1959, a year after NASA was established, it's made up of a blue circle filled with stars, a red swoosh that represents an airplane wing, a spacecraft orbiting the wing, and those four white capital letters.
Discover how words have the power to improve a website’s ranking The written word is a key tool for developing any brand. Every business needs to use text to present itself to the world, to connect with potential customers, and strengthen its relationships with users. Copywriters are content creators who write words and messages for media platforms and brands and speak directly to clients and customers.
Discover how to use the basic Pathfinder options to speed up your workflow If you are familiar with vector illustration, or even if you are just starting out in Adobe Illustrator, one of the tools that you'll find more useful is the Pathfinder tool. By learning how to use it, you will be able to quickly do many designs and streamline your workflow. Discover its essential functions below. What is the Pathfinder tool for in Illustrator? This useful tool allows you to quickly manipulate different shapes and strokes to create other, more complex shapes and combine them without having to redraw. It is handy when you want to combine several shapes. Find the tool To start using Pathfinder, go to the Main Menu, then to Window, and then Pathfinder to make it visible. You can also use the Shift + Ctrl + F9 commands on PC, or Shift + Cmd + F9 on Mac.
Experts reveal their secrets and tutorials to exploit the potential of your videos on YouTube Remember when we believed that to succeed on YouTube you only needed a good video? That is not the only key factor. If you want to create a solid profile you need technical knowledge. There are some secrets that will allow you to make sure that you are doing the right thing so that that video that cost you so much, reaches as many people as possible. Some Domestika experts give you access to these techniques through their tips. If you are interested in learning more, just click on the red title to read the full details.
This Rio de Janeiro stylist found her inspiration to create fancy dress, accessories and colorful fashion collections in her city’s famous Carnival
Director Lyona Ivanova teaches you what to do and what not to do when creating music videos
Learn this essential tool to create amazing digital illustrations with vectors from the experts Vector illustration is a type of graph that represents images or shapes through mathematical formulas. Unlike what happens with illustrations made in bitmaps or from pixels, vectors do not lose sharpness or resolution no matter how much the size varies. At present, vector illustration is used in creative fields such as web design and this is due to its ability to be resized without losing quality. Graphic designers and digital illustrators are the ones who use it the most. If you need to learn how to create vector graphics, these courses could help you:
Cherry Bomb Creative Co. share their favorite platforms for inspirational video content Nora Muñoz and Gabriel Tinoco are the co-founders of independent studio Cherry Bomb Creative Co. (@cherrybomb_creative), which specializes in branding, design, and illustration. They’ve worked with major brands such as Nestle, Cinépolis, Didi Food, Editorial Santillana, and Pearson, as well as NGOs including UNICEF, UNHCR, and the Red Cross.
The year of the Ox begins and several countries welcome it with postage stamps from amazing illustrators The Lunar New Year, also called the Spring Festival in China, is the most important of the traditional festivals celebrated by Asian cultures around the world. In addition, it represents another beginning in the oldest calendar in the world. On February 12th, the year of the Buffalo or Ox begins and, to welcome it, many postal services around the world call on artists and personalities to be inspired by the figure of this animal. These are limited pieces that, over time, acquire special value among collectors. We show you seven of the most important and who is behind them.
Find out how you can use design systems to develop online products If you work in web development or the creation of digital products–such as apps, websites, portals, or digital services–design systems are a set of principles that will help you develop your project in a comprehensive and efficient way. Find out what a design system is and how you can start using one right away. What is a design system? A design system refers to the processes used to decide which elements will be included in a system during the planning and construction stages of a digital project. These elements include the structure, modules, components, interface type, design, and usability of the website or app you are building. A design system looks at a digital product as a whole and understands how all of the different elements interact. You can think of it as architecture for a digital product.
Discover this popular software’s advantages and animate your best ideas As a professional designer and illustrator, or if you wish to pursue a new career in animation, you’ll find a key ally in Adobe After Effects. This software is intuitive and perfect to create all kinds of animated projects, however big or small they might be. Now animation and motion graphics experts share some tips to start using this program from scratch. To watch each class, just click on its red title.
Can designer Fernanda Guimarães create a Carnival tiara using only the items hidden in our surprise box?
Is modern art really art? Learn how chimpanzees, teenagers, and fake artists tried to challenge it Modern art has many supporters, as well as detractors. When Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's piece 'Comedian' was unveiled at the Art Basel exhibition in Miami in 2019 and was sold for 120,000 dollars, modern art became the object of disapproval, ridicule, and even anger. The reason for all the fuss was that the artwork consisted of a fresh banana stuck on a wall with duct tape. Even the most popular banana brands joined in on the joke, and the parodies lasted a considerable time.
Photographer Esteban Calderón shows you two ways to design lighting for portraits When preparing a portrait it is important to enhance the aspects that most flatter a person and, in this way, make them the true protagonist of the photo. To achieve this, lighting is a fundamental aspect of the creative process. When we work with artificial lighting we can have absolute control of this aspect.
Learn the basics of UX and user research to analyze what your users are doing and why they are doing it, with Patricia Reiners UX research can seem like an intimidating area of study but it is actually based on a set of simple principles and methods that you can learn and apply to your own projects. Patricia Reiners (@ux_patricia) is a UX/UI designer based in Berlin who is an Adobe resident and the host of the Future of UX podcast. In this tutorial, she explains the basic principles and techniques of qualitative user research and how to use it to improve your product’s UX.
Social communication expert Natalie Koutia shares some tips to help you organize online events efficiently Nathalie Koutia (@nathaliekoutia) is a freelance designer and social media enthusiast who is the communication director and social media manager of the international creativity event OFFF Festival. In her recent Domestika live, Nathalie tells us how a large live event was transported into a virtual world. She advises on how to ensure your online events, however small, are also successful.
Discover why writing by hand with pen and paper can be extremely beneficial Ever thought of what writing by hand entails? The brain and bodily processes involved in this activity are phenomenal. The first step is to stop and focus, feel, and invoke one’s memory. Then comes planning the idea to convey to the reader by connecting with one’s intentions and emotions. Then, again, we need to build a grammatical structure from our semantic word stock. Finally, we select the graphic signs and sequence of movements that correspond to each letter so that our hand can put it together. Writing may seem like quite a tiring process, but all the benefits this exercise brings to our body, heart, and mind make it worth repeating over and over again. On International Day Of Handwriting, we spoke to Alejandra Marcos, an educational psychologist specializing in cognitive neuropsychology, and calligraphy teacher Bego Viñuela Galarraga (@caligrafiabilbao). They helped us to better understand what goes on in our brain and heart when we write by hand.
Discover the origins of casting and why it’s such an important part of film production, with Luci Lenox Casting is a fundamental element for any film project, whether you’re producing a short or a feature length film. In fact, many directors say that 90% of the work of directing actors comes down to casting. Luci Lenox (@lucilenox) is an international casting director with over twenty years of experience, and she’s worked with clients such as Netflix, Disney, and Paramount to help bring their projects to life. In this video, she explains what casting is, the crucial role it plays in every film project, and what makes for a successful casting director.
Discover the work of these top needle felting artists using wool in inventive ways Needle felting, a technique that involves compacting a ball of wool to create different shapes using a spiky needle, is growing increasingly popular. This is largely thanks to social media, which provides artists with a platform to share and sell their adorable needle felted art toys and other creations. In this blog post, three Domestika teachers share a list of needle felting artists whose work will inspire you to pick up a needle. Artists selected by Caro Indy (@caroindy): Wes Anderson – The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox Let’s start by talking about Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stop-motion animation film starring some very charismatic needle-felted animals who stole the hearts of indie film lovers. This film made needle felting very popular, even though Wes didn’t actually make the animals with his own hands. Carolina Alles recommends the book, The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox. The film is an adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's classic, a story that Anderson reimagined in 2009 for the enjoyment of a new generation of cinema-goers. The book offers a vast amount of material, such as storyboards and behind-the-scenes photos.
Use, modify and enjoy a template with 60 stunning slides prepared by Data Designer Katya Kovalenko If you truly want to impress your clients, your colleagues or potential collaborators, you need to develop your concepts in a visually compelling fashion. Presentations and data visualization will help you to organize your ideas and articulate what you want to communicate. That’s the area of expertise of Presentation and Data Designer Katya Kovalenko (@katyakovalenko), whom specializes in creating graphic visualizations that help companies articulate what their product is about. Her secret is to deeply understand how our brains perceive information and align that with design principles.
Learn how to create cameras and instantly produce static, high-res rendered images for 3D architecture, with Miguel Albo
Learn about this minimalist interior design trend mixing Scandinavian and Japanese styles Also known as Japanordic or Scandenese, this aesthetic mixes Scandinavian coziness and traditional Japanese elegance. Japan and Scandinavia are on opposite sides of the world but have a lot in common in the simplicity of décor and understated style. The notions of ‘hygge’ (the Scandi homely feeling of coziness) and 'wabi-sabi' (the Japanese quest for finding beauty in imperfection) are a perfect foundation on which to build calm and stress-free living spaces.
Get the most out of these 30-second-long vertical videos for your Instagram profile Last week, I talked about what Instagram Reels is. Many creatives have started using this new format of short vertical videos that last 15 to 30 seconds. I highly recommended using this tool and the new formats that Instagram is launching since the algorithm usually makes them stand out. In this case, it is also a perfect content format for creatives and very suitable for attracting an audience that increasingly prefers short, visual, and easy to assimilate content. This content is especially interesting to connect with younger generations; both millennials—those who are now between 32 and 26 years old—and Gen Z or Zillennials—born between 1995 and 2009. Let's explore some ideas to get the most out of this format with some examples from the Domestika teachers who already use it:
Illustrator Jon Berkeley takes us through the tools he uses to conceive, paint, and publish his acrylic illustrations Whether digital or analog, the variety of materials available to an illustrator is vast. Everyone has their own preferences but when investing in your own materials, it can be helpful to see what other professionals use. Jon Berkeley has over 30 years of experience in editorial illustration, and has won awards from Creative Quarterly, the Society of News Design, and the British Society of Magazine Editors for his work illustrating for the biggest magazines in the world. His preferred medium is acrylic as, in his opinion, it offers him the best of watercolor and oil painting. In this video, Jon shows us what tools he uses, sharing simple tips on how and why they are useful for acrylic illustration.
Learn the key concepts involved in professional copywriting with Erica Igue
Meet Alba and Marisa, the creative minds behind Gazete Azulejos, a leading handmade tile manufacturer from Oporto
Learn from experts to create original, emotional-filled self-portraits Photography is a magical and expressive universe that enchants thousands of people through a fascinating play of lights, moments, scenarios and original creations. Self-portrait, in this context, is an excerpt from the photography universe that overflows meanings and transforms personal emotions and motivations into powerful, intimate and mysterious narratives. You are the one who sets the creative tone from start to finish. These five photographers and artists are experts in self-portrait and share with you their best techniques in the courses below.
Learn how to use the color wheel and benefit from this important tool for illustrators and painters We often talk about the importance of the color wheel and color theory, but how are they applied? With the intention that you observe closely the use that the experts give it and so that you analyze how to apply the color wheel to your projects, we have selected the following free classes. To see each lesson, you just have to click on its red title. Enjoy!
The Smithsonian National Museum collections offer public domain resources for you to use The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the most important museum dedicated to African American history, life, and culture. With over 36 thousand artifacts, it provides an exciting opportunity to explore through interactive exhibitions. As a public institution in the US, and part of the Smithsonian National Museum, it’s open to collaborations and participation from the public.