#anyway I spend days on the typography and to be honest i know it's not perfect

[smoakqueenz]

When I'm with you There is no one else I feel this way I never felt The Astronaut - Jin (cr. 0613data)

[mohtivations]

i’ve always wanted to make more content than just pictures, so i’m going to post about how i set up my bullet journal! (disclaimer: there are many ways to set up a bujo, but i hope that you can find some inspiration from this post)

because i use my bullet journal as both a planner and a journal, i basically have it with me EVERY SINGLE SECOND of the day. so basically if i were to lose it i will most likely have a mental breakdown hahah... anyway, here’s just a breakdown of what pages i like to add in preparation for a new month! 

inspirational quote / typography to start off each month, i find a quote that may appear deep and inspirational, but to be honest, i probably found it in a bts song translation. usually, i opt for one color theme, and then i attempt multiple styles for the words on a separate piece of paper before finalizing the typography in my bujo. sometimes i mess up, sometimes i don’t. really depends on the month, and that is honestly okay; this bujo is meant for mistakes. 

title page of the month  obviously. you can’t have a new month without a new title (it’s a new start!!!). below the name of the month, i write out the days of the month starting on a sunday. it’s pretty basic but i like it. add some stickers and... voila! you got a brand new beginning. 

tracker this tracker has stuck with me for as long as i’ve used a bullet journal, so i gotta say, it’s been consistent. i track some of the daily tasks i need to do, plus my sleep schedule. i’ll straight up list everything on my tracker. so - eat healthy, save money, workout, read, play instrument, write my research paper, retainers, AP prep, shower, pooping (yes ik), period, post on studyblr/gram.

moodboard looking back on all of my moodboards for the past few months, i’ve noticed a pattern. there is always a photo of at least one of the bts members. whelp. i usually go for the light / pastel colors. basically, i print a bunch of aesthetic photos at one go, and store them at the back of my notebook, until the time comes to create another moodboard. i can usually find photos on tumblr that are very aesthetic and minimalist. twitter is a great source of fantaken kpop pictures and these moodboards can also include photos you take yourself! the colors that seem to call to me each time are selected for that specific month. it’s very calming. 

goals + favorites  i like to set up my goals and favorites with different icons each month. for example, in april, they were bar graphs. previously, each slot for a goal / fave has been in the shape of waves, blocks, polaroids, coffee cups, and leaves. i usually leave three or four spots for each category. i fill out the goals at the beginning and the favorites as the days go by. 

a sentence a day  i like to record one line of thought for each day. it’s nice looking back on the days, noticing how i felt across the entire month. these sentences are fairly simple, but they are my best bet at summarizing a day.

eats i track the three meals of my day, plus a snack. because i’m at boarding school, there really aren’t that many choices, but i do think that it’s a nice concept. keeping records of what i eat really keeps me accountable and eating healthy. although it is tedious, this routine motivates me to be more conscious of my body. 

expenses as someone who is essentially SHIT at controlling the amount i spend, i’ve been trying out this page to keep myself accountable. i wish i had more self control and noticed more about what i spend my money on. it’s a problem. i hope to fix it with the help of this expenses tracker. for each item, i have a date, name, and cost. at the end of each month, i calculate the total, and set a goal for the max i can spend the next month.

thoughts this is essentially where the journaling part of my bullet journal comes in. i leave the page blank, except for a header. whenever i feel a strong burst of emotion, i flip to this page. i have one at the beginning of my monthly spread and one more at the end, in case i run out of space.

weekly layouts for each week, i based my spread on the muji layout. because a week in the life can get extremely busy with all the assignments and extracurriculars, i found that a very open spread has helped me structure out my week. with everything that’s going on, this layout stands as a good organizational tool for a busy student. there are pictures of my weekly spreads under my posts!

polaroids at the end of each month, i print out four polaroids that highlight the good memories that have passed. this is a recent idea, so i have actually not tried it out yet. i hope it works out though!

whew. now that’s all out, i hope this post helped out anyone who was nervous about starting a bullet journal. to be honest, finding the right set up and pages took a very long time, so don’t feel pressured or anxious about finding the perfect routine straight away. i know i sure as hell did not. i’m currently on my second bullet journal, and i believe there is room for plenty of improvement ahead! 

i guess what i’m trying to say is good luck to all of those that have read this far and are giving bullet journaling a go. my inbox is always open so feel free to send a message!

[guiltytuning]

a little bit of normal

diamari / 3.6k / ao3. Happy birthday Mari!

Japanese characters blink to life on Mari’s laptop screen after over a year of its absence. The email’s title only displays her name – the Japanese rendering of Ohara Mari that she hasn’t seen since she left Uchiura just over a year ago. With suddenly cold fingers, she clicks open the email and then stares for a moment, not wholly seeing the characters in front of her. A quick scan down and she can see a signature: Kurosawa Dia. The effect is immediate: her heart starts thumping a rugged pattern against the interiors of her ribcage, and her hands start trembling with unbridled adrenaline.

She pulls back to the top of the message, printed in black Meiryo-font text and lacking any colourful borders or photos that usually accompany the majority of the emails she receives either from her family’s business or her school’s announcements, and reads it.

 Greetings,

As of today in Uchiura, Shizuoka Prefecture, the time and date is June the 13th. Thus, I sincerely wish you a happy birthday. While the time zone in America may be different, I still hold to the fact that it is indeed June 13th on my side of my globe. So technically, I am not incorrect about sending this now.

I hope you are doing well, Mari.

 Best regards,

Kurosawa Dia

She remembered my birthday, is Mari’s first though. She had my email all along, so why did she wait until now to message? is her second thought. She reads it at least ten times, always slowing down on I hope you are doing well, Mari. The email is formal and professional in a way that is distinctly Dia and it brings an unbidden smile to Mari’s lips. On the twelfth reading, Mari thinks if she sears the words into her brain, maybe she can uncover the unspoken meanings behind each character.

Typical of Dia, the true meanings remain carefully encased in their perfectly hand-picked characters. It is unfortunate, Mari thinks, that the email cannot even convey the tremble in a stroke of a character that would give her some insight into Dia’s mindset. Instead, slight of hands are erased by the monotony of the sans-serif typography.

The only way to get something else out of Dia is to write back, Mari thinks. Hands poised over the keyboard, she begins to type a response, hoping to garner just a glimpse of what the other girl is feeling. Despite the ways they parted, surely the other girl had some semblance of feelings about it, even after a whole year. Mari definitely still has feelings about it: not a day went by without her thinking about the dark-haired girl’s enthusiastic voice and infectious smile whenever she was talking about μ’s or the way her eyes looked down, turning her back on Mari when Kanan quit being school idols.

The memory brings forth a sharp clench in her chest that she can’t help, and she closes her eyes and exhales, willing the feeling away before she continues typing.

Hello! (This part is written in English.)

I’m glad you asked because I’m doing very well! America is very fun! Recently it’s been a little hot for my liking, to be honest. Nonetheless, I’m still having fun with my American friends! Sushi is cheap here! Though it’s not as good as it is in Japan.

(Biting her lip, Mari quickly types the last few lines and presses send before she can regret her decision. Though she’s not quick enough to send it without second-guessing Do you hate me? and promptly erases the question.)

I haven’t heard from you or Kanan in a while. I know we weren’t expected to keep in touch after what happened but you can video call or phone call me anytime.

 Looking forward to hearing from you,

Mari (This part is written in English too – call it a habit of being in America.)

The moment the email blips out into cyberspace, she wants to reach out and snatch it back, tearing it into pieces and flinging it out the window.

“That was a bad idea,” she whispers out loud.

Purposefully torturing herself, she clicks her ‘Sent’ folder and rereads the message, groaning inwardly at the first paragraph’s overuse of exclamation marks. “Yeah Ohara, we get it. You’re fake,” she grumbles. America is not fun. She doesn’t really have friends. The others don’t like her heavily accented English and she knows that the Americans make fun of her. It doesn’t take much to decipher their giggles and snorts every time she says something in class. (She’s made it a point to be more exuberant now – emphasizing her accented English so hard that she hopes they get tired of making fun of it. So far, there seems to be no end to their snickers. The jabs at Mari’s accent never gets old for them.)

Though it is getting hotter recently. And the sushi is definitely cheaper and less heavenly-tasting than in Japan.

A ping from her laptop snaps her out of her thoughts, and she focuses back down on her opened email server. There’s a new email from Dia. Mari hadn’t expected her to reply so quickly, especially not immediately after sending her reply. To be honest, she didn’t really expect to hear back from Dia at all and spend the rest of her days poring over the meaning of Dia’s overly formal email. Now counter-evidence was lying right in front of her. She opens the email and takes in the brevity of Dia’s answer.

Dear Ohara,

I would be honoured to receive a call from you any time.

 Sincerely,

Kurosawa Dia

Mari pushes her laptop to the side of her bed, grabbing her phone and opening the messages app that she hasn’t touched for years. The screen loads and at the top of the list below their group chat, two contacts line up: Kurosawa Dia and Matsuura Kanan.

She’s not surprised to see that they haven’t left any messages for her there even after a year. Their group chat still has a slew of messages she sent all the way back from last year. She smiles bitterly when she scrolls through them.

[April 25, 14:26]

MARI: Kanan, please. We can talk about this.

[April 25, 14:27]

MARI: Dia, listen to me. If this is about what happened in Tokyo, I just want to let you guys know that I’m fine about it. We still have a chance to do this. We can’t give up so easily.

[April 25, 18:52]

MARI: Why did you tell me to go study abroad?

[April 28, 1:38]

MARI: Why are you ignoring me? Did I do something wrong?

[April 28, 12:42]

MARI: Kanan. Dia. Please answer me.

She exits the group chat and clicks on Dia’s name. The app is telling her that Dia is offline, but that doesn’t deter Mari from pressing the call button and bringing the phone up to her ear, the staccato of her heartbeat so loud that she feels like the other side can hear it against the phone.

It rings, once, twice –

“Hello?”

Mari exhales a breath she doesn’t realize she was holding. The voice on the other side is tentative but distinctly Dia in her deep, warm tone, cautious-sounding as it is.

“Hello Dia,” she says in Japanese, the words flowing out of her mouth freer than any English phrases she’s forced herself to utter under the American flag. “I thought you were offline.”

“Then why’d you call?” Dia says teasingly, and in that moment, Mari feels like they can go back to where they were a year ago – friends on the verge of something more, playful poking at the bounds and limits of where they can stretch their relationship. But the moment dissipates in the silence, and Mari is once again aware of the distance between them. “Never mind,” Dia backtracks. “It only shows I’m offline because I turned off my status. Anyway… Um… How are you?”

The hesitancy in Dia’s voice is a punch to the heart. They’re not like this; this isn’t how they’re supposed to be. A year later and hundreds of thousands of miles apart, Dia sounds like she’s talking a total stranger. The connection has fizzled away and Mari is left grasping at the straws left of her relationship with Dia.

Which only makes Mari want to reclaim it. She’s made a mistake of burying her feelings and not looking back. If this is her chance to turn back time in whatever way she can, she’ll take it.

“Ah-mazing!” she exclaims in English. “The sun is beautiful and the people are fantastic!” she continues, interjecting English within her sentences. “Oh! I really wish you were here. And Kanan too of course,” Mari adds.

There’s a brief silence where Mari thinks in fear that she’s gone too far with her exaggeration but then she hears a short chuckle on the other end of the line. “Seems to me like America was a good decision after all.”

No, Mari thinks. It really isn’t. I want to come back. I hate it here. I don’t get along with a lot of people. I don’t really have friends here. I miss Japan. I miss Uchiura. I miss Uranohoshi. I miss you so much, Dia.

She swallows down the words so they are locked deeply within her.

“Yes, well,” Mari begins carefully, “I still think Japan is more fun, you know? And well, there’s not a lot of…school idol stuff here in America. They’re not about that.”

“Oh,” comes Dia’s stunted reply. There’s an awkward silence and then, “Isn’t it really late over there right now? It’s eleven in the morning over here.”

“Yeah, it’s nighttime over here. It’s only ten though,” Mari says, looking out the window of her bedroom. “It’s not that late. Plus, I’m not going anywhere tomorrow morning so I’m not in a rush to go to bed.”

Dia makes a shocked sound at that admission. “Ohara Mari! It’s a school night! How could you be so casual about this?”

That elicits a laugh out of Mari, and it’s been so long that she starts doubling over while laughing, clutching the phone to her ear and listening to Dia’s scandalized scolding before bursting into more peals of laughter. She finally wipes the tears from her eyes and responds, “Dia… Dia – it’s summer vacation over here,” she says, lips curved into a smile.

That stops Dia in the middle of her lecture. “Oh. Well – I, I definitely knew that!”

She can picture it now – Dia on the other side of the line, face flushed red with embarrassment. Maybe she’s sitting in the courtyard of the school, since it seems to be around lunchtime. Mari giggles, wondering what other students would think if they saw Dia like that. Perhaps they’d think she was talking to her crush – that thought makes an involuntary smile rise to Mari’s lips, cheeks warming slightly.

“Sure you did,” Mari drawls. “I’m absolutely sure you knew,” she says, dropping an English word within.

“Yeah, I did!” is Dia’s indignant reply.

And just like that, everything falls back into place again. Mari and Dia chat for the next half hour about, catching up on each other’s lives while carefully avoiding the topic of Kanan or idol activities. Mari is cautious to keep the unpleasantness of her life under careful wraps; Dia doesn’t need to know about how Mari thinks about returning every single day. She doesn’t need to know that Mari dreams of returning to Uchiura in that stupid magenta helicopter that flew her to the airport and surprising Dia and Kanan. Sometimes, she pretends that instead of leaving without a word and waiting for friends that never came to stop her, she takes actions into her own hands and confesses her own feelings to Dia, no matter how unrequited they may be.

Dia sounds wistful on the other hand – her life has mellowed out after their half year of being school idols. She’s now a member of the student council with eyes set to become student council president. “Just like Ayase Eli. You know? In μ’s?”

It’s clear to Mari that Dia still thinks about their lost days while the three of them were Aqours. When Kanan had left the clubroom, Mari didn’t miss the way that Kanan had abandoned her final costume on the table while Dia collected hers back. She wants to ask, Why did you quit with Kanan? Why didn’t you say anything to stop her? Why did you leave with her? I thought we had something, Dia. Aqours was the three of us, no doubt, but we could have stuck together until we convinced Kanan to come back. Why did you leave? Why did you leave me? There are so many questions swimming in Mari’s head, but she knows that the moment she asks them, Dia is going to stiffen up again and they’ll once again be consciously aware of the circumstances that had led to this moment of them talking on the phone, an entire world apart.

“I’m getting tired,” Mari finally says after an hour has passed. “I’m going to hang up now. I’ll talk to you next time?”

“I’ll call you again to say happy birthday,” Dia replies before hanging up. Mari frowns, but decides not to think much of it as she heads over to turn off the lights of her bedroom and lies face-down on her bed to sleep.

Mari’s eyelids are drooping and she’s half-asleep when the buzzing of her phone wakes her. Hand fumbling around her bed, she finds the phone under her stomach from when she had flopped face-first in her bed. The display screen shows Dia’s name. “Hello?” she says groggily, slipping into English out of habit.

“Happy birthday!” Dia says back excitedly, and Mari can almost hear the grin in the other girl’s voice. She looks over at her bedside table to see the numbers 12:00 on her clock blinking back at her. “Well, at least on your side of the world. Like I’ve said in my email – it’s already June thirteenth over here.”

“Mmh, yeah thanks Dia, but I was sleeping,” Mari says, a complaint that isn’t really a complaint at all.

“Don’t get snarky with me,” Dia says but then softens on her next words. “Good night, Mari.”

“Good night,” Mari whispers back. There’s silence for a while where the both of them listen to each other breathing on the other side. It’s calming, Mari thinks. She could fall asleep to this, imagining Dia on the other side of the bed, curling closer to Mari.

Then there’s a beep of the call being ended that snaps her out of her imagination, and Mari is left conscious of the empty space in her bed.

The concert that Mari goes to for her birthday is…not what she really wanted to go to. A few friends – well, classmates really – had convinced her to buy front row tickets for them to see it since it fell on the date of her birthday. The man singing onstage was amazing, but there is just something empty about it. She wants to see girls in frilly costumes dancing and singing their hearts out, braving through hardship and despair and working to make a name for themselves on stage. And to be honest, Mari doesn’t really care about so-called attractive men the same way that her classmates do.

After the concert is over, the other girls leave together, Mari having declined to ride back with them and stating that she already has her chauffeur picking her up. There are other people leaving now – mostly girls her age or younger. All of them are starry-eyed or in tears with joy. Mari smiles, wondering if this is how school idols make people feel. She’s certain that tears were shed during the overwhelmingly emotional performance of μ’s’ KiRa-KiRa Sensation performance that she owns on tape.

She gets a call from her chauffeur telling her that traffic is heavy and that she’ll be a few minutes late. Mari ends up sitting on a bench, watching the concertgoers leave en masse. She thinks of playing a game on her phone but then checks the time and notices that it should be around the end of lunchtime at Uranohoshi. She calls Dia despite Dia’s status being offline. Once again, Dia picks up on the third ring.

“Mari? What is it?” Dia asks.

“I just went to a concert and I’m waiting for my chauffeur to pick me up,” Mari says. She can almost feel the way that Dia gets excited, thinking that it’s about idols. “No – it wasn’t idols,” Mari says quickly before Dia can say anything. “It was some middle-aged man. There were a lot of girls in the crowd.”

“Oh, that sounds interesting,” Dia says in a tone that gives away the undercurrent that she doesn’t feel interested at all.

“It wasn’t, really,” Mari says with a chuckle. “I just…” She takes a deep breath in and then says the next words so quickly that she’s almost hoping they’ll be loss through the phone. “It made me miss being an idol and watching other school idols.”

There’s a pause where Mari thinks that she’s gone too far and Dia will hang up on her and never speak to her again. She’s about to take it all back when Dia says, “Yeah…me too.”

Then why did you turn your back on me? is the question that bubbles up. Instead of voicing it, Mari swaps it out with something else. “Do you think about it a lot? Not just μ’s but also us. Aqours,” she specifies.

Instead of replying instantly, Dia clears her throat – and then she starts singing the song that brought them enough attention to attend the preliminaries in Tokyo. “Go ahead and tell me what you wanna do, please!” Dia sings a line that’s originally hers. It’s clear from her intonation that Dia has still been practicing singing even with Aqours disbanded. Mari pauses in hesitation for a second, looking around furtively to see if anyone is looking at her but then decides that she doesn’t care what people think after all.

“’Cause I wanna go have fun!” Mari sings, her voice a little scratchy from disuse over the course of the year.

“Even if it’s totally out there, we’ll do it,” they both sing together, melodies mixing together that is profoundly them and Aqours even if it is missing one member, and then Mari starts laughing.

“That was fun,” she admits to Dia, ducking her head and smiling at the ground, her hand pressing her phone against her ear. She misses it so much – the blend of melodies, the fluidity in her trained dance movements, and the feeling of being on stage.

She knows that Dia can hear the longing in her voice. “I miss it too,” Dia says. “I miss performing with you and Kanan. But most of all,” her voice lowers until it’s almost a whisper, “I miss you,”

Mari’s heart picks up the pace and she’s sitting very still in her seat.

“Not just Aqours,” Dia says, voice wavering a little. “But I miss you – just…you. I want you here with me and not in America where I can’t even see you everyday. I just miss you enough that I sometimes dream about you returning and – and I can’t control how I feel about it…” She cuts herself off with a chuckle. “Was that weird? Sorry. Ignore that.”

“No, no,” Mari replies hastily, hating the way she sounds shaken to the core. Though vague, Mari can almost swear that it was half of a confession. If only she were there in front of Dia – perhaps the other girl would say her true feelings instead of masking it in apologies. “I – Dia, I feel the sa– “

Dia cuts her off very quickly. “Um, even though we’ve disbanded, I’ve still been writing lyrics. They’re very rough, and I know there’s a very low chance of…becoming idols again. But do you want to look it over?”

Their confession moment has been pushed away, and Mari can understand why Dia did it. It’s something that only feels right face-to-face. Mari doesn’t know if she can do long-distance with Dia while there’s no guarantee that Mari will return to Uchiura or even Japan. She shuffles her feet, looking down at the cobblestone ground. The sounds of the concertgoers are distant now, and the leaving crowds have thinned considerably.

“I’d love to look at your lyrics,” Mari says, letting go of her unspoken confession. “But they better be very good,” she says, dropping another phrase into English, chuckling when Dia tries to defend lyrics that she hasn’t sent over yet.

Despite snapping back to their easy jocular friendship, Mari is almost certain Dia is aware of her feelings too, but for now, she allows it to slip by quietly.

Dia sends her an email of the lyrics she’s been drafting on the next morning.

Dear Mari,

Here’s a verse of the lyrics I was talking about the other day. I’m not sure what I should name it yet. But, it’s a song that has been sitting in my head for a while. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it, because I imagine it having a more EDM genre type to it and it’s…a very personal journal of my feelings but… Here it is.

 Is this the last step? The person

That understands my heart is waiting…

That someone is…

You.

 “I’m here,” I can hear your voice say

Please, guide me with your gentle voice.

With just that, it seems like

I can really come to like this planet

Let’s hurry and meet each other,

I’m calling calling you.

 Yours,

Dia

It doesn’t take much to make her decision after reading those lyrics.

After the American school year is over, she’s going back to Japan. She’s going to confront Dia and kiss the other girl stupid – or at least until Dia understands that her feelings are reciprocated.

That thought brings a wide grin to Mari’s face. A happy birthday indeed.

[templified]

Best WordPress Coffee Shop Themes, Tea Houses and Cafés | Templified

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Best WordPress Coffee Shop Themes, Tea Houses and Cafés

  It seems that coffee shops have been around forever, but they’ve come a long way. It used to be that coffee shops were pure functionality. These days, they are more than a place to get a delicious pick me up in the morning. A delicious jolt of energy. Lots of people work from coffee shops. They spend hours studying or socializing. Coffee is more than coffee.

Likewise, websites have come a long way over the last few years. Gone are the days when a custom website would cost you thousands of dollars. If you need a great-looking website for your coffee shop or Cafe, you have a lot of options. You can select a premade WordPress theme to help get you started and that saves both time and money. This collection represents the absolute best coffee shop WordPress themes available.

  These themes have been purpose built to make your coffee shop stand out from the crowd. If you’re selling beans wholesale, if you’re selling products on the internet, many of these themes have WooCommerce built-in. That allows you to set up a functional online shop. We’ve done our very best is like a wide range of themes. They work well for any sort of coffee shop. Every one of these themes is completely flexible too. You can adjust the colors and layouts to reflect your company’s brand. All of that helps to give you or visitors a great experience. It’s never been easier to create a winning website for your coffee shop. In this collection, I am certain that you’ll find something that you love.

Corretto

Corretto is a premium quality coffee shop and café WordPress theme. Corretto has several different home page designs. It offers several attractive inner pages and even a few options for shop templates.  With a theme like Coretto, you get the special ingredients you need to make a beautiful website for any café. Coretto offers a powerful, beginner friendly admin panel. That panel is a one stop shop for adjustments and customizations for your site.  You’re able to import any of the demo designs with one click, helping establish your site fast.  Presenting your business in a professional way with Corretto is quite simple. You can display drink menus, create a beautiful portfolio of images. It’s all possible with the Corretto WordPress theme.  Corretto has a wealth of short codes included too. That allows for big styling and feature implementation.  Check out more information below.

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Mister Coffee

Most of the themes in this collection deal with coffee shops. Mister Coffee is a different theme for a different purpose. Mister Coffee would work as well for a retail or brick-and-mortar coffee shop. It’s more of an online coffee market. Mister Coffee is a place where people can buy fresh or roasted beans. You can buy equipment for roasting and making coffee too. Mister Coffee could even adapted to do double duty. If you are selling cups of Joe inside your store, you can also roast beans and sell them behind the counter as well. You can sell brander merchandise and more. Mr. Coffee has the flexibility to do a lot of things and do them very well. This theme has everything you need to build a successful coffee business. It’s got a great looking stuff included. The homepage, image galleries, built-in blog and testimonials pages look great. Of course, it’s also the most popular and feature film e-commerce solution for WordPress. This theme has plenty going for it and I think that it is one of the better themes out there.

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Café Pro

Cafe Pro is a Genesis framework child theme that combines two of the very most popular Genesis themes, Foodie and Parallax. The result is a fabulous and modern style that is great for coffee shops. This theme offers very simple to use customization options, the theme customizer allows you to tweak almost every setting in your website from colors and content, and you will see all of your changes in real time. There are several different custom page templates, for on page widget areas and this theme was built to be mobile-friendly from the ground up. It looks great on all screen sizes and devices. Like all Genesis framework themes, this one is well coated and well supported, you will never run into issues at customizing your theme as the developer stands behind their product.

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Barista

Coffee is important, to me at least.  I know I’m drinking coffee right now as I type this.  Well, not exactly as I type, but it’s sitting right next to me.  See?  Oh damn, I knocked it over.  What am I doing, you couldn’t see that I was drinking coffee anyway.  This is what happens when you’re not drinking enough coffee, to be perfectly honest.

Coffee!

Barista was crafted to be a modern WordPress theme for building an amazing website for your cafe, coffee shop or bar. There are nine remarkable home pages each with a slightly different style. If you want a standard traditional website, the main homepage might be the one that you choose. There are also styles for a Metro layout on your homepage, an intriguing and unique look. There’s a dark home page, a grid page and a vertical showcase. Whether you want to go boxed or widescreen, you’ll have that option as well. There are Parallax showcases and even a coming soon page for when you are about to launch your new coffee shop. For bakeries and bars, bistros and coffee houses, Barista has all the features and functionality you could possibly need.

Okay, so we all know that coffee is great, way better than tea anyway.  It kicks sand in tea’s face and steals it’s lunch money.  Coffee is where it’s at and it’s big business too.  If you want to try to go head to head, toe to toe with the big hitters in the coffee business, sites and companies like Starbucks or Stumptown or my personal favorite, Coava, you’re going to need an incredible website.  A coffee shop website template like Barista could be the secret to getting those high rankings you want.

But is Barista just a coffee shop theme?  Oh definitely not, it’s great for bakeries, restaurants and more.  Any food service business would benefit from the style, the features that Barista offers.

Barista has several pre-made demo sites to choose from, a standard home page, metro style or dark style home page, grid home and boxed home pages, vertical showcase, shop home for extablishing a WooCommerce based shop.  There’s a parallax showcase and more coming soon too!  That’s a lot of options for setting up a page you’re going to really love.

One click demo data import, WooCommerce, tons of typography options, a café menu, booking form for Open table integration, responsive design, customizable colors, tons of free plugins an so much more, this is a theme that any coffee shop owner is going to adore.

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Cakecious

This is Cakecious, a curiously named theme, but one that I think is a solid choice for a coffee shop.  Of course, the demo is shown as a bakery, cake shop or cupcake shop, but the sheer number of features, the adaptability, that can work well for a coffee shop as well.  The theme was developed to be flexible enough to work for all kinds of websites and all kinds of businesses.  It’s unique, fun looking and approachable.  Cakecious has a high conversion front page, it’s got a well crafted blog and it supports WooCommerce to sell products too.  Cakecious is integrated with WooCommerce and several different payment gateways.  With a perfect rating of 5 stars, this is also among the highest rated themes that I’d recommend for a coffee shop.  One really cool feature, they’ll even let you test this theme for up to 30 days to see whether you like it or not and if you’re not satisfied, they’ll give you a full refund, no questions asked.

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Coffee Luck

Coffee Luck is an attractive WordPress theme for coffee houses. This Gutenberg compatible theme develops a modern and bright, responsive and receptive web page for your coffee shop, Cafe, Restaurant, bakery or tea house. This theme has a very colorful design that is highly interactive, making it simple for your readers to get all of the information that they need. There are several premium plugins included with the Coffee Luck WordPress theme, this theme is fully WooCommerce compatible, comes complete with WPBakery Page Builder and has Revolution slider and essential grid included as well. There’s one click demo installation, this mobile-friendly design has multiple home page layouts to choose from. It’s SEO optimized and translation ready as well. You really do get a lot of functionality out of the Coffee Luck WordPress theme.

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Nitro

Nitro is a multi-purpose WordPress theme that comes with several different demo Styles, one of which is an attractive cafe or coffee shop website. It’s actually styled as a tea house, though I think that it works just as well for selling coffee. With over 3000 sales, this is one of the most popular coffee shop templates around. This is a well-documented and responsive theme that also incorporates Ecommerce to allow you to set up a store online. This template includes over 200 layered PSD files so that you can dive deep into customization, if you should choose to do so. Ninja pop-up is included, as is Revolution slider and Visual Composer. There are Advanced product filters and plenty more in this responsive and attractive, modern and Powerful website template.

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Downtown

Downtown is a really fun WordPress theme for recipes, Cuisine related websites, restaurants and even coffee shops. If you want to present your business in a professional but fun way, this multi-purpose team delivers at clean and responsive experience for every visitor to your website. Slider Revolution is included, that allows you to really make a great first impression on your homepage. In terms of customization, almost everything that you see on the page can be swapped around or tweak to fit your needs. There are built-in short codes and plenty of social media Network support, you can even integrate Google Maps to let people know where you are in the world. Tesla is the developer behind this template and they always do a fantastic job of supporting their themes. I think that this is certainly one that is worth considering.

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Brunch Pro

Brunch Pro is a Genesis framework theme that is a fork of Foodie Pro, one of the best-selling the Genesis framework tablets around. I think that the clean and modern design could make this perfect for a european-style coffee house. In terms of customization, you have plenty of options. The theme customizer let you tweak all the little settings and your template, the colors and background images, even the content, displaying those changes in real time thanks to the you live theme customizer. You get multiple custom page templates, several different widget areas on the homepage and in the footer area and your header is ultimately customizable as well. This mobile-friendly theme looks great on all devices and includes a different layout options to give you plenty to think about when you are making your website.

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Salmon

Salmon is a restaurant WordPress theme that also includes a cafe or coffee shop demo to show you what your webpage might look like if you should happen to pick this thing. Salmon offers all the essential restaurant features you might expect, menu Builder and management plugins, event promotion areas, image gallery management as well as a traditional blog. There’s even a contact form so folks can get a hold of you if they want more information. There’s even on online reservations form, though that might not be a requirement for a coffee shop. This theme has a perfect five star rating and includes six ready to installed demo sites. The theme customization options are Limitless and the result is an attractive and professional, modern and stylish homepage for your coffee shop.

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Verdure

This Verdure theme is a modern tea house and eCommerce theme that would like to remind you that it is Tea O’Clock. I’m not sure what Tea O’Clock really is, but I guess it’s time for tea. No matter which beverage you are searching for a website for, this one could be perfect. I’ve even seen it used as a template for selling kombucha, which is pretty close to tea. This is theme is highly customizable and has an extensive admin interface to help you make any customizations you might want to. If you’re not a coder, that’s no problem at all. This theme comes with several different demo styles that you can install to get your website up and running quickly. You’ll never need to touch a line of code to produce a stunning and beautiful website for your tea shop or coffee shop.

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Aperitive

Aperitive is a Blog theme that I’ve included in this collection of coffee shop themes, because I love the design of it so much. There’s nothing that really limits it to being just a simple blog, I think that you could use this template for practically any type of business. There’s a built-in menu Builder, a prominent and attractive blog to keep your readers updated on your latest news or offerings and a built-in contact form as well. Aperitive isn’t engaging theme that is meant to be a perfect blend of style and substance. I really do like the magazine inspired to block layout for this template. It is a pretty individual taste though, so it might not work for everyone. I still thought it was worth including in this collection.

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Parallax Pro

While the Parallax Pro demo isn’t specific to coffee shops, I think that the design and look of the stand is so unique, it could be readily adapted to be a high-performance coffee shop template. Genesis framework is one of the most popular and fastest growing theme of Frameworks out there and Genesis child themes, such as Parallax Pro, offer a really nice option for webmasters who want high performance website that is still very simple to configure end update. The steam has eCommerce bill right in, there are five homepage widget areas that can be customized to fit your brand. This mobile-friendly WordPress theme loads up fast and is SEO friendly as can be. Like all Genesis framework child themes, this one is well supported and well-documented.

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Espresso

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Espresso is a powerful WordPress theme that could be great for building a coffee shop website. This theme is perfectly responsive, includes a food menu Builder and has a really unique blur slider that is worth checking out. That’s not the only premium plug-in included, you get the envira gallery, Soliloquy slider and visual composer as well as slider Revolution. Espresso support WooCommerce for building an online shop and as an events calendar too. If you want a clean and well-organized theme for building a flexible coffee shop website, this could be the ticket.

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Studio 8

When it comes to versatility, the Studio 8 WordPress theme offers everything you need to find success in any niche or industry. So, why not use this one as a coffee shop theme?  I think it’s got a clean look that really lends itself to almost any industry.  Complete beginners to the website building world will appreciate the offer of full installation and configuration by the developers themselves. In just a few minutes, your site will be ready for business. All you need to do is make any changes you desire and add content. After the site is active, anyone should be able to use the highly intuitive control panel to create unique layouts and design styles for small companies, creative agencies, freelance professionals and any other group or individual.

This completely responsive WP theme looks sharp on every screen size and never compromises the user experience when configuring different page elements. With the correct and current coding, Studio 81 a 98% score on the Page Speed Grade test. Fast, fast, fast!  This means site visitors will never have to wait to experience everything you have to offer. If you wish to make alterations to the base site, the process is simple. Besides adding your own graphics and text, the Full Width Slider option allows for unique animated slideshows. Multiple header layouts are also available and the blog section can be reconfigured with various options such as threaded comments and more. The Studio 8 WordPress theme truly offers a plug-and-play style answer to website building.

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[mi5016connorunsworth]

reflective piece

This module gave me a lot to think about, about where what I want to do, where I want to end up and how I’m going to get there.  I’ve always been a fan of character design and over the course of my two years here that interest has only grown, I don’t know where I’ll end up when I finish university and to be honest I don’t really want to think about it right now, but my end goal is a job in character design, I don’t mind starting at the bottom, I don’t even mind starting in another area, but character design is where I would like to end up.

My background is in graphic design; it was the first subject I really got into. I chose it as one of my options in high school, to study during my final two years and then went on to study it exclusively at college, it was here my skills really started developing, as did my interest in animation. I enjoyed making things, but I didn’t really enjoy what I was making, products such as leaflets, posters, studying advertisement was honestly the least fun I’ve had creating something, but it wasn’t all bad of course, in fact my typography pieces remain as one the works I’m proudest of.  My first experience with character design was in my second year, when we had to write and illustrate a children’s book, I knew by this point I wanted to do animation, but it wasn’t until I got to university that I settled on what I wanted to do.

I used this module as an excuse to reflect on myself, thinking back to the work I’d done and honestly realising quite how much I hate quite a lot of it, the primary problem was my art style. Having studied graphic design in college, my art style was a product of that, simple, clean and easy to look at, all good things when creating leaflets or posters, but I’m not doing that anymore, if I want to start getting into character design, I feel my art style should have some character too, using this module as an excuse I finally decided to bite the bullet and start working on getting an art style that I enjoyed, a messier, sketchier, rougher art style. I enjoy drawing, I’m not good at it, but I enjoy it, so I plan to keep at it and maybe one day I’ll actually be able to draw a human.

As it’s my end goal, I want to start focussing more on character design, to start this off I’d planned on doing some kind of personal project, in an attempt to both practice drawing and fill up my blogs with work I actually don’t mind look at. I wanted to expand on the characters and world I created in the previous character design module, as I’d become a bit fond of them. However, I decided to postpone this, I intend on taking a year out next year to go and study abroad, the university I’ve chosen to attend gives me the opportunity to work on a personal project as part of the curriculum, I’m going to hold out until then as I feel it will be infinitely better than something I create in my own time, alongside all of my actual assignments.

In order to start moving towards my end goal of character design, there’s a few things I need to start working on, firstly, a portfolio, I have a portfolio, but it’s still quite focused towards animation, it’s also still got a lot of my old graphic design work in, things like my typography pieces, which while I quite like, don’t really help me towards a career in character design. I plan to spend some time over summer, working on various projects, or rather just, things to fill my portfolio with, one idea I had was to start making up basic character designs using ideas from the multitude of random generators online. This would not only give me things to add to my portfolio, but would allow me to practice skills that I need to practice, drawing, idea development and actually design characters based on ideas that aren’t my own.

The next thing I need to work on is a suitable CV, like my portfolio, I have one but it isn’t really relevant to character design, though in the case of my CV, it isn’t even relevant to art, as I’ve never gone for a job in art and I doubt any of the grocery stores I apply to for part time jobs care what adobe software I can use. I did make an “artsy” CV back in college, but like most things I made in college, it wasn’t great, so I just did another one, it was well timed actually as I needed a new CV anyway for my exchange programme. For the time being, I’ve made an Instagram page that I’m in the process of filling with work, both from that I’ve done in uni and some of my better work from my graphic design days back in college, I plan to keep adding to it, though I may reserve it for my better, more finished work, I’m toying with the idea of making another Tumblr blog at some point for things like, basic skethes, experiments and development work. I will probably start this over the summer, as I plan to do some preparation for my year abroad project, things like character and world building ideas for example, as well as basic storyboarding ideas, which will go onto my Tumblr, with finished character and environment designs on my Instagram.

The final thing I need is a showreel, obviously, my first showreel is going to be short and very simple and as I want to focus more on character design, won’t feature too much animation, I did look up a few character design showreels I only found one that featured actual animation, one that was obviously made a late into someone’s career, the others I found were simple still images, showing the different parts of the character design, from concept to the final piece. This is the kind of thing I’m aiming towards, as well as the kind of thing I will likely have late into my career. That said I may end up making more than one showreel, one focussed on character design and one with my animation work, though having multiple showreels isn’t something I’m even thinking about right now.

I feel that I’ve gained a good number of skills throughout my time in university and college, with software especially, programmes such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, I’ve been using since I took up graphic design in high school six years ago, so I like to think I’ve become pretty decent at using them, though I’m still learning new things. In university, I’ve started using a lot of new, more specialised programmes, Maya for example, I picked up last year, while I still have a lot to learn with Maya, I feel like I’m making very good progress.

Beyond just technical skills, I have gained other more personal skills that I feel will serve me well in the future, having worked in retail for the past four years or so, I have become adept at work both independently and as part of a larger team, I feel these will serve me incredibly well working in the animation industry.

I’m not sure where I’d like to work in the end, the far off future is something I really don’t enjoy thinking about, I know the kind of place I’d like to work though, but at the same time I’d feel like I’d be happy anywhere. Somewhere like Disney for example, is pretty much the top place you can get a job, but at the same time I don’t really like the idea of working in a studio of that size. One thing I do know is that I really don’t want to work in London, but at the same time, that’s where most of the big studios are. In class we were shown a few different places, one that stood out to me was Ubisoft Reflections, in Gosforth. I’d quite like to stay around Newcastle, it’s a nice city and I know my way around it, it also has the metro system, which would save me having to invest in a car. It also seemed like it had quite a good, atmosphere, laid back, but still productive, which relates back to my main goal of enjoying my job. As well as this, an option that has been given to me even since I started college, is freelancing, I honestly wouldn’t mind freelancing, especially to begin my career, that said, freelancing isn’t something I’d like to do long term, as I feel it’s a bit too unreliable, you just have to hope that someone needs something animated and they just happen to find and choose you, amongst all of the other freelancing animators.

[lillerblg-blog]

I upload my reflection on ‘how have I got here?’

drawing 

I hated drawing. Okay, that’s not 100% true. I still remember, when I was younger around 5, I always did drawing about tale characters, some fantasy drawing and my mom said they’re beautiful and like everyone else I did believe it too. So when I went to primary school I loved art lessons and once I participated in an art competition and when I shown my final painting to my teacher I asked her ‘is it nice?’ my teacher said ‘no’ (here I was so sad for a second) and she continued ‘this is not nice, this is beautiful Lili’. I don’t know why I still remember this conversation this clear, but probably because this was my first sense of achievement in art.

however, later, in high school I didn’t really cared about art or drawing, I didn’t think about choosing a career of arts. but when me and my family moved to London (I was 15) I went to a normal high school and I chose art&design as a subject and I truly loved it, it helped me to fell in love with art again. I’m so grateful for those years as I decided I wanna work with art somehow. 

I went back to Hungary after finishing with GCSEs, and I was attending to an art high school, I was studying art history, graphics and academic drawing by models. I liked that I surrounded by Hungarian students so I finally understood everything and I could make some friends, but on the other hand I didn't really like the school method. I had one-day long academic drawing practice lectures on every week and we drew ‘still life’ and portraits or full-length drawings about live models. They tried to teach me what I missed in the past 2 years (I dropped in the middle of the course) but it was just impossible me. They expected me and us to draw exactly what we see in front of us, it had be correct by scale, size, shadows, shades, everything like pros did in last century. It was really cool if you were good in drawing, but if you weren’t then you could feel isolated and  ‘excommunicate’. Plus, all of the BA courses based on academic drawing skills (don't know why, so stupid, I don't think so that there is connection between graphic design and drawing skills, but never mind) so if you wanna get into a uni then you need to pass the 3-steps application process where the second step is a practice exam drawing full-length by live model (1. portfolio and 3. interview). I felt so hopelessness and futureless as I hated drawing and also wasn’t good in it at all.

I didn’t went to uni in Hungary in the end, I rather came to London within that to UAL to study graphic design and I still happy for this decision.

as I explained, it seems I always loved drawing in the depth of my soul just those years in Hungary, they really pushed me to believe I’m terrible in drawing and I shouldn't do it. however, I wanted to change on this old habit that I don't draw, so I bought a small journal sketchbook and now I'm making sketches about what I see on my way home, these are normally made on buses or trains. I know its not a big deal, but for me it is, I'm really proud of myself to get rid of the thought that I'm not good in drawing.

3D

I’ve done something which I could say similar to 3D in Part 1 on a Catch Up Day. it was a 10 minutes challenge to connect two elements together without sticking, so I made this geometric straw pyramid. I really enjoyed the method and also was satisfied with the outcome. 

I would do more 3D works in the future if it will be available and have time to spend on it.

photography

in high school I had photography lessons and also did my GCSE in it. that was the first time in my life holding an expensive real camera in my hand, I remember I couldn't even use it. of course, later on I got used to how to use them and also I truly enjoyed the projects and all of the things what we have done at photography lessons.

at the beginning of foundation course I set up a photoshoot for my blind date project, and I think it went well. it was a bit weird that I had to do the photoshoot about a ‘stranger’ I mean it was a little uncomfortable to tell instructions to her, but I feel this feeling in me doesn't come up on the outcomes.

I enjoyed to do and set up the photoshoot, and because of this feeling in me I became interested in photography, moreover in photo manipulations, what possibilities do we have, both manual and computer-based.

to be honest I'm pretty bad in technical things however also very interested in, so I would be very happy to be able to attend on a photoshop class or something, because I realised it doesn't matter how interested I feel, I can't learn it by myself just by watching videos.

film

filming is not really my world but I was always impressed by effects and creative solutions. so I'm interested in how each films was made by, but I wouldn't do as a job, I rather just watching them.

animation

I kinda have the same feeling to animation like to film. I always so amazed by truly creative animations and more amazed by how they did it, how they were created. 

print

I very like prints especially lino prints. I like the most about linos that they are multipliable as many times as I want it and by this I had the opportunity to print them in different colour see which one is matches the most. I also like the cutting process due to I like detailed works, I like to work carefully and be able to take my time.

the ‘biggest’ lino cut I made is an eight-sheets book and it took me 2 or 3 months to finish as it is a coloured lino, more precisely I used 5 colours.

typography

when we were doing the typography project at the beginning -to be honest- I didn't really like it as it seemed a bit dry, boring. however, later on as we worked on the project it began to be interesting and I started to enjoy it. at the end, it was one of my favourite projects. I learned that typography is really the base of every piece of graphic design, without a good edited typography even the greatest work can be looked awful.

this is my final outcome at this project, and I honestly enjoyed it despite the fact that at the beginning I thought it will be boring and ‘dry’.

book arts

I like making books and also liked the book project, especially the first two one-day projects, both the group and individual one. I liked the group project because it was great to cooperate with classmates and set up a book together where all of the decisions were made together too. however, I enjoyed the individual project as well as I explored how different things can we create using an old book, in my opinion it was really beneficial and useful for further book projects too.

research

of course, I like to do researches especially hand-on researches like experimenting, watching movies & interviews or visiting related exhibitions. I think these ways of getting information is more useful and lasting on longer term as I remember more easily what I experience, see or watch.

I can't even imagine a project without research, I search for related images or articles inevitably anyway.

group work

I truly enjoy group works & critics every time we have it. at the beginning, I didn’t want to take part in group things because I felt shy and uncomfortable due to my weak English but after couple of times I realised it’s doesn’t matter, the point is to describe my thoughts as clearly as I can and don’t worry about the rest. moreover, in my opinion I found group critics very beneficial, it helped me a lot particularly when I got stuck in the middle of the project or just wasn’t sure about my ideas.

one-day project

I found beneficial these short projects as well as longer ones, this is because in my opinion these shorter projects help us to get a taste and get the feeling & mood to an upcoming projects. I could learn a lot from these teaser days. if it would be possible, I would do at least one one-day project at the start of every project.

this is my ‘how have I got here’ reflection, I hope you will be able to understand my thoughts and opinion despite of my grammar.

[webbygraphic001]

26 steps to perfect product design

Over the last four years I’ve been designing dashboards and applications, and I’ve learned how to deal with different departments, and utilise their knowledge in order to make product design more efficient.

Today, I’m going to share all of the steps that I’ve built into my daily routine, that I believe have made me a better designer.

Pre-process

1. Get as much information as possible (ask for three examples)

For me, nothing provides more clarity than seeing a real working example. When I am working with a new client, or on a brand new landing page for a product, I find as the easiest starting point is to ask the client to provide three or four inspirational pages, because this really helps both parties. Getting your client to put ideas onto the table gives you an opportunity to readily understand what they like, and what they expect from the finished design.

If you’re working with multiple teams you should aim to spend as much time with the developers on a product as you do with your designer colleagues. What I’ve learned is that the key to making an effective design decision is to ensure you speak with the dev team as much as you can. In my case, there have been cases where a solution to a problem was found, that I couldn’t come up with by myself.

The goal is to eliminate as many questions as possible before you move into development.

2. Learn about personas

At first, I must say I was skeptical about personas, but now it all makes sense to me.

So in complete contrast to my older process, I can see how personas are super important while working on product features, especially when the solution has many different edge cases. It helps you to understand who are you really designing for. I aim to have around four to five personas.

3. Set up exact goals —what exactly should we track?

I think most designers/clients ignore this step, but one of the most important aspects of design for both parties is to understand the goals of the product you are designing. We tend to jump straight into pixels and quickly flesh out the UI of the project. If it’s a brand new website, or a new feature, be sure to set clear goals of what you want to achieve first.

Since everything is trackable, speak about the exact points you’re going to track. For example, these could range from new sign ups, to a number of customers using Paypal vs. purchases with credit cards. Always make sure you know how high you’re aiming for at the start!

(You’ll need this anyway for setting up funnels on Mixpanel later in this process.)

4. Set up a project folder and start building a moodboard

There are plenty of sites for inspiration — Dribbble, Behance, Pttrns etc. It’s really easy to find similar projects to the one you’re working on. Additionally, there may be already a solution to a problem you’re experiencing and trying to solve.

When I start working on a new project, I always setup a folder with folders named — Source Files, Screens & Export, Inspiration & Resources. I save everything I find on the internet to Inspiration folder to be able to use it later to create basic moodboards. This folder could be filled with anything from plugins, swatches or even full case studies from Behance.

Going low fidelity

5. Whiteboard

If we want to add a new feature or redesign a process we sit down and everybody at the meeting starts sketching ideas on a whiteboard, paper or even an iPad. This action allows us to put everyone on the team in the designer’s position. Later we end up with two design options to see which one works the best.

We always try to go through the whole experience and discuss most of the edge cases during this part of the process. It is really crucial to address them now as opposed to during the design phase, or even worse, during the development part. That’s when you can lose a lot time and energy.

6. Map out all of your screens (what data a user needs to input)

This is the time to go beyond the whiteboard and list out all of the user’s inputs and stories. Write down what exactly a user should insert into a particular screen and how a user can achieve their desired goals.

7. Write down all possible states

Because all dashboards, apps or websites’ forms have different states, this is another important step you shouldn’t forget.

While designing we need to be sure to address all of them. It’s nice to have shiny graphs and cool profile pictures in our Sketch files or PSDs. However, most likely, users will see the opposite side of your app. Especially when they come to your product. It’s necessary to be prepared. Below is an example of how we deal with empty states in one of our data components.

8. Prepare your first diagram

All of this leads to the final part of low fidelity. Thanks to the outcome of the whiteboard task we now know all of the possible states, user’s inputs and goals. To sum up all interactions I create a diagram and to be honest I’ve changed the style of doing this many times: Going from Sketch files with rasterized layouts to just rectangles symbolizing each page with their names below. That being said, the process was always painful, I usually end up in a situation where we want to change or add something later on in the process. With these solutions I’m usually forced to do many more steps; such as changing the positions of lines, arrows and images.

Recently I’ve been using Camunda Modeler, which is a not exactly a design tool; it’s a simple app for creating technical diagrams. Which sounds odd, but this app is developed to help you build basic diagrams. Most importantly everything created is completely scalable. You can easily drag and drop any point and it will automatically create lines and arrows for you. You can also choose from different types of points which can be helpful for highlighting when, for example, a user receives an email from Intercom. Camunda exports to SVG which makes it easy to color trackable points in Sketch.

Work / Design

9. Moodboard

I’m able to start with the creation of mood board, as I collect all images to my Inspiration folder. I use mood boards mainly to discuss my thoughts with colleagues and describe some of the visual ideas, before I start with the pixel process.

10. First draft

Designing is always an ongoing process. You’re going to iterate a lot along your way to a great result. With first draft is also a way of gathering feedback. You don’t have to come to pixel perfect design in order to start receiving feedback from your teammates, clients or potential users. To get their first thoughts and to start a discussion, I usually mix screens from our current designs. This allows us to start playing with real looking designs in less than a day. You can do a first simple prototype to test if things connect well together.

11. Write your copy

Copy is one of the key aspects of users’ decisions and I take it as a crucial part of the design. There is nothing worse than a nice design with confusing dialogs where users are struggling to find the next step.

12. First intern test

With your first draft you can quickly create a prototype in Marvel or Invision. This is something that I started doing recently and it turns out it’s another amazing validating aspect. With a prototype you can now easily set up a call with 3 or 4 people from your team and share the prototype link with them and try to ask a few questions while test on them particular flows/scenarios.

This way you can easily test your questioning skills and obviously test your design decisions on real users without worrying about wasted resources and time. I tend to choose people who are not that much involved in dashboard development. Also try to avoid watching someone who has already had a chance to play with the prototype before.

13. Etiquette

We all know how hard it is to stay tidy. How to deliver yet another feature. This usually leads to a messy Sketch or PSD files. I’ve learned a lot about the differences between working as a single designer in a startup, working in teams, or working on my own digital products.

When you do work in a team, think about your PSD’s like you’re creating them for someone else. I use the rule that if you have more than 8 layers in a folder, then you should create a new one.

I found one great plugin for Sketch, which saved me hours while I worked on my UI Kits: Rename  It.

Tip : Put everything on the canvas. I’ve always struggled with designing nice headers while I the rest of the canvas was white. While designing I learned to put all the content in place first — just play with the layout and typography. It’s much easier to design nice details and play with the whole concept with the content in place.

14. Create UI elements and start playing with Lego

I’m probably late to the party and this will already sound outdated while I’m writing it. The reason why we haven’t done any wireframing on the journey here is simple. Sketch 39 comes with something that I have found incredible and that is “shapes with resizing properties”. This is something that makes designing easy for everyone on the team. Our Sketch file is pure drag-and-drop now. You can easily give any of your teammates a blank canvas and they can create almost hi-fidelity drafts. Thanks to this we are able to skip all wireframing tools and start with almost real looking pixels.

This also goes hand in hand with us being able to actually convert wireframes to real designs. Any PM can create a wireframe and then I can easily take it over and transform to hi-fidelity.

Assets & Delivery

When you’re done with designing and iterating based on first feedback you’re not done yet. Now comes the time to hand your designs over to your engineers/devs.

15. Specifications

One my main aims is to always be able to communicate my decisions with the team and be able to reduce difficulty for our developers as much as I can in order to provide them with the best possible resources. That for me is definitely the most important part of my job as a designer.

Since we documented all the interaction and have everything ready from the beginning of our process, creating specs is a piece of cake. I tend to write specs in Google Docs or below the screens in Sketch files. It’s nice to handle your designs with explanations of all features so anybody can grab your file in the future.

16. Diagram

This technique is nice for printing out designs and discussing them with the team. But nowadays I think there are better options. Such as having ready the final prototype.

17. Final Prototype

One of the key things for me is to always have all interaction ready in prototype. I usually end up having 3–5 prototypes on the way to the final one for those little session with teammates or to show some particular flows. I tend to prepare all states in Sketch in one artboard and then duplicate those artboards to have every state ready when exporting.

It’s great to add comments to parts of your designs to expand your specification much more so that even a copywriter can easily go and check in real pixels and flows if every copy and dialog works as required.

18. Quicktime Video > Notes

When I’m not presenting stuff on Hangout to the team or a client I’m sending a screenshare video of me going through the prototype and explaining everything what I’ve designed. It’s a nice confirmation for me before any presentation that I know the answer on any question and possible fancy interactions I’ve decided to design. Could be also nicely used when working in remote teams. Everyone has access to replay the whole interaction thinking at anytime.

19. Animate

As a nice final touch you can use After Effects or Principle. It’s good to explain how you want this or that to move.

20. Styleguide

Another crucial point for engineers is to know how things will react in different scenarios. Think about error states of input or where to show error messages. Similarly how the disabled state of a submit button will look, where to put a spinner etc.

It’s super easy for engineers go just through your Symbols artboard and style elements one by one before they even start coding all screens thanks to having a Sketch file as Lego blocks.

Final testing

Since we are done with handing over our designs to engineers we are able to focus on the last part of the process — testing our decisions!

21. Inspectlet / HotJar

After the designs are turned into working code don’t forget to include your Inspectlet or HotJar JS snippets. I’m always excited (or frustrated) to see how users navigate through our dashboard or what are they doing on my portfolio page. Inspectlet is amazing in capturing all of your user session. Works great for bigger projects as well.

It comes with easy “/page” filtering which helps you watch sessions of a particular feature or flow.

22. Mixpanel

Mixpanel works great for validating our goals (those which we setup at the very beginning of our process). Mixpanel helps to see how many users complete particular flows. How many users dropped before setting up the account. How many people went from main landing page to store and to our most valuable product.

23. Google Analytics

I’m not capable of coding big things, but at least I’m able to work with CSS files and with simple code. Lately I was interested to see where users click and while looking at Hotjar heatmaps so I’ve decided to setup basic click tracker in Google Analytics as well. You can easily track every of user’s clicks on your website as well.

This helps me to easily map out user’s behavior. For example, I found out that people used top navigation on my site 5x more over the highlighted link in intro text. Sadly it doesn’t count clicks from users with AdBlock.

24. Intercom

When we agreed on our initial flows we were talking about part of the flows where user receives an email from Intercom. Our responsibility here is to ensure that all copy and the message itself makes sense and is actually helpful for the visitor. Be sure that your emails are guiding your user to your keen result and always try to provide specific support articles and info how to continue in the flow.

  The last few words

25. Leave Dribbble behind

From what I’ve learned and how my design has changed over past 4 years, I’ve got to the point where Dribbble is not necessarily the place you want to create your designs for. I’ve always aimed to have nice pixels with sexy profile pictures, but that’s not what real users need and will use.

Here’s an example, on the left you’ll see something I designed for Dribbble. On the right, you’ll see something I designed once I spent some time watching people editing their profiles and realised that my vision wasn’t delivering what they needed.

You may receive 500 likes for bright crazy animation of a potato or sliding pizza but what’s really important is that your users will find how to manage frequency of company emails or how to filter their performance analytics.

    [– This post was originally posted on Medium, republished with the author’s permission. –]

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