Our use of colour is changing, argues Brendán Murphy
From the street to the supermarket shelf, the use of colour has been a visceral differentiator among brands and logo design. Companies across all industries have built moats of colour to define and defend their brand identity.
While the use of colour in branding is nothing new, the shift to the digital world has brands using colour in more nuanced, strategic and multi-faceted ways to better connect with consumers and give themselves a distinct and authentic brand personality.
Brands today are using colour in more nuanced, strategic and multi-faceted ways
Aligning brand colour with brand character gives a strong and concrete foundation from which to begin building equity and affinity. From its early origins, Apple took on the big blues of HP and IBM by forging its own path.
Apple has forged a unique approach to colour in its marketing and packaging
And while over the years it has used and defined colour trends through product design and advertising, today Apple takes a minimalist approach to "brand" colour, giving it incredible flexibility to dip in and out of colour trends, to operate across many different industries and always, it seems, to be culturally relevant and of the moment.
Apple, with its highly nuanced appreciation for materials, leverages sleek glass and cool aluminum product design and store fascia, and gives its products the freedom to live in and frame its audience's world of colour.
Don't confuse logo colour and brand colour. Tiffany blue is one of the world's most recognised brand colours. But its logo is an understated and refined serif type expression of the Tiffany name in black.
Tiffany's understands the ritual associated with its packaging
Similarly, the store exterior is not painted robin's egg blue. Tiffany understands the ritual associated with its uniquely coloured box and that when it comes to any brand element, less is often more.
The New Yorker masthead is black. But it sits comfortably in a world of colour brought to life through words, pictures and my favourite, cartoons.
Put aside personal preferences and explore what you want your customers to feel. Many colour decisions are based on the hidden or overt bias of a management team (favourite sports team), or research panel.
Colour is a complex and emotional decision that is best explored with ethnography and through a range of experiences, not behind the looking glass of a 12x12 windowless room.
Don't confuse a company for a packaged good. People expect their can of Coke to be red and Cadbury's bar to be purple. Colour in this instance becomes a wayfinding device on the store shelf.
Consumers expect Cadbury to be purple
But today's companies are not so easily packaged, and the ingredients on the inside— namely, their people, ideas, products and services—are constantly innovating and changing.
IBM's kaleidoscope colour approach helps it look and feel more innovative and creative, more like a 'Human Era' B2C company talking to me and less like a corporate B2B company talking at me.
Alternatively referred to as a cell, cellular, and cellular phone, a cell phone, which is also sometimes abbreviated as cp is a mobile phone or portable phone that enables a user to communicate almost anywhere in the world. The cell phone was invented by Dr. Martin Cooper who led a team of developers at Motorola and made the first cell phone call in April 3, 1973 at Motorola.
As can be seen by the picture to the right, of the Nokia 6010 cell phone, modern cell phones have changed drastically from the original cell phones (aka bricks). New cell phones are much lighter than the old brick cell phones, much smaller, and have LCD (often a color LCD) to display contacts, pictures, ringtones, games, etc.
Today, cell phones are capable of doing almost anything a computer is capable of doing. Below, are just a few examples of what some of the new phones are capable of doing.
Also see: Phone terms, Memory card, Smartphone, Telephone
We've scoured the web to present you with a fine and varied selection of free fonts. Including scripts, serifs, and a range of ligatures, these fonts will give you greater flexibility in your designs, and add to your arsenal of design tools.
This list represents the 100 best free fonts we've found in a variety of styles. However, for specialist fonts that won't cost you a penny, read these:
Some of the typeface collections listed below can be used on your web projects, but please be sure to check the terms. Now join us as we present you with 100 of the best free fonts, which you can download and use today. Let us know how you get on!
BellaBoo is an all caps font that's perfect for any kind of design project
This bold, all-caps font from Marcelo Reis Melo contains Latin and Swedish characters. Guaranteed to add a quirky, handmade flavour to your designs, it's free to download – both for commercial and personal use – and comes in both TTF and OTF formats.
TTF and OTF
Add a touch of class with Pier, a geometric font with a modern feel
Pier is a clean sans-serif font that's perfect for any-sized design, big or small. Created by Montreal-based senior art director Mathieu Desjardins, it comes in four weights, has a selection of glyphs and is free for personal use.
"The idea was to create a slightly off geometric font that would look good big or very small," he says. "It was made to fit your everyday designs and text needs."
OTF
Manifesto is an angular headline font with style
Tomaz Leskovec's clean, uppercase show font Manifesto was inspired by the geometric aesthetic of the Italian rationalist movement in the mid 1920s. Angular and eye-catching, it'll add impact to headlines, posters and more.
: TTF
Need a minimal serif stencil? Look no further than Delicate...
For a minimal option, French studio FAAK&PAAT's Delicate is an elegant serif stencil with a contemporary geometric twist. The classy design is available in three versions; rounded, bold and strict, and is free for both personal and commercial use.
: TTF
"Timber is very versatile," says designer Mehmet Reha Tugcu on Behance
Istanbul-based designer Mehmet Reha Tugcu's trendy inline font Timber has a retro-futuristic vibe. Free for both personal and commercial use, it's perfect for logos, posters, headlines and any design situation where you have a bold typographic message to convey.
TTF and OTF
After a script font with a hint of retro? Try Fabfelt...
French graphic designer Fabien Despinoy is the creative behind Fabfelt, a free script font with an industrial feel. "I tried to design a handwritten typeface without graininess, which is natural and a little retro," he comments.
OTF
Bizon is a trendy uppercase font that's free to use
Nantes-based art director Axel Bizon is behind this personality-packed uppercase typeface, Bizon. The irregular, handmade design is free for both personal and commercial use.
: TTF
Futuracha is a display font based on futura's backbone
A group of curious design explorers make up høly and are the team behind today's font of choice Futuracha. They comment on Behance: "The name is the combination of words futura and cucaracha (cockroach in Spanish). "The design is based on the basis of the pf futura book. The letters edges radically extend in a forceful way trying to remind the art deco's style.
: EPS
Monthoers is a new update to Rochoes, by designer Agga Swist'blnk
If you're looking for a distressed retro font, Monthoers could well be the answer. Created by Indonesia-based graphic designer Agga Swist'blnk, it's the latest incarnation of her Rochoes typeface, and free for personal and commercial use.
TTF and OTF
Reis is great for posters, logos and much more
This cool, handwritten design Reis was created by Marcelo Reis Melo. Great for posters, logos and much more, Reis is available free for personal and commercial use, with donations to the author, as always, appreciated.
: TTF
Anders was an experimental project by creative advertising student Tom Anders Watkins
Geometric design Anders was an experimental project by creative advertising student Tom Anders Watkins. "Using influences from modern font design, I wanted something very minimal and a little unique, here's the result," Watkins comments on Behance.
: TTF
Dense currently only comes in Regular but there'll be more weights to follow
Dense is a versatile, elegant, geometric and compact sans-serif typeface. Three weights have been created thus far: thin, regular and bold. Created by Canadian artist Charles Daoud, Regular is currently the only weight available, but Daoud has said that he'll update his Behance page with news on how to get the other weights in the near future.
TTF
Reckoner was inspired by popular industrial sans serif typefaces
Reckoner was created by Sydney-based graphic designer Alex Dale. "Drawing inspiration from popular industrial sans serif typefaces such as Bebas Neue, Alegre Sans & Dharma Gothic, I set out to design a typeface with a modern twist whilst keeping the fundamentals of a traditional font," Dale comments on Behance.
"The result is Reckoner, a free for commercial and personal use typeface that features a secondary set of characters in the lowercase setting that can be placed in your designs to add a unique touch to certain words."
TTF
This free type collection was Suarez's first fully functioning typeface
Vincent was developed by graphic and product designer for NBC Universal Ben Suarez. Created at the end of last year, this vintage-inspired design was Suarez's first fully functioning typeface, and is a great addition to our list of 100 free fonts.
"Vincent was intended to be used as a title font," explains Suarez. It was "named after my grandfather who drove a '76 Chrysler Cordoba and smoked out of an old wooden pipe. He was rad."
TTF
Create eye-catching headlines with Jaapokki
Jaapokki was created by Finnish designer Mikko Nuuttila. With clean lines, two alternatives and large set of glyphs, Jaapokki is great for headlines, posters, logos and more.
: OTF
Biko Black is a big, brash display font that has a touch of class
Biko is a design by graphic designer and visual artist Marco Ugolini: "a geometric sans serif with a strong and yet friendly character". The name is a tribute to South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. Perfect for display, copy text and logos, it's available in regular, and black versions. It's also one of our typefaces that's only free for use in personal projects, and as you can purchase the font for a mere 20 Euros for commercial use we felt that it must be included.
TTF
Parisish by George Williams is kinda reminiscent of the French capital city - hence the name
This is one of the most elegant typefaces, and was created by type designer George Williams; it has the feel of old Paris about it. One of 57 fonts created by the designer, this is one of his most popular, having received over 200,000 downloads. It's free for both personal and commercial uses.
TTF
Baron is an uppercase display typeface, free for personal and commercial projects
Created by graphic design student Frank Hemmekam, this font family is designed for display with Hemmekam describing it as "a free uppercase display typeface inspired by the classic sans serif font families. This typeface is, because of its many alternative options and weights, perfect for usage in posters, logotypes and headlines." Baron is free for both personal and commerical use.
TTF
Davide Cariani's free font was inspired by old school tattoo typography
Davide Cariani is a UX designer and web developer with a passion for typography, which led to him creating this entry in our list. True Love was created in his spare time and his first type experiment. Inspired by old-school tattoo fonts, glyphs available include letters, numbers, dash and dot.
TTF
Calendas Plus was created by the team at Spanish design agency atipo
Calendas Plus is an improved version of Atipo studio's first typeface, Calendas. The team at the Spanish design agency completely redrew the font with new ligatures and includes a full glyph set. You can download this simply by sharing news of the design on Facebook or Twitter.
Microsoft launched Office 2016 Preview and you can get your hands on it now
Microsoft today launched Office 2016 Preview, making it available to download for users who want to get an early look at the latest iteration of the company's productivity suite. This new version includes several new features for home and business users, and is designed to work seamlessly across a wide range of devices, including Apple's iPad, Mac OS X, and Android tablets.
New Office 2016 Features
There are several new features coming to Office 2016, which are aimed at both users at home and in the workplace. Here's a look at some of the more notable items of interest for end users.
Real-time Collaboration will allow users to co-author documents with others straight from within the application. You'll be able to see where each author is in the document and the changes being made as they occur. Real-time collaboration is already available in Office web apps, but now comes directly to your desktop.
Modern Attachments in Outlook will now allow users to attach files from OneDrive and automatically configure the permissions the recipient will have, all without having to leave Outlook.
Smart Applications have been added and are designed to "learn" as you work. For example, Clutter is an Exchange feature that now works directly with Outlook for home users. It uses machine learning to analyze email patterns and de-clutter your inbox based on the priority of messages. Meanwhile, the new Tell Me search tool available in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel brings up commands you're looking for by simply typing what you want to do. Another Smart Application is Insights. This is powered by Bing and lets you highlight text to find more information about it via the web, without having to open a separate browser.
Microsoft promises that new Excel data analysis will be faster and let you pull, map, analyze and visualize your data more easily. It will also include one-click forecasting based on your data series, along with the inclusion of Power Query, Power Pivot functionality, and new modern charts and graphs.
Start testing
To install the Office 2016 Preview, you don't need to be part of the Windows Insiders program for testing Windows 10, but you do need a PC running Windows 7 or higher. Also, you cannot have Office 2013 and 2016 installed side-by-side, so you will need to uninstall Office 2013 first.
This preview isn't meant for the average user, but rather enthusiasts and power users who are familiar with Microsoft Office. The final version is expected to be released later this Northern Hemisphere autumn, following the expected launch of Windows 10 this Northern summer.
If you're keen to start testing it out and providing feedback to Microsoft, head to the Microsoft Office 2016 Preview page to get started.
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Short for Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lighting, CCFL is lighting used in a flat panel LCD monitors, neon signs, and computer case lighting. The picture is an example of a blue CCFL from Logisys that could be used in a computer case.
Could Thoughtflow be the app to provide you with the inspiration you need?
Mood boards are an essential tool in the designer's armoury, and there are a number of apps available to the creative community battling it out to be the go-to inspiration tool for designers and illustrators. Thoughtflow is the latest app that aims to inspire. But, as creator Leon Wee explains, it's different from all the other alternatives out there.
Discover the 20 best tools for online collaboration
"A lot of creative apps take the approach of sketching, or designing something. Thoughtflow differs in that it comes in earlier in that process, while you’re still staring at the blank page," explains creator Leon Wee. "It's made to get ideas going before you even know what you’re looking for."
"Sites like Pinterest are great for scrapbooking inspiration, but Thoughtflow is made for exploring them. Its main focus is to start ideas, track them, and keep them coming." Starting with any word or image, you'll be presented with colours, emotions, politics or any other number of themes. Have a go and see for yourself.
