20+ Best Background Templates

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Designing the header section of a website is one of the most difficult parts of the entire website design process. You have to think about your content arrangement, the font size of the headline, product image placements, menu design, and much more to get it just right. But, background templates can help to give you a great head start!

Background templates are customizable background designs crafted by professional designers with the proper content layouts for you to use with your own projects.

The templates are available in vector format to let you easily edit the text, colors, and everything else to make a unique design for your own website or print design.

Creative Landing Page Background Template

Creative Landing Page Background Template

Creativity is a big part of website design. This colorful and attractive background template will help you design a creative and modern landing page header or a banner. The template is available in AI and EPS file formats featuring organized layers and customizable elements.

Modern Abstract Background Template

Modern Abstract Background Template

Whether you’re working on a website design for a creative agency or a business website, this background template will allow you to create a stylish banner filled with unique shapes, texture, and colors. This template is also customizable with Illustrator and includes editable colors and text as well.

Furniture Website Banner Background

Furniture Website Banner Background

Using a minimal and clean design is important when you’re making banners and websites for furniture and interior design businesses. This background template features a stylish design made specifically for such websites. It comes in AI and EPS file formats with fully editable vector elements.

Agency & Freelancer Background Template

Agency & Freelancer Background Template

This stylish website homepage banner is perfect for making an attractive design for a freelancer or a creative agency website. The template features a split layout with space for including an illustration with text and button placements for adding a call to action.

Product Landing Page Background Template

Product Landing Page Background Template

When designing a landing page or a sales page to promote a product, it’s important to create a background that highlights the product. This background template will allow you to create such a design to make a more effective product website. It’s available in AI and EPS file formats.

Dark Background Template

Dark Background Template

The dark and elegant color design of this background template makes it a great choice for designing a website or a banner for a luxury brand or business website. The template features fully editable colors and a layout you can customize with Adobe Illustrator.

Digital Analysis Background Template

Digital Analysis Background Template

Looking for a minimalist background design for a modern startup or business website? This background template is the perfect choice for you. It features a …

The Black Hole Becomes Visible With Half A Ton Of Hard Drives

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Brace yourself. You can finally see how a black hole looks like. Up until today, no one really knew how a black hole looked like.

Finally, the day has come but it was no easy task.

The newly released image of a black hole (below) is a watershed moment for physics. Finally, we can put some of Einstein’s most famous predictions from a century ago to the test, but it was not as easy as pointing a big lens at the M87 galaxy and pressing a button. It took years of work and the collaboration of more than 200 scientists to make it happen. It also required about half a ton of hard drives.

(Via: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/289423-it-took-half-a-ton-of-hard-drives-to-store-eht-black-hole-image-data_)

What’s interesting about how the snapshot of the black hole was the length of time it took to put it together. It took years and a network of telescopes from around the world to capture the first real image of the black hole.

Data collection for the historic black hole image began in 2017 with a coordinated effort called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). That isn’t a single instrument but rather a collection of seven radio telescopes from around the world. The EHT used a principle called interferometry to combine the capacity of all those telescopes, creating a “virtual” telescope the size of the Earth.

The EHT had to collect a huge volume of data to deliver us this one image. Dan Marrone, Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona says the EHT team had to install specialized super-fast data recorders on the various radio telescopes to handle the influx of measurements.

The now-famous image of a black hole comes from data collected over a period of seven days. At the end of that observation, the EHT didn’t have an image — it had a mountain of data.

(Via: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/289423-it-took-half-a-ton-of-hard-drives-to-store-eht-black-hole-image-data_)

The data collected was just too massive for the internet to handle. The hard drives had to be flown by plane.

According to Marrone, 5 petabytes is equal to 5,000 years of MP3 audio. There’s simply no way to send that much data efficiently over the internet. It’s faster to actually ship the hard drives to collaborators around the world. That’s why MIT has 1,000 pounds of hard drives sitting in its Haystack Observatory labs.

(Via: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/289423-it-took-half-a-ton-of-hard-drives-to-store-eht-black-hole-image-data_)

Thanks to the EHT project, black holes are no longer just illustrations on text books. They are real.

The historic black hole snapshot not only puts to test Einstein’s predictions. It also sheds a new light on the general relativity of black holes.

Another interesting thing about the historic snapshot of the …

Getting Clients to Work Your Way

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They say that “the customer is always right”. And while that may be true (most of the time), it certainly doesn’t mean that we have to bend over backwards for them in every instance. I should know, as I spent years attempting to contort myself to fit whatever clients wanted.

One area that is particularly tough to manage is when it comes to our process for getting things done. If you deal with multiple clients, each one of them has their own distinct way of working. Some are night owls and feel the need to send email when the moon is out. Others expect a lot of in-person meetings – something difficult for a busy web designer to fit into their schedule.

Trying to accommodate each and every client’s way of working often leads to chaos. It makes getting things done more difficult and will leave you scrambling to find some level of consistency in your workflow.

Sound terrible? Sound familiar? If you’re banging your head against the wall, know that change is possible! Let’s take a look at some ideas for getting clients to work in a way that benefits you.

Create Processes That Work for You

During the early part of my career as a freelancer, I really had no process for getting things done. That is, unless you count waking up and walking over to the home office. There wasn’t any real organization to speak of and I haphazardly went back-and-forth between tasks. Sort of like a single-player game of table tennis.

Not only that, I was often running out to meetings and taking a seemingly endless number of phone calls. This led to a lot of stress, and a pile of work that I couldn’t seem to get through. Eventually, I realized that a change was needed.

So, I started putting some processes in place. Each one acts as a bit of a boundary for both my clients and myself. They’re not perfect, but have produced some positive results. Among them:

Limit Meetings

I now avoid going out to meetings when possible, and they are usually reserved for higher-revenue clients. As most of my clients are based at least a half hour from my office, I found that, when accounting for travel, even a short meeting tended to take up several hours of work time. Replacing meetings with phone calls or video chats (which I limit to specific hours) has saved a ton of time, while keeping the lines of communication open.

Reserve Time for Each Task

Understandably, clients tend to want things done “as soon as possible”. At the same time, it’s not always …

7 Amazing New CSS Techniques For 2019

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This is the right time to choose web development as a career option. Just like web designers, web developers also fascinated with ways to try new CSS techniques and push the limits of what CSS can do. Here, we will take a look at some of the new CSS techniques and entire specifications that are making their way into creative designs. You can control almost any aspect of a design by a well-described CSS. Also, it can enhance a better overall user experiences—with cleaner and more consistent code. 1. Initial Letter Initial letter is a CSS property, property that selects … Continue reading →

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How to Insert a GIF Into PowerPoint

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GIFs are more popular than ever right now and they can be a great way to add a touch of personality, character, or humor to your PowerPoint presentation. We’re going to quickly cover how to insert a GIF into PowerPoint in a few quick, easy steps!

Of course, you have to find the right image to use in a presentation. If you’re going for humor, aim for something short, punchy, and easy to read from a distance as well! If you’re using a GIF to explain a workflow in your app or product, try zooming in on the areas you’re getting people to look at.

Once you have your GIF sorted, here are the steps you need to focus on in order to insert your GIF into PowerPoint.

Choose the Slide to Add the GIF To

First up, choose the slide you’d like to add your GIF to. Make some space for it to fit in with your design, and think about the type of background and style you’ll use to ensure that it stands out.

You should consider the option of a full-screen GIF as well, creating a slide dedicated to it. Nothing creates a big, bold impact like a full-screen GIF!

Download Your GIF + Open File Picker

It’s best to download your GIF to your computer (by right-clicking the image and selecting “Save Image As…”). This means you’re not relying on the computer you present on having an internet connection, which is never a guarantee!

Browse the menu in PowerPoint to find the “Insert” tab. Choose “Pictures”, and then PowerPoint will ask you to choose the GIF that you’ve just downloaded.

Choose Your GIF

Now you will need to navigate to the location of your animated GIF and then click Insert or Open. This will drop it into the current slide. You can make some minor enhancements to the GIF if you’d like (things like adding a frame or border to make it stand out). Or, you can resize it to cover the full slide if that’s the look you’re going for.

How to Play the Animation

You can test out the animation by choosing “Slide Show” from the menu, then “From Current Slide”. This will show you a preview of how your presentation will look when you reach the slide that contains your GIF.

You should find that the animation plays automatically when you get to the slide. Simple!

Thankfully, adding and playing a GIF file in PowerPoint is really quite simple, and can work splendidly as a way to add some life and interest to your slide deck.

That said, deploy tactically… No-one wants a …

How to Insert a GIF Into PowerPoint

admin–Uncategorized–

GIFs are more popular than ever right now and they can be a great way to add a touch of personality, character, or humor to your PowerPoint presentation. We’re going to quickly cover how to insert a GIF into PowerPoint in a few quick, easy steps!

Of course, you have to find the right image to use in a presentation. If you’re going for humor, aim for something short, punchy, and easy to read from a distance as well! If you’re using a GIF to explain a workflow in your app or product, try zooming in on the areas you’re getting people to look at.

Once you have your GIF sorted, here are the steps you need to focus on in order to insert your GIF into PowerPoint.

Choose the Slide to Add the GIF To

First up, choose the slide you’d like to add your GIF to. Make some space for it to fit in with your design, and think about the type of background and style you’ll use to ensure that it stands out.

You should consider the option of a full-screen GIF as well, creating a slide dedicated to it. Nothing creates a big, bold impact like a full-screen GIF!

Download Your GIF + Open File Picker

It’s best to download your GIF to your computer (by right-clicking the image and selecting “Save Image As…”). This means you’re not relying on the computer you present on having an internet connection, which is never a guarantee!

Browse the menu in PowerPoint to find the “Insert” tab. Choose “Pictures”, and then PowerPoint will ask you to choose the GIF that you’ve just downloaded.

Choose Your GIF

Now you will need to navigate to the location of your animated GIF and then click Insert or Open. This will drop it into the current slide. You can make some minor enhancements to the GIF if you’d like (things like adding a frame or border to make it stand out). Or, you can resize it to cover the full slide if that’s the look you’re going for.

How to Play the Animation

You can test out the animation by choosing “Slide Show” from the menu, then “From Current Slide”. This will show you a preview of how your presentation will look when you reach the slide that contains your GIF.

You should find that the animation plays automatically when you get to the slide. Simple!

Thankfully, adding and playing a GIF file in PowerPoint is really quite simple, and can work splendidly as a way to add some life and interest to your slide deck.

That said, deploy tactically… No-one wants a …

Data Visualization in Web Design: 12 Stunning Examples

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Data, data, everywhere. But what do you do with it? Today, we’ve collected 12 stunning examples of data visualizations in website design to jump-start your thinking about how to work with data.

We live in a time where the ability to showcase data in new and interesting ways can be a huge asset as a designer.

Whether you have a massive collection of numbers or just information that you want to showcase, this design style can be a great tool in your kit.

1. History of the NFL

data visualization

With decades of data spanning 32 teams, there’s plenty of information available about games in the NFL. FiveThirtyEight boiled it all down into a series of interactive graphs that you can view by team to see the ebbs and flows of football history.

The best thing about this data visualization is that it is super simple. The lines show wins and losses. But with clicks and hovers, the data springs to life: You can get scores, dates, and records for every single game overlaid on a map of the averages for the entire league. (So you can see if your team is ahead of or behind the pack.)

2. Selfiecity

data visualization

Selfies are more than just a fun set of photos. Selfiecity uses rich media visualizations to assemble thousands of photos to find demographic information about the people who take them.

What’s cool about this data set is that while it is all visual – thousands of photos – you can start to see patterns, such as the style of selfie people take in different places, whether women or men take more photos and the ages of selfie-takers. While there are some statistics and numbers here, this data is plotted using photos in a giant grid.

3. Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop

data visualization

This project from ThePudding shows that data doesn’t always have to be numbered. It analyzes the number of unique words used in hip hop lyrics and plots the biggest vocabularies by the number of words with images of the artist.

Here’s how it works: “It compares the number of unique words used by some of the most famous artists in hip hop (that is, an example of a quantitive view of lyricism, once proposed by Tahir Hemphill). I used each artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. This way, prolific artists, such as Jay-Z, can be compared to newer artists, such as Drake.”

The simple black and white design of the plotted chart is visually interesting and makes it easy to see which artists are ahead of the pack. (Or you can use the more interactive tools and search for specific artists.) You can …

How the ERP System is Showing Perfection in the Business

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Nowadays, ERP systems are fundamental for the management of thousands of companies of all sizes and belonging to different sectors. For these companies, ERP is as important as the electricity that powers all the systems. Fundamental aspects of ERP ERP systems are based on a common and defined data structure that generally shares a common database. ERP systems offer access to company data belonging to different activities, through different constructs, definitions and user experiences. One of the basic principles of ERP is that of centralized data collection for wide distribution. The integrity of the data is guaranteed for every activity … Continue reading →

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40+ Best Photoshop Logo Templates (PSD)

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We’ve collected the absolute best Photoshop logo templates to help you choose a pre-made logo design as a starting point for your new brand. All these logo templates come in a PSD format, for you to tweak and customize in Photoshop.

It’s all too easy to burn through a budget, crafting a logo that fits your business and mission. Some design agencies and freelancers charge thousands of dollars to craft basic logos that never really live up to your expectations. Logo templates give you another option for a quick-start to your logo design.

Whether you’re a freelance designer looking for inspiration, a blogger starting a new blog, or a brick and mortar business, this collection has a logo template for all types of brands. The best part is you can easily customize these templates using Photoshop to change text, colours, and resize however you like.

As you embark on your logo design, don’t forget to check out our in-depth guide on how to design a logo!

Isometric Cube Logo Template

Isometric Cube Logo Template

This is a creative logo template that comes with a multipurpose design which allows you to make many different types of business, corporate, gaming, finance, and other logo designs. The template is fully customizable and it’s available in PSD, AI, and EPS file formats as well.

Walking Bear – Logo Template

Walking Bear - Logo Template

Featuring a minimalist and modern design this logo depicting a magnificent bear can be used to design logos for all sorts of businesses and agencies. The unique style used in the illustration of the bear will help make your brand stand out as well. The template is available in Illustrator and Photoshop formats.

Ninja – PSD Logo Template

Ninja - PSD Logo Template

A fun and creative PSD logo template featuring a colorful ninja. It’s most suitable for gaming, security, and entertainment related logo designs. The template can be easily customized with Photoshop or illustrator.

Heart & Health Care Logo Template

Heart & Health Care – Medical Logo Template

If you’re working on a logo design for a medical or health care related business or agency, this logo template will come in handy. It features a creative design depicting both a heart and a human. It’s available in AI, PSD, and EPS file formats.

Law and Justice Logo Template

Law and Justice Logo Template

Design a unique logo for a lawyer or a law firm using this modern logo template. It features a stylish illustration with a unique take on the Lady Justice. The template can be customized with Illustrator and Photoshop.

Isometric Triangles PSD Logo Template

Isometric Triangles Logo Template

Another modern logo template that comes with a unique design and an isometric view. This template is ideal for making modern technology businesses and corporate companies. The template is …

Free Programming Courses from Harvard, MIT, Microsoft and More

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Did you know that you can learn computer science and programming online from institutions like Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and Microsoft on edX.org? The nonprofit site offers 2,000 online courses from 140 institutions worldwide. Courses are free to try.

edX Online Courses

Popular Courses

Here are some of the most popular courses and programs offered on edX:

CS50 from Harvard

The most popular course on edX gives you an introduction to computer science and programming. Learn how to think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently. Gain familiarity in a number of programming languages including C, Python, SQL, JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

Front End Web Developer from W3C

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the organization that develops web standards. It was founded by the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee. In this 5 course program, learn how to code with modern HTML5 tags, draw and animate fun web graphics, and play audio and video elements. Learn CSS best practices for web page design and the fundamentals of JavaScript to help you develop interactive web apps.

Introduction to Computing in Python from Georgia Tech

In this 4 course program, learn the fundamentals of computer science in one of the field’s most popular programming languages, Python 3, including writing code, executing it, interpreting the results, and revising the code based on the outcomes. Rated as one of the most in-demand and beginner-friendly programming languages, a background in Python will give you a solid foundation to build your career. Short videos (2-3 minutes each) are rapidly interwoven with live programming problems and multiple-choice questions to give you constant feedback on your progress and understanding.

C Programming with Linux from Dartmouth

Did you know that smartphones, your car’s navigation system, robots, drones, trains, and almost all electronic devices have some C-code running under the hood? Along with the C programming language comes Linux, an essential operating system that powers almost all supercomputers and most of the servers worldwide, as well as all Android devices and most “Internet of Things” devices.

In this 7-course program, develop and debug code in the C programming language. Discover the foundations of computer programming and Linux, manipulate the command line, manage processes, files and memory, and compile C code with Linux.

Data Science from Harvard

Data science is one of the hottest fields in programming. Learn key data science essentials in this 9-course program, including R and machine learning, through real-world case studies to jumpstart your career as a data scientist. Also learn statistical concepts such as probability, inference, and modeling and how to apply them in practice. Gain experience with data visualization with ggplot2 and data wrangling with dplyr. Become familiar …