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How To Translate Brand Strategy Into Design?

Once you gathered all the information, it’s time you create a mind map that represents all of your ideas, and don’t forget to highlight keywords. This will help with picking patterns.

Next are the mood boards, which are looking for visual references such as images, graphics, and colors, suitable to capture your ideas.

This step is ten times easier and the results will be better if you use a design system. We offer you our inclusive design system that helped numerous brands achieve consistency and success with our friendly-user templates and a large library of 100% customizable components.

Arsenic Design System is a methodology, a path, and a comprehensive guide for project design that facilitates and shortens the design process and allows involved teams to collaborate better.

Take Arsenic as your next team player and benefit from exclusive features.

The design world will never miss a wave, shifting from one trend to another trying to meet the evolving user expectations. Even The best designs have a questionable longevity: Designers might spend hours creating something that would be used once for a certain project and then eventually just gets outdated and forgotten.

What drove design pioneers to create the famous design system concept  is the need to find a solution for the immense amount of “disposable” designs that cost effort, charges and hours of work!

How disposable designs are trouble to your business? How important is it to find a middle ground between re-inventing the wheel and reprocessing existing designs ?

This article is a reflection about the huge necessity of adapting design systems to fight against disposable designs!

Disposablity in a digital context? How harmful?

The anti-disposability movement is often taken from an ecological perspective. In 2021, we talk about the fundamental necessity of taking anti-disposable practices for planet survival. But when we take it to the digital context??

The trend-changing digital world creates Disposable designs that carry the efforts, time, and money spent on it in one single use.  Longevity is as important in real life as in the digital concept.

Metarphorly, disposable designs can be as harmful as single-use plastics:

Holds work at a short term based action where you have to reinvent the wheel each time

Give little chance to test future-proof usability, leading to an unpleasant User experience.

Waste of  time recreating and reformulating existing solutions for existing problems

A very long, monotonous, and complex design process

Stocking a huge amount of disposable data

Limited time for innovation

Often ends up with inconsistent branding

Feeding your portfolio on Disposable designs leaves no space for a long-term strategy and leads to the accumulation of the issues mentioned above to a point where day-to-day tasks get affected, eventually causing inefficacy over your design process and drainage of your resources.

Nowadays, it’s all about the consumer: how comfortable he is, how quick, appealing, and efficient the app or website is for him, how satisfied he is, etc. With the heated competition between businesses, everyone is trying to catch the attention of a larger number of consumers to increase sales and business growth, but if the customer cannot even understand what you’re offering or thinks that your website looks meh, he’s most likely to close that tab or uninstall your app and go somewhere else. How to avoid this? With a good UI design.

Study your targets

Every business has targets, and it’s a fundamental step before creating your UI design that you study your targets, you need to know more about them because their goals are your goals. Your design should be based on their needs, and it has to meet their expectations. You also need to focus on your targets, rather than your competitors, so you wouldn’t get carried away with the competition and trendy styles and features till you lose your personal touch and uniqueness.

Keep it simple

As mentioned previously, if the user cannot even understand your website, he’s out. Nobody likes complicated things, where even the simplest task requires time and effort. So avoid unnecessary information and features and before adding anything, ask yourself: “Does the user really need this? Or is it me who like this?” Therefore, you should reduce the design to only necessary components. It’s great that you love your design, but in the end, it’s the user that matters, so never let your focus shift from your target to your personal taste. Also, it would be more efficient to use a design system to minimize potential errors, so the website/app wouldn’t require a certain level of expertise above that of the user.

What is holding design teams from delivering top-notch designs for every single project? Is it time-consuming repetitive tasks? Unorganized design processes? Lack of fruitful team collaboration?  Or inconsistent Design practices?

If a project falls from success it is often due to the lack of alignment around common goals! You might be aware of the team mission and in perfect understanding of the project requirements, but it is the different direction that each design take that holds the project in the middle ground with the incapability of moving forward. Sometimes the issue is related to abstract human behavior that is out of the manager’s control There are tons of tools in the market dedicated to improving team communication for better task management, but nothing really helps to move the design process away from personal tastes and opinions

So how can you get a team to move in the same direction and achieve consistent designs?

Design systems to align teams around consistent design processes

Design systems aren’t just a tool to normalize work under best practice guidelines, it is a whole path and methodology towards implementing consistent components, patterns, and styles that serve the right branding.

Beyond tangible aspects, how Design systems can solve team collaboration problems? In a previous blog, we discussed how design systems are about bridging relations within an organization with a more technical approach we are discussing how they align practices and efforts.

At cohort when we first started strategizing to create Arsenic Design System as an atom-based Multi-Brand Design System for Sketch, our main aim was beyond typical Design system purposes like accelerating design processes, we wanted to create a spontaneous, transparent, Dynamic, and ultra-organized collaboration space to bring value to our team first and the public who needs it.

Implementing a design system the right way is a direct path to boost internal work practices, shorten processes and create a culture based on honest transparency where each member’s contribution is seen by everyone to keep all the team updated about every change.

A landing page isn’t just a web page where you add content that explains the purpose of your business, it is basically your shop window, your lead generator, and your main operation’s conversion portal that instruct your visitors to take product/service buying action, so you better take careful care designing it!

While social media users might find your services by chance without the intention to look for them, people who are actively searching for key terms in Google are proactively looking for a solution to their problem.

The key to succeeding in your landing page design is to pay focus on what best practices can increase your conversion rate on your site

Here are some main points that can’t be missed:

Set a layout

The elements to be designed for a landing page are the following:

Headline

On-page copy blocks

CTA buttons

Complementary images and video

Social proof section/ testimonials or collaboration data

You can be creative with your page and make it the way you want, but there is always page anatomy to follow that consists of different elements such as color, typography, and spaces. The layout you go with should be consistent and match the rest of the web pages. The best way to guarantee the designing of a correct structured landing page is by using design system guidelines to avoid the burden of wasting time defining what a page should look and feel like. A design system will automatically take care of maintaining consistency and branding throughout every element, you design. Not only that but also save your designs and components with robust documentation to be reused and customized when needed.

Are Design systems boring and unuseful?

If you do believe in the title written above, then you have missed A LOT of OPPORTUNITIES!

Design systems are the talk of the IT and design world for so many reasons that cant be denied. Offering the high value of consistency  to Designers to optimize their design process and feel free to extend their creativity and the efficiency in every thing they do is just a blessing! Design systems that marked 2021 made it heaven for  teams to elaborate a consistent design language and a rich pattern library to solve their UI and UX inquiries systemically and overcome technical challenges.

At cohort, we have never been prouder launching Arsenic Design System to the smart Design community helping hundreds of companies achieve consistent and branded product designs faster and with our  7500+ reusable ultra customizable components, 1500+ responsive symbols, 2900+ text type, 650+ layer styles and way more.

The smart value isn’t in inventing, but in curating ;)!

This blog explains it all

Compras – Kids Clothing E-Commerce Web UI Kit

Overview

A fun, clean, Pixel perfect, and Visually pleasing eCommerce UI kit for conversion-driven UX.All layers composing this kit are well structured, labeled, and organized with smart sketch symbols to help you accelerate your design process and deliver a quality user experience with the best eCommerce features.

Responsive templates Neatly organized Groups and Layers Clean, Modern and Minimal Style Best E-Commerce practices Made with Arsenic Design System Built for the latest Sketch

Tips to Create Blurred Backgrounds in Software UI Designs

Hello mates! Repeat after me: Blur is clean… Blur is clean…!! Sounds confusing, isn’t it? Friends, we are talking about the most extraordinary elements in UI designing. In this blog, we are discussing the pointers to keep in mind for designing elegant, clean, yet simple blurred backgrounds. After all, website design and mobile app design are done with a purpose. And that is to grab the visitor’s attention effortlessly.

By this time, you may know the purpose that blurred backgrounds are used to emphasize the content (visual or text) or icons which are elevated or just overlaid. However, there is much more to it. So why wait? Let us find out.

Techniques used in Blurring Implementation

To start with, you should know how to blur any image. Three ways to implement this technique are:

Linear Blur Image Perhaps the simplest technique of all, this way an image is blurred by horizontal and vertical averaging of a fixed number of pixels. However, compromise needs to be made with the blurred quality.

Block Blur Image In this technique, averaging of a small black of pixels by propagating a fixed sized window across the whole image is performed. The blurred quality is somewhat improved as far as linear blur is concerned, and lines are not visible anywhere in the output.

Gaussian Blur Image The best of the three, this technique presents the convolution of the image with a two-dimensional Gaussian function. Gaussian technique has been in the use of many commercial softwares, such as Adobe Photoshop.

Tips to create the Perfect Dark Themes in Software Design

Dark mode UI was applied on a larger scale by some of the biggest brands in 2019. Ever since then, it has become one of the hottest trends in 2020 when we talk about UI designing. The response based on the user experience is thrilling and encouraging. Users are found getting crazy about the dark mode themes after getting the dark mode UI options in MacOS, Apple iOS, and Android.

This blog depicts the right way to do it, how to create stunning yet meaningful dark themes for a mobile app and/or a responsive website.

But first, let us understand some apparent and instant benefits users get via opting the dark mode option if provided.

Why are Users in Love with the Dark Mode so much?

Improves Readability & Visibility Dark themes instantly reduce eye strain and have been proven a great option for night time periods. Try if you haven’t, it’s a really really cool thing.

Enhanced Battery Performance Facing battery issues? Not to worry now. Dark mode UI and icons have a greater impact on smartphone battery. It prolongs battery life.

Vibrant Visual Content The colors, design, icons, or any atomic element can be emphasized brilliantly to portray overall emotional appeal to the users.

There are also CONS associated with the dark mode UI, and you must understand them before going to read the tips to create dark themes. It will do good to your understanding.

How do design systems operate?

Till the beginning of the 19s, going digital was considered an option let’s say a side project that companies go for when they have extra profit. The world didn’t fail to prove how wrong they were!

When it comes to design, it is currently involved in almost every domain, from space architecture to UI/UI in IT. And so business needs did evolve from the necessity of graphic guidelines, deadline and long processes that lead to a lack of synchronization to an actual smooth digital workflow called a “design system”.

If you have one already integrated system within your work then congrats you made it to evolution! If not this blog is for you to answer all your questions about how design systems actually operate? But before we dig into operational info let’s clarify some concepts that I bet are confusing you.

What’s the difference between a design system and a pattern library

Many do confuse a design system with a pattern library which is totally wrong. A design system is far from just integrating static design files and pattern documentation! Unlike a pattern library that only operates as a collection of components, a design system is meant to create functioning UI components that can be used to build real software applications, emphasize early browzing, enhance perfect front-end code iteration, and provide necessary guidelines to ultimate consistency and meaningful production.

When the pattern library only projects the superficial what? of the project, a design system deeply conceptualizes the meaningful why? That delivers an actual user experience & exceptional consistency.

Advantages of Having a Design System in Your Plans

Need a quick word on a design system? A design system is a common source of design truth, which can be shared across the organisation. If you want to find out more about why design systems are needed for software design companies or organisations, please refer to the blog on Reasons that make Design Systems inevitable.

Design system is a guided, standardized, and predefined set of atoms and elements. These can be used or reused to craft any number of application designs. Anyone would wonder about the design system (if not should) especially when giants like IBM, GitHub, Google, Salesforce, and many other companies have been using their own design systems. This blog exactly depicts the benefits of using a design system across the organisation.

Benefits of a Design System

Consistency is the Key

In any software, the design is always centered around upbringing and enhancing the user experience. And consistency in the designing is the one of the most crucial factors in the design success. To elaborate it more, let us have an idea on the three forms of consistency that matter:

Visual Consistency is related to the colors, fonts, shapes, sizes, etc. Multiple elements or components that are made from the same set of atoms can have the visual similarities between them. This promotes the overall visual consistency which delivers an instant feel to the user about the product and brand name.

Functional Consistency is about bringing the results to the application users upon their respecting actions. For example, users would click on the button in the top left corner to go back or users would click “Quick Checkout” to view the cart items for a quick payment and order completion. The precision in functionality instills reliability, safety, and good vibes only about the software application.

Internal consistency is maintained when the previous both (visual consistency and functional consistency) are intact. If any more features, pages, or modules are added, the users will still feel home while coming across the updated version because of the look and feel of the website or a mobile app.

Arsenic Design System Free Demo

Arsenic is atom based Multi-brand friendly Design system with standards. Create UI projects much faster without creating them all over again everytime!

Speed up your design workflow

Use as Library

Tidy and Organised

Arsenic Plugin

Component Driven

Color Variables

Made with Arsenic for Sketch

Arsenic Plugin - Sketch Plugin for Arsenic Design System

This plugin specially designed and developed for Arsenic Design System for Sketch app to eliminate the manual process of replacing colors and typography along with all the linked components.This plugin will not work with any other sketch design files apart from Arsenic Design System.

Change Colors

Change Typeface

Manage Color Shades

Compatible with Color Variable

Design system team Management

Adapting a design system is a huge strategic move booming the classic process of your design and development. Implementing a design system takes time as it is a big change in a company as it affects the role of many individuals within the organization and it all starts with assigning a design system team

Who Manages a design system?

A design system is meant to operate as a team by reducing the attempts of synchronization between different departments and the bother to visually design every state of every screen while you can think more efficiently and operate by Assembling all components Line of UX/UI in a contributions space.

Everybody working on a brand or product line operates the same by using a design system.

Assigning a design system team is a core start of the implementation process within a company. The persons assigned are meant to manage and ensure the functionality of the design system by analyzing design requirements, build a personalized brand promotive library, ensure perfect UX/UI, and assist coding accordingly.

A comprehensive design team is based on Fostering collective ownership and it includes:

UI designers: It is called a design system because it engages designers in the first place. a designer role in a design system goes beyond the conventional UI tasks and engages him/her to no longer only care about the visuals, but also become a real design architect that owns/co-owns/updates the design system and also fills in additional needed designs by creating, selecting illustrations and visual layers of all elements, photos, logos, shapes, colors, scale, contrast, spacing, and rhythm.

DS Product Owners: A design system ensures automated coordination and a collaboration space yet it needs a person to take care of management responsibilities, coordinate within the team, filter and ideas, understand which projects need cleanup work, which projects may need new components, and a general snapshot of design adoption.

Front-end Developer: Designing elements is one stage, coding them correspondingly is a whole other Responsibility.

UX Designers: The person who ensures the utility and usability of the design functional point of view selects stages, determines engagement aspects, and ensures smooth micro-interactions between the user and digital solution. The efficiency of the user experience is what differentiates a beautiful design from a successful design and building a design system’s first aim is increasing user satisfaction.

Common Myths Surrounding the Design Systems in 2020

Let us quickly remember what a design system is. From what we have seen so far through the blog on fundamentals of the design system, the whole definition of it can be put like this :  A single, common source of design truth, which can be shared across the organisation. Yes, it is shared between multiple teams like UX designers and developers as an example.

The genuine essence of a design system is focused around your user needs of today and tomorrow. Hence thinking, predicting, and planning your design around that can prove to be a success. Sharing a design system throughout your organisation to the relevant stakeholders of a project in a strategic way helps them visualize and understand the elements centered around the user requirements. As a result, a more cohesiveness is maintained during the design and software development process resulting in an end product with better, enhanced overall user experience.

A good thing is always speculated before being accepted in the technology world, which is fair too. The Design System is also not the exception. There are a few myths circling in the air here and there about the effectiveness of the design system in various cases.