Gritty Pretty is the creation of Eleanor Pendleton — Australian award-winning beauty editor and the style influencer, who has worked for Harper’s BAZAAR Australia, Men’s Health and Refinery29. The first issue of Gritty Pretty magazine has won Readymag’s Mag of the Year 2014, and we decided to talk with its founder and editor Eleanor Pendleton and art director Morgan Tait about the process of creating an online magazine.

Congratulations on winning the Mag of the Year with the first issue. Tell us about the start of Gritty Pretty?

ELEANOR: Thank you so much! Gritty Pretty began in 2010 as a creative outlet for me to educate readers on all things beauty. At the time, I was a beauty editor at FAMOUS magazine in Australia and despite writing 8 editorial pages a week, there was still so much I wanted to cover and share. Equally, there wasn’t a lot of beauty blogs or websites out there that served as inspiration so I took it upon myself to start my own. Gritty Pretty has since evolved into a complete beauty digital platform — spanning across blog content, social media offerings and most recently an online magazine powered through Readymag.

https://readymag.com/41642

What’s the magazine’s goal and how is it different from other publications for women?

ELEANOR: Gritty Pretty Magazine is Australia’s first digital publication dedicated solely to beauty. It caters for women worldwide ages 18—35 and is for the stylish woman, who is confident in her own style, but wants to learn more about beauty whether it be makeup, skincare, fragrance or hair. I saw a gap in the Australian market and decided to fill it. Together with my good friend and art director, Morgan Tait, we set about bringing my dream to reality, focusing strongly on product animation and high-quality visuals. The entire process from me coming up with this idea to pressing ‘publish’ probably took 6 months. We really spent time honing in on the concept and as editor; I wanted to ensure everything was original. So, we shot and produced everything — I even had the beauty products shot by a talented stills photographer in Sydney. Everything you see in the magazine, we created. This is why I believe the debut issue of Gritty Pretty Magazine was so well received. Since launching in December, the magazine has received over 170 000 page views, which I’m very proud of. 

MORGAN: Personally, to create beautiful and inspiring content, that each girl loves and connects with. Gritty Pretty stands on its own. Currently, the only digital publication in Australia dedicated to beauty. 

Gritty Pretty is originally a popular beauty blog, why have you decided to evolve it into a digital magazine?

ELEANOR: Since moving on from my full-time beauty editor role at InStyle Magazine Australia, I have embarked on a freelance career and am now fortunate enough to work on my brand, Gritty Pretty, full-time.  At the end of last year, I relaunched the site with a new skin but during the process, I wanted to really evolve the brand and take it into its next phase. I wanted to do something no one had done before in the Australian market. Yes, there are plenty of beauty blogs out there but I have never come across an interactive online publication with high-end editorials that was centred solely on beauty both within Australia and the rest of the world. So, again, I decided to do it myself. It’s been a huge move for me business-wise as the project has been completely self-funded but the response has been overwhelmingly positive (from both brands and readers) so I trust that this investment will pay off and hopefully help grow Gritty Pretty to encompass a larger editorial team.

MORGAN: Gritty Pretty was at a time where it was ready for a new approach. The brand had the trust that what is produced we believe in. Eleanor first approached me with the magazine concept, and really, it was a no-brainer — it just felt right.  

Are there any printed and online publications that influenced the look and feel of Gritty Pretty magazine?

ELEANOR: In terms of aesthetic, Harper’s BAZAAR and NET-A-PORTER’s The Edit have a similar feel. Gritty Pretty is very clean, minimalistic and not at all about fuss. There’s a strong focus on bold, eye-catching fonts. That is my own personal style so I ensured my art director saw this come through in the pages she designed. She has a very similar aesthetic to me.  

MORGAN: I find a lot of inspiration online rather than print publications. Net-a-Porter is always going to be an influence as this company was started in a garage and has changed the whole fashion industry. But I truly believe the essence of the magazine reflects our style, as creatives and people.   

It can be seen that the magazine is designed with mobile-first approach, tell us the details of this decision.

ELEANOR: Managing a beauty blog means my content is not only viewed just on desktop computers but also on iPads and smartphones. When I redesigned the website, having a mobile-friendly platform was an absolute must so when I came across Readymag and saw that it accommodated this need for my readers, using the digital publishing platform was an absolute no-brainer. I had been researching various publishing platforms for a few months and had found a few, but none were high quality or had easy-to-use programming like Readymag. The creative possibilities Readymag gives Gritty Pretty Magazine are endless and I love that the Readymag team is constantly expanding and growing their platform, which only makes my life better. They’re just as passionate about digital publishing as I am so it was a great fit.

MORGAN: Eleanor and I are going to and from meetings during the day, and like everyone else our phones are attached to us at all times. This was important for us to make sure the mobile site easy and clear as a majority of people would be reading this on a phone rather than a desktop. 

  A photo posted by Gritty Pretty (@gritty_pretty) on Dec 17, 2014 at 7:58pm PST

One of the most eye-catching design ideas in the magazine is the usage of GIFs. What other digital tricks do you use or plan to in Gritty Pretty’s design?

ELEANOR: I really want to push the boundaries with GIFs and particularly cinemagraphs. Readers are going to see a lot more of that come through with each quarterly issue of the magazine. Essentially, my aim is to create beautiful editorial beauty content that gives the reader a little “Oh, hang on a second… Did that just move?” moment. I want it to almost make the reader gasp and look twice. I want them to be completely engaged and mesmerised by the pages — whenever and wherever they are in the world.

Who else is on the team, and how do you select the content and decide on the design?

ELEANOR: As editor and founder, I’m the only full-time person working on the brand. My incredibly talented art director, Morgan, works on the magazine on a part-time basis and the rest of the magazine is outsourced to freelance writers, photographers, stylists, makeup artists, hairstylists and more. I’m about to move into a new office and I would love to eventually see the Gritty Pretty brand take on full-time staff but only time (and hard work) will tell.

MORGAN: We work with an extremely talented team of contributors. Photographers, stylists, makeup artists and editors. Each person brings personality but evidently captures the Gritty Pretty essence. Eleanor and I work quite closely throughout the process – Gritty Pretty is a collaborative process — and workshop the content to make sure it’s the right fit for the magazine. We are tweaking up until the last second before an issue launches, but we work off inspiration and mockups we do for the spreads.

A photo posted by Gritty Pretty (@gritty_pretty) on Mar 2, 2015 at 1:25pm PST

Take us through the process of making the first issue in 10 steps.

ELEANOR:
1. Brainstorm. Each issue is quarterly so our content is seasonal. I sit down and workshop four key messages I want to get across to our readers, whether it be a skincare feature, a beauty shoot which focuses on makeup trends, an at-home shoot or a health and wellbeing feature. I then sit down with Morgan and bounce all of my ideas off her.

2. As a start up business owner, I have many hats — one minute I’m editor, the next I’m advertising sales manager, the next I’m fashion assistant or bookings editor. The second step in our process involves me doing the latter: securing the celebrity and model talent for the issue including the cover celebrity.

3. Once the schedule has been confirmed, I outsource certain articles to freelance beauty journalists and shoots to photographers, makeup artists and hair stylists.

4. Once the journalists have filed their stories and photographers filed their shots, I style the product stills with talented photographer and friend, Edward Urrutia.

 

A photo posted by Gritty Pretty (@gritty_pretty) on Nov 26, 2014 at 6:20pm PST

5. Once we have all digital assets, that is when I hand over the reigns to Morgan who uses Readymag to generate the pages, GIFs and animations. We work very closely on the concepts, constantly tweaking until we get each page right. Generally, I already have an idea in my mind as to how to a story will look and Morgan just gets my visions so well and she brings them to life with her own style.

6. Once Morgan has dropped in all the images and designed the 40-plus pages, it’s time for me to jump into Readymag and drop in a copy, captions and click-to-buy hyperlinks. We leave comments throughout the magazine for each other making notes of any changes before we move onto iPad and iPhone where Morgan amends the pages.

7. Now, it’s time for me to work on the pagination of the magazine — where each page sits so the journey has a beautiful flow to it. Like a print publication, we start with light, single beauty pages at the front of a book, moving into the cover story and meatier feature articles before closing with interiors and wellbeing.

8. Next, the digital magazine is professionally sub-edited to ensure it’s of the highest quality and reads perfectly.

9. Before we hit publish, I develop a PR strategy with my management agency — we create press releases and social media strategies to ensure the magazine is blasted out to as many people as possible. Because the magazine is viewed at www.grittypretty.com, the traffic is 100% authentic and organic so creating a buzz in the lead up to the issue is integral to driving traffic.

10. The best and last step — I hit publish!

https://readymag.com/54059

What benefits do you see in publishing online?

ELEANOR: To be honest, the creative options are endless. There’s a level of interactivity you can create with online publishing that you can’t create with print publishing. If I want to make a stunning makeup palette open and close or give it a 360-degree view, I will. If I want a how-to tutorial video to be embedded into an editorial, I can do that. Publishing online also has the obvious benefit of being able to work remotely. Last week, I was in New York for fashion week and being able to jump into Gritty Pretty’s Readymag page while Morgan has been designing layouts on the other side of the world is just so easy. I can give her feedback and we can work that way from wherever we both are in the world. By being online, our audience isn’t centralised to one area — it’s global. Morgan and I are constantly looking at the bigger picture and trying to push ourselves creatively.

And finally, can you give some practical tips to people starting their own magazine — how to plan the budget, organise photo-shoots, find writers?

ELEANOR: Have a realistic budget — I had a realistic one for mine and I very quickly met it. At the end of the day, your magazine can be as small or big as you want to be. I invested heavily in it because I see Gritty Pretty Magazine becoming a worldwide leader in online beauty.  You need to have exceptional organization skills. As a journalist, I work best when I have deadlines so we had deadlines set for all steps of the creative process — I set deadlines for writers, photographers, design, subbing and myself.

A photo posted by Gritty Pretty (@gritty_pretty) on Jan 16, 2015 at 1:51am PS

MORGAN: I am extremely lucky to work with not only an extremely talented Editor and creative mind, but a good friend. We work seamlessly alongside each other, both complimenting our own styles. Having someone with the same goals and visions for the magazine makes it enjoyable and not like a job. I think it’s important to know not only your strengths but knowing what your weaknesses are, and being open to change. The biggest tip is knowing there will be sacrifices in the beginning whether it’s time or money, but when you work at something you are truly passionate about the outcome will be more than you hoped for.

Subscribe to our blog to get the new inspiring stories of Readymag publishers first & follow up the tag #r/m publisher.

This is a monthly compilation of Readymag’s 10 favourite Instagram accounts of creative people and communities, whose lifestyle and sources of inspiration are consonant with our conception of aesthetics.

1. Draw Down Books

A photo posted by Draw Down Books (@drawdownbooks) on Mar 13, 2015 at 5:33am PDT

Draw Down Books is an independent publisher and distributor of small publications about photography, design, art and architecture. Great red & blue source for digging inspiration on graphic design and typography.

2. Studio SP-GD

  A photo posted by Studio SP-GD (@studiospgd) on Nov 30, 2014 at 5:43pm PST

Melbourne-based graphic design studio SP-GD can master any kind of a project from brand identity, campaign material to packaging, posters and motion graphics. They devotedly believe that good graphic design is based on good content. Follow the feed if you share minimalist and systematic approach to the design.

3. Serjios

A photo posted by serjios ♦️ (@serjios) on Oct 8, 2014 at 3:20am PDT

An amazing photo project by the Lebanese photographer Serge Najjar — people captured in the geometry of architectural facades. The photographer takes pictures on his iPhone 4 on the way from his advocacy work, seeing beauty in everyday life and seemingly ugly or not-so-appealing aspects of the world around him.

4. Logothorns

A photo posted by Logo Thorns (@logothorns) on Dec 22, 2013 at 1:05am PST

Instagram catalog of high-quality and time-tested logos. Greatest examples, concise and inspiring.

5. Sung Min Youn

A photo posted by @sung_min_youn on Dec 27, 2014 at 5:28pm PST

Instagram account of an author of Korean lifestyle blog Outoutoutout is a moodboard for a contemporary living with deep appreciation of good design and functional minimalism. A beautiful Instagram gallery about everything that we like so much, brilliantly photographed without using any filters.

6. Erin O’Keefe

A photo posted by Erin O’Keefe (@erinokeefeart) on May 14, 2014 at 12:54pm PDT

Erin O’Keefe works between two-dimensional representation and three-dimensional space. Her photographs examine space as an objective formal construct and place as a site of memory and desire, informed by history and culture. A combination of digital and analogue techniques that create a third dimension with new meanings and associations.

7. Atlas

A photo posted by Atlas (@design_by_atlas) on Feb 20, 2015 at 4:39am PST

Atlas is the most awarded branding and design consultancy in Spain with over 40 years of international experience and knowledge. Clients list include Phaidon Press, IBM, BMW and Barcelona Design Museum amongst many others. Beautiful presentations of the latest projects and behind the scenes of the Atlas team’s creative weekdays.

8. Faculty Department

A photo posted by Faculty Department (@facultydept) on Aug 7, 2014 at 5:20am PDT

Faculty Department is a book-project by New York City-based photographer Justin Chung together with the very talented Studio Faculty. The book explores the lives of 13 noteworthy creative individuals while at work, inside their homes, during a particular daily routine or within the stillness of a moment. “A glimpse inside the life of” became a popular genre and fair enough, as getting to know other people’s philosophies and approach to life we learn to act or to simply appreciate.

9. Хiantounv

A photo posted by @xiantounv on Dec 15, 2014 at 1:38am PST

Xiamtounv’s unique photography forms an unusual format of an Instagram feed, reminiscent of some kind of mysterious Japanese movie storyboard. This Instagram account is intriguing to follow, eagerly waiting for a new beautifully directed mystical scene.

10. Folch Studio

A photo posted by Folch Studio (@folchstudio) on Nov 18, 2014 at 12:56am PST

Folch Studio was founded in 2004 by one of Spain’s most prolific graphic designers Albert Folch. The studio works across different media: from magazines, posters, visual identities, books and stationery to websites, video and exhibition design. Highly recommended to follow, particularly for editorial design inspiration.

Hope you enjoyed the list. Subscribe to our blog’s newsletter to follow along, and don’t miss the next month’s compilation. Stay inspired!

Readymag is built on the idea of modularity, which means that the possibilities of the platform aren’t limited to a standard set of widgets. In this series of articles, we’re selecting the best online tools and services that you can use with R/m to create fantastic publications. Here is the second edition:

1. E-commerce

Gumroad
Price: 5% + $0.25 per transaction.

A very simple and effective solution for independent writers, designers, software developers, musicians, artists and anyone in-between, who would like to sell the products of their creativity right from their portfolios or websites created on Readymag. “Without the hassle and cost of selling within a marketplace, Gumroad enables you to sell directly to your audience — just like you talk to them.” And since this is a quick-and-easy solution you won’t find difficult settings or tons of selling options. Only some design details of how the widget can be changed: colors, description fields, and special text. In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to embed Gumroad form into Readymag.

In Use:

http://dpubtesting.tk/p355702

2. Looped Videos

Coub
Price: Free.

Coub allows users to create looping videos up to ten seconds long, using existing videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or their own files. Most people use Coub to make funny short videos, quoting their favorite movies and tv shows, but the possibilities here are endless. You can capture a moment with a tiny bit of motion and create the illusion of a cinemagraph. You can create a 3D preview to show off your products from every angle on your business website. Illustrate an article in your online magazine with a short snippet of a fashion shoot, scenery or a landscape.

In use:

http://dpubtesting.tk/p358806

3. Infographics

Tableau
Price: Free trials + paid plans from 999$ per year.

Tableau is a powerful data visualization tool. With its desktop application, you can create interactive infographics that can be later shared on the web and embedded into R/m publications. Everyone who wants to present their datasets in a meaningful and beautiful way and also allow readers to interact with that data (highlight a particular part or filter the information presented) should consider Tableau as a powerful solution. The combination of Readymag + Tableau allows many writers and journalists to quickly catch up with the emerging trend of data-driven journalism.

In Use:

http://dpubtesting.tk/p355704

4. Interactive Image Galleries

SnapWidget
Price: Free + Pro-plan 6.99$/month.

Although, you can easily create a slideshow with Instagram images using our default Slideshow widget, some may want to have a live feed of images that automatically updates itself (like twitter feed) and always shows the latest photos. You can do it with SnapWidget. Just fill in the form of parameters and click Get Widget button right on their homepage. Then paste the <iframe> code into the iFrame widget. That’s what it takes to create a live feed of Instagram photos in your R/m publication of any kind.

In Use:

http://dpubtesting.tk/p355706

5. Feedback

Typeform
Price: Free + Pro plans from 20$/month.

A cloud-based service that allows you to build and design beautiful device-agnostic forms, called “type forms”. You can use Typeform for creating whatever you can imagine around asking questions — surveys, tests, contests, Quizzes, job applications, landing pages and a lot more. “By matching your style, both verbally and visually, type forms transform the way you collect data, so you can put your stamp on what you ask.” What is important, the tool offers respondents a great experience across devices (desktop/laptop computers, tablets and smartphones) and a fantastic design user experience for your data collection.

In Use:

http://dpubtesting.tk/p355705

How to use these widgets:

All of the services mentioned above provide an embed code that you can copy and paste into your publication using Readymag’s embed widget.

If you have any suggestions on tools and services that you would like to use with Readymag, just drop us a note at blog@readymag.com and subscribe to our blog to keep updated.

Many of us have a rather weighty online presence — 1-2 profiles in social networks, professional portfolio and a resume, personal blog, a photo album, a mood board, an email, and a couple of different messengers where we prefer to communicate. In order to introduce yourself, you would have to share all of this information and the links by email or in a long impersonal instant message.

The format of a microsite simplifies this task and makes it easy for people to learn about you and find your content on the web. A microsite is basically your portable digital business card that is universally accessible.

Creating a personal microsite is a great way of putting your content out there while simultaneously keeping the information about yourself down to a minimum, carefully selecting how you would like to be presented online.

A microsite is usually designed as a smaller website of  just a page or two with the main focus on a brief bio about you along with your professional description, your contact information such as your email and social profiles, and a link to your portfolio-website. It is also a good practice to map a domain with your name to a microsite to help your friends, followers and potential clients quickly find all your work online in one place.

Keeping in mind that microsites are actually a big thing we’ve prepared a handy pack of miscrosites’ templates, which you can easily adapt to your personal and professional needs.

https://readymag.com/55743       https://readymag.com/54970https://readymag.com/54709       https://readymag.com/55054

Fill in your bio, attach your social profile links, choose a background picture, and you personal microsite is ready in 1 and a half minute.

Watch this short video to learn how:

Expanding the boundaries of inspiration, this month, we’ve decided to appeal to the leading collector of everything eye-catching — Pinterest. Design masters at work, Soviet typography, Japanese graphic design, editorial inspiration and a lot more in our special Pinterest edition of Who to follow: 

1. Studio Transformer / Cyrillic

Follow Studio Transformer’s board Cyrillic on Pinterest.

Studio Transformer is a small Moscow-based branding studio with an exceptional visual taste. The Cyrillic board is their ongoing collection of samples of both old and new Cyrillic type pieces — Soviet books’ covers, posters and best from Russian editorials of modern days.

2. Esquire / Photography

Follow Esquire’s board Photography on Pinterest.

Photography board curated by the team of Russian Esquire magazine. The hallmark of all the photos featured in Esquire magazine is their rich visual narration, whatsoever is depicted or not shown on them. If you want to claim you know photography — don’t miss this board.

3. Wayne Ford / Graphic Designers at Work

Follow Wayne Ford’s board Design: Graphic Designers at Work on Pinterest.

A collection by graphic designer and creative director Wayne Ford. What can be more inspiring than watching the greatest in the creative process: Alexey Brodovitch and Richard Avedon arranging the sequence of pages, Gary Anderson presenting his Recycle symbol, Lella & Massimo Vignelli reviewings the Benetton Branding guideline.

4. Sergey Lomakin / Studio

Follow Sergey Lomakin’s board Studio on Pinterest.

The Studio set collected by fashion photographer Sergey Lomakin is an ultimate guide to the current trends in art direction and still life photography. Colourful geometry mismatched textures and surreal incognito characters.

5. Nicolas Valla / Work is in the house

Follow Nicolas Valla {Royal Roulotte}’s board Work is in the house on Pinterest.

A great selection of creative workspaces by interior designer Nicolas Valla. Workspace is important and sacred. As the saying goes: ‘Show me your desk and I’ll tell you who you are’, or ‘A workspace is worth a thousand words’.

6. Ionut Radulescu / Layout

Follow Ionut Radulescu’s board LAYOUT on Pinterest.

New York-based designer and illustrator Ionut Radulescu Pins the outstanding examples of the contemporary editorial layout designs. To watch and learn, and make even better.

7. Playtype / Mood

Follow Playtype’s board MOOD on Pinterest.

Playtype is a Danish type foundry working on the junctions between typography and aesthetic compositions, creating fonts and curating beautiful stuff. Mood is their nonexceptional Pinterest board сombinig pieces of modern fine art, installations, graphic design and photography under a similar eccentric style.

8. Rich Stapleton / Outside

Follow RICH STAPLETON’s board O U T S I D E on Pinterest.

Rich Stapleton is the founder and creative director of Cereal magazine, a one-of-a-kind travel and style magazine which engages with its calibrated minimalistic design, subtle typography and inspiring spatial photography. Outside is his collection of light and calming landscape photography, holding to the magazine’s visual language — a mood board for tranquility and mindfulness.

9. Toshio Miyake / Ikko Tanaka

Follow Toshio Miyake’s board Ikko Tanaka on Pinterest.

Toshio Miyake is a pioneer of Pinterest with over a hundred thousand of followers and a huge library of boards on graphic design and graphic design masters. Our personal favourite is the board with the works of the greatest Ikko Tanaka.

10. COS / 50 Things

Follow COS’s board 50 Things on Pinterest.

50 Things was a project to celebrate COS arrival in the US. “A collection of things we love from across America — one from each of the 50 states”. This Pinterest board probably won’t be updated, but you can Repin it at least 50 times and just absorb the idea as a brilliant inspiration itself.

Share your inspiration with R/m creative community, follow  → Readymag  on Pinterest. And check on the next creative boards compilation to make sure we’ve mentioned you. Stay inspired!

In today’s digital world storytelling and technology become inseparably linked, making the narrative more engaging and offering a diversity of interactivity. The possibilities of digital storytelling encourage more people to abandon a single media approach and adopt a range of different means to personalize their experience. Today we decided to share with you some greatly designed travel narrations & as a bonus we’ve got some Readymag tricks that will enhance a photo story of your own:

https://readymag.com/74099

— An elegant 10-pages narrative about a trip to Thailand, the land of friendliness and whole-hearted smiles. A great example of how just a few breathtaking images paired with a fascinating video result in a solid photographic story.

http://features.surfingmagazine.com/63131

— ‘Alone in Iceland’ is a story experienced and told by a courageous surfer Dane Gudauskas and captured by photographer Elli Thor Magnusson. A clearly expressed style of narration and a smart use of minimalistic design elements all together forming a full-fledged digital piece.

https://readymag.com/49141

— Not quite a photo story, more of a photo book about an insightful journey to the magical Kingdom of Nepal. The tale about traditions and customs, decorated with graphic design elements complementing the character of the photographic storytelling.

https://readymag.com/53045

— A colorful photo journey to the calmness of Cabo Verde’s islands photographed and created by designer Jan Hippchen.

https://readymag.com/42069

—  A beautiful story documenting China’s everyday life traditions. Joshua Cogan is an Emmy Award-winning documentary photographer and anthropologist whose work explores both custom and the social struggle of the vanishing cultures. 

https://readymag.com/46698

— Jericoacoara is a magnetizing place for travelers keen on hard-to-reach locations and unique experiences — a breathtaking journey by designer and photographer Anton Repponen of a NY-based design studio Anton & Irene.

7 Readymag features that will greatly benefit your travel photo story:

Templates

The easiest and the fastest way to start designing your photo story is to use templates. Once you click Create in Readymag editor, you will be offered a set of predesigned templates with a special group for photo stories. All you have to do is to choose the template that appeals to you — you can select a full set of template’s pages, or combine pages from different designs to create your own unique layout. And within the template it’s even easier to operate: you just substitute your photos and texts and customize them as you like — change the text color, choose another font, use additional widgets.

Icons

Using icons in your photo stories may be an interesting design decision. You can replace practically any information — landmarks, weather conditions, vehicles, etc. with beautiful graphic symbols. Readymag’s integration with the Noun Project gives you an access to thousands of free glyph icons on any topic. Select the Shape widget, choose the duck icon and search for the topic you want to illustrate. You can easily change the color of the icon, resize it, rotate it, and fix it with a link to a website or to one of the pages in your publication.

Slideshow

The Slideshow widget comes in handy when creating stories that display several photos and, for example, require some comments for the final touch. You can find it in the same widget menu by pressing the plus button. The widget will immediately prompt you to upload multiple photos from your computer. In the slideshow preferences, you can change their sequence, activate the fullscreen mode and autoplay, add thumbnails and choose the slideshow style with captions.

Google Maps

With the Google Maps widget, you can turn your photo story into a travel guide. You can easily share the locations of the places you’ve visited, create routes, or make a detailed fully customized map for your fellow travel photographers to follow.

Instagram

Lots of travel photographers use Instagram as an online portfolio, where they keep their best shots. You can easily load the pictures from your story straight from the Instagram account, or add pictures of your friends’ from the feed, or even find some extra images by tag search. And of course you can stretch these photos, trim, hyperlink them and more. Just use the Picture widget, then click the Instagram icon, and change the settings using the widget bar on the right.

Soundtrack

Music is the most powerful conductor of vivid memories and associations, so it may be a good design idea to attach your favorite track to a photo story to make it more meaningful. Simply choose Sound in the widget menu, paste the track’s URL from Soundcloud, twist the settings and customize the appearance of the player.

 Viewer

When your photo story is ready, there is one important point left that could radically change the nature of your narration and its perception — the navigation style. You can choose between the classic flipping — the common photo album look, or scroll navigation — an emerging trend in the blog and app culture. You can play with navigation styles in Settings, the Viewer tab. There you can also customize your navigation by removing arrows, adding the page counter, hiding the menu and more.

Subscribe to our blog if you want to receive more inspiring examples and storytelling tips. Or just share this post if you think it can inspire more people to tell their stories in a more meaningful way.

Design productivity

Notes and annotations 

Readymag is built on the idea of modularity, which means that the possibilities of the platform aren’t limited to a standard set of widgets. In this series of articles, we’re selecting the best online tools and services that you can use with R/m to create fantastic publications. Here is the 3rd edition:

1. Live Chat

RumbleTalk
Price: Paid plans start from 14$/month.

With RumbleTalk, you can create your own personalised chatrooms and embed them on your website, presentation or any other kind of projects, where you’d like to provide live social support for your audience or customers.  Live chat may be a perfect solution for internal meetings, live stream comments, and customer support on the fly — great way to get instant feedback from your community. This video tutorial will help you to embed a RumbleTalk chat into your Readymag project.

In Use:

http://readymag.digitalpublishing.space/p499095

2. Signup Form

MailChimp Price: Free plan + Paid plans start from 10$/month.

Sign up forms are great in terms of audience and customer growth. It’s the vital solution for almost any online endeavour, whether you are running a digital magazine, providing a product or forming a community for your project.  If your audience it not that big yet and you want to start out with zero costs, Mailchimp is a way to get started — it is free up to 2,000 subscribers and has everything you need. MailChimp forms are mobile responsive, so your potential subscribers can sign up from any device. In Use:

In Use:

http://readymag.digitalpublishing.space/p499094

3. Interactive Gallery

Pinterest Widget
Price: Free.

http://readymag.digitalpublishing.space/p499092

Pinterest offers its own easy-to-use widget builder that allows you to add Pinterest content to your projects. You can find the widget builder in the “For Business” section under “Tools”, and it allows you to build five different items. Aside from standard Pin it button and follow button you can create a customizable profile widget, that will show up to 30 of your latest Pins, make a similar display from a specific board or a pin. This way you can easily share your moodboards, thematic selections, wishlists and creative ideas, allowing your visitors to engage with your Pinterest content without having to leave your project page.

4. Event Manager

Eventbrite
Price: Free + Service fee on ticket sales.

An easy-to-use event management platform that allows to plan, promote, and sell tickets to any kind of event and publish it across social media. With Readymag iframe widget, you can easily embed 4 types of event forms: event page preview, event calendar, event countdown and a ticket form. To embed the Eventbrite form into your Readymag project, simply select an event you created, go to “Invite & Promote” section, select “Widgets” and choose a form that you’d like to use. Important note: when copying the code, copy and paste only the iframe part — <iframe… ></iframe>.

In Use:

http://readymag.digitalpublishing.space/p499096

5. 3D Gallery

Megavisor
Price: Free.

Megavisor is extremely useful for those who sell anything on the internet. With this tool you can present a compelling and detailed view of your physical products, create a panoramic view of an interior (amazing opportunity for shops, cafes, restaurants and other public spaces to present yourself in a whole new way) or even a scenery of an architecture project. Let your readers interact with the objects instead of showing them just one picture. The platform also has a catalogue of ready-made objects which can be used free of charge for any purpose and save you money on a studio photo session.

In Use:

http://readymag.digitalpublishing.space/p499093

How to use these widgets:

All of the services mentioned above (except for the ones with special tutorials), provide an embed code that you can copy and paste into your project using Readymag’s Embed widget.

If you have any suggestions on tools and services that you would like to use with Readymag, just drop us a note at hello@readymag.com and subscribe to our blog to keep updated.

Today storytelling and design are two notions that go hand in hand in order to create a meaning and an impact. Here at Readymag, storytelling is our direction and design is the core of our vision, mission, and product. We are dedicated to contribute to design education, as we believe that design is the key to self-expression, problem-solving, and accurate communication and we want to help people achieve absolute perfection when designing their own content.

That being said, we are happy to launch R/m Design School ( school.readymag.com) — an e-series of informative projects about design, a constantly expanding “design primer”, covering such fundamental concepts as typography, color, grids and composition. It is a practical and engaging source that cultivates creative thinking.

Сhapter one is about combining typefaces — the nuts and bolts of graphic and web design. Despite the fact that fonts are the fundamental basics, like all basics they are often neglected and replaced with advanced novelty.

In the times of print, fonts became art and established themselves as a separate culture. Now there are thousands of designers who work in the web space, yet few of them have thoroughly mastered typography, but the ones who have – tend to stand out and, generally, their works are of exceptional quality.  

The idea behind R/m Design School is to share valuable design knowledge so that more and more people improve and perfect their design experience. We provide the essential basis and the rest simply adds up to it. And by the way, the entire R/m Design School was made with Readymag.

— school.readymag.com

Pavel Kedich is a web-designer in a multi-disciplinary agency VCG. This is a story behind “MOON” — a series of his design experiments with Readymag, the result of a simple aspiration to materialise certain skills and long kept thoughts.

http://moon1.kedzich.com/

Idea

It all started with a desire to experiment with Readymag’s functionality. I’ve noticed some skepticism about R/m from my colleagues, so I wanted to prove them wrong and implement a certain number of living examples, demonstrating the capabilities of the Readymag tool. I didn’t have any particular source of inspiration, maybe just a set of visual clichés and moves that I wasn’t able to implement or try earlier because of the nature of commercial projects I was working on. So the main motivation was my curiosity and my personal interest in Readymag’s capabilities.

It is difficult to isolate a specific area of my interest, I would just say that I like “fast” projects. For me, it is important to see the results quickly, since in the ‘long run’, unfortunately, I may lose focus and interest. I’m really fond of working with text, aiming for the final text in the layout to be interesting and sophisticated at all macro and micro levels. Often it turns out that the design of internal pages may be more interesting and much more successful than the home page of the project.

The pilot issue 

I was always curious about the topic of the Moon exploration, but I couldn’t boast of having a great depth of knowledge. So I decided to take advantage of this experiment to study the question in detail and eventually share this information. Honestly, the positive feedback and the overall interest in my Moon publications have appeared to be a pleasant surprise.

The pilot issue came out of the desire to collect sort of a school fact sheet about the Moon. I started with the Wikipedia pivot table about the Moon, I felt like I needed to divide the information into sections and combine them in some kind of a system. Googling the most simple queries, I started to shape a picture in my mind, a form that would be interesting and easy to perceive. In most cases, I used direct borrowings of text, historical moments and facts that would be great to mention. 

The result of an improvisation was to become only this page :

Just a composition of some blocks with small portions of knowledge. But in the process I became so involved and enthused that only while already putting the other sections in some logical order, I realised that the publication is already way ahead of a one-page design.

Layout

In the flow of improvisation, I had no sketches at all. Almost all of the designs were made in the browser. I was curious to check what would be the minimum amount of use of third-party tools, as a result I only used Ps, and just to cut out some of the photos and make the timeline for the Soviet and US missions. That is a big value of Readymag — If desired, you don’t have to use anything else apart from the browser.

Certain graphical parts were edited simply by improvising, without any finished concept in my head. I put the timeline with 38 US and Soviet space missions very fast, just to have a quick idea of how the timeline will sit in the layout. The footer with a panoramic Moon surface seemed like a fantastic find.

http://moon1.kedzich.com/p598571

The preview of the pages impressed me a lot because they were the living layouts, which can be published at any second. This effect and the feeling could never be reached with static models.

Grid

The grid for the first issue wasn’t more than the relative alignment of objects on the grid. I allowed myself to deviate from certain principles. Compositionally it was important to make pages dynamic, here I was simply guided by the overall feel from the layout. I wanted to make it rich in details, so it will be understandable if someone finds the 1st and 2nd editions a bit “overdesigned”. But even with this approach, the snapping of the objects and the guides options in the Readymag editor really helped out.

Typography

While making typographical decisions, I had lots of doubts whether such complexity and variety of styles was justified, and once again came to the conclusion that I can afford it in a sense of an experiment. I had never worked with font superfamilies before. It was interesting to experiment with Freight, combining its styles. It was a pleasant discovery of how good the Freight Micro works in small size — it has a friability, and at the same time a nice density, and in a set of leads, wherein the font size is slightly larger, it’s chopped details become even more impressive.

Obviously, reversing is not the best solution for reading, but these were my micro-experiments. Reversing was primarily all about the atmosphere. It was difficult to imagine the page about the Moon with dark text on a light background. I wanted to set a certain mood with these visual effects. Plus it helped make the moon itself and other objects literally implanted into the page. It came out pretty successfully in the part where the temperature data is set on the moon itself, and the text “the dark side of the moon” is under its outline. I was delighted by the fact that I can afford to control the transparency of each letter.

Content

I do suffer from a lack of consistency in my design approach and, for sure, a knowledgeable person can find lots of shortcomings in terms of the structure of each of the issues. But I was moved by some other force — to share a portion of the acquired knowledge immediately, as simply as “explored — published”.

As the basis, I took an article on Wiki and quickly ran through the subheadings of the article to define the zones of interest. I sought confirmation or extension of the facts on nasa.com, space.com, history.nasa.gov or simply in a search engine for key words and immediately inserted it all in the publication. Of course, some places were subjected to minimum editing to achieve a geometric shape of the block, for example. I checked all of the textual content with Grammarly, which I had learned about from the Readymag blog. But I still think that not everything is OK in my publications in terms of grammar.

Illustrations

Every single photograph in the archives or galleries of NASA is a masterpiece. They are valuable and interesting in themselves, without any design. To be honest, the self-sufficiency of the content is a big part of the overall impression of the publications on this topic, I think.

Since, I didn’t want to dedicate the issue to US research results only, it was an unpleasant surprise that there are almost no open visual materials about the Soviet missions. It turned out that some high-quality photos can be found in the archives of the European Space Agency, but not in Russian resources. But for the most part it was simply impossible.

Talking about the multimedia, the very first thing I did when started the design process — checked the possibility of using video as the background and yes, it was there. I found a suitable video, studied the peculiarities of the license holder, cut off the desired part and that’s it. There was no doubt that this is, though ordinary, but relevant and effective touch.

Icons were also a big part of my experiment with Readymag’s functional as I wanted to use them to bring an additional layer of details. How often do you use the icon of a lunar module? But yes, it was there in the icon library and in several variants.

The photos with fixed position work as combining elements for sections on the Soviet and US missions, also giving a sense of the dynamics and layering of the pages when scrolling.

Another pleasant discovery was the full-width option. With its help came a greater feeling of the fullness of the layout, allowing the photos to take the entire width, which emphasised their importance, plus full-width slides work as content dividers.

If you analyze in detail, starting with the first issue, I tried to check out and touch all the tools. I can say that I was inspired and impressed by Readymag itself: the range of opportunities in working with the font and style, pleasant and flexible in its configurations grid… I could go on and on about every piece of its functionality.

At the moment there are 4 publications in the moon.kedzich.com series. I plan to publish a few more issues till the end of 2015. I’m trying to contact the authors and researchers who would be interested in publishing their materials. I would like to go beyond the borrowing of texts from popular science resources, and find a way to work with a little more complex forms of content, improving my skills of presenting information.

http://moon.kedzich.com/

Pavel Kedich

With Christmas and New Year around the corner, you probably find yourself wondering what to put under the tree for your creative friends. Just in time for last-minute holiday shopping, we made a list of gifts that will undoubtedly make any designer’s heart beat faster.

1. Wacom Cintiq

A universal way to make a designer happy is to give him a Wacom graphics tablet. Cintiq 13HD is one of the best compact models out there, that offers great drawing experience directly on the screen.

2. Readymag Gift card

For a curious web designer, a bedroom publisher, an online zine creator and everyone in between a Readymag prepaid account for either one month or one year will be a best gift option. And if he never used Readymag before, you will be thanked not only for a gift but also for a professional discovery.

3. Pencil by FiftyThree

One of those cool interactive pens would be the hottest present of them all. FiftyThree Pencil made everybody talk about it and desperately want to try it out. Plus who won’t be charmed by its beautiful seamless design.

4. Braun Watch

If you are up to something timeless look no further, this watch is a perfect example of classic design. A person who works with shapes and colors will truly appreciate the clean and minimalistic look.

5. Oculus Gear VR

Another device that is tailor-made to make every creative geek excited. Oculus Gear VR turns your average smartphone into virtual reality goggles, that will carry their owner to the highly addictive world of 3D-gaming.

6. A Louise Fili book

Famous Louise Fili designed more than 2000 book covers, some of which got into Cooper-Hewitt Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale collections. Besides designing books, she writes them herself. Any item from this list will make a perfect holiday read for a designer — http://www.amazon.com/Louise-Fili/e/B001JP4GKK.

7. Visual Design in Action by Ladislav Sutnar

Reprint of the iconic 1961 book by a Czech-American visionary of information design Ladislav Sutnar will be a nice addition to a designer’s library. Visual Design in Action is a great read about the power of design and design thinking.

8. CMYK Color Swatch Calendar

While the absolute bestseller from Verlag Hermann Schmidt publishing house —Typodarium typography calendar — is long sold out by now, you still have a chance to grab CMYK Color Swatch Calendar 2016. For those who love to create their own color compositions, this gift will be a lot of fun.

9. Complete Neue Grafik Issues

If you are ready to go the extra mile to find a perfect gift, take a look at this wonderful facsimile reprint of all Neue Grafik issues with a commentary. Legendary Swiss graphic design magazine will be a highlight of every bookshelf.

10. A Systems Collection Poster

Pick one from these fascinating posters made by leading designers to celebrate the legacy of Braun and you are good to go. The entire collection is dedicated to the most famous pieces of modernist product design.

Claudio Guglieri is a design director at Microsoft Groove and Movies & TV department and former Creative Director at Elephant, an agency serving exclusively Apple. In his Readymag-based portfolio Claudio goes far beyond design and not only shows off his best projects but acts both as a journalist and a visionary. 

How has design changed over the last 5-10 years?

I recently gave some talks regarding the crossing paths of Sci-Fi movies and interactive design. In general, Sci-Fi movies were an important source of inspiration at the very beginning of the internet and that influence has gone back and forth. In 2010 the skeuomorphic trend was on the peak in digital design. Even non-designers can recall old Apple products that had all these leather textures and stitches. I remember some great examples of it coming from Russia — SFCD, the agency previously known as SoftFacade, for example, was doing extremely detailed skeuomorphic interfaces and iconography. Back then ‘familiarity’ was a key factor, therefore the focus was on creating digital interfaces that would somehow resemble real world objects.

‘Familiarity’ eventually went too far and became aesthetically gimmicky. The initial reactions to it fully opposed the trend and looked elsewhere for inspiration. Metro Design from Microsoft is the best example of it, it looked at print design for inspiration.

What’s your vision of contemporary web design? Why is it like this?

After the whole ripple effect and the initial excitement around “flat design” we got to where we are now, the next logical step. Designers asked themselves — what if we combine the best of print design, augmented in the digital world with what makes the real world familiar beyond aesthetics? That’s when design started looking at the physical properties of objects and when animation gets fully in and becomes a vital part of the creation process. Physical properties like weight, speed and elevation are now everywhere in digital design. Now “familiarity” is conveyed to users through properties and behaviours instead of aesthetics or look and feel.

Which artists/schools/tendencies influence present-day design? What will be a source of inspiration tomorrow?

In the early beginning of my design career I did marketing sites and promotions for random products and video games. These projects called for a more artistic approach and the sources of inspiration were really out there, it was a bit of a free for all.

Well, I don’t work on marketing sites anymore. My job now is about figuring out customer problems and empowering users to do certain things. That’s a higher level of design, it’s systematically closer to engineering and demands deep knowledge of human psychology rather than sophisticated artistry. Because of the lack of ornamentation in UX design I would say a constant inspiration for this branch of design will always be the Bauhaus approach, or the Massimo Vignelli type of approach — it is visual and delightful but really well-structured and functional, just like a piece of architecture.

Which fonts do you use most frequently in your works? What were the most popular and in-demand fonts of 2016 in your view?

Because of where I work I quite often use the same font Segoe UI. Or sometimes it’s Schamalfette CP, a really powerful sans serif. When I was working with Apple it was all about Myriad and San Francisco and before that I always loved Publico. In my personal projects I’m pretty classy: for my Readymag-based portfolio I’ve been choosing Utopia and Nimbus. In my last post I’m exploring Bodoni and some others.

Proxima Nova was definitely the most used font in 2014 and in the past couple of years we’ve seen lots of similar fonts. Throughout the year I’ve been seeing lots of variations of Helvetica and bold grotesques yet I can’t say they capture the times we are living in. To be fair maybe that’s because my world has become much more product-driven, not necessarily reflected by the times we live in.

Name several of your favorite design instruments (programs, apps, whatever).

Due to my work I use Illustrator. I still use a lot of Photoshop, because I love to draw and do lots of photography. To make mobile apps and screens I use Sketch. And I also use Framer a lot, I don’t do motion design but I do lots of prototypes and different interactions. Framer is my favorite prototyping tool right now.

I’ve been trying Figma app recently, I like the premise of real time collaboration with other people, but I haven’t had an opportunity to use it yet.

How is Readymag helpful to you?

I do some coding myself, but it’s really scrappy, just like prototyping things. What I truly love about Readymag is its “what you see is what you get” approach. It takes the traditional two-step workflow of designing and coding and merges it into one. It’s almost like a graphic editor with enhanced capabilities for interactions and web design. Most of the time I start my work offline in Photoshop and Sketch and then I bring it to Readymag to finish it and add interactivity to it. It’s a half and half process.

Do you lack anything as a designer — instruments, fonts, technologies?

There are still big disconnections between design, motion and development. And Readymag is one of the tools, which strives to bridge this gap. I like that it makes web design a more fluent process. But I’d love to see prototyping tools like Framer somehow evolve into a framework or code base you could use in real apps.

Then regarding virtual reality, I myself have tested a bunch of headsets but there’s still a big entry barrier for getting into that world. I’d like to see more tools that bridge that gap.

What emerging digital trend are you most excited about right now?

Something I’m really excited about is how design is getting more and more platform agnostic. There are many dimensions to design depending on what discipline you use to look at it with. Design does not necessarily need the existence of a screen. Imagine everybody in the world is using some sort of mixed reality glasses, the world would be your canvas (pun intended), and that would be the end of the display biz. How will streets change as soon as we don’t need platforms to host those messages? I’m excited about a type of design that is contextual more than ever.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a Google Home assistant, it’s pretty much like Amazon Echo. At home we just talk to it, even my 3-year-old son does so. You could argue — is that design? It’s not visual, but it’s clearly helping me. As we move away from fun and crazy to being more functional, becoming more platform agnostic than visually driven seems like a natural step. I’m really excited about that.

What’s your outlook for the future of web and media? How will the human interaction with the web change? What role will design have in this process?

The internet as a single touchpoint is already gone. Now it’s all over you, it’s represented in different devices, depending on where you are and what you’re doing. For example, right now it’s my computer, but if I go for a run it might be my watch, and if I’m at home it might be that Google Home speaker. I think designers need to step up their design-thinking and understanding of the user to transcend the visual world and still remain relevant in the future. The more the Internet is embedding itself into our life, the less visual it gets.

From a literacy perspective I believe the future of media/technology will continue to lower the entry barrier required to become a user. My son doesn’t know how to speak properly yet, but he already understands what Google Home can do for him. He is used to see me talking to it now and he tries as well. He was born in an environment where talking to machines is natural (crazy). He says “Hi boo-boo” instead of “Hey Google”  because he can’t pronounce it yet and after repeated attempts our Google Home now wakes up to his words, almost like it’s learning. “I’m sorry I don’t know how to help you with that” it says to him. It’s mind-blowing to me.

Is there something you’ve long wanted to ask Readymag?

How will Readymag change in two years? What’s your vision?

This is what Readymag CEO Diana Novichikhina says:

We will continue enhancing the capacity of R/m Editor. At the same time we strive to keep its interface simple and pleasant to use. We work hard to keep Readymag meeting the requirements of modern web. In addition to that, we are looking to add more integrations with third-party services. Within the next two years the range of projects that could be done with Readymag will rise substantially.

The tumult of 2020 transformed the way people live and interact with each other. This encompasses all the common social norms — including patterns of behavior, communications, and attitudes. Now people often speak of the ‘new normal.’

As designers and developers, we are obliged to create experiences that are better than normal. For us, it’s important to never lose the wider ethical perspective; seeing changing circumstances not as a drawback, but an opportunity for a better shared future. This future has to be envisioned and designed, and we hope that everyone will participate. This perspective is especially relevant in as contradictory and mercurial environment as the web.

Adding a new dimension to design — an ethical one — can address this challenge and embrace the disruption. For the Ethical Issue, Readymag asked five design entrepreneurs and educators to discuss how an ethical approach can provide unique insights on behavior, context, and consumption. With this project, our primary goal is to stimulate thought-provoking impulses and inspire discussion.

From the Ethical Issue you will learn:

—How to make your approach to design and business more positive: creative director and entrepreneur Ab-d Choudhury shares the experience of resetting his consultancy and finding new clients. Read about examples of harmonising individual needs and collective interests, while pursuing economic goals.

—How to use times of disruption and rapid change, like now, as a springboard for creative experimentation, through the example of journalist and entrepreneur Fraser Morton.

—What the Shift Design charity does to generate and multiply power through community relationships. Find out how to design with communities and not just ‘for’ them.

— Why does user-centered design struggle with ethics? Designer and futurist Cennydd Bowles explains the role of other stakeholders beside the final user, including the indirect and hidden implications, calling for pluralistic and courageous design instead.

—How to recognize and understand dark patterns — designer Eileen MacAvery Kane discusses online experiences that are intentionally designed to trick users into taking unintended actions.

Articles will be published once a week.

The Ethical Issue is a series of articles initiated by Readymag—a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community. Continue exploring Readymag and our other resources here.

The Ethical Issue was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With more designers and agencies adopting a position of purpose, it’s harder to stand out and truly demonstrate a unique creative angle. Abb-d Choudhury, founder of Driftime®, writes about why he chose to reposition his business and undergo a radical shift towards people and planet-focused outcomes. Here are some ideas and tips for those looking to instill design and organisational ethics in their companies.

In the wake of climate change, social injustice, and wanting to create a more equitable world, purpose-driven design practices are springing up everywhere. Designers want to add meaning to the work they do and boost impact. The challenge is, finding purpose can take patience and experience. Yet, in the world of creative saturation and competition, the term ‘purpose’ in itself can become contradictory and lose its meaning.

We are taught early in our creative careers to chase kudos for our work, find the perfect clients, then one day become a creative director for a large firm, where you win prestigious awards and so on. As someone who has achieved these goals, I can tell you the luster wears off quite quickly. It hasn’t brought long-lasting happiness or fulfilment, it simply guaranteed I would be forever busy with work I didn’t care much about, with results and impact I had no control over. I wanted more from what I spent my life learning and crafting, and believed that design has a much higher responsibility.

Since 2015, when my partner Sara and I started Curate Labs, we have been failing, learning, iterating and listening as a purpose-driven business. When we started, we only had our experience in large agencies to reference. Curate Labs was a design shop with many capabilities; a jack of all trades, but master of none. We said yes to every job from any industry with some sense of purpose, and were fortunate to work with some amazing teams and clients like Hulu, Virgin Media, and Google, among other notable brands. As a generalist creative studio serving multiple industries, it has been a continual challenge defining who we are, what we do, and the purpose behind it all. This was essential as we learned and experimented with ourselves, and subsequently what we offered as a service — the ending result is Driftime®.

Lean in a little closer

In October 2020, we officially transitioned to Driftime® — a sharpened, and more refined, results-driven design practice. To say you’re a purpose-driven business is no longer enough, you have to show it. Now we’re able to better articulate that worldview and the impact it creates not just for partners, but for ourselves. This articulation is part of a responsibility to show purpose not through words, but actions.

Words themselves become numb or frivolous with overuse, words like authentic, original, and luxury are all good examples; purpose now sits firmly in this group. How can you truly show and articulate purpose without it feeling like a buzzword? Purpose in itself is subjective to a worldview, and over the last five or so years we’ve reflected to understand what that means for us… a worldview that uses ethical design to solve the challenges of tomorrow, and is at its core focused on people, planet, and profit.

Working with the right clients

Social, economic and environmental impact should be at the core of decision-making: from the clients and partners you work with, through to internal processes, principles and company values. Having some ethical criteria serves as a filter for creating better relationships with a more lasting, positive impact.

At Driftime®, we first ask ourselves if a potential partner operates at the intersection of culture and purpose. If not, the likelihood is we aren’t a good fit and there’s little impact we can create. If they do, we determine the quality of a partner through a simple matrix of alignment (do they share the same values), and are they of high or low quality (do they have the budget to match the desire and impact they want to create)?

Sell your soul, because the devil is in the detail…

During our transition, we reviewed all our suppliers to ensure that they shared similar values. We switched our energy provider to completely renewable sources. We joined 1% for the Planet, and began donating monthly to causes like The Wildlife Trusts and The Tide. We set up a grove in the Scottish highlands and donate 2 trees a month to offset our carbon footprint. We provide mentorship for the next generation of designers, run local events to support our professional community and are currently pending with our B-Corp accreditation. Having these things in place and keeping them transparent throughout your brand adds a level of detail others can see, making it publicly accessible without the need to market externally.

We’ve even gone so far as to leave social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter due to the ethics associated with these systems. By removing the distractions and requirements of social media marketing, we can work towards a purer sense of focus. Are we truly bringing value, community and advocacy to the table by being on these channels? Focusing on a more direct relationship feels more useful not just to us, but to our community as well. With less urgency placed on social media, a huge amount of breathing space is added that allows you to better take stock.

A lot of this goes against the grain, some even call us a little crazy. But it turns out, freeing up your time, removing clutter and being more conscious about your decisions, ultimately can make you a better designer and business.

The role of ethics in design

Design can and should be more than aesthetics: it can also encourage better behaviours, teach empathy, make products and services more accessible, champion diversity and so forth.

That said, designing better systems isn’t always enough. As creative problem solvers, we must redefine the role of design and align it with business objectives. Can designing a beautiful interface, one that empowers people to advocate their brand further, help the client become more profitable?

Since 2019 we’ve also worked with Only One, a non-profit based in New York — they provide a platform for stories, solutions, and community action to protect the ocean, tackle the climate crisis, and help fuel the movement for a more just, equitable planet. This project was a collaborative focus on accessibility, transparency and impact through design. Using humane design principles, we as designers are able to encourage positive change over the long-term, without resorting to dark UX models for short-term gains. The Only One team is made up of like-minded advocates and talented people, all striving to create opportunities for ocean conversation, local communities and better sustainable standards. The team understands the value and power of design. With ethical methods and a shared vision, we’re able to reach the objectives of the platform and achieve the larger goals we value most

Many fall into a pattern of short-term thinking, but the ability to design for the long-term is possible when you take the conventions of today with a bucket of salt.

Becoming ethical yourself

To become an ethical designer or business doesn’t necessarily mean going paperless or investing in a reusable coffee cup. From an internal perspective, you can focus on measurable results and what you as a designer or business can control, internally and externally, with your client partners. Doing this is a way to gain external validation and show you’re an ethically-minded business or designer, rather than having to say it with marketing.

None of this is new or easy, and saying it in an article like this is one thing and doing it for real is something else entirely. It can take time, patience and a ton of perseverance. But don’t let that stop you. Valuable change is difficult and I promise you it’s worth it.

Taking action and finding greener pastures

—Review your carbon footprint through the energy you use and your hosting services, then set goals to offset. For example, consider using green hosting providers like Kinsta and Krystal.

—Join environmental initiatives that align with your worldview and donate regularly.

—Check that the products and services you use have sustainability goals in place.

—Be a driving force for advocacy and change, learn from peers and educate others.

—Create a methodology to partner with the right clients for long-term impact.

—Live and breathe your values, in public and private.

—Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to say no.

—Continue to listen, learn and never compromise your values. No matter how big or small, you can become leaders in design by living your principles and expressing them with every touchpoint of your brand — without a buzzword in sight, no less. Focusing on what we can control through design and the associated responsibility has made us better designers, a better business, and better advocates for positive change. Your worldview can most certainly be a part of the solution. The question is, what will you design today to solve the challenges of tomorrow?

Find out more on Driftime® and follow their progress on their Substack.

This article was commissioned by the Readymag team. Readymag is a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community.

Find more articles from the Ethical Issue series here.

“Purpose-driven design is not profitable”: how leading by example can prove this heading wrong was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fraser Morton, a mixed-media journalist, filmmaker & founder of Far Features, an independent media production company, talks about using times of disruption as a springboard for creative experimentation.

Now is the time

There has never been a better time to invest in independent, experimental, creative, socially-oriented work. If you have a project you have always wanted to get done — now is the time.

The interconnectedness of people and global economies, our broken relationship with the natural world, racial injustice, health inequality — the list of realisations is endless. This is a time of radical awakenings for many, what professor Otto Scharmer describes as “A New Superpower in the Making: Awareness-Based Collective Action”. Maybe this will emerge as a pivotal moment of change, or maybe this is a mere preamble to more future pandemics and climate-related issues.

This pandemic is a time of deep disruption and we all feel the shifting landscape. This is a time of adaptation, and I think that applies to creative industries, where it can produce interesting results for artists and audiences alike as we look to the future.

Tough times call for creativity. You don’t have to take my word for it. There are numerous examples of rapid and ingenious adaptation that emerged from previous pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish Flu (H1N1 virus), as well as contemporary op-eds such as “Never Waste A Crisis” or scientific papers exploring “Meaning-Making Through Creativity During COVID-19”.

One thing I think is important during this time is to keep the sense of urgency front and centre. Don’t wait until tomorrow to work on passion projects, especially ones that explore personal, social or climate issues. Now is the time for an explosion of creative voices from all sides of the world.

How we have adapted

At Far Features, our independent work focuses on documenting environmental and human health issues.

Shortly after the pandemic began, our “paid” work all but stopped. Previously, we spent most of our time travelling, producing and shooting.

While we are just one of many small creative companies working internationally that saw projects halted, postponed or cancelled over the past year — doing nothing was not an option.

Each member of our small team felt a powerful need to respond to the pandemic, and so transformative times became a springboard for new projects. We kept busy with new “remote” multimedia projects thanks to the innovative response of the creative industries internationally, which have evolved into a new normal with new methods of working. We embraced collaboration over competition and tied it to the trend of producing remote, virtual, mixed-media documentaries.

Our photographer Eszter Papp created Our Social Distance, a webcam portrait series of everyday life during lockdown.

Our editor Sadiq Mansor deep-dove into self-learning animation, developing a unique style that has become a meditative representation of the times.

Our designer Ali Kelly and I have been working closely to create Project Reset, a user-generated time capsule documentary project that is still ongoing in 2021. When the pandemic began, I journalled each day, writing down thoughts about the confusing new times we found ourselves in. Soon, I had a collection of dated letters, and I wrote one to the future. At the time, my reading list was also filled with books about the future, space travel and the human genome project, such as Superbugs, How Innovation Works, or The Uninhabitable Earth or Spillover, Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic — so this was the mindset I was in at the time.

This idea is for users to “Write The Future”. Anyone can visit the time capsule project and write short, 1,000-character letters that document pandemic experiences or set intentions for the future.

Be flexible, push boundaries, welcome rejection

The worst piece of career advice I ever received: “You have too many interests. You should settle on one thing and do that.”

How about, “No”.

For me, that’s an archaic way of thinking, and not at all suited to who I am or the team we have built. We prefer to work across mediums in a small team of self-learners, constantly picking up new skills so that we can adapt and meet the demands of an ever-changing industry, as well as the storytelling needs of different audiences. In today’s digitally disrupted age, exposure to multiple disciplines and varied skills are both essential.

I find work interesting when it pushes boundaries. Nothing stays the same, nor should it. That goes for journalism, design, documentary filmmaking, magazines, print editorial — most of the areas I’ve worked in have rapidly changed in the 15 years since I left university. It’s fascinating and compelling to mix parts of everything, and you learn a lot when you work with positive people who like doing the same.

Pushing creative boundaries in your work comes with confronting your own relationship with rejection and how you perceive “industry standards”. Breaking the norm sometimes means forgetting the “right way”, and not taking “no” for an answer. For instance, applying for creative funds takes a sense of humour. Most, if not all, will simply never happen. From experience, my independent projects would never exist if I relied on validation from external sources to begin the work.

You have to create because the work wants to come into existence, you find a way no matter what. I think it applies to all “passion projects”, no matter the size, scale or budget.

In spite of the challenging times independent creatives face economically, expression through new original work is essential in these times — no matter how small, and without fear of rejection or not finding a final destination.

There is always a way to put out original and helpful work, no matter how small. A pen and notepad don’t cost much, and art is always necessary.

Fraser Morton is the director of Far Featured Ltd, an independent British multimedia production company working between Europe & Asia. He is a writer, ghostwriter, and mix-media documentary filmmaker. You can find him on Instagram at @far_features, as well as on Medium. If you’d like to support the Project Reset, reach out here.

This article was commissioned by the Readymag team. Readymag is a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community.

Find more articles from the Ethical Issue series here.

Tough times call for experimental social projects was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Design ethics and relationship-centred practice

As designers, we are not set apart from systems of inequality, acting from the outside in. We shape and mold; we create cause and effect. Immy Robinson, an Innovation Lead at British charity Shift Design, speaks on what can be done to generate and multiply power through community relationships. From this article, you will learn how to design with communities and not just ‘for’ them.

2020 was a year of many reckonings. A global pandemic amplified and exacerbated the many forms of inequality we see in our communities — racial, economic, health and cultural. We saw, with renewed clarity, the crucial role everyday relationships play in shaping our wellbeing. Designers of all persuasions have worked to adapt their craft, responding to the changing world around them.

Now, as we allow ourselves to imagine a world post-Covid, we must remember what didn’t work before: the unfairness, the waste, the version of society that fell short. We must embrace this window of opportunity and strive to build a world that is more equitable, more equal, and more just.

Power beyond the pandemic

Design is not neutral and designers, by virtue of their role, have significant power. Through design, we impart a world view, a perspective, a set of experiences, a set of biases. How we approach design and the values we put at the heart of our process determines the impact we have. As designers, we are not set apart from systems of inequality, acting from the outside in. We shape and mold; we create cause and effect.

As the saying goes, with power comes responsibility, and this is where ethics comes in. Design can and must play a role in building a better future. So, as designers, we must consider carefully how we wield power, what we use it for and — crucially — how we redistribute it to tackle inequality.

Power moves through networks and is generated through relationships — between individuals, communities, organisations and institutions. Power is multiplied and shared through a web of sincere and meaningful relationships. To design in ways that seek to multiply and redistribute power, we must put relationships at the centre.

This has been the focus of my work at design agency Shift, co-leading the development of the Relationships Project. Our mission is to make it easier for organisations and services to put relationships at the heart of what they do. The community of practice we’ve fostered around the Relationships Project’s mission is forging a new field that puts ethics front and centre for design.

Introducing relationship-centred design

As designers, we can learn lessons from the world of community development, and especially from the sub-discipline of asset based community development (ABCD) — especially when it comes to designing for relationships.

Building from the belief that communities are best situated to design and lead change by ‘identifying and mobilizing existing, but often unrecognised assets’, ABCD offers a more sustainable, democratic and ethical approach to design.

Here, I’ve adapted a framework originally published by Nurture Development to explore how we can apply the ABCD approach and ethic to design, guiding us to a more relationship-centred approach. By working within this framework, we’ll discover four modes of design and examine how relationships grow and power flows through each: designing TO, FOR, WITH and BY.

These four approaches are more or less relevant depending on what you’re trying to achieve as a designer. Some things, like refuse collection, are well suited to services that are designed FOR. Others, like social care, can only be effective when designed WITH users, and are most effective and sustainable when designed BY communities themselves.

When we do design TO others, we do not include them in the design process. We — as designers — wield our power in order to achieve an impact or outcome that has been defined by those outside the community of users who need or will use the design.

Nurture Development describes this as the ‘Medical Model’: decisions made on behalf of and interventions done unto. In this mode, power and knowledge flow in one direction. Relationships — where they exist — are transactional, unequal and hierarchical. Power is guarded, preserved, held tight.

Examples from the world of behavioral insights / nudge theory often adapt this approach. For example, designing letters, texts and online choice architecture in a way that nudges the user towards a desired behavior. Among our projects at Shift, we’re working with a community development finance initiative to promote better borrowing with an online loan calculator.

Though relevant and effective in some settings, this mode of design isn’t the best at putting ethics front and centre.

When we design FOR we are taking into account and designing for our understanding of user experience, preference, need and priority.

Usually based on good intentions, this mode is akin to the ‘Charity Model’ of development. Relationships are formed between designer and user, but they are temporary, transactional and unequal. Power is still held and maintained by the designer. Information passes through the filter of the designer’s beliefs, biases and experiences.

Designing FOR can be effective. A common example is the food bank system we see operating across the UK and beyond, where donated food is provided to communities in need. Clearly user needs are the fundamental driver of this format. However, users don’t usually have agency in the design process, or indeed much choice when it comes to accessing the service — such as what types of food are available. While primary needs may be met, this model can have unintended consequences (like provision that is not culturally relevant) and discourage other community-based alternatives. Despite some positive impact, designing FOR in this way doesn’t disrupt existing hierarchies, nor does it serve to multiply or share power.

When we design WITH, we act collaboratively, designing side by side with the intended users. Designing WITH can be understood as a ‘Social Model’ of development, using approaches like co-design that are so familiar to many designers.

When we design WITH our users, we start to develop a two-way relationship based on a degree of mutual exchange and reciprocity. There’s a spectrum here: from engaging users in one or two co-creation workshops, through to working with them as equals at every stage of the process. Almost inevitably, there remains a power imbalance in this relationship. The designer has the final say in how the product or service turns out and, in the charitable sector, it’s often funders who set the brief and direction. On top of this, the output can lack sustainability, being reliant on external support for maintenance and support.

But there are many instances in which this approach to design is important and effective, especially when support from others outside the user community — who can bring specific skill sets, assets and connections — is valuable and necessary.

An example from my team at Shift is the work we’ve done to support UK housing associations to improve services for local residents, often at risk of or experiencing financial vulnerability. By holding space for user communities to share experiences and needs, and by encouraging empathy among those designing services, we’ve helped improve engagement and deepen ties. Another example we love in this mode is Heart n Soul at The Hub, an experimental research project at Wellcome Collection, led by people with and without learning disabilities and autistic people. The result is a website specifically designed to be accessible for users with a range of needs — like their ‘take a break’ option, which provides a respite from digital spaces that might be overwhelming or challenging for people with learning disabilities and autism.

When designing WITH our users, we should seek to design in ways that create new connections and share skills, knowledge and power. In doing so, we help nurture the conditions for the fourth and final design mode we’ll explore — design BY communities themselves.

When design is BY communities (i.e., the users or groups who stand to benefit from change or innovation) the process, end-to-end, is led from within. This is where the values of ABCD are fundamental. Skills, assets, knowledge and connections that already exist within the community are leveraged, shared and strengthened. Decisions about the shape, function and trade-offs of the output are made by those that use it. The chances of sustainability are enhanced because the necessary skills, resources and energy already exist within the community in which it is used.

The Mutual Aid response to Covid-19 is a recent example of design BY communities. Leveraging existing relationships, resources, energy and assets, we’ve seen communities band together over the past year to deliver support, develop new initiatives and achieve more than many thought possible. This activity was not dependent on external structures, processes or support. Instead, it was driven from within communities, allowing it to develop swiftly, adapt to emerging needs, and strengthen communities in the process. If you want to find out more about the community response to Covid, take a look at our Active Neighbours Field Guide.

As designers who do work outside of many of the communities we seek to serve, we can still play a role by shifting our focus from designing outputs to designing for relationships. A key question to ask ourselves is: How can we leverage our methods, skills and expertise to accelerate design BY communities?

We’ve been focusing on this question at the Relationships Project, and have developed some tools for communities to use when designing for change.

Intentions and practice

Designers can put ethics front and centre in their practice by intentionally acting in ways that share power, knowledge and skills. Nurturing relationships can help expand design BY communities, where knowledge, power, ideas and resources flow.

These three questions sit at the heart of ABCD, so ask yourself before starting a new project:

—What is it that communities can best do? (Design BY)

—What do communities need help with? (Design WITH)

—What do communities need outside agencies to do for them? (Design FOR)

Doing so will help you avoid defaulting to designing TO or FOR. It’s always better to start by understanding what assets already exist, and what communities can do for themselves.

As we slowly unfurl from the pandemic, we face a fork in the road: to return to ‘normal’ or build a new, kinder, more equitable normal. Design can, and must, play a central role in driving this change.

Shift Design is a British charity that tackles social problems through the power of design thinking. Together with partners, Shift helps transform systems, services and organisations.

This article was commissioned by the Readymag team. Readymag is a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community.

Find more articles from the Ethical Issue series here.

Design ethics and relationships-centred practice was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For decades we’ve been taught that user-centricity is the key to good design. But now the philosophy is showing vulnerabilities. We need approaches that are less narrow, less transactional, and more able to cope with the diverse, systemic challenges the 21st century has in store. Designer and futurist Cennydd Bowles elaborates.

In those toddler days, when the connected age was still taking its first tremulous steps, digital design was slow to find its identity. Design practises tended to fall into one of two extremes; either the experimental but baffling sandbox of Flash design, or design as web page layout, subsumed in a developer’s daily work, a matter of table hacks and spacer GIFs.

It wasn’t until the early years of the new millennium that the budding UX movement, a chimera of human-computer interaction and library science, brought some rigour and process. The key to the movement’s success was a single, external reference point: the user. We were taught to stop focusing on business or technical whims, and to instead do what’s right for users. Do that, and everything else will fall into place.

It worked, mostly. User-centred design (UCD) helped convince tech companies that design can offer a reliable and genuine competitive advantage. The field matured, companies grew, conferences, books, and celebrities sprang up.

User-centricity became an orthodox view even outside the world of design.Of course, the problem with orthodoxy is that other options start to seem ridiculous.

Discussing the quirks and flaws of the status quo is seen as weird or borderline heretical. But as it belatedly dawns on our industry that technology has serious social and ethical dimensions, one thing is increasingly clear: user-centred design is inadequate for the needs of the 21st century.

The user isn’t all that matters

The most obvious flaw? What’s good for the user, may be awful for others. Design a beautiful interface that helps someone buy the SUV of their dreams and you’ll probably achieve business and user success, but at the cost of environmental damage. Build an app to help landlords turn city apartments into short-term vacation rentals? Your two primary user groups — property owners and visiting tourists — will be thrilled, but you’re making neighbourhoods worse, eroding local communities and pushing up rents for genuine residents.

Digital technology’s unique trait is scale; successful apps and products can reach millions of consumers within months. We have to recognise, then, that our responsibilities aren’t just to businesses and users.

We also have a responsibility to society, communities, and cities, to social goods like democracy and freedom, to non-human life, and to the planet itself. Yet these hidden, indirect stakeholders aren’t represented in UCD — instead, we assume every transaction between user and technology is positive and ignore any external damage the transaction may cause.

Make me think?

Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think — by some distance the best-selling UX book ever — is less a textbook for designers than a primer for marketers, execs, or anyone else who needs to understand why they should fund design. As the title suggests, Krug claims the user shouldn’t have to worry about how a device or product works. It’s the designer’s job to present a simple mental model and then design away — or otherwise hide — complexities that might threaten that model.

‘Don’t make me think’ is an understandable and useful concept that comes with a downside. The mindset tempts us to design products that operate by sleight of hand, that read users’ minds and pull a rabbit out of a hat. It promotes seamless experiences that whisk away all the techie stuff. As a result, we train people to believe they have no business tinkering under the hood of their technologies: “trust us, we’ve got this” is the message.

Little surprise that the general public finds the world of technology dizzying.

Most people have little idea how connected tech works, thanks in part to its seamless design. So we face a dangerous pairing, where we paint opaque technologies with seamless, magical interfaces, providing excellent cover for exploitative data harvesting and transfers.

Data misuse may have been the previous decade’s predominant digital trend. Users don’t understand and can’t correct a system that’s not working in their best interests; instead, they have to put blind faith in developers or hope the OS overlords (Apple, Google, Microsoft) or local regulators have built in enough controls to prevent abuse. So far, those hopes haven’t come true.

Sometimes, making people think is the only way to give them agency, to help them make informed decisions about important ethical questions.

Leave no trace

Despite these vulnerabilities, UCD adherents often argue user-centricity adopts a neutral, pure stance. It’s a stance that tends to look down on fashion and style, instead laying claim to a higher purpose. User-centred designers often describe themselves as impartial observers using rigorous, repeatable methods to uncover true needs and to support them via timeless design.

This supposed neutrality is a myth. Whenever you design, you’re making a claim about how the future should be. You’re putting forward an argument about which technologies should exist in our future world, how we should interact with them and, by extension, how we should interact with each other. Every click of the Erase tool discards thousands of other slightly different worlds.

All design bears the fingerprints of its creators, whether intended or not. A product we might think of as style-neutral and value-neutral is simply one that wears the predominant styles and values of the society we live in, invisible like the air.

So the very idea of neutral design is fundamentally conservative. Rather than trying to change society, or to engage with the ethics and the politics of the world around us, neutral design is content to reproduce the status quo, along with all its entrenched hierarchies and inequalities. Given the huge challenges facing society — scathing inequality, the conundrum of automation, and the looming climate emergency — we don’t have time for neutrality. This is no time to meekly support our current trajectory.

What we need

User-centred thinking has become an almost analgesic way of thinking, numbing us to the deeper impacts of innovation, both positive and negative. The current ethical crisis in technology is just a teaser of what lies ahead: we could argue that design’s most important role now is to help humans not flourish, but even just to *survive* the 21st century. So it’s time for design to abandon the pretence of neutrality and all its regressive connotations. We should recognise the responsibilities and powers we hold, and actively imbue our work with the values we want to see in the world.

This isn’t, however, a call for moralizing superheroes. Ethical and social change must be participatory, not imposed by privileged elites.

It’s time for an opinionated but flexible model of design; one that doesn’t revolve around the user — or indeed anyone — but instead addresses the diverse needs of all stakeholders, including indirect and hidden ones. This can only happen if designers become active facilitators, bringing unheard voices into the design process, and engaging the wider public in a discussion of the ethics of technology.

Cennydd Bowles is a UK designer and futurist with nearly two decades of experience advising companies including Twitter, Samsung, Accenture, and the BBC. He is the author of a guide to the ethics of emerging technology called Future Ethics and runs the responsible design studio NowNext.

This article was commissioned by the Readymag team. Readymag is a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community.

Find more articles from the Ethical Issue series here.

Why user-centred design struggles with ethics was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We have released two new features that allow to fine-tune user mobile experience.

— Select from a list of mobile devices in Preview mode. This feature allows users to view the mobile version of their page as it will appear on a variety of devices.

Use this feature, for example, to make sure that your project’s most relevant details fit the first screen of all devices.

— You can now change the width of mobile layouts in the Editor using the Guides menu in the mobile viewport.

This will help you fine-tune your project for a particular device version. Content will scale up or down on devices with different screen proportions.

Learn more about working with mobile layouts in our Help section.

If you’d like to try out new Readymag features before everyone else, apply to become a beta tester.

Design digital publications and websites with Readymag.

Viewport customization for mobile was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dark patterns are online user experiences that are intentionally designed to trick users into taking unintended actions. These actions rarely benefit the user, but rather serve the owner of the site or app — almost always for financial gain. This article by graphic designer, artist and art educator Eileen MacAvery Kane will explore different types of experiences, the role and responsibility of designers, the confusing online landscape created by dark patterns, and what actions can be taken to prioritize users in the online design process.

The term “dark patterns” was coined in 2010 by UX specialist Harry Brignull, describing online experiences that are intentionally designed to trick users into unintended actions. These actions rarely benefit the user, but do benefit the owner of the site or app, and usually for financial gain. The presence of these patterns makes the current digital landscape one of “user beware.” In this context, even UX designers with the best of intentions can find themselves designing for the dark side — unless they actively take steps to avoid it.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably experienced dark patterns in your daily life. Here are some at the most common:

—Bait and Switch: Takes advantage of familiar actions and behaviors to substitute a new action, typically with some kind of in. This can create confusion or knee-jerk reactions, as when Microsoft’s upgrade to Windows 10 was initiated by clicking on an “X” — how you would normally close a window, not initiate an installation.

—Disguised Ads: Ads are usually located in specific places on a web page and include graphics and copy that clearly promote a product or service. However, sometimes they are designed to look like action buttons for obtaining content. It’s up to the user to fully read the instructions and ignore misleading graphics. Sites like Dafont.com, that graphic designers use to access free fonts, are a prime example.

—Roach Motel: Occurs when it becomes almost impossible to delete an account or unsubscribe from a mailing list. A prime example of this was when online donors for Trump weren’t aware that they were making weekly contributions to keep his struggling campaign afloat. One donor who lived on an income of less than $1,000 per month found out what they thought was a one-time donation of $500 had turned into $3,000 in less than 30 days.

—Friend Spam: Occurs when a product asks for social media permissions under false pretenses and then spams your friend list. LinkedIn was fined $13 million dollars for this as part of a class-action suit in 2015.

—Forced Continuity: Websites that offer free trials force users to submit a credit card to continue using a site for “free.”Failure to cancel within the allotted time frame leads to automated billing. On top of this, cancelling the subscription can be extremely difficult, akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Affinion Group is an international loyalty program manager that has paid millions of dollars in claims for unfair and deceptive trade practices. They face multiple class-action suits for misleading consumers using dark patterns.

These are just some of the “dark patterns” that have been identified — and more are being concocted every minute, which is hardly surprising given what a lucrative practice it can be. Users must educate themselves to successfully detect and avoid dark patterns. However, the onus shouldn’t just be on users — what is the role of the designer in dark patterns? Many believe ethics for graphic designers should be based on the idea of service, and that helping other people is a good thing to do. With knowledge and access to tools that can direct people’s attention and actions, we have a moral responsibility to avoid using dark patterns for ourselves or clients.

If we look specifically at the role of a UX/UI designer, the most basic user experiences are designed to help and direct. Experiences should be positive, easy, and intuitive. Like a carpenter building a set of stairs, the designer should build an experience that is supportive and safe. Dark patterns introduce a moral hazard to this mission, akin to building a set of stairs with booby traps that send users in a variety of confusing or pointless directions. A carpenter would surely be held accountable, as would the general contractor and architect; yet in the online environment we all currently inhabit, there is little accountability. Who should be held accountable? Should it be the individual UX/UI designer, or their employer? Top level management may not know the specifics of the dark patterns used to make an app or website more profitable. However, they are aware of the revenue being generated and prefer to turn a blind eye to the dark side of how it happens.

For users, there is a variety of private and public information on how to spot and avoid dark patterns. Cyber security and IT departments have created consumer awareness programs and professional development classes — these are increasingly made mandatory by employers. A non-profit organization, darkpatterns.org, features a “Hall of Fame” where they call out offenders. However, until there are legal and financial repercussions along with public shaming, change will be slow in coming.

There is reason to believe that more systematic prevention and punishment is on the way. California recently passed legislation banning dark patterns that trick users into giving away their personal data. The updated legislation is intended to strengthen the 2018 California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which gives Californians the right to say no to the sale of their personal information. Legislators are concerned that this option can be buried with dark patterns. By banning them, California is striving to make sure consumers will not be confused or misled when exercising their right to privacy in online experiences. Unfortunately, the new regulation only bans dark patterns connected to the consumer’s “opt-out” choice, but at least it’s a start. In Europe, CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) emphasized in their report, Shaping Choices in the Digital World, how dangerous manipulative and misleading interface design is and how it jeopardizes our rights and freedoms. Their report is a call to arms for the regulation of design, and a reminder of the need for informed and unambiguous consent.

Designers should adhere to a code of ethical conduct where transparency and respect for privacy are first and foremost. Next, they can educate themselves about dark patterns and examine their role in creating them by seeking out research on the topic and attending workshops. They can look for alternative solutions to offer their clients and impress upon them the advantages of building trust with users, rather than taking advantage. They should look at best practices created by apps like Duolingo, that allow users to sign up through their Google or Facebook accounts and quickly give them access to lessons; this stands in contrast to Rosetta Stone, who’s registration process requires several steps and payment information for a trial account.

Creating a customer-centric culture will build long-lasting relationships and engender trust. Over time, this will prove much more valuable than the short-term gains that result from dark patterns. While users can stem the tide, designers have a greater influence over the future of dark patterns, and whether or not the dark side will win.

Eileen MacAvery Kane is a U.S. artist, graphic designer, and art educator with over 30 years of experience. Eileen’s artwork explores our relationships with memories, family, community, spirituality, nature, and the environment through photography, drawing, and film. The interaction of these elements, and the sometimes unlikely pairing of them, is what interests her.

This article was commissioned by the Readymag team. Readymag is a digital design tool that helps create websites without coding. Readymag values creative freedom, appreciates the trust of its users, and aims to support the development of the global design community.

Find more articles from the Ethical Issue series here.

Dark patterns, the dark side of design was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The checkout flow in our e-commerce widget has changed. Store owners can enable Google Pay and Apple Pay, set up promo codes, change delivery settings and support recurring billing. Users will be now redirected to Stripe to complete their purchase instead of the sidebar checkout.

The change only affects shops created with Stripe Products. Shops using the now-defunct Stripe Orders system won’t be affected.

Learn more about Stripe integration here.

If you’d like to try out new Readymag features before everyone else, apply to become a beta tester.

Design digital publications and websites with Readymag.

Changes to checkout flow in Stripe-based online stores was originally published in Readymag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.