If you’re a writer, you probably know it has never been easier to share your works with the world. Thanks to the Internet and platforms like WordPress, you can easily create your writer’s website and reach your fans.
But, before you do that, you will need a great WordPress theme for writers. One that puts your work front and center and makes it easy for your audience to spend hours on your site. Luckily, there are plenty of free, quality WordPress themes designed with writers in mind and below, we’ve gathered the best of them.
You might also like this collection of free minimal WordPress themes or this collection of personal blog themes.
The Celsius theme has a white, minimal design and beautiful typography. It supports multiple post formats, slide-out navigation, comes with several widget areas, and bold featured images.
The Write theme is a clean WordPress theme for writers. It’s fully responsive and comes with several options for customizing your site and making this theme your own. You will find a number of different widget areas as well custom widgets, multilingual support, and several menu locations.
The Candor theme is yours for free when you sign up for Envato Elements subscription. The theme offers 4 different design variations for the blog page. It’s easy to customize thanks to Live Customizer. It’s also SEO optimized and comes with a number of custom widgets such as author profile and related posts.
Dansal is a child theme for one of the default WordPress themes, Twenty Sixteen. This child theme was designed especially for bloggers and passionate writers. It’s fully responsive and focuses on providing your visitors with the best possible user experience across all devices.
The Integer is a single-column theme with a minimal design. This makes it easier for your readers to focus on your content. It’s also responsive and supports various post type formats.
The Mallow is a classic and flexible theme that features a standard two-column design with bold typography and large featured images. It’s a great choice for an online magazine. The theme is easy to customize and fully responsive.
The Impose theme has a unique look and a minimal design. The homepage shows a very minimal list of posts and you can use featured page images to link to other pages on your site.
The Libre theme is perfect for longform posts. With a strong emphasis on typography and beautiful pull quotes, sharing your stories and other literary works with the world has never looked more elegant.
The Davis theme is another minimal theme for bloggers and writers. It’s very lightweight which means your website will load fast. On top of that, it comes with support for dark more and Gutenberg.
The Isola theme has plenty of whitespace that lets your content breathe and provides your visitors with a pleasant user experience. The theme can easily be customized using the Live Customizer and supports various post formats.
The Opta theme is perfect for writers as well as anyone else who wants a unique and minimal way of displaying their portfolio. The theme supports image carousel and is translation-ready.
The Qwerty theme is another longform theme for writers, authors, and bloggers. The theme is responsive and has beautifully styled blockquotes which are sure to grab the attention of your readers.
The Hew theme has a single-column layout and makes it easy to add a touch of your personality with a splash of color. With support for a custom social links menu, custom widgets, and beautiful typography, this theme will help you share your stories and connect with your audience.
Try the Reyl Lite theme if you want to wow your readers with stunning animations and minimal design. The theme is fully responsive and translation-ready.
As the name suggests, JustWrite WordPress theme helps you to just write and share your stories. Thanks to stunning featured images, you will be able to draw your audience in. It comes with the ability to create your own homepage layout with custom sections, ad spots, and plenty of customization options.
The Lingonberry theme features an elegant and responsive design. The theme displays your posts in a timeline fashion and it supports various post formats. It’s translation-ready and comes with full Gutenberg support.
The Audax theme is clean and modern theme that’s perfect for sharing longform writing. It’s fully responsive, lightweight, and easy to use. You can customize the colors to add a touch of your personality.
The Cols theme is a novel theme for WordPress that supports multiple post formats and uses a standard newspaper layout. The theme is easy to use, responsive, and easy to customize.
The Teletype is a minimalist blog theme, that offers advanced customization options and post layout masonry grid. It’s also fully responsive, has two menu locations, and comes with a custom front page.
The Writers theme offers a minimalistic and modern design. The theme is simple and easy to set up and you will get SEO optimised and SEO friendly theme with beautiful typography and plenty of customization options.
As you can see, there is no shortage of high-quality WordPress themes for writers. The best part about them is that they offer minimal design which puts your content front and center and improve the reading experience as they use elegant typography. They are also free to use so feel free to download them and try them out so you can see which one would be best suited for your writer’s website.
The post The 17 Best Free WordPress Themes for Writers appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
Our 50 Favorite CSS Libraries, Frameworks and Tools from 2019 – Save time and build something great with this CSS collection.
Front-End Performance Checklist 2020 – Everything you need to create a fast web experience, available in PDF, Apple Pages and MS Word.
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30 Seconds of Code – A collection of quick code snippets for your projects.
Memo App – Write notes in a GitHub Gist.
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Icons Library for Figma users – A free collection of vector icons for use with Figma.
The Screens 4 – Free PSD Mockup Template – Show off your design projects in style with this free template.
The post Weekly News for Designers № 522 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
Slideshows are a great way to grab your audience’s attention. Whether you’re making a business presentation or want a unique way to preserve precious moments, a slideshow can help you make it more memorable.
That’s why in this article, we’ve selected the best After Effects slideshow and gallery templates that will help you create a stunning video presentation.
More free After Effects templates: Titles, Animated Icons, Logo Reveals, Animated Fonts, Lower Thirds, Intros, and Openers.
Use this Contact Sheet Slideshow if you want a creative way to present your employees or team members. The template includes 10 placeholder images and you can easily add more if you need them.
The Old Slideshow template is another great choice if you’re looking for a retro-style gallery or slideshow. The template comes with full color control so you can easily customize the colors and drop in your photos.
Try the Wall Slideshow if you want a cool-looking, modern gallery to display your family photos and albums. The template is easy to customize and comes with full color control.
This Modern Zoom Telescopic Slideshow Video features a unique zoom effect pictured through a telescopic transition. You will also find multiple light leaks with sleek camera motion and a grand total of 6 image placeholders.
If you want a clean slideshow that you can use to present your family photos or if you need a clean slideshow for a corporate project, the Clean Slideshow template is the right choice. It features a stylish design, simple text animations, and smooth transitioning effects.
The first template on this list features a vintage-style slideshow of polaroids. It’s a great choice if you want to combine all your photos and create a truly unique photo album.
Parallax is an extremely popular animation effect used in a number of websites. Thanks to this template, you can use it in your videos as well. This template contains 9 image or video placeholders, and 9 text placeholders.
Try the Bold Slideshow if you want a bold and colorful look. This template includes a detailed help file, full color control so you can easily customize the colors to match your brand, and editable text layers.
The Modern Tile Slideshow is a great choice for professional and corporate videos. The slideshow template features a unique, tiled look and a 3D tile drop down effect to reveal your images and transition between them in 3D. The template also includes multiple light leaks.
This dynamic template features a modern and colorful style paired with minimal typography. It’s a great choice for both business and personal video slideshows. The template includes 23 media placeholders, 19 editable text layers and an intelligent color controller.
Consider the Stylish Spinning Columns Slideshow Template if you’re working on a high-end project. The template features 6 image placeholders paired with a modern spinning column transition effect and multiple light leaks.
This versatile template features an upbeat and cinematic style based on the popular travel intro trend. The template is easy to update and customize to suit your individual styles.
This After Effects template is perfect for corporate and business slideshows. The template features elegant slide transitions and includes a number of placeholder images. You can easily add more and customize text and colors to match your brand.
In this template, you will find 14 image placeholders that are arranged in a stunning grid layout. You can easily adjust the colors thanks to the intelligent color controller and replace the text with your own.
Use this template if you’re working a video that could use a fast-moving animation. This slideshow would be perfect at the beginning of a video to introduce different concepts that will be addressed in the video.
This Creative Slideshow template features a dynamic, fast-paced animation style and bold typography. The template would be perfect for a corporate video presentation and includes full color control as well as editable text layers.
Adding a slideshow to the beginning of your video can be a great way to give a preview of what you will talk about in the video. You can also use slideshows in the middle of the video to introduce a new segment or as a personal collage of your favorite moments.
This collection is a great starting point that you can use as an inspiration or to find the perfect After Effects slideshow template for your project.
The post 10 Free Slideshow & Gallery Templates for Adobe After Effects in 2021 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:
Procreate is an app designed for artists that makes it easy to create paintings, drawings, illustrations and other works of art while on-the-go. From quick sketches to animations, this app is truly versatile and is marketed as a mobile art studio. Though it comes with over 200 brushes, you can still add more to further add to the complexity of your work
That’s why we’ve put together a collection of brush sets that you can use in Procreate. And the best part about these brushes is that they’re free, so there’s no risk to you for trying them and you can feel that little bit freer to experiment.
Though we’ve researched these brushes and found them to be free, it’s still a good idea to read any license agreement or terms and conditions before using them in your commercial work. Better to be safe than sorry!
You can download Procreate here, and you may also like our round-up of Procreate tutorials.
Procreate Grain Brushes are pretty much exactly what they sound like: brushes that add a graininess to your work. These speckled, dusty-looking brushes can be used to add texture or age to a project.
The Comics and Halftone Procreate Brushes offer up those brushstrokes that have become so synonymous with comic books. They can be used to add the look of real paper or real brush strokes — like hash lines, for instance — to a drawing.
This Stippling Brush Set consists of 17 brushes in all: 9 stipple brushes, 3 liner brushes, and 5 texture brushes. These brushes are multi-faceted and can be used for just about any project you work on.
This set of 5 oil paint brushes are made to look and function just like real oil paints. The set includes True Oil, Small Liner, Bristle Brush, Super Wet, and Legacy Smudger.
Another great free Procreate brush are in these Grain Pencil and Copic Marker sets. They mimic the look and feel of real pencil strokes and real lines drawn with a Copic marker — the latter of which manages a level of buildable coverage that is stunning.
This collection of beauty brushes for Procreate were largely inspired by vintage beauty ads of the past/ The 20 brushes in this set were made using real cosmetic products, so maintain the dustiness, blend ability, and softness you’d expect from real makeup.
Here’s another small collection of Procreate brushes that will add texture and personality to your artwork. This set includes 6 brushes in all, including 2 Gouache, 2 oil paint, and 2 watercolor brushes. Each perform beautifully and are solid brushes to have in your kit.
The Flora Vegetation Brushes is a massive set that includes a whopping 91 brushes! All of these brushes are designed to mimic the textures, weights, and tone of things you’d find in nature. A must-have for creating nature scenes or even drawing backgrounds.
The Very Dry Gouache Brush lives up to its name. This brush offer a super dry texture that makes every single brush stroke visible. This can be a great thing if that’s the artistic style you’re going for. Plus, it reveals different texture depending on how hard you press.
Here’s another set of brushes for Procreate that center around nature. This natural brush set includes 20 brushes in all and consists of pencils, chalks, and shaders.
The Free Floral Stamp brushes consist of 5 different brushes that help you to capture the look of petals, leaves, vines, and more.
The Ballpoint Pen brush mimics the look of a real ballpoint pen, offering fine strokes that you can layer to build shadows and contrast by applying greater pressure and through the use of hatching.
This collection of art brushes includes 21 different brushes for imitating real painting techniques. They have naturally for both wet and dry looks.
If you want to draw realistic hair in Procreate, you’d benefit greatly from using this HairBrush set. With them, you can create straight or curly hair and achieve a variety of textures.
Stripe is a single brush that’s well worth the download. It’s simply a smooth calligraphy or lettering brush and it responds to pressure and layering. A fantastic choice for adding script to your work.
This collection of geometry brushes includes 34 different brushes that make it easy to add shapes, design motifs, and patterns to your work. They could even be used creatively for shading.
The Cardboard Procreate brush has a semi-streaky look that can be used for a variety of lettering projects, from signs to business cards to logos.
Here’s a collection of 7 anime bokeh brushes that are certain to add flair to your next drawing. And they can be used in a number of ways to achieve different effects depending on the layer style you use.
The Comic Ink Brush Set for Procreate includes 16 inking and SFX brushes for creating comic books from scratch. From fine liners to gradients, you have everything you need here to get started.
This collection of swatches aren’t brushes per say, but they are still extremely useful for creating artwork in Procreate. With these, choosing colors should no longer be an issue.
This is a nice collection of lettering brushes that are a bit unusual and that’s honestly appreciated. There’s shrub brush, a wood grain brush, and even a worm brush!
Here’s a collection of 48 (yes, you read that correctly) brushes for Procreate that let you mimic wet media. There’s too many watercolor effects to name here, so you’ll definitely want to download it for yourself.
Need marker brushes? This set offers 2 options: one is an opaque marker and the other is a variable opacity marker. They offer irregular coverage that looks more natural.
This collection of texture brushes mimic the look of sand. This set consists of 6 brushes that can be used to add texture to just about any drawing.
This free Procreate brush features a natural bristle brush for creating the look of brushstrokes on a linen canvas. It also makes use of the wet blending feature in Procreate to mimic a realistic painting experience.
Matt’s Painting Set is described as an all-purpose brush set for those using the gouache painting style. Add a fine lines, texture, grit, or even airbrush effects with this free set.
The Cheap Fine-Liner Brush is a recreation of a 0.6 technical pen. It’s precise and allows you to create fine line drawings or to fill in tiny details. A great addition to any brush collection.
The Snow Brushes for Procreate is a set of 16 original brushes that offer a quick way to create snow effects in your art. From fine flurries to full blizzards, each brush makes it easier to create a snowy scene.
The Pencil, Inking, Painting Basic Brush Set consists of 7 brushes for creating comic art from scratch. It’s got all that you need to conceptualize a piece from the sketch phase through painting.
Now that you’ve had a chance to browse this collection of free brush sets for the Procreate app, hopefully you’ll have either already downloaded a few or have put together a nice short list to revisit. These free brushes make it easy to add precision or texture to your work, without having to create designs from scratch. Plus, they add the dimension your work needs without having to add cost. All in all, this is a solid of collection of Procreate brushes that can be used in a variety of types of art. Happy creating!
The post 25 Free Sets of Brushes for Procreate App appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
Procreate is a fantastic mobile app that makes it easy to draw on your iPad. But it’s really so much more than that. Not only can you create drawings from scratch, but you can also make detailed illustrations, paintings, graphic designs, and more.
There are tons of tools included within Procreate that make the task of creating art more streamlined and just overall easier. For instance, you can import brushes that add new textures and designs to the mix. You can use templates to get ahead start.
Whether you’ve never used Procreate before or you want to learn about how to get better, you’ve come to the right place. This collection of Procreate tutorials consists of a nice mix of walkthroughs for beginners and more experienced artists looking to improve their skills within the app.
Feel free to take a look. Hopefully, one of these will set you off in a whole new creative direction.
You can download Procreate here. You may also like our round-up of free Procreate brushes.
Here’s another Procreate tutorial for beginners that covers all the basics and gives you a good jumping off point into more advanced techniques.
In this Procreate tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a digital illustration from scratch.In following along with the artist’s process of drawing a woman’s face, you’ll learn how to use all of the tools included in Procreate.
This YouTube tutorial by Chelsea Ekberg walks you through the process of creating 3D lettering in Procreate. It goes from the sketch phase all the way through completion, so if you’ve curious as to how to do 3D lettering in this app, this is a good choice.
If calligraphy is an artistic pursuit of yours, you’ll definitely want to check out this painted calligraphy tutorial by Dawn Nicole. It offers written step-by-step instructions with video supplements for creating calligraphy brushstrokes and using stamps and brushes to create a paint splatter effect.
If you want to achieve a traditional painting look in Procreate, this is the tutorial for you! This digital painting walkthrough is glossy and interesting, and the techniques learned here can be applied to many different art pieces.
This Procreate tutorial is by Bardot Brush and offers an intro course on how to draw on the iPad in general, using Procreate. It covers Procreate tools as well as techniques with drawing in digital spaces.
Now, in this Procreate tutorial, you’ll learn the basics of how to draw in the app, of course, but also various methods of inking, coloring, and shading.
Once you’ve mastered the basics of Procreate, you can learn some more advanced techniques, like drawing with masks. This tutorial shows you how to use masks and how they can be applied to add greater depth and texture to your work.
In this tutorial by Brad Colbow, you’ll learn how to coloring in a comic using Procreate. He covers the fill and gradient tools as well as how to combine layers to achieve a desired effect.
In this video, Stayf Draws shows you how to paint shadows using alpha lock in Procreate. This tutorial is super specific in what it covers but it obviously can be applied to any number of projects.
Here’s another tutorial about creating masks but the approach is slightly different. This is a well-presented, step-by-step guide for creating layer masks in a way that is quite similar to doing so in Photoshop.
This YouTube tutorial by Haze Long shows you how to paint a portrait in Procreate. Though this tutorial doesn’t teach you how to draw, it does show you how to use the tools of Procreate to achieve a painted portrait look.
Here’s a quick and fun tutorial that shows you how to draw a piece of cake in Procreate using a gouache style. It follows the process from sketch all the way through painting, shading, and texturizing.
Here’s another lettering tutorial for Procreate that walks you through the true-blue basics of getting started with the app as well as how to do lettering on the iPad in general.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn all about how to color hair using Procreate. This is a good primer on digital coloring in general, but the specific focus on hair will really appeal to illustrators of all types.
If the whole concept of layers in Procreate are confusing to you, this tutorial walks you through what they are, how they work, and how you can use them in your work. It’s a combination of written and video instruction, which I always think is super helpful for later reference.
If you want to achieve a super cool looking black light effect in your digital paintings, this video tutorial will show you how to achieve it from start to finish. Can you imagine the creepy cool effects you could add to your next piece?
Here’s a really specific tutorial, but again, the techniques you learn here could easily be applied to other projects. This video shows you how to draw a cactus in Procreate. That’s it. But the end result is vivid and fun!
If you’re struggling with using imported art in Procreate, this tutorial shows you the steps to take to color the lines on imported images. This is a tip that could be applied to every art style, too.
Here’s the first video in a series on how to make art with Procreate. It’s a basic primer of the tools and features of the app but it also shows you the actual process of conceptualizing and beginning on an art piece.
In this video, Holly Pixels shows you to how import Procreate swatches files into the app with minimal fuss. Best of all, it shows you the proper way to do this so you can use these swatches in all your next projects.
The symmetry tool is a real lifesaver, and this tutorial shows you how to use it in Procreate. Learning how to do this is a real time saver when you’re wanting to create patterns or intricate designs, but you don’t want to have to copy them over and over by hand.
Budding comic book artist? This video tutorial shows you how to create a comic in Procreate from your very first steps to the final coloring.
Finally, we have a tutorial for creating stunning floral designs in Procreate. These instructions show you how to create florals and leaves and then how to arrange them to create a full display.
Procreate is a robust mobile app, so it’s always heartening to see the makers of an app come through with detailed tutorials themselves. The company’s YouTube channel offers up everything you need to get started with the app, so be sure to check it out.
Procreate is definitely an app you should check out if you haven’t done so already. It’s robust and offers a myriad of features you can use on your iPad to create beautiful works of art from anywhere at any time. And this collection of tutorials should make it a snap to get more familiar with the app and to learn a few more advanced techniques as well.
The post 25 Procreate Tutorials for Drawings, Illustrations, Paintings, and More appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
