Design Shack

20+ Best Photoshop Smoke Brushes
20 Professional PowerPoint Templates (And How to Use Them)
Data Visualization Design: Tools, Examples & Tips

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 10:00 AM PDT

Have you ever wondered how designers create those beautiful smoke effects in posters and photo manipulations? Well, all you need is a quality Photoshop smoke brush and you can create those same effects all by yourself.

A smoke brush can be quite useful on many different occasions, whether it's for adding a bit of artificial smoke to a cup of coffee, creating a fog-like effect, or adding a stylish fading effect for a poster.

We browsed the web and handpicked a collection of the best Photoshop smoke brushes you can use to create all kinds of smoke effects. These will be great additions to your arsenal of graphic elements.

87 Abstract Motion Smoke Brushes Pack

This collection includes 87 unique abstract Photoshop brushes with creative motion-based smoke designs. It features brushes with different shapes, styles, and sizes with resolutions starting at 1085px.

20 Smoke Photoshop Brushes

This bundle comes with 20 different Photoshop smoke brushes featuring various styles and designs that are perfect for making photo manipulation effects, poster designs, and more. It includes brush versions for both newer versions of Photoshop as well as for versions lower than Photoshop CS5.

109 Abstract Smoke Art Photoshop Brushes

A bundle full of Photoshop smoke brushes featuring different styles of designs that are made specifically for creating artistic effects, poster art, and portrait designs. The pack includes 109 variations of brushes in 2500px resolution and comes with an additional 10 creative Photoshop smoke gradients as well.

60 Real Smoke Photoshop Stamp Brushes

This bundle includes 60 unique stamp brushes for Photoshop featuring various styles of smoke shapes and designs. The brushes come in high-resolution, allowing you to use them with poster designs, flyers, and many other graphic designs.

100 Cloudy Smoke Photoshop Stamp Brushes

This massive collection of Photoshop brushes includes 100 different cloud smoke brushes that are ideal for crafting backgrounds and other effects for modern graphic designs. The brushes are compatible with Photoshop CS2 and higher.

Free 200+ Thin Smoke Brushes

This is a collection of free smoke Photoshop brushes featuring 215 different brush designs. The brushes in this pack feature thin smoke trails layouts. Which are most suitable for creative effect designs.

Smoke – Photoshop Brushes

Whilst not the most elaborately named, Smoke provides a wide range of Photoshop smoke brushes for a wide range of creative applications. Each brush comes in a distinct style and is quick and easy to apply onto your visual canvas.

19 High-Quality Photoshop Smoke Brushes

With this collection of smoke brushes, you'll be able to create many unique designs such as background effects, art, and stylish presentations. It comes with 19 unique Photoshop smoke brushes in sizes up to 5000px resolutions. The brushes are compatible with Photoshop CS2 and higher.

Price: $4

50+ HD Smoke Brushes & Transparent PNG

To make creating smoke effects easier, this bundle comes with both Photoshop brushes and transparent PNG variants of the smoke designs. It includes more than 50 different smoke Photoshop brushes and their PNG versions in 3000 x 2000px resolution.

Price: $10

21 Real Photoshop Smoke Brushes

This bundle of Photoshop smoke brushes comes with 21 unique brush designs that have been inspired by real smoke movements. These brushes come in 3000px resolution and they are compatible with all Photoshop versions, from Photoshop CS3 and all the way up to Photoshop CC.

Price: $3

25 Creative Photoshop Smoke Brushes

A set of high-resolution Photoshop brushes featuring 25 different variations. It includes different brushes for creating all types of print designs, digital artworks, backgrounds, and much more. It's compatible with Photoshop CS6 and the lower versions of the app as well.

Price: $4

65 Free Ink & Smoke Splatter Brushes

Another collection of free Photoshop brushes featuring a mix of ink and smoke splatter brush designs. The pack includes 65 free brushes that are compatible with Photoshop CS2 and higher.

39 Photoshop Smoke Brushes

The brushes in this bundle are ideal for creating photo manipulation effects and various backgrounds. According to its creator, the brushes work well when they're used in separate layers and they look great when used with the eraser tool. The pack includes 39 brushes compatible with Photoshop CS3 and above.

Price: $4

25 Smoke Photoshop Brushes Abr Vol.2

Featuring 25 unique Photoshop smoke brushes, this bundle aims to help you craft creative effects, backgrounds, and stylish designs with smoky flows. The brushes can be used stacked to create amazing effects and comes in 5000x3000px resolution.

Price: $6

50 Abstract Smokes Brushes ABR

This bundle comes with 50 Photoshop smoke brushes all with abstract designs and flowing effects for using with various design projects. Inspired by real smoke effects, the brushes come in high-resolution to allow you to resize them to whichever size you want.

Price: $6

50 Modern Smoke Brushes Brushes

Another big bundle of smoke Photoshop brushes with more than 50 variations of smoky brush designs. This pack features artistic brush designs that you can use to create creative effects, styles, and photo manipulations. The brushes are available in 2500px resolution and higher.

Price: $6

Free Realistic Smoke Photoshop Brushes

This free Photoshop smoke brush pack can be used with various designs from creating realistic smoke trails to crafting unique effects and more. It comes in 4 different brush designs.

Light Smoke Waves Photoshop Brushes

Light Smoke Waves is a professionally designed collection of Photoshop smoke brushes that provides an unparalleled amount of customization and functionality, with each brush coming with finite detail rendering, high-resolution, and unmatched versatility.

Cigarette Smoke Brushes Pack

Cigarette smoke is the classical smoke style, employed in film noir and many other genres to drive a defining style that is hard to walk by. Now with the Cigarette Smoke package, you'll have access to over seventy different cigarette smoke brushes to help you bring the same style to the page with ease.

Neosmoke Photoshop Brushes

Neosmoke is a collection of Photoshop smoke brushes that have been designed to create a unique inverted color effect with smoke designs. The bundle includes 10 brushes in 3000px resolution. They seem perfect for creating unique backgrounds and duo-tone smoke effects.

Price: $4

Abstraktt Shapes Photoshop Brushes V2

Even though these brushes aren't technically smoke brushes, they do have a certain design that makes them look quite like smoke motions and flows. You can use them to create photo manipulations, portrait effects, posters, backgrounds, and much more. The bundle includes 10 different brushes.

Price: $5

20 Photoshop Cloud Brushes

Clouds and smoke have very similar features. You can use this bundle to create stylish effects with a mix of smoky cloud designs. The bundle includes 20 unique Photoshop cloud brushes that are compatible with Photoshop CS2 and up to Photoshop CC.

Price: $4

20 Fog Photoshop Brushes

Create stylish smoky fog effects using this pack of Photoshop fog brushes. It comes with 20 unique brushes featuring realistic foggy designs in 2500px resolution. The brushes can be easily customized to create authentic artworks as well.

Price: $6

We also made a list of the best Photoshop brushes of 2018. Check it out for more inspiration.

20 Professional PowerPoint Templates (And How to Use Them)

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 07:00 AM PDT

Let's face it, not everyone has the time or energy to design a pixel-perfect PowerPoint slideshow for every presentation they make. This is where professional PowerPoint templates can be a live-saver!

Whether you're in charge of designing a slideshow for the weekly team meeting, or a freelancer pitching to clients, designing unique and attractive PowerPoint presentations for each meeting can be a painful task—even for a pro.

Well, let's change that, shall we? In this post, we're going to show you a very simple way you can make stunning presentations using professional PowerPoint templates that will knock your client's socks off.

Why Use Premium PowerPoint Templates?

As you know, PowerPoint comes with a few default pre-made templates made by Microsoft. While these templates make it easier for you to start designing your presentations, the ugly outdated designs of those slides will only make your presentations look less professional.

Premium PowerPoint templates, however, are crafted by professional designers and they help make your presentations stand out from the crowd. Here are some of the benefits of using professional PowerPoint templates.

Easily customizable without expert design knowledge
More attractive and modern slide designs
Includes multiple choices of color schemes
Includes custom vector graphics, icons, charts, and more
Drag and drop editing with image placeholders
And much more

How To Use A PowerPoint Template

Using and customizing premium PowerPoint templates are also quite easy. We'll show you how it's done in a few simple steps.

Step 1: Download the PowerPoint Template

Once you buy and download the PowerPoint template you'll have a .ZIP file on your computer. Right-click on this file and UNZIP it.

The unzipped folder will include a .PPTX ( or Microsoft PowerPoint) file. This is the template file you'd want to use to make a slideshow.

Step 2: Open the PowerPoint Template

To load the template in PowerPoint, simply double-click on the downloaded .PPTX template file.

This will open the template in PowerPoint as a new slideshow.

Step 3: Customize the PowerPoint Template

Once the template is opened in PowerPoint, you can edit it to change colors, text, images, and customize the entire design however you like.

It's that easy.

Best Professional PowerPoint Templates

Much like most quality things in our lives, you can't get premium templates for free. But, there are many professional templates you can download for an affordable price.

We handpicked a few of the affordable professional PowerPoint templates you can download for a single price. These templates are from Envato Elements, where you get unlimited access to over 800,000 design elements for a single subscription.

MOLLI – Brand Guidelines PowerPoint Template

Molli is a professional PowerPoint template you can use to design brand guidelines presentations for modern businesses and corporate agencies. It features 28 unique slides with stylish designs. You can also customize the slide layouts with different fonts, colors, and images as well.

Venture – Pitch Deck Professional PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is perfect for creating pitch decks for presenting startups, projects, and new ideas. The template includes a set of modern slide designs you can customize however you like. It's also available in PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides versions.

TEXICO – Technology Professional PowerPoint Template

Texico is a unique PowerPoint template that comes with mixed modern and creative design elements. It's perfect for professional and company presentations related to technology. The template includes 30 unique slides.

Tecwin – Business & Professional PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template is ideal for designing business presentations with a modern approach. It includes 40 unique slide layouts that you can customize with a few clicks to add your own colors and images.

Tandem – Colorful Business PowerPoint Template

Tandem is a colorful and attractive PowerPoint template that's most suitable for creative agencies. You can use it to craft professional presentations to showcase portfolios, brand profiles, and much more. It includes 39 slide layouts.

Orizqi – Brand Identity PowerPoint Template

A minimalist PowerPoint template for designing professional presentations for corporations and brands. This template comes with 40 unique slides you can use to craft brand identity slideshows. It features image placeholders, editable shapes, and vector graphics to let you easily customize the design.

STARTES – Clean Professional PowerPoint Template

This beautiful PowerPoint template comes with a set of clean slide layouts. They are perfect for crafting presentations for modern businesses, creative agencies, and even freelance professionals. It includes 30 slide layouts with editable designs.

Volo – Creative Agency PowerPoint Template

Volo is a colorful PowerPoint template designed with creative agencies in mind. It can be used to make portfolio presentations and brand profile slideshows for various types of agencies. The template also lets you choose from 30 slide designs to craft the perfect presentation.

ARKNAR – Simple & Professional PowerPoint Template

Aknar is another clean and minimal PowerPoint template you can use to design professional presentations. It includes 30 unique slide layouts you can customize to fit your brand and business. The slides feature editable graphics, shapes, and image placeholders as well.

Professional B2B Marketing & Sales PowerPoint Template

If you're a professional working for a B2B brand, this PowerPoint template is a must-have for you. It's designed with B2B marketing presentations in mind and it comes with more than 60 unique slides with fully editable layouts.

Be. – Professional PowerPoint Template

Be is a modern and elegant PowerPoint template that comes with more than 125 unique slides featuring 550 icons, editable graphics, customizable colors, maps, vectors, device mockups, and much more. This template is perfect for making all kinds of business, creative, and professional presentations.

Simpleco – Professional PowerPoint Template

Simpleco is a professional PowerPoint template featuring slides full of visual elements. The template includes 93 unique slides with animated transitions and effects. It's also available in 2 different color schemes and 2 aspect ratios. You can easily customize the template to change its colors, fonts, and images as well.

Blues – Professional PowerPoint Template

Blues PowerPoint template comes with colorful graphics, shapes, and stylish designs. This template is ideal for making presentations for conferences and events. It includes lots of 3D graphics, vector icons, infographics, and more for creating an effective presentation that captures your audience.

Creative – Professional PowerPoint Template

Just as the name suggests, this PowerPoint template features a very creative slide design that will truly make your presentation stand out. It comes with 25 unique slides that are also available in 5 different color schemes, making a total of 125 slides. All of the graphics and icons in this presentation template are fully customizable as well.

Power – Professional PowerPoint Template

Power is a modern PowerPoint template that features a design that focuses on highlighting your presentation points with large images. It features lots of image placeholders for easily placing your own images and it comes with 100 unique slides in 12 different color schemes.

Watercolor – Professional PowerPoint Template

If you're looking for a more colorful PowerPoint template to design a visually appealing presentation, this template will come in handy. It comes with 20 master slides filled with bright and colorful watercolor graphics and design. You can easily customize the master slides to make your own slides as well.

Innovation – Professional PowerPoint Template

Innovation is a multipurpose PowerPoint template you can use to create all kinds of presentations, including business, creative portfolio, investor pitch decks, startup presentations, and more. The template features 60 unique slides, customizable colors, drag and drop image placeholders, and lots of editable vector graphics.

Minimal Sale – Professional PowerPoint Template

Minimal Sale is a professional PowerPoint template designed for product and business-related presentations. It features a set of creative slides featuring minimal designs crafted to highlight your product, app, or designs in a professional way. The template also features lots of charts, graphs, infographics, and diagrams as well.

Proposal – Professional PowerPoint Template

This PowerPoint template has been designed specifically for making presentations for pitching startups, products, and presenting proposals to clients and investors. It's a must-have for businesses and freelancers. The template includes 30 unique slides which are available in 5 different color schemes.

Boeotian – Professional PowerPoint Template

Boeotian is a unique PowerPoint template featuring a bold and dark color theme. It comes with more than 50 unique slides with stylish layouts, attractive colors, and shapes. The template also features lots of 3D infographics, vector icons, and other editable elements. You can also easily change its colors and text to your preference.

For more inspiration, check out our collection of the best PowerPoint templates.

Data Visualization Design: Tools, Examples & Tips

Posted: 26 Apr 2021 05:09 AM PDT

Data visualization is one of those design trends or techniques that just seems to keep growing in use and value. From simple infographics to full data stories, this informational format is almost everywhere.

And for good reason: A good data visualization makes complex content that much easier to understand.

Here, we are breaking down data visualization tools, examples, tips so you can design with data successfully.

What is Data Visualization?

When you start talking about data visualization, it's best to start at the beginning. What, really, is data visualization?

A data visualization is any graphical representation of information – often numerical or on a map – with graphics, charts, or in another digestible format.

Data visualizations are useful for making complex information, such as lots of numbers, easier to understand quickly or at a glance. Not only do data visualizations make information easier to understand, but they can also make information more accessible.

You might see data formatted in graphics such as:

Line chart
Bar chart
Histogram
Scatterplot
Boxplot
Pareto chart
Pie chart
Area chart
Control chart
Run chart
Stem-and-leaf display
Cartogram
Small multiple
Sparkline
Table
Marimekko chart
Timeline
Dashboard

Data Visualization Design Tools

It's true. Designing data visualizations can be complicated and time-consuming.

The good news is there are a lot of tools that help you create professional elements and take a lot of time and hassle out of the process. Different tools might work better for certain types of data or graphic representation, so it's important to look for the tool that works best for your application and use.

Here are 10 to consider:

Tableau: A tool that combines data visualization and analytics with everything you need built right in for charts and maps to data elements. Paid.
FusionCharts: This premium tool is designed to created responsive charts, dashboards, and more at scale. Paid.
Datawrapper: This tool is a great data starter with the ability to create charts, maps, and tables using the same tool. Free version with more custom paid options.
Plotly: This business-focused data tool uses AI and data science to showcase your information. Pricing varies on use.
Highcharts: Designed for interactivity with rich graphics, this tool is made for developers who want to integrate rich data. Free for personal use.
ChartBlocks: Code-free toll that lets you import to create visualizations with dozens of chart types to work with. Free and paid versions.
Infogram: Create more complex data visualizations using drag and drop tools and collaborate on designs in real-time. Free and paid options.
Google Charts: A simple chart builder to create rich and interactive options from a starter gallery. Free and open source.
Chart.js: A simple and flexible JavaScript chat building tool with eight chart options on an HTML5 canvas. Free and open source.

Data Visualization Design Examples

Make sure to click through each of these examples to see how interactivity drives data visualization design.

Every Solar Eclipse Happening in Your Lifetime

There's so much data in this globe image with lines to represent time and viewing opportunities for solar eclipses. Originally created in 2017, by The Washington Post, this information is timeless.

Selfiecity

A massive project that looks at "selfie styles" from different cities. The data set is all images and provides a glimpse into what we look like.

Age Pyramid

This is a chart that uses a massive amount of information to show the changing "age pyramid" to show age demographics.

Mister Roger's Cardigans of Many Colors

Showing change over time, this data visualization shows a combination of time and color of the sweater Mister Rodgers wore on his television show between 1979 and 2001. Most notable is how color preference changed over time.

NBA Shooting Percentages

Sports data is a great place to use visualizations to show comparative analysis. The color element here also helps make a large complex chart easier to understand.

Data Visualization Design Tips

So how do you do it? Creating a great data visualization can be a design challenge.

It starts with an understanding of the story you are trying to tell. Then thinking about it analytically. How can I show this information? What can I do to make it easy to understand?

Don't feel like you have to use all the data. Use only what helps tell your story.
Design for quick comprehension. The data visualization itself is usually enough. Don't over-design surrounding elements. Keep it simple.
Take care with labels and callouts. Do they have a purpose? Sometimes hover state and tooltips are a better option.
Use plenty of white space. The more complex the information, the more white space you might need to make it look and feel less intimidating.
Make it responsive. (This is where the right tools come in.)
Don't get crazy with color. Monotone palettes can show change without looking like a rainbow.
Avoid odd stacking of text. A normal, horizontal placement is always the most readable.
Order with care so that charts show change. The scale and axis also matter. Take care that you can see the difference when picking these elements.
Think about the kind of chart or map or table or visual that helps tell the story. Think beyond bar charts.
Don't forget titles, sourcing, and microcopy that supports the visual story. Sometimes it only takes a simple headline, such as the Mister Rogers example. Other times, you might need a full paragraph to explain the information.

Conclusion

Data visualizations are an amazing tool for designers because they can help simplify complex information and provide value.

While they are innately complicated the best data visualization designers have a knack for breaking it all down into something useful that tells a story at a glance.