In a world where there are 67,000 Google Searches, 58,000 GBs of Internet traffic, 8,000 Tweets & 851 photos uploaded to Instagram every second, it’s hard to filter out all the rubbish news and useless updates. Luckily for you, good old LaserLines have done the hard work for you. You’re welcome.

We’ve decided that we should be the ones to supply you with the interesting and creative-thought-sparking updates from every corner of the design industry. All of this wonderful information will be supplied to you in monthly blog posts in which we “round-up” (see what we did there?) what we think is the most interesting and recent information for you to read on your lunch break or for a cheeky bit of reading before you start the days work grind.

IOS 12

Apple has recently released previews of their next major update for our idevices! There is some pretty cool new features such as the ability to now create an emoji of yourself which they’re calling “Memoji”. Apple is, however, slightly late to this feature as Samsung beat them to it not so long ago. There is also the ability to have 32 people in one FaceTime call. I dread to think what having 32 people in one call will be like. Maybe this will be the end of the conference calls and the start of conference FaceTimes? Click the image below to be taken to the Apple Website where you can view a more in-depth preview of what is to come with iOS 12.

15 common WordPress mistakes

WordPress is great, isn’t it! Open source, easy to update, and with thousands of well made plugins at your disposal, it is literally the Swiss Army Knife of CMS systems! Whilst we can design and build you an amazing WordPress based site, if your website takes too long to load then your users will give up trying to visit the site within seconds. Yep, seconds! Apparently just over half of us won’t wait three seconds for a website to load before we give up and then start looking at competitor sites.

This obviously means that one of your main goals when creating a website has to be speed. This is something we always work hard on at the end of creating a clients website (We offer web services by the way *cough*). We always work to get it down to under a second or at least under 2 seconds, but it all depends on the amount of content there is on your website and how it’s delivered. Click the image below to have a read of a fantastic post by Cloudways on the 15 most common WordPress mistakes and how to avoid them.

Personal branding guide for designers

Freelance designer or Agency, we all have a personal brand. It’s important to always keep updating your portfolio with what you feel is your best work right? It seems a lot of us forget about our personal branding and that it may come into effect when clients are choosing who to work with. Our personal branding has to show what we stand for and be personal to us at the same time. Understandably not everyone has the time to create their own branding or perhaps has hit that awful creative wall we all know too well. If you’re stuck in that position we offer Branding services to help you swing that wrecking ball and break the wall!

This post on Envato Tuts by Tomas Laurinavicius will talk you through why it’s important and the key points to remember when creating your personal brand. Click the image below to be taken to the post!

20th anniversary of the iMac

We’re a little late to be celebrating the exact date the iMac was first released (6 May 1998) but it is still the 20th Anniversary year of the iconic Apple iMac. You know, the one pretty much every designer uses? On 6th May 1998, Steve Jobs first announced the iMac which changed how people looked at computers and altered the industry. It stood out from the rest of the traditional desktop computers with its fused motherboard and CD-ROM, not to mention the crazy colours that it came in. Where is the colour on today’s iMacs, huh? The original iMac set Apple on a new course and threw them to the top of the leading tech companies where they’ve now been sat for years. Click the iMac below to take a trip down Memory lane!

Design inspiration

As designers, we always need to top up our banks of fabulous ideas. It’s also important to stay up to date with trends so we can keep our clients happy and looking great! One of the places we head for inspiration is Muzli, it’s a Medium blog that creates curated design inspiration posts every week. The posts feature work within UI / UX Design, Motion Design, Illustrations & Print Design. We also look elsewhere for inspiration but we can’t tell you all of our secrets in one go, haha.  Click the image below to be taken to their post for this week’s Design Inspiration!

That’s all from us for now. We’ll be posting these Round Ups every month, so keep an eye on our social media to stay up-to-date. Have we missed a trick? If so, please let us know your thoughts and any ideas on what we could add to our Rounds Ups via social media!