Backgrounds

Backgrounds

Aesthetic backgrounds: how to make your own

5 min read

Downloaded backgrounds are shared by everyone who found the same page. Making your own takes an afternoon, and the result matches your phone, your desktop and your posts.

Backgrounds

Presentation backgrounds that don’t fight your slides

5 min read

Most slide backgrounds are chosen for the title slide and then suffer through forty content slides. Design a small family instead: loud where it can be, quiet where people need to read.

Backgrounds

Zoom virtual backgrounds that look professional

5 min read

A virtual background sits behind your face for hours a week, seen by everyone you meet. A calm, well-placed one looks intentional; a busy one makes the software's edges and your hair fight all meeting.

Backgrounds

Gradient wallpaper for desktop and phone: codes and how to make one

5 min read

A gradient is the ideal wallpaper: no details to fight your icons, nothing to tire of, and colour that changes the feel of a whole screen. Here is how to make one that stays smooth at full size.

Backgrounds

Phone wallpaper size, and how to design for the lock screen

5 min read

Most phone wallpapers are designed at the wrong shape, then cropped, zoomed and covered by a giant clock. A few minutes of planning fixes all three.

Backgrounds

Website hero background: gradients that look rich and load fast

5 min read

The hero is where a site makes its first impression, and where it most often gets slow. A gradient hero can be both the richest and the lightest thing on the page, if you build it the right way.

Backgrounds

Abstract backgrounds: shapes, fields and flow

5 min read

Abstract backgrounds carry mood without telling a story, which is why they sit behind so many headlines, slides and product pages. Choosing the right kind of abstraction is most of the work.

Backgrounds

Minimalist backgrounds with just enough going on

5 min read

Flat colour can look unfinished; busy colour can look desperate. The best minimalist backgrounds sit just between: one hue, a whisper of light, a little texture, and room for everything else.

Backgrounds

Product photo backgrounds that flatter the product

5 min read

A product photo background has one job: make the thing in front of it look its best. Colour, lightness, shadow and consistency do most of that work, and none of them need a studio.

Backgrounds

Poster design: backgrounds that carry the headline

5 min read

A poster gets a glance from someone walking past. The background decides whether that glance lands on the headline or slides off the wall.

Backgrounds

Event backdrop design: stage screens that read from the back row

5 min read

A stage screen is the biggest design at any event, seen from thirty rows back, through stage lighting and on every photo. It needs different rules from anything made for a laptop.

Backgrounds

Email header design with gradients

5 min read

An email header is the first thing someone sees after the subject line, in an inbox you don't control. Designing it well means planning for images off, dark mode and small screens from the start.

Backgrounds

LinkedIn background photo ideas that say what you do

5 min read

The banner behind your profile photo is the largest image on your LinkedIn page, and most people leave it blank or fill it with a stock skyline. A few words and a considered background do far more.

Backgrounds

Stream backgrounds, panels and offline screens

5 min read

A channel looks professional when its offline screen, panels, banner and scene backgrounds are clearly one family. Here is how to build that set, at the right sizes, without fighting your encoder.

Backgrounds

Pitch deck design: a look that holds for twenty slides

5 min read

Most decks look good for three slides and fall apart by slide eight. The fix is a system: a handful of slide types, each with a background that knows its job.

Backgrounds

Background textures: grain, paper, fabric and glass

4 min read

Texture is what makes a flat screen colour feel like a surface. Used faintly, it adds warmth and hides banding; used heavily, it becomes noise. Here is how to find the line.

Backgrounds

Blurred backgrounds: soft focus done right

5 min read

Blur pushes a background back so the subject or the words come forward. Too little looks accidental, too much in the wrong place looks cheap. Here is how to judge it.

Backgrounds

Dark mode design: backgrounds, colour and contrast

5 min read

Dark mode is not light mode inverted. Surfaces, text, accents and gradients all need their own values, and the rules are different from the ones you know.