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The Brief has been a product-first company since day one. We are always looking for new ways to improve our product and make our users' lives easier, and because this is a never-ending quest, 2019 was a busy year for us.
We launched features like Photoshop Integration, Design for Print, Smart Resize, and many more. We even kicked-off a new podcast series: The Drag & Drop Show.
And what better way to close out the year in style thanbyannouncing one last round of product updates?
Below you can find all the new and improved The Brief features:
We are excited to roll out a brand-new powerful feature: The Brief Elements.
Packed with original content and delivering no less than +3000 new visual elements, this functionality has one main goal: to help you achieve more with less effort.
The new library operates as a directory and it comprises all the major visual elements categories available in The Brief, such as Images, Shapes, Widgets, and Brand Logos, while also introducing three new content groups: Icons,Illustrations, and Lines.
All visuals included in the library assemble into curated categories, so you don’t have to waste time and browse through irrelevant content. If you’d like to save even more time, you can now use the search bar and filter the results by file type.
We aimed at developing a highly functional and robust library, so we put a lot of thought process into it. Before getting to work, there was one big question we had to address: What elements we, as marketers or designers, use most?
We then had a few brainstorming sessions with our team and lined up an extensive list of the most sought-after design elements.
Finally, we got to work and created over 3000 new pieces of visual content, out of which over 1000 are unique design shapes, forms, and outlines, 1500 are icons that spread out in 20 categories, more than 600 are original illustrations, and we also have 80 end-to-end scalable, non-distorting lines and arrows.
Icons are elements that often come in handy for designers. By using icons, you can deliver messages effortlessly and succeed in attracting the attention of users.
A rule of thumb when using icons in design is to choose the items that people are familiar with. In case you have a heavy hand over decision-making, or you’d like to focus on something else, our tool can now help.
With the new upgrade, there are now and +1000 fully customizable icons—that’s ten times more icons than we had before. The icons are distributed in over 20 categories, such as Promotions & Sales, Health & Medical, Food & Services, Educational & Learning, and more.
These days, digital illustrations are everywhere. If you take a good look at design trends, you’ll see that most of them center around custom-made illustrations and flat pattern mixes.
But what is it about illustrations that makes them so efficient in visual communication?
We believe it’s the originality and spice they bring to design—although custom-made illustrations require lots of creativity and effort, they deliver many benefits and can provide adapted support to copy. Illustrations are also highly-efficient in storytelling and can enhance the emotional impact of design in general.
With the new version, we put forward over 600 handcrafted original illustrations, with more to come soon. There are also nine illustration categories, such as Fashion, Software & Technology, Real Estate, Health. You can use them as they are or customize them entirely in no time.
Lines can give you the false impression that they're basic elements in design. In fact, lines are extremely versatile and they can be used in various circumstances to emphasize the message you want to send.
Now, you can say goodbye to creating lines and arrows in other design tools because, in The Brief, you get access to 80 new creative variations of lines and arrows.
These elements are end-to-end scalable, non-distorting, and flexible.
They are going to help you create powerful content, such as infographics, mind maps, flows, and routings, and use them as connection or separators.
Productivity is the core of our tool and its features, therefore we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the design process and enhance the time taken to complete a visual.
We hope that the next two productivity features will help in this respect:
When it comes to design, we’re not playing favorites, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. Don’t let your favorite elements get lost in the shuffle—be it images, shapes,illustrations, or lines, you can now put a star on the elements that you plan to use later, or that you like. You can also search and filter the items from your Favorites directory.
Recently Used is another highly requested productivity feature that we managed to implement with this update. You can now search and filter the elements that you worked with before and keep track of all the elements that you already used.
With the new upgrade, all the content previously available in the Images, Shapes, and More directories is now put on display in a more intuitive way to help you focus on what matters most: the actual design, not the design process.
Below you can see what else is new in The Brief:
Shapes are a fundamental element in graphic design. With this in mind, we decided to upgrade the The Brief functionalities that involve shapes and allow their full customization.
In our library, there are now 13 categories of design shapes, such as Geometrical, Frames, Brushed, Sunburst & Halftone. As previously mentioned, the new collection has an inventory of over 1000 unique design shapes, forms, and outlines.
We broke down the Images section, which consisted of My Images and Stock Photos, to separate folders: My Uploads and Stock Photos.
You can find our stock images inventory in the Stock Photos folder, just like before, or work with your own visuals by uploading them to My Uploads folder. The only difference is that they are no longer bonded into one folder.
Logos are everywhere and play an essential part in our daily lives, and since we upgraded the most-used The Brief elements, our Logos folder had to get a facelift too.
From Social Media & Entertainment and Payment to Services and Software, we covered all the popular logos categories, in both black-and-white and color.
As per your own logos, you can easily upload them along with all your brand assets via My Uploads section. The Brief supports the upload of the majority of file formats used in graphic design, such as PSD, SVG, JPG, PNG, and GIF, so you don’t have to worry about converting files or compromise on quality.
The new Widgets directory is a replacement to the old More section. From there, you can add YouTube videos or embed items of your choice.
Creativity doesn’t just happen. It’s a process, and it’s different for each person. However, with a tidy, intuitive interface and more time on your hands, you can focus less on the execution part and more on the creative process.
The new interface has the purpose of offering the short-and-sweet search and design experience we’re all looking for. Available and synced in both single banner editor and banner set generator modes, now you can design full sets of banners within minutes, more practical than ever.
Design consistency is something that pops into the conversation frequently here on our blog. We practice what we preach, so to match the breezy, minimalist approach of the new layout, the toolbar, layers, and icons also went through a UI facelift.
From the Elements section, you can now upload music or audio files to any design. Or simply drag and drop the audio file straight on the editor.
The accepted formats are .wav, .mp3, and .oog, and the maximum file size is 10MB.
Note: you need to download the design in MP4 or HTML5 format in order for the audio file to work.
To upload an audio file in the design generator, you need to click on the NEW LAYER button > My uploads, and just add the audio from your computer.
Alternatively, you can double click the size you want to edit, enter into focus mode, then drag and drop the audio file.
It's important to note that you cannot select the audio file from the canvas, only from the layers panel or from the Timeline.
In The Brief, it's extremely easy to trim, replace, change the volume, or play the audio file on RollOver.
This premium feature is available for Plus and Team plans.
Who doesn't love GIFs? Exactly.
Now you can do even more creative things in The Brief, thanks to the integration with the GIPHY library.
You can find this new feature in the Elements section (when you work with the Design Editor), or in the New Layer section (if you work in the Design Generator).
The animated GIF can be edited just like a video, which means you have the option to trim it, add build-in or build-out effects, enable/disable autoplay, or play it on a loop.
When it comes to design, resell is just not our thing. So, once you purchase a premium account, you can use any and as many visual elements as you want for free, at no separate plans or extra chargers.
Find all our pricing options here.
This was it, the last set of The Brief updates for 2019. We hope that you find the new features helpful and that they’ll make your design skills shine bright.
We are already working on the next round of updates, and we’re pretty enthusiastic about them. Make sure that you subscribe to our newsletter to get notified when they go live.
Subscribe to the The Brief newsletter here.
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