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Humberto Lopez

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Cheyenne Ard

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Dark Violet Lines Web Designer Business Card

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Cheyenne Ard

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Olivia Malick

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Olivia Malick

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Your Path to a Career in Education is Here

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Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software - Canva

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Women's CrossFit Sports Photo Collage (1)

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Blush Pink Baby Shower Basket Sale Leaderboard (IAB)

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Blush Pink Baby Shower Basket Sale Leaderboard (IAB)

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Millennials and Gen Z Are Using Social Media Less: Here's How to Earn Their Attention and Loyalty Now

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Millennials and Gen Z Are Using Social Media Less: Here's How to Earn Their Attention and Loyalty Now

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Social media has been a key communication channel for as long as digital marketing has been around-but social media use is declining. Most marketers never believed they'd see the day.

After all, teens and young adults have reigned on social media since the advent of Facebook, the inception of Twitter, and the invention of Pinterest, Snapchat, and the rest.

But the day has come.
Social Media Usage Is Down
Recently, Convince and Convert analyzed findings from The Social Habit study, a yearly report from Edison Research and Triton Digital.

The findings regarding Americans age 12-34 are crazy when you look at trends over the past two years:

Facebook usage dropped from 79% in 2017 to 62% in 2019.

Twitter usage dropped from 36% to 29%.

Pinterest usage dropped from 36% to 31%.

LinkedIn usage is down from 23% to 21%.

The only social network with stable usage is Snapchat, which neither grew nor declined from 2017 to 2019.

The sole network that's registered growth in use among Americans 12-34 over the last two years is-you guessed it-Instagram. Usage is up just 2 points, from 64% in 2017 to 66% in 2019.

The bottom line: Social media usage is falling among Gen Z and Millennials.

For marketers, that brings up tricky questions.

How do we keep the attention of this major group of consumers without the crutch of social media? How do we continue earning loyalty when more and more of them are pulling away from the major channels we've used for valuable interactions?

I've outlined a few approaches that work, and one to avoid.
How to Keep Pulling in Attention and Loyalty from Young Consumers-Sans Social Media 1. Pushy, overly salesy pitches are out, and ads are irrelevant
Outside of social media, there are plenty of ways to attract young consumers, engage them, and pull them into your devoted audience.

Sales is not one of them.

Millennials are a tough crowd to entice with salesmanship. If you push for a sale, you're bound to fail. Why?

Because most Millennials are immune to traditional sales and ads.

According to an eMarketer study, two-thirds of Millennials prefer digital shopping to buying in-store.

A digital shopping experience is self-directed, independent, and much less straightforward than buying in-store-but Millennials prefer it. Gen Z does, too.

The preferred buyer journey for young people is wildly unpredictable. They ignore traditional ads, hate cold sales pitches, and crave companies that actively and authentically engage with them.

So, if you're thinking of resorting to traditional marketing and ads to entice young consumers, think again.
2. Mobile-friendliness is key
Consider this: 67% of consumers are more likely to purchase when visiting a mobile-friendly site. Another 61% will leave a site if it's not responsive, according to Think with Google.

If your site isn't mobile-friendly, you'll automatically lose with the younger generation, no matter how great your content, products, or offers. Help keep them engaged with great design, UX, and website responsiveness at the base of your strategy.
3. Transparency and authenticity work
Transparency, honesty, authenticity, and character are all traits Millennials and Gen Z expect to see in the brands they support.

An Irregular Labs report found that authenticity is what matters most to Gen Z, in particular. Fully 67% said "being true to their values and beliefs" is what makes a person or brand a standout.

How do you build that trait so it's part of your brand persona and reputation?
Build great content.
One way to do that is to share stories on your company blog that reflect the humans you serve and hire. At Express Writers, we did this on our blog by compiling tips from our staff and speaking directly to a common client problem.
4. Building trust and loyalty will get you everywhere
Offering great content is one thing, but a one-off piece every few months is not enough to prove your worth. Instead, you need to tie great content to user intent and produce it consistently. That's how you build your reputation as trustworthy.

In other words, answer the questions your buyer is asking at every stage of the marketing lifecycle, and do it with excellence and expertise.

There are four stages in the lifecycle, and each connects to different types of content that will build trust and loyalty at that particular stage:
A. Awareness

Maps to: Informational search intent (the buyer is problem-aware and searching for answers)

Types of content to create at this stage: Lead magnets, inbound SEO content, information-packed guides

B. Interest & Intent

Maps to: Investigative search intent (buyers understand the information/solution they need and are looking for the right option)

Types of content to create at this stage: A website with clear navigation and CTAs, lead magnets centered on your core mission, e-books demonstrating your expertise, whitepapers and case studies showcasing client success stories

Maps to: Transactional search intent (buyers are ready to commit: they know exactly what they want)

Types of content to create at this stage: CGC (customer-generated content) in the form of positive reviews and testimonials, work samples or demos (depending on the company)

Maps to: Mainly navigational search intent (the buyer knows you, likes you, and is looking for your brand online)-but can also map to each of the other kinds of intent

Types of content to create at this stage: New product announcements, content with high informational value, and content that maintains your exceptional standards

5. Email is in
Email remains one of the most effective ways to reach your audience, no matter their age. Millennials, especially, rely on email as a mainstay for communication.

According to a ClickZ study, 73% of Millennials and 68% of Gen Z prefer to hear from brands through their inboxes.

The key to engaging email? Get creative with it! Don't send ugly, staid, stagnant messages that fail to move people. A great example of engaging email comes from Tarzan Kay:

She is up front, authentic, and fun. She doesn't need a fancy, flashy design (though that rarely ever hurts); the draw is in her voice, style, and the information offered.

* * *

Overall, the value you provide at every touchpoint is what decides whether you earn (and keep!) your audience's attention, or whether you lose them altogether.

Provide consistent value, be real, stay mobile-friendly, and don't fall into the pushy sales trap-that's how you win over today's young generation of consumers, with or without social media.

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Millennials and Gen Z Are Using Social Media Less: Here's How to Earn Their Attention and Loyalty Now

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Social media has been a key communication channel for as long as digital marketing has been around-but social media use is declining. Most marketers never believed they'd see the day. After all, teens and young adults have reigned on social media since the advent of Facebook, the inception of Twitter, and the invention of Pinterest, Snapchat, and the rest.

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The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them. Effective personas:

Represent a major user group for your website

Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups

Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the site

Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality

Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

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The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics. Remember, your personas are only as good as the research behind them. Effective personas:

Represent a major user group for your website

Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups

Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the site

Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality

Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

Benefits of Personas

Personas help to focus decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation. They also offer a quick and inexpensive way to test and prioritize those features throughout the development process. In addition they can help:

Stakeholders and leaders evaluate new site feature ideas

Information architects develop informed wireframes, interface behaviors, and labeling

Designers create the overall look and feel of the website

System engineers/developers decide which approaches to take based on user behaviors

Copy writers ensure site content is written to the appropriate audiences

Best Practices for Developing Personas

Personas development belongs at the beginning of the project, as personas can inform site functionality, help uncover gaps, or highlight new opportunities.

You may develop one or more personas for a project but limit yourself to the main audiences for the site. For any given project, creating only three or four personas is best. Remember that it is better to paint with a broad brush and meet the needs of the larger populations than try to meet the needs of everyone. The goal of personas is not represent all audiences or address all needs of the website but instead to focus on the major needs of the most important user groups.

To ensure your personas are accurate representations of your users and have the support of your stakeholders throughout the process, you should:

Conduct user research: Answer the following questions: Who are your users and why are they using the system? What behaviors, assumptions, and expectations color their view of the system?

Condense the research: Look for themes/characteristics that are specific, relevant, and universal to the system and its users.

Brainstorm: Organize elements into persona groups that represent your target users. Name or classify each group.

Refine: Combine and prioritize the rough personas. Separate them into primary, secondary, and, if necessary, complementary categories. You should have roughly 3-5 personas and their identified characteristics.

Make them realistic: Develop the appropriate descriptions of each personas background, motivations, and expectations. Do not include a lot of personal information. Be relevant and serious; humor is not appropriate.

Questions to Ask During Persona Development

The following questions and areas of discussion will help you construct a snapshot of the visitors to your site.

Define the Purpose/
Vision for the Site

What is the purpose of the site?

What are the goals of the site?

Describe the User

Personal

What is the age of your person?

What is the gender of your person?

What is the highest level of education this person has received?

Professional

How much work experience does your person have?

What is your person's professional background?

Why will they come to the site? (User needs, interests, and goals)

Where (or from whom) else is this person getting information about your issue or similar programs or services?

When and where will users access the site? (User environment and context)

Technical

What technological devices does your person use on a regular basis?

What software and/or applications does your person use on a regular basis?

Through what technological device does your user primarily access the web for information?

How much time does your person spend browsing the web every day?

User Motivation

What is your person motivated by?

What are they looking for?

What is your person looking to do?

What are his needs?

Elements of a Persona

Personas generally include the following key pieces of information:

Persona Group (i.e. web manager)

Fictional name

Job titles and major responsibilities

Demographics such as age, education, ethnicity, and family status

The goals and tasks they are trying to complete using the site

Their physical, social, and technological environment

A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona as it relates to your site

Casual pictures representing that user group

Organize persona information in an easy to read, logical format. Depending on the amount of user research you were able to conduct and the nature of your organization, personas may be laid out in a number of ways, including:

The Narrative

The Table

The Quick-and-Dirty

Best for stakeholders who are not so concerned about the technical details of user needs.

Best for designers who need an easy way to compare designs to user needs.

Best in situations where personas lack sufficient research.

Source: Dan Brown
Example Persona

Some personas are incredibly detailed, whereas others simply offer a brief sketch of each type of user. Here is an example of a portion of a larger persona developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS).

Photo:

Job title/
major responsibilities:

Program Staff Director, USDA

Demographics:

51 years old

Married

Father of three children

Grandfather of one child

Has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics.

Goals and tasks:

He is focused, goal-oriented within a strong leadership role. One of his concerns is maintaining quality across all output of programs.

Spends his work time:

Requesting and reviewing research reports,

preparing memos and briefs for agency heads, and

supervising staff efforts in food safety and inspection.

Persona developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS).
References

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A persona is a written representation of your website's intended users. Find out more about developing personas at Usability.gov.

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Student Demographics for Lamar University

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Student Demographics for Lamar University

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Sample Technical Writing: IKEA instructions

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Sample Technical Writing: IKEA instructions

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With detailed instructions this video can guide you through the PAX Wardrobe assembly. This wardrobe has a variety options to match your style or décor.

The combination shown is the triple track with the single track curtain system. It includes instructions on how to install the KVARTAL corner piece so curtains can go around corners.

Detailed instructions guide you through the BEDDINGE sleeper sofa frame assembly. We'll show you how to attach the mattress to the frame and secure the slipcover.

Detailed instructions guide you through the MASKROS assembly. This pendant light fixture was designed to imitate a dandelion and mimic its natural lighting pattern onto your walls and ceiling.

Detailed instructions guide you through the EKTORP Sofa assembly. Customize this couch to meet your needs. With a wide range of slipcovers you'll find one that complements your style.

Detailed instructions guide you through the GODMORGON cabinet, EDEBOVIKEN Sink, RINNEN water trap assembly and installation.

Detailed instructions guide you through the HEMNES Daybed assembly. This unique wood daybed is built for function and flexibility.

Detailed instructions guide you through the HEMNES Desk assembly. The drawers can be mounted on the left or right sides according to your needs.

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With detailed instructions this video can guide you through the PAX Wardrobe assembly. This wardrobe has a variety options to match your style or décor. The combination shown is the triple track with the single track curtain system. It includes instructions on how to install the KVARTAL corner piece so curtains can go around corners.

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Libra is a permissioned blockchain digital currency proposed by the American social media company Facebook.The project, currency and transactions are to be managed and cryptographically entrusted to the Libra Association, a membership organization founded by Facebook's subsidiary Calibra and 27 others... (from Wikipedia)

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This document outlines our plans for a new decentralized blockchain, a low-volatility cryptocurrency, and a smart contract platform that together aim to create a new opportunity for responsible financial services innovation.

Problem Statement

The advent of the internet and mobile broadband has empowered billions of people globally to have access to the world's knowledge and information, high-fidelity communications, and a wide range of lower-cost, more convenient services. These services are now accessible using a $40 smartphone from almost anywhere in the world. ¹ This connectivity has driven economic empowerment by enabling more people to access the financial ecosystem. Working together, technology companies and financial institutions have also found solutions to help increase economic empowerment around the world. Despite this progress, large swaths of the world's population are still left behind - 1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access. ²

For too many, parts of the financial system look like telecommunication networks pre-internet. Twenty years ago, the average price to send a text message in Europe was 16 cents per message. ³ Now everyone with a smartphone can communicate across the world for free with a basic data plan. Back then, telecommunications prices were high but uniform; whereas today, access to financial services is limited or restricted for those who need it most - those impacted by cost, reliability, and the ability to seamlessly send money.

All over the world, people with less money pay more for financial services. Hard-earned income is eroded by fees, from remittances and wire costs to overdraft and ATM charges. Payday loans can charge annualized interest rates of 400 percent or more, and finance charges can be as high as $30 just to borrow $100. ⁴ When people are asked why they remain on the fringe of the existing financial system, those who remain "unbanked" point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation. ⁵

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies have a number of unique properties that can potentially address some of the problems of accessibility and trustworthiness. These include distributed governance, which ensures that no single entity controls the network; open access, which allows anybody with an internet connection to participate; and security through cryptography, which protects the integrity of funds.

But the existing blockchain systems have yet to reach mainstream adoption. Mass-market usage of existing blockchains and cryptocurrencies has been hindered by their volatility and lack of scalability, which have, so far, made them poor stores of value and mediums of exchange. Some projects have also aimed to disrupt the existing system and bypass regulation as opposed to innovating on compliance and regulatory fronts to improve the effectiveness of anti-money laundering. We believe that collaborating and innovating with the financial sector, including regulators and experts across a variety of industries, is the only way to ensure that a sustainable, secure and trusted framework underpins this new system. And this approach can deliver a giant leap forward toward a lower-cost, more accessible, more connected global financial system.

The Opportunity

As we embark on this journey together, we think it is important to share our beliefs to align the community and ecosystem we intend to spark around this initiative:

We believe that many more people should have access to financial services and to cheap capital.

We believe that people have an inherent right to control the fruit of their legal labor.

We believe that global, open, instant, and low-cost movement of money will create immense economic opportunity and more commerce across the world.

We believe that people will increasingly trust decentralized forms of governance.

We believe that a global currency and financial infrastructure should be designed and governed as a public good.

We believe that we all have a responsibility to help advance financial inclusion, support ethical actors, and continuously uphold the integrity of the ecosystem.

The world truly needs a reliable digital currency and infrastructure that together can deliver on the promise of "the internet of money."

Securing your financial assets on your mobile device should be simple and intuitive. Moving money around globally should be as easy and cost-effective as - and even more safe and secure than - sending a text message or sharing a photo, no matter where you live, what you do, or how much you earn. New product innovation and additional entrants to the ecosystem will enable the lowering of barriers to access and cost of capital for everyone and facilitate frictionless payments for more people.

Now is the time to create a new kind of digital currency built on the foundation of blockchain technology. The mission for Libra is a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people. Libra is made up of three parts that will work together to create a more inclusive financial system:

1. It is built on a secure, scalable, and reliable blockchain;

2. It is backed by a reserve of assets designed to give it intrinsic value;

3. It is governed by the independent Libra Association tasked with evolving the ecosystem.

The Libra currency is built on the "Libra Blockchain." Because it is intended to address a global audience, the software that implements the Libra Blockchain is open source - designed so that anyone can build on it, and billions of people can depend on it for their financial needs. Imagine an open, interoperable ecosystem of financial services that developers and organizations will build to help people and businesses hold and transfer Libra for everyday use. With the proliferation of smartphones and wireless data, increasingly more people will be online and able to access Libra through these new services. To enable the Libra ecosystem to achieve this vision over time, the blockchain has been built from the ground up to prioritize scalability, security, efficiency in storage and throughput, and future adaptability. Keep reading for an overview of the Libra Blockchain, or read the technical paper.

The unit of currency is called "Libra." Libra will need to be accepted in many places and easy to access for those who want to use it. In other words, people need to have confidence that they can use Libra and that its value will remain relatively stable over time. Unlike the majority of cryptocurrencies, Libra is fully backed by a reserve of real assets. A basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities will be held in the Libra Reserve for every Libra that is created, building trust in its intrinsic value. The Libra Reserve will be administered with the objective of preserving the value of Libra over time. Keep reading for an overview of Libra and the reserve, or read more here.

The Libra Association is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The association's purpose is to coordinate and provide a framework for governance for the network and reserve and lead social impact grant-making in support of financial inclusion. This white paper is a reflection of its mission, vision, and purview. The association's membership is formed from the network of validator nodes that operate the Libra Blockchain.

Members of the Libra Association will consist of geographically distributed and diverse businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions. The initial group of organizations that will work together on finalizing the association's charter and become "Founding Members" upon its completion are, by industry:

Payments: Mastercard, Mercado Pago, PayPal, PayU (Naspers' fintech arm), Stripe, Visa

Technology and marketplaces: Booking Holdings, eBay, Facebook/Calibra, Farfetch, Lyft, Spotify AB, Uber Technologies, Inc.

Telecommunications: Iliad, Vodafone Group

Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Inc., Xapo Holdings Limited

Venture Capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures

Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women's World Banking

We hope to have approximately 100 members of the Libra Association by the target launch in the first half of 2020.

Facebook teams played a key role in the creation of the Libra Association and the Libra Blockchain, working with the other Founding Members. While final decision-making authority rests with the association, Facebook is expected to maintain a leadership role through 2019. Facebook created Calibra, a regulated subsidiary, to ensure separation between social and financial data and to build and operate services on its behalf on top of the Libra network.

Once the Libra network launches, Facebook, and its affiliates, will have the same commitments, privileges, and financial obligations as any other Founding Member. As one member among many, Facebook's role in governance of the association will be equal to that of its peers.

Blockchains are described as either permissioned or permissionless in relation to the ability to participate as a validator node. In a "permissioned blockchain," access is granted to run a validator node. In a "permissionless blockchain," anyone who meets the technical requirements can run a validator node. In that sense, Libra will start as a permissioned blockchain.

To ensure that Libra is truly open and always operates in the best interest of its users, our ambition is for the Libra network to become permissionless. The challenge is that as of today we do not believe that there is a proven solution that can deliver the scale, stability, and security needed to support billions of people and transactions across the globe through a permissionless network. One of the association's directives will be to work with the community to research and implement this transition, which will begin within five years of the public launch of the Libra Blockchain and ecosystem.

Essential to the spirit of Libra, in both its permissioned and permissionless state, the Libra Blockchain will be open to everyone: any consumer, developer, or business can use the Libra network, build products on top of it, and add value through their services. Open access ensures low barriers to entry and innovation and encourages healthy competition that benefits consumers. This is foundational to the goal of building more inclusive financial options for the world.

The goal of the Libra Blockchain is to serve as a solid foundation for financial services, including a new global currency, which could meet the daily financial needs of billions of people. Through the process of evaluating existing options, we decided to build a new blockchain based on these three requirements:

Able to scale to billions of accounts, which requires high transaction throughput, low latency, and an efficient, high-capacity storage system.

Highly secure, to ensure safety of funds and financial data.

Flexible, so it can power the Libra ecosystem's governance as well as future innovation in financial services.

The Libra Blockchain is designed from the ground up to holistically address these requirements and build on the learnings from existing projects and research - a combination of innovative approaches and well- understood techniques. This next section will highlight three decisions regarding the Libra Blockchain:

1. Designing and using the Move programming language.

2. Using a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus approach.

3. Adopting and iterating on widely adopted blockchain data structures.

"Move" is a new programming language for implementing custom transaction logic and "smart contracts" on the Libra Blockchain. Because of Libra's goal to one day serve billions of people, Move is designed with safety and security as the highest priorities. Move takes insights from security incidents that have happened with smart contracts to date and creates a language that makes it inherently easier to write code that fulfills the author's intent, thereby lessening the risk of unintended bugs or security incidents. Specifically, Move is designed to prevent assets from being cloned. It enables "resource types" that constrain digital assets to the same properties as physical assets: a resource has a single owner, it can only be spent once, and the creation of new resources is restricted. The Move language also facilitates automatic proofs that transactions satisfy certain properties, such as payment transactions only changing the account balances of the payer and receiver. By prioritizing these features, Move will help keep the Libra Blockchain secure. By making the development of critical transaction code easier, Move enables the secure implementation of the Libra ecosystem's governance policies, such as the management of the Libra currency and the network of validator nodes. Move will accelerate the evolution of the Libra Blockchain protocol and any financial innovations built on top of it. We anticipate that the ability for developers to create contracts will be opened up over time in order to support the evolution and validation of Move.

To facilitate agreement among all validator nodes on the transactions to be executed and the order in which they are executed, the Libra Blockchain adopted the BFT approach by using the LibraBFT consensus protocol. This approach builds trust in the network because BFT consensus protocols are designed to function correctly even if some validator nodes - up to one-third of the network - are compromised or fail. This class of consensus protocols also enables high transaction throughput, low latency, and a more energy-efficient approach to consensus than "proof of work" used in some other blockchains.

In order to securely store transactions, data on the Libra Blockchain is protected by Merkle trees, a data structure used by other blockchains that enables the detection of any changes to existing data. Unlike previous blockchains, which view the blockchain as a collection of blocks of transactions, the Libra Blockchain is a single data structure that records the history of transactions and states over time. This implementation simplifies the work of applications accessing the blockchain, allowing them to read any data from any point in time and verify the integrity of that data using a unified framework.

The Libra Blockchain is pseudonymous and allows users to hold one or more addresses that are not linked to their real-world identity. This approach is familiar to many users, developers, and regulators. The Libra Association will oversee the evolution of the Libra Blockchain protocol and network, and it will continue to evaluate new techniques that enhance privacy in the blockchain while considering concerns of practicality, scalability, and regulatory impact.

For more details, read the technical paper on the Libra Blockchain. Detailed information is also available on the Move programming language and the LibraBFT consensus protocol. We've open sourced an early preview of the Libra testnet, with accompanying documentation. The testnet is still under development, and APIs are subject to change. Our commitment is to work in the open with the community and hope you will read, build, and provide feedback.

We believe that the world needs a global, digitally native currency that brings together the attributes of the world's best currencies: stability, low inflation, wide global acceptance, and fungibility. The Libra currency is designed to help with these global needs, aiming to expand how money works for more people around the world.

Libra is designed to be a stable digital cryptocurrency that will be fully backed by a reserve of real assets - the Libra Reserve - and supported by a competitive network of exchanges buying and selling Libra. That means anyone with Libra has a high degree of assurance they can convert their digital currency into local fiat currency based on an exchange rate, just like exchanging one currency for another when traveling. This approach is similar to how other currencies were introduced in the past: to help instill trust in a new currency and gain widespread adoption during its infancy, it was guaranteed that a country's notes could be traded in for real assets, such as gold. Instead of backing Libra with gold, though, it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks.

It is important to highlight that this means one Libra will not always be able to convert into the same amount of a given local currency (i.e., Libra is not a "peg" to a single currency). Rather, as the value of the underlying assets moves, the value of one Libra in any local currency may fluctuate. However, the reserve assets are being chosen to minimize volatility, so holders of Libra can trust the currency's ability to preserve value over time. The assets in the Libra Reserve will be held by a geographically distributed network of custodians with investment-grade credit rating to provide both security and decentralization of the assets.

The assets behind Libra are the major difference between it and many existing cryptocurrencies that lack such intrinsic value and hence have prices that fluctuate significantly based on expectations. Libra is indeed a cryptocurrency, though, and by virtue of that, it inherits several attractive properties of these new digital currencies: the ability to send money quickly, the security of cryptography, and the freedom to easily transmit funds across borders. Just as people can use their phones to message friends anywhere in the world today, with Libra, the same can be done with money - instantly, securely, and at low cost.

Interest on the reserve assets will be used to cover the costs of the system, ensure low transaction fees and support further growth and adoption. The rules for allocating interest on the reserve will be set in advance and will be overseen by the Libra Association. Users of Libra do not receive a return from the reserve.

For more on the reserve policy and the details of the Libra currency, please read here.

To make the mission of Libra a reality - a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people - the Libra Blockchain and Libra Reserve need a governing entity that is comprised of diverse and independent members. This governing entity is the Libra Association, an independent, not-for-profit membership organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland has a history of global neutrality and openness to blockchain technology, and the association strives to be a neutral, international institution, hence the choice to be registered there. The association is designed to facilitate the operation of the Libra Blockchain; to coordinate the agreement among its stakeholders - the network's validator nodes - in their pursuit to promote, develop, and expand the network, and to manage the reserve.

The association is governed by the Libra Association Council, which is comprised of one representative per validator node. Together, they make decisions on the governance of the network and reserve. Initially, this group consists of the Founding Members: businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions from around the world. All decisions are brought to the council, and major policy or technical decisions require the consent of two-thirds of the votes, the same supermajority of the network required in the BFT consensus protocol.

Through the association, the validator nodes align on the network's technical roadmap and development goals. In that sense, it is similar to other not-for-profit entities, often in the form of foundations, which govern open-source projects. As Libra relies on a growing distributed community of open-source contributors to further itself, the association is a necessary vehicle to establish guidance as to which protocols or specifications to develop and to adopt.

The Libra Association also serves as the entity through which the Libra Reserve is managed, and hence the stability and growth of the Libra economy are achieved. The association is the only party able to create (mint) and destroy (burn) Libra. Coins are only minted when authorized resellers have purchased those coins from the association with fiat assets to fully back the new coins. Coins are only burned when the authorized resellers sell Libra coin to the association in exchange for the underlying assets. Since authorized resellers will always be able to sell Libra coins to the reserve at a price equal to the value of the basket, the Libra Reserve acts as a "buyer of last resort." These activities of the association are governed and constrained by a Reserve Management Policy that can only be changed by a supermajority of the association members.

In these early years of the network, there are additional roles that need to be performed on behalf of the association: the recruitment of Founding Members to serve as validator nodes; the design and implementation of incentive programs to propel the adoption of Libra, including the distribution of such incentives to Founding Members; and the establishment of the association's social impact grant-making program.

An additional goal of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard. We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a prerequisite to financial inclusion and competition.

An important objective of the Libra Association is to move toward increasing decentralization over time. This decentralization ensures that there are low barriers to entry for both building on and using the network and improves the Libra ecosystem's resilience over the long term. As discussed above, the association will develop a path toward permissionless governance and consensus on the Libra network. The association's objective will be to start this transition within five years, and in so doing will gradually reduce the reliance on the Founding Members. In the same spirit, the association aspires to minimize the reliance on itself as the administrator of the Libra Reserve.

For more on the Libra Association, please read here.

Today we are publishing this document outlining our goals for Libra and launching libra.org as a home for the association and all things Libra. It will continue to be updated over the coming months. We are also open- sourcing the code for the Libra Blockchain and launching Libra's initial testnet for developers to experiment with and build upon.

There is much left to do before the target launch in the first half of 2020.
The Libra Blockchain:
Over the coming months, the association will work with the community to gather feedback on the Libra Blockchain prototype and bring it to a production-ready state. In particular, this work will
focus on ensuring the security, performance, and scalability of the protocol and implementation.

The Libra Association will construct well-documented APIs and libraries to enable users to interact with the Libra Blockchain.

The Libra Association will create a framework for the collaborative development of the technology behind the Libra Blockchain using the open-source methodology. Procedures will be created for discussing and reviewing changes to the protocol and software that support the blockchain.

The association will perform extensive testing of the blockchain, which range from tests of the protocol to constructing a full-scale test of the network in collaboration with entities such as wallet services and exchanges to ensure the system is working before launch.

The association will work to foster the development of the Move language and determine a path for third parties to create smart contracts once language development has stabilized - after the launch of the Libra ecosystem.

Together with the community, the association will research the technological challenges on the path to a permissionless ecosystem so that we can meet the objective to begin the transition within five years of the launch.
The Reserve:

The association will work to establish a geographically distributed and regulated group of global institutional custodians for the reserve.

The association will establish operational procedures for the reserve to interact with authorized resellers and ensure high-transparency and auditability.

The association will establish policies and procedures that establish how the association can change the composition of the reserve basket.

The Libra Association:

We will work to grow the Libra Association Council to around 100 geographically distributed and diverse members, all serving as the initial validator nodes of the Libra Blockchain.

The association will develop and adopt a comprehensive charter and set of bylaws for the association on the basis of the currently proposed governance structure.

We will recruit a Managing Director for the association and work with her/him to continue hiring for the association's executive team.

We will identify social impact partners aligned with our joint mission and will work with them to establish a Social Impact Advisory Board and a social impact program.

The association envisions a vibrant ecosystem of developers building apps and services to spur the global use of Libra. The association defines success as enabling any person or business globally to have fair, affordable, and instant access to their money. For example, success will mean that a person working abroad has a fast and simple way to send money to family back home, and a college student can pay their rent as easily as they can buy a coffee.

Our journey is just beginning, and we are asking the community to help. If you believe in what Libra could do for billions of people around the world, share your perspective and join in. Your feedback is needed to make financial inclusion a reality for people everywhere.

If you are a researcher or protocol developer, an early preview of the Libra testnet is available under the Apache 2.0 Open Source License, with accompanying documentation. This is just the start of the process, and the testnet is still an early prototype under development, but you can read, build, and provide feedback right away. Since the current focus is on stabilizing the prototype, the project may initially be slower to take community contributions. However, we are committed to building a community-oriented development process and opening the platform to developers - starting with pull requests - as soon as possible.

If you want to learn about the Libra Association, read more here.

If your organization is interested in becoming a Founding Member or applying for social impact grants from the Libra Association, read more here.

The association will work with the global community in the coming months and continue to partner with policymakers worldwide to further the mission.

This is the goal for Libra: A stable currency built on a secure and stable open-source blockchain, backed by a reserve of real assets, and governed by an independent association.

Our hope is to create more access to better, cheaper, and open financial services - no matter who you are, where you live, what you do, or how much you have. We recognize that the road to delivering this will be long, arduous, and won't be achieved in isolation - it will take coming together and forming a real movement around this pursuit. We hope you'll join us and help turn this dream into a reality for billions of people around the world.

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Libra White Paper | Blockchain, Association, Reserve

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This document outlines our plans for a new decentralized blockchain, a low-volatility cryptocurrency, and a smart contract platform that together aim to create a new opportunity for responsible financial services innovation. Problem Statement The advent of the internet and mobile broadband has empowered billions of people globally to have access to the world's knowledge and information, high-fidelity communications, and a wide range of lower-cost, more convenient services.

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Sample Technical Writing: Communication Plan 

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Sample Technical Writing: Communication Plan 

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“How To Make A Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich” by Keri Savoca https://link.medium.com/eKAcsrd4QZ

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Data Visualization and Translation Exercise: Vacation

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Data Visualization and Translation Exercise: Vacation

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From the Washington Post

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As summer-getaway season draws to a close, it's time to face a tough reality: America is not a great vacation nation.

In fact, one report goes so far as to call the United States a "no-vacation nation," thanks to the paltry (well, nonexistent) amount of paid vacation time mandated by federal law compared with that of other well-off countries.

According to the study from Center for Economic and Policy Research, the European Union requires member countries to grant workers at least 20 working days of paid vacation. But many nations go well above that number, and some offer a heap of paid holidays, to boot. France, for example, requires at least 30 paid workdays off, not including paid holidays, while the U.K. mandates 28, followed by Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden at 25.

The United States, on the other hand - on the very worst hand - mandates no paid vacation or paid holidays. Zero days. It's the only country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 36 of the world's wealthiest nations, that doesn't require employers to give workers annual paid leave, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. That leaves 23 percent of Americans with no paid vacation and 22 percent without paid holidays.

"I see that as part of a whole set of benefits that people have in other countries but they generally don't have here," says Dean Baker, a senior economist at the policy group, which published the No-Vacation Nation report in May.
[How to have the worst summer vacation ever]
That's not to say employers don't offer vacation. According to the report, employers are granting paid vacation to 90 percent of full-time workers this year and 40 percent of part-time workers. But what might be shocking: Even when Americans get paid time off, they don't use it all. And when they do use their days - it may not come as a surprise to learn - many of them fail to leave work fully behind.

Vacation might not even be an option for many in the United States, whether they can't afford to lose wages or have to prioritize other spending ahead of leisure. The top barrier to taking a vacation is cost, says David Huether, senior vice president of research for the U.S. Travel Association. After that, he said difficulty getting away from work and dealing with the hassles of air travel stand between Americans and vacation.

Still, there might be some positive movement. According to the association, Americans used an average of 17.4 days of paid time off last year, up slightly from 17.2 days in 2017. That's based on a survey of more than 1,000 adult workers who work more than 35 hours a week and get paid time off from their jobs.

"Americans over the past few years are taking more time off to vacation, which is a positive trend over the past four to five years, which is the good news," Huether says. "But the bad news is we still have a ways to go to get back to our long-term average. We're still underperforming in terms of taking vacations, compared to where we used to be." Between 1978 and 2000, Americans on average took more than 20 days of vacation time, he said.
[Still checking work email on vacation? This employer says 'Stop']
Every year, several studies come out to prove just how bad things have gotten for vacations in the United States. Here are some findings:
The guilt factor is real
More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent - reported feeling guilty about taking vacation time either sometimes, often or always, according to a survey of more than 2,000 full-time workers in the United States by TurnKey Vacation Rentals.
Leaving it on the table
Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time. Of the time they took, U.S. workers used nine days to travel.
Short and sweet, apparently
More than half of Americans did not take a leisure trip of more than four nights over the past year, according to a report from Allianz Global Assistance. The travel insurance company said millennials were leading the "micro-cation" trend, with 72 percent taking at least one trip of fewer than five nights. Nearly 20 percent of those surveyed in May said their longest trip in the past year was three to four nights long. The same survey found that 28 percent of Americans did not take a leisure trip of any length.
Cutting the cord is hard
According to TurnKey's survey, 70 percent of respondents admitted to checking in with their workplace from vacation at least occasionally. Twenty-nine percent managed to limit their work during vacation to every few days, but about 30 percent said they checked in at least once a day, and more than 11 percent said they did so several times a day.
Read more: I am taking a vacation - and so should you We're in the age of the overtourist. You can avoid being one of them. How to take a staycation this summer

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What does America have against vacation?

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As summer-getaway season draws to a close, it's time to face a tough reality: America is not a great vacation nation. In fact, one report goes so far as to call the United States a "no-vacation nation," thanks to the paltry (well, nonexistent) amount of paid vacation time mandated by federal law compared with that of other well-off countries.

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From the genius known as Stephanie Evergreen -- This is hos you should do reports.

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It's time to talk about how a highly visual, well-formatted recommendations page doesn't have much impact when it is buried on page 104. This is how we make reporting less cumbersome, particularly in a digital reporting era.

Of course your reporting will probably include a slidedeck. I mean, you could totally give a talk with no slides. People would look at you. And you would be awesome. But most of the time we have a slideshow, designed with the principles I've been discussing in this blog, all my books, and in every workshop for years. The idea of the presentation is generally to spark conversation and get people interested in learning more about your ideas, Rockstar.

So what next? Now that we have piqued their interest, we - what? - toss them a 300 page report and wish them luck? Sounds like a terrible way to foster engagement.

Instead of giving people a new doorstop, we can extend their engagement with a handout. Something short and sweet, like the stuff I discuss in my new book. In fact, this is where the 1-3-25 reporting model comes in handy. The 1-3-25 model suggests that our reporting include a 1 page handout, a 3 page executive summary, and a 25 page report. In each of these layers, readers gain more and more detail. They can stop anytime, having already gotten the high points from us. But it provides a scaffolding toward learning, in which each step helps the reader learn a bit more without being completely overwhelming.

This example comes from an Australian University research department that requires all researchers to publish by this model and makes templates to fit it. Smart! (See their package at http://rsph.anu.edu.au/research/projects/2015-extension-overcoming-access-and-equity-problems-relating-rural-and-remote-phc)

Of course its hard to squeeze your work into just 25 pages, especially when you include graphics and data visualizations. So you'll need an appendix and this is where you can put things like your logic model, methodology, and p values. And it can even be a separate document that you just link to from the others.

So let's talk about that 25 pages and what that's going to look like.

We normally go about structuring our reports (and presentations and posters) like this:

Background
Literature Review
Methodology
Discussion
Findings
Conclusion

It feels serious and logical and rigorous. Does it look familiar? Probably so, because it's the basic format for a journal article. It's just that a journal article is not the same dissemination forum as the work many of us do, where our charge is focused on being useful to decision makers and we are paid to provide them actionable information.

Jane Davidson wrote a life-changing article on this matter, where she reorients us toward truly user-oriented reporting, in which we do not make the reader wait until page 104 to get to the good stuff. Today's readers just don't have the patience for it. They might flip through to glean highlights but few read, word for word, something so long and tedious. In fact, there's a hashtag just for this scenario: #TLDR, which means Too Long, Didn't Read.

The revolution in reporting is simple: Arrange the sections of the report in the reverse order. Report the findings and conclusions first. That's what people came to learn, so give it to them. If they are satisfied, you are done! If they have questions, you have explanations, because that's your discussion, methodology, literature review, and background. Reporting in reverse values their time. It means the C-Suite members of your audience can go on with making strategic decisions with your findings and the few statisticians in the room can hang out til the end and talk nerdy with you. Reporting in reverse puts the audience first.
This blog post is an excerpt from my new book, Presenting Data Effectively, 2nd edition. The second edition of this bestseller is in full color and includes much more on reporting for a digital reading culture. Order now.

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It's time to talk about how a highly visual, well-formatted recommendations page doesn't have much impact when it is buried on page 104. This is how we make reporting less cumbersome, particularly in a digital reporting era. Of course your reporting will probably include a slidedeck.

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Zumba has a horrible logo. How should it be fixed?

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You'd be hard-pressed to find a more dubious design title than "The World's Worst Logo." It's a grim indictment of skill and taste, but it's also a subjective conclusion, one of preference and visual intuition. The truth is, there are a lot of mind-bendingly bad logos out there, and every logo designer has a past project they'd prefer to omit from memory.

So then, how did we determine which logo, of all the logos ever logoed, was deserving of such dishonor?

How we selected the world's worst logo

We asked Toptal designers to help us narrow the field and nominate logos that fit the following criteria:

Really terrible

Currently in use by a brand or institution that is both recognizable and reputable

Not obscene or vulgar

Once all the submissions were in, judging and deliberation were under way. For this step, our staff took a long hard look at every available option before crowning an unfortunate winner.

Drumroll . . . So, what was our decision? Which logo earned the notoriety of "World's Worst?"

The Zumba logo!

A controversial selection, the Zumba logo met all of our criteria for badness while simultaneously seeming like a fun problem to fix. But before we get to that, let's take a moment to introduce Zumba to any of our lead-footed readers who might be unfamiliar with this global dancercise brand.

Zumba company profile

Even though the logo needs work, there's a lot to like about Zumba and the company's dance-based fitness experience. Zumba classes are led by certified instructors and held in over 200,000 locations across 180 countries.

With a range of Latin and World dance styles to choose from, Zumba routines can be tailored to people of all skill levels and abilities. The company has been around since 2001 and now boasts over 15 million students attending Zumba classes. A regular schedule of concerts, cruises, dance parties, and charitable causes has helped Zumba transcend the "fitness routine" label and cultivate a loyal community of brand advocates across the world. With their "Everybody and Every Body" promise, Zumba unabashedly targets a wide demographic, and they back it up with classes that are open to everyone from infants (Zumbini) to senior citizens (Zumba Gold).

So what about that logo? With all the swagger in Zumba's step, why does it look so darn clumsy?

Our critiques

Zumba's website, social accounts, merchandise, and marketing materials mirror the music and movements of its classes. There's a dynamic vibrancy that pulses through the brand, and the logo attempts to embody this with its loosely constructed letterforms and gestural "dance man" icon. Unfortunately, it falls flat on several fronts. Here's a sampling of the design critiques that our staff offered up:

Bree Chapin: "The Zumba logo is clearly trying to convey a sense of kinetic playfulness but ends up feeling more unbalanced visually than was probably intended. The scribbly letterforms in 'Zumba' are fun, but . . . the circular element on the right doesn't read clearly and is floating too far from the "Zumba" letters, which are tightly spaced by contrast."

Micah Bowers: "My wife goes to Zumba weekly, so I'd better be careful! The problem with this logo is that it fails to be what it truly wants to be-a wildly organic expression of visual rhythm. Instead, we have a collection of awkwardly spaced letters with weird kinks and curves adjacent to a perfect circle encapsulating a stick-figure who appears to be playing a phantom upright bass."

Cameron Chapman: "My biggest complaint about the Zumba logo is that it looks dated. Logos should be timeless, and I don't think this one ever fit that criteria. The typography . . . is particularly awful."

Break down the brief

Seasoned logo designers know that a well-written creative brief is a crucial part of the design process. The brief is true north, the guiding point of reference for all design decisions. Ignore it, and chaos ensues.

That said, this is a self-initiated project, and we received no formal client brief. So, we constructed our own and outlined all the problems that needed to be addressed in order to make Zumba's logo better reflect the gusto of the brand:
Logotype

Resolve the awkward shapes and negative spaces.

Improve the spacing relationships between the letterforms.

Lockup relationship
Refine the space and scale relationship between the Zumba icon and logotype.
Iconography

Address the Zumba "dance man" icon. Can it be improved? Should it be reimagined? Would something else work better?

Experiment with the circle that surrounds the icon. Would a more organic shape (still circular in nature) work better?

Color
Investigate alternatives to the current Zumba chartreuse, but don't lose the impression of visual "electricity" it evokes.

Logo refresh versus redesign

If we had decided to undertake a complete logo redesign, we could have done anything we wanted, but that would have left us in a classic "apples to oranges" scenario, making it difficult to measure improvement (or lack thereof).

So, we settled on a design refresh and used the current logo as a framework to reference and refine. It was important that the updated logo be immediately recognizable to loyal Zumba instructors and students-that it be true to the original, but elevated in a way that improves the brand's visual impact.

The logo refresh process

Unsurprisingly, the logo refresh process looks a lot like the design process.

Define the problem: What's wrong with this logo?

Collect information: Could these formal design elements be the cause of the logo's problems?

Develop solutions: Here are a number of ways we might fix the logo.

Gather feedback: Would you mind critiquing our work?

Improve the design: Based on everything we've learned so far, here's how we can make the logo better.
In the section below, we discuss the design paces we put the Zumba logo through. The actual course of the investigation was a bit more detailed, but the logo refresh process isn't complicated. Simplicity and clarity of action are key objectives.

1. Overlay sketching
The first step in our logo refresh process was a series of overlay sketches. Essentially, we examined a ghosted version of the original Zumba logo in an effort to uncover what elements of the design might be useful or problematic as we moved forward.
2. Concept sketching
Using the observations made from the overlay sketches, we conducted a round of concept sketches exploring various improvements. Letter spacing, style, and thickness were of special concern.
3. Group review
Once the concept sketches were completed, they were submitted to the editorial staff for a design critique.
4. Refinement sketching
After getting feedback from the editorial staff, we began cleaning up details and further honing the concepts.
5. Community feedback and group review
With our refined sketches in hand, we returned to the Toptal community members who originally answered our call to submit bad logos and asked for their thoughts. Then, we circled back for review with the editorial staff and chose one concept to move forward.
6. Vector refinements and color
For this step, we transitioned from analog to digital and created a precise vector version of the logo in Adobe Illustrator. We also looked at updating the logo's color.

Presenting the refreshed Zumba logo

So, where did the logo refresh lead us?

Did we meet the objectives outlined in our brief?

Does the updated logo have ties to the original, or have we created an unrelated mark that will alienate loyal Zumba customers?

Ladies and gentlemen, the refreshed Zumba logo.

Letters, shapes, colors, symbols, and proportions have all been revitalized. No detail was left unexplored, and no design decision was deemed inconsequential.

To highlight our improvements, we'll compare the new with the old and revisit the areas of emphasis in the creative brief.
Lockup relationship improvements

By ditching the pseudo-hand-drawn elements of the original logo for clean lines and curves in the update, we made for a more natural pairing between the logotype and circle surrounding the "dance man" icon.

In the portrait version of the update, the "dance man's" v-shaped torso rests comfortably above the crotch of the "M."

We also flipped the direction of the "dance man's" posture so that it feels like he is partnering with the logotype in landscape orientation.

Logotype Improvements

We said farewell to the kinks, flattened curves, and undulating stroke thickness of the original logotype for dynamic letters built with precision.

In the original logotype, there's an attempt to convey spontaneity and rhythm. We've taken it a step further by alternating letter scale, angle, and skew to visually illustrate a pulsing dance beat.

"Dance Man" Icon Improvements

Updating the "dance man" was by far the most challenging aspect of this process. We explored a number of concepts and contemplated dropping him altogether, but ultimately, there was something uniquely "dancey" about his posture that made him difficult to ditch.

So, we deconstructed the original icon and focused on refining its four basic parts: Outer Circle, Head, U-Arm, and Z-Arm.

We also flipped the direction of the "dance man's" posture and made his U-Arm overlap his torso.

Color improvements

Since Zumba uses an extensive color palette across multiple brand channels, we opted for minor adjustments to the logo's color.

For the Zumba green, we added blue and upped the saturation to make it less "pea soup" and more "vibrant vegetation."

We also added blue to the Zumba black and increased its brightness for a more relaxed relationship with the green.

Final Review

When dealing with the design update of a globally recognized logo, there's going to be controversy. Zumba is a company that helps transform lives with fitness, tight-knit community, and meaningful causes. Its followers are loyal and passionate, and it was our goal to refresh the logo in a way that would excite them. With that in mind, here's an honest assessment of our work.
Where we failed
Research. There's no way around it, due to limited resources (time and financial), our research was shallow. We didn't interview Zumba students or instructors at any point in the process, and our understanding of the brand and its target market was culled from the online investigation.
Where we succeeded

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You'd be hard-pressed to find a more dubious design title than "The World's Worst Logo." It's a grim indictment of skill and taste, but it's also a subjective conclusion, one of preference and visual intuition. The truth is, there are a lot of mind-bendingly bad logos out there, and every logo designer has a past project they'd prefer to omit from memory.

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As the kickoff of the 99th NFL season on September 6 draws nearer, fans from Hawaii to Maine are preparing for another year of football.

There are many ways to cast a vote of NFL allegiance, and wearing a favorite jersey, studying team Xs and Os, and spending Sunday afternoons in front of the TV are all hallmarks of fanhood. But there is no truer show of support than by making the trip, however far it may be, to see your football team play live.

By analyzing the behavior of NFL shoppers on SeatGeek, we were able to map "NFL Fandom" by county across the United States. See below for the interactive map and some of the most interesting stories that it surfaces.

Team with the most U.S. counties: Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys are the team with the most shopped-for tickets in 392 U.S. counties, making them the clear NFL leader. Much of this fandom is, of course, concentrated in the team's home state of Texas, but the Cowboys' influence reaches beyond the Lone Star State. Much of Oklahoma and Arkansas, along with parts of New Mexico and Kansas, makes up Cowboys country.

Cowboys fandom in Texas and beyond stretches across 392 total counties

Following the Cowboys in the county rankings are the Kansas City Chiefs, the favorite team of NFL ticket shoppers in 319 counties. Like most teams, the Chiefs' core audience is in the areas surrounding the team's home stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, but Chiefs fandom extends in all directions: north into Iowa, east into Illinois, south into Arkansas and Oklahoma, and west throughout Kansas and some of Nebraska.

Third on this list are the Minnesota Vikings, the favorite team in 257 counties across Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, and - sacrilegiously - Wisconsin, home of the rival Green Bay Packers.

Team that covers the greatest land area: Seattle Seahawks

As the favorite team of ticket shoppers in 149 counties, the Seattle Seahawks fall outside of the top five ranking of teams by number of counties. But these 149 counties account for nearly 800,000 square miles - roughly one-fifth of the county - making the Seahawks the nation's leading team by land area.

Much of this is due to the Seahawks' dominance of Alaska, which is the largest state by area and closer to Seattle than any other football city. In the continental United States, the Seahawks cover much of the expansive Pacific Northwest, including Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

Seahawks fandom in much of the Pacific Northwest, along with Alaska, covers more land mass than any other team

Following the Seahawks are the Broncos, with fandom covering almost half a million square miles across Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana. The Cowboys, with large coverage of the country's second-largest state of Texas, are third at just over 400,000 miles.

Team with the most out-of-state counties: Kansas City Chiefs

Chiefs fandom is ubiquitous in Missouri, which is home to Arrowhead Stadium: the Chiefs are the most popular team in 110 Missouri Counties, nearly the entire state. The Chiefs, however, are the top team in another 199 counties outside of Missouri, spread across eight additional states. Chiefs fans are next-most likely to be found in Kansas (81 counties), followed by Iowa (41), Nebraska (39), and Illinois (23).

The Chiefs are the top team across most of Missouri, but the team's fans extend beyond its home state

Following the Chiefs are the Dallas Cowboys, whose fans extend beyond the Texas borders; just behind Dallas are the Minnesota Vikings, a team with a large footprint across the northern U.S.

Team with the most California counties: San Francisco 49ers

California - the only state with four NFL teams - can be the site of hot competition for NFL fans. The San Francisco 49ers are currently the most popular team in the state, and also happen to be the most successful of the group on the field, historically speaking. With 41 counties, the 49ers hold a commanding lead.
California, currently home to four NFL teams, is largely Niners county
San Francisco's rivals across the Bay Bridge, the Oakland Raiders, are the top team in the second-most counties, with eight. Raiders fans also make up three large counties in Nevada, the team's future home state when it moves to Las Vegas in 2019 or 2020.

The state's two Los Angeles-based teams, the Rams and Chargers, are locked in a battle for Southern California. The Rams currently hold the lead as the top team in seven counties, including LA County, while the Chargers have retained fans in San Diego County despite their move north.

***

Fandom can be fickle, and when it comes to the most popular sport in the country, NFL allegiance does not always follow state lines. Explore the interactive map above to find out which teams NFL fans in your state and county are supporting. And to plan your schedule for the season, find NFL tickets here.
For additional data and information, please reach out to press@seatgeek.com.

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Where do NFL Fans Live? Mapping Football Fandom Across the U.S. - TBA

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As the kickoff of the 99th NFL season on September 6 draws nearer, fans from Hawaii to Maine are preparing for another year of football. There are many ways to cast a vote of NFL allegiance, and wearing a favorite jersey, studying team Xs and Os, and spending Sunday afternoons in front of the TV ...

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Want a design challenge? Try this out.

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Millions of practice design prompts to challenge you to think outside the box.

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Press Release: In-N-Out is favorite for burgers, Jersey Mike’s makes comeback in sandwich category

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Press Release: In-N-Out is favorite for burgers, Jersey Mike’s makes comeback in sandwich category

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From the article: "A new, large-scale consumer study conducted by Market Force Information (Market Force) reveals America’s favorite quick-service restaurant (QSR) chains in seven popular food categories: burgers, sandwiches, Mexican, pizza, chicken, coffee and bakery, and frozen dessert and smoothie. "

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Restaurant | Market Force Information, Inc.

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From the article: "The market-research firm Market Force Information surveyed 7,600 people to find out which burger chains the liked the most and least, ranking them by eight attributes, like "food quality", "speed service" and "staff friendliness".

Over at Flowing Data, Nathan Yau took that info and charted it out in a superb dataviz..."

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The market-research firm Market Force Information surveyed 7,600 people to find out which burger chains the liked the most and least, ranking them by eight attributes, like "food quality", "speed service" and "staff friendliness".

Over at Flowing Data, Nathan Yau took that info and charted it out in a superb dataviz:

What's interesting here isn't just the burger info. What's fun is noticing how beautifully Yau's dataviz here takes eight tables of data -- hard to look at, hard to spot patterns in (you can see the original tables here) -- and transforms it into something that tells a story at a glance: The customer approval for chains like In-N-Out and Whatabuger are pretty well-rounded, while people seem to have only one big thing they like about chains like Steak 'N Shake (value for the money) or Jack in the Box (speed of service.)

Yau's stuff is always good, but this one is a particularly nice object-lesson in the value of well-done data visualization.

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The market-research firm Market Force Information surveyed 7,600 people to find out which burger chains the liked the most and least, ranking them by eight attributes, like "food quality", "speed service" and "staff friendliness". Over at Flowing Data, Nathan Yau took that info and charted it out in a superb dataviz: What's interesting here isn't...

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Use for your in-class assignment.

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Free Icons and Stickers - Millions of images to download

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Download Free Icons and Stickers for your projects. Images made by and for designers in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD and CSS formats

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Use for in-class assignment

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One Font, 675 Icons

In a single collection, Font Awesome is a pictographic language of web-related actions.

No JavaScript Required

Fewer compatibility concerns because Font Awesome doesn't require JavaScript.

Infinite Scalability

Scalable vector graphics means every icon looks awesome at any size.

Free, as in Speech

Font Awesome is completely free for commercial use. Check out the license.

CSS Control

Easily style icon color, size, shadow, and anything that's possible with CSS.

Perfect on Retina Displays

Font Awesome icons are vectors, which mean they're gorgeous on high-resolution displays.

Plays Well with Others

Originally designed for Bootstrap, Font Awesome works great with all frameworks.

Desktop Friendly

To use on the desktop or for a complete set of vectors, check out the cheatsheet.

Thanks to @robmadole and@supercodepoet for icon design review, advice, some Jekyll help, and being all around badass coders.

HUGE thanks to @gtagliala for doing such a fantastic job managing pull requests and issues on the Font Awesome GitHub project.

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One Font, 675 Icons In a single collection, Font Awesome is a pictographic language of web-related actions. No JavaScript Required Fewer compatibility concerns because Font Awesome doesn't require JavaScript. Infinite Scalability Scalable vector graphics means every icon looks awesome at any size. Free, as in Speech Font Awesome is completely free for commercial use.

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Introducing the Impossible Whopper

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Our Impossible™ WHOPPER® Sandwich features a savory flame-grilled patty made from plants topped with juicy tomatoes, fresh lettuce, creamy mayonnaise, ketchup, crunchy pickles, and sliced white onions on a soft sesame seed bun. 100% WHOPPER®, 0% Beef.

* For guests looking for a meat-free option, a non-broiler method of preparation is available upon request. .

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Our Impossible™ WHOPPER® Sandwich features a savory flame-grilled patty made from plants topped with juicy tomatoes, fresh lettuce, creamy mayonnaise, ketchup, crunchy pickles, and sliced white onions on a soft sesame seed bun. 100% WHOPPER®, 0% Beef.*For guests looking for a meat-free option, a non-broiler method of preparation is available upon request..

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What does this look like to you?

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Color: The blackest black car in the whole world

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Color: The blackest black car in the whole world

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"First developed for use in light-sensitive aerospace components (and infamously licensed for artistic use solely by sculptor Anish Kapoor), the pigment uses tiny carbon nanotubes to absorb up to 99.965% of light striking its surface. At Google’s top secret materials lab, I recently gazed upon a sample of Vantablack in real life for the first time. It almost broke my brain. It has no reflection, no contours. It’s like part of the world has been Photoshopped away. Stare at it long enough, and it feels like your soul is being sucked out of your eyeballs."

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It's hard to describe Vantablack, the world's darkest black pigment, without seeing it for yourself.

First developed for use in light-sensitive aerospace components (and infamously licensed for artistic use solely by sculptor Anish Kapoor), the pigment uses tiny carbon nanotubes to absorb up to 99.965% of light striking its surface. At Google's top secret materials lab, I recently gazed upon a sample of Vantablack in real life for the first time. It almost broke my brain. It has no reflection, no contours. It's like part of the world has been Photoshopped away. Stare at it long enough, and it feels like your soul is being sucked out of your eyeballs.

I couldn't imagine any everyday object being painted in Vantablack, let alone one that can move at 90 miles per hour. But at the Frankfurt Motor Show this September, the auto manufacturer will be displaying a one-off BMW X6 painted in Vantablack.

Even in photos, the effect is pronounced. The car itself appears two-dimensional. Only details like the tires, grill, and windows offer visual cues as to the true shape of the car-though in many images, those components simply seem to be floating in space.

It's a frightening idea, to imagine seeing a Vantablack car on the road. BMW used a more reflective version of the paint, which bounces back a more generous 1% of visible light, for this application. Yet even with a slightly reflective surface, a Vatablack car in your rearview mirror would probably look something like a Looney Tunes tunnel painted on in the middle of the street. Is that an object or a void?

Black cars are notably more dangerous to drive than white cars for reasons of visibility already. A study by Monash University Accident Research Centre in Australia, which studied crash data across the country from 1987 to 2004, found that compared to white cars as a baseline, crash risk was higher for just about every other common color, including red, blue, silver, green, gray, and, yes, black. Black performed the worst by every measure: In daylight, the chance of crash is 12% higher than that of white cars. At dawn and dusk, that jumps to 47%-though your relative risk of getting into an accident at that time is lower at those hours, the authors point out. Monash's study was consistent with at least one other, from the University of Granada, which determined that yellow was a safe alternative to white. The center is a respected resource in vehicle safety, also contributing to the annual Used Car Safety Ratings.

In any case, if black is the least safe color for a car, making that black even blacker seems like an objectively terrible design decision. In fact, BMW confirmed outright that this car will not be going into production. As to whether or not the company considers it safe? "The car hasn't been made for road test drives and hasn't seen daylight yet, but we will certainly test it on our proving grounds to see how it reacts/looks outside of a hangar," a spokesperson said. "Therefore, we can't answer this question yet."

So why make this car at all? Is it simply to get the attention of headlines? Or could it be teasing something else about BMW's future?

In fact, the latter seems to be the case.

"The Vantablack X6 is the first project we had using this material, but we are thinking of other applications than coating a car (which is more a test or a show car purpose)," they say. "For example, the use of Vantablack allows to reduce drastically sun reflections on screens/displays/lenses and could make it's way in Head-up-Displays or camera lenses used for driving assistant systems, making them more accurate by reducing reflections."

In other words, the future of Vantablack in cars probably won't be on the outside of vehicles, but on their insides, where reflection can actually hinder visual perception. I, for one, cannot wait to spill fries and latte foam all over my Vantablack dashboard.

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The first car painted with the world's "blackest black" is deeply unsettling

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It's hard to describe Vantablack, the world's darkest black pigment, without seeing it for yourself. First developed for use in light-sensitive aerospace components (and infamously licensed for artistic use solely by sculptor Anish Kapoor), the pigment uses tiny carbon nanotubes to absorb up to 99.965% of light striking its surface.

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Fast and easy GIF creation. Create animated GIFs from YouTube, videos, or images and decorate with captions and stickers.Share your GIFs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SMS.

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It's essential that Lamar University promotes and protects the use of the Lamar University name, logo, and other identifying marks.
To ensure proper use we have developed polices and guidelines for all printed, electronic, promotional and retail items.

Through a partnership with Learfield Licensing, we monitor commercial use of all LU marks. Please help us keep the LU brand strong and request a license before printing or producing materials bearing the University's name.

Licensed Vendors

Licensing Approval

Trademark Reinforcement

Visual Standards Manuals

Websites and Social Media

Mass Emails

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It's essential that Lamar University promotes and protects the use of the Lamar University name, logo, and other identifying marks. To ensure proper use we have developed polices and guidelines for all printed, electronic, promotional and retail items. Through a partnership with Learfield Licensing, we monitor commercial use of all LU marks.

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From HubSpot: "When putting together great visuals, make sure you’re staying consistent from a brand style standpoint. Whether you’re adding an image to a blog post or a social media post – or adding anything visual at all – the last thing you want to do is guess which colors, images, or fonts to use to stay consistent with other images your brand publishes."

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Hubspot Academy's Graphic Design Essential Tutorial

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Hubspot Academy's Graphic Design Essential Tutorial

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I use HubSpot for class work and consulting work. Here is a quick tutorial. You will have to sign in but it's worth 44 minutes of your time if you want additional insight.

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Learn the fundamental concepts of graphic design and how to use them to create high-quality graphics.

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@CinemaPalette's Twitter account is dead. Now go to their Instagram page

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@CinemaPalette's Twitter account is dead. Now go to their Instagram page

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Well, the Twitter account is inactive. The user now posts on Instagram. See what they are doing there.

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Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

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This article and the Twitter feed inside of it inspired this exercise.

What's your favorite movie? Steal a few shots from that movie and create the color palette for the movie.

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Color Palettes From Famous Movies Show How Colors Set The Mood Of A Film

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Color sets the tone and mood of a film before any of the actors have even uttered a word. Directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski used a green tint in The

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Things I love and like. There will be a lot of cookies, fonts, and knitting posted. You haven been warned.

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This IN-CLASS exercise was inspired by this article.

This exercise will use the DSDE posters lining the Communication Building halls.

You will be assigned a poster. You will have to translate the poster into a new poster format and into the surprise format you are given.

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Scholars around the world share their latest research findings with a decidedly low-tech ritual: printing a 48-inch by 36-inch poster densely packed with charts and graphs, and accompanied by blocks of text describing their research hypothesis, methods and findings. Then they stand in an exhibit hall for an hour, surrounded by rows of other researchers presenting similar posters, while hundreds of colleagues from around the world walk by trying to skim the displays.

Mike Morrison, a PhD student in psychology at Michigan State University, says the experience turns out to be highly dispiriting.

"It's like standing at a bar or a club and waiting for someone to talk to you-you're thinking, 'am I not pretty?'" he said in an interview this week. Often the people browsing the posters avoid eye contact, so they can keep scanning the titles of the posters until they find one that seems related to their own work.

Not only does the exercise deflate the morale of the scholars sharing posters, but the ritual is also incredibly inefficient at communicating science, Morrison argues. And the stakes are high, since the posters could potentially connect scholars to findings or approaches that could help them speed up their own discoveries to, say, cure a disease faster. "It's not just frustration that's on the line, it's human progress itself," he says.

Morrison says he has a solution: A better design for those posters, plus a dash of tech.

Mike Morrison's redesigned research poster design leaves out the dense text and highlights key findings, in plain language.

Specifically, he created a poster template that skips the dense academic title of the project and replaces it with the main research finding, stated in plain English and printed in a giant font that can be read clearly even from several feet away. The design still includes a few charts and bullet points about the methods, but there's also plenty of empty space. It looks eye-catching, if a bit incomplete.

To make up for all the nuance and detail lost in this approach, the template includes a QR code that viewers can scan to get to the full research paper.

Before Morrison decided to go back to grad school to get his PhD, he spent more than a decade as a web designer who specialized in user experience. Which is why the cluttered and hard-to-read layout of the standard templates used for posters struck him as particularly egregious.

A typical conference poster is difficult to skim while walking by in an exhibit hall, says Morrison.

And he's had his own bad experience with the traditional poster design. He remembers presenting his first research poster in 2017 at the Association for Psychological Science's annual conference in Boston. Despite his eagerness, few people stopped to talk to him.

Ironically, he was presenting research on what makes work meaningful to people. "One of the quickest ways of making work meaningless is doing something that's futile," he says, which is what it feels like to stand by a poster no wants to talk about. "It's almost like you'd have a better experience if you had 50 people yelling at you and saying it's a bad paper," he joked (since if people criticize you they likely, at least, have read your work).

Morrison decided to share his template with the world, and he wanted to do so in a way that would make his method the new norm. If everyone followed his lead, he argues, researchers could rethink how they experience poster sessions.

The current model lets scholars deeply explore two or three papers during a typical hour-long session, since the dense poster design requires the reader to stand at one display for a long time to take in all the information. The new design could give scholars the chance to quickly scan all the major findings presented in the room, and leave time to have more conversations with presenters about the related work.

So Morrison designed a splashy social-media rollout of his template. He spent a year-in his spare time on nights and weekends-producing a 20-minute animated video explaining the problem with research posters and why people should try his idea. In March, he posted the video on YouTube, with a link underneath pointing to a webpage where anyone can download his poster template. Then he sent out a tweet with the video link.

"Let's fix academic posters!" it began. "Watch this cartoon to see a new, faster approach to designing research posters. Includes templates. #betterposter."

Since then the tweet, and the video, have gone viral, with more than 3,000 retweets and 200,000 video views.

Just weeks after he released his design, a researcher in Canada became one of the first to try it out.

Eugene Ofosu, a social psychology graduate student at McGill University, presented a research poster at the 2019 Mental Health and Law Conference using Morrison's template. And he won first place in the poster competition.

Dumbing Down Science?

The new design has some critics, though.

In Twitter and YouTube comments, some researchers said Morrison was dumbing down the science and missing the point of poster presentations, which they say is to show all the work on the board so that peers can have a conversation at the conference about all the fine points.

"They said, 'You're turning science into a meme," said Morrison.

Morrison sees it as a compliment. "Memes by design spread," he said. "Don't we want science to spread?"

Use of the template appears to be spreading from discipline to discipline with each new conference.

A blog about the design of scientific posters (yes, there are blogs devoted to this) offered some detailed suggestions for small modifications to the design. Morrison has already incorporated some of those changes in a new version of template. In fact, he has been releasing new updates frequently, as if the template was a piece of software needing regular improvements.

But not everyone using Morrison's template is following his directive to keep the text short.

Some examples researchers have tweeted out using the #betterposter hashtag show posters with QR codes but still densely packed with text.

Rankyung Hong, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Minnestoa, said the new design is probably "more ideal" than the traditional template. But she admits she will probably continue to fill all the available space on her research posters with findings and detail about her research. "It's very complicated material," she says of her research. Plus, she says, presenting as much information as possible is "the norm in our department."

But she will consider adopting at least some of Morrison's ideas, like using the QR code to send people to the full paper. "I think it's cool," she says. "It'd get very good attention from the audience because it's a different style."

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Research Posters Are a Staple of Academic Conferences. Could a New Design Speed Discovery? - EdSurge News

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Scholars around the world share their latest research findings with a decidedly low-tech ritual: printing a 48-inch by 36-inch poster densely packed with charts and graphs, and accompanied by blocks of text describing their research hypothesis, methods and findings.

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As we evolve to meet beautifully diverse customers all over the world, our brand has evolved too. Here we introduce a fresh new design system that maintains the core elements of our brand while keeping our customers' experience central to creative expression.

To achieve this, we're thoughtfully incorporating beautiful, expressive moments with calm confidence in ways that are optimistic, joyful and recognizably Starbucks. By consistently utilizing the Siren logo, an expanded palette of greens rooted in our iconic green apron and a constrained family of harmonious typefaces, we bring purpose and cohesion to every interaction customers have with our brand.

From farmers, roasters and baristas to writers, designers and illustrators, we believe in the power of both coffee and art to connect people and communities. Our new creative expression marries the artful core of our brand with helping our customers where they are, on their terms.

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Our new expression. It all starts here. Use this guide as a high-level overview of how the Starbucks brand comes to life.

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Starbucks "published the brand’s full guidelines—complete with color codes and typographic weights—onto a public website for anyone to explore."

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Whether you love or hate its coffee, there is no denying that the Starbucks brand is a juggernaut. The green siren logo- with her ingeniously asymmetrical face-is a universal beacon for a caffeine fix. And there is no mistaking one of the company's hyperbolic beverages like the Tie-Dye Frappucino, which you can spot on the street from a block away, for a drink made by any other chain.

With more than $24 billion in revenue, 31,000 locations worldwide, and countless promotions and menu items that vary regionally, keeping the brand operating at scale is a major job. But for the past year, Starbucks's internal creative team has been updating the brand system that makes up everything from its in-store signage to its promotions on Instagram. And now, it's published the brand's full guidelines -complete with color codes and typographic weights-onto a public website for anyone to explore.

"We were just proud of the work, and inspired by other brands being more transparent about their creative process," says Ben Nelson, creative director at Starbucks.

Brands like Uber and Netflix have taken similar approaches to pulling the curtain back on their brand identities through public microsites. Such sites also serve as a tool that anyone in the company, or agency partners, can access globally to quickly double check brand standards.

Some of the core elements of the new creative don't look a whole lot different than what you'll find inside of any Starbucks today: The logo is the same as it's been for years, and employees still wear their green aprons.

Using these details as an anchor, the design team redeveloped everything else. The result is an overall sharpening of the global Starbucks look. From my perspective, it's not trying to be your neighborhood coffee shop in the way it has for the last decade or so. It's trying to be your nearest Starbucks. It does this through a combination of changes focused around two themes: First, the design prioritizes legibility and conveying information as clearly as possible. The other half is about expressivity, emotion, and all the other intangibles Starbucks wants to spark in the consumer. Depending on the context, the brand system allows designers to dial up either trait as needed.

The new menu board articulates the clarity the design team was going for. "We really cleaned it up and made it more functional for our occasional customers, for those who just want to come in and order their Caramel Macchiato," says Nelson. "But then, on the other side of the spectrum, we have a lot of artfulness in our creative expression. You'll see that in merchandise, like [gift] card packaging."

Starbucks is moving away from hand-lettering-a staple of coffeehouse culture it had used in the past-altogether. Instead, it collaborated with an unnamed external firm to develop two new typefaces. Sodo Sans is a streamlined typeface used for most of the company's body copy. Lander is a serifed typeface with character that looks perfect for social media. And a third off-the-shelf typeface, condensed Trade Gothic LT, is a means to squeeze a lot of words into tight spaces.

On the expressive end, the design team focused heavily on illustration and color-which the new branding uses to articulate a sense of time, cueing you into the changing seasons, and seasonal drinks, available at Starbucks.

"We started with this kind of world of greens, building of course from our green apron," says Nelson. "Then each season, we're choosing colors that are on trend, inspired by our coffee craft or beverages, then building a cohesive campaign across channels as well." So far, spring is defined by coral, turquoise, and goldenrod, while summer includes soft pink, along with a yellow and peach that resemble desaturated watercolors. In each case, foundational Starbucks greens ground it all.

The way it all comes together feels quite poised. Starbucks's drinks appear with a crystal clarity, their milky swirls frozen in time on top of sharp lettering. Sometimes the vibe is stoic, as three matcha drinks are lined up side by side with all of the excitement of a public transit sign. Sometimes it's cheeky, like a meme-y Starbucks zodiac illustration. But broadly speaking, any bohemian aura that was lingering from the bygone, '90s-era coffeeshop culture has been ironed out of the updated global brand. Of course, a few things remain the same. If you stare long enough, those Caramel Crunch Frappuccinos still start calling your name.

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Starbucks just publicly deconstructed its brand-here's why

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Whether you love or hate its coffee, there is no denying that the Starbucks brand is a juggernaut. The green siren logo- with her ingeniously asymmetrical face-is a universal beacon for a caffeine fix.

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Founder and CEO of Giphy, Alex Chung, shares his reflections on the limits of written language, the topic of wonder, and how GIFs help break boundaries.

In his talk, he says, "If you get into the visual language of gifs, you are now expanding vocabulary because these things are saying things that never could be said before." What do you think--true or false, right or wrong?

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All Talks Individuals Chapters

Alex Chung is currently the founder and CEO of Giphy, the people who bring you all the GIFs.

Before founding Giphy, he worked on hardware at Intel and music videos at MTV as well as over a dozen startups over the last 20 years.

He was named on Business Insider's Top 25 most influential technologists in New York, Ad Age's 50 most creative people, Fast Company's most creative people in business right next to Beyoncé, and has degrees in philosophy, computer engineering, and graphic design.

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Alex Chung | GIFs, Wonder, and the Contraints of Language | CreativeMornings/NYC

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All Talks Individuals Chapters Alex Chung is currently the founder and CEO of Giphy, the people who bring you all the GIFs. Before founding Giphy, he worked on hardware at Intel and music videos at MTV as well as over a dozen startups over the last 20 years.

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All you favorite emotes on one page. ｡◕‿◕｡

Emotes.io is one of the biggest library of emotes on the web. All of your unicode emoticons, emojis and ascii art (coming soon!) available in one place, for your convenience.

What is an emote? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to emote is to give expression to emotion especially in acting.

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Emotes.io is one of the biggest library of emotes on the web. All of your unicode emoticons, emojis and ascii art (coming soon!) available in one place, for your convenience.

1. Copy emotes by clicking on them.

2. Paste them anywhere by pressing Ctrl+V (or ⌘+V).

3. Done. It's that simple.

Created by Stix Support by buying me a coffee

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All your favorite emotes in one page ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Emotes - All of your favorite emotes in one page, click to copy to clipboard, paste them anywhere. One of the biggest and most updated library of emoticons ლ(╹◡╹ლ). Over 1500+ Emotes, Kaomoji, Text Faces, Donger, Japanese Emoticons and Emojis¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ಠ_ಠ