Design

In this blog post, we're diving headfirst into the realm of creative social media assets and unleashing a tidal wave of fun-filled strategies to turbocharge your online presence. So grab your digital paintbrushes and let's get ready to shake up the social scene with some seriously sensational content!
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Nostalgia On Trend Remember the era when pixels ruled screens? With today’s high-res images and digital, out-of-this-world AI smoothness, a swing back to the comfortable imperfection of the glitch can be reassuring for millennials seeking their childhood vibe or Gen X looking back at their ‘youth’ years loving this style.
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Today's blog takes a look at some ideas for posts on social media, by revolutionising your feed using these captivating tips!
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Why, When, Where, all at once  Botanica is the trend of response to a world increasingly shaped by technology, seeking to reconnect individuals with the beauty of the environment. Ok you may have seen this before, in the early 2000’s, but it is now back and it’s here to stay.
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In this blog we talk about the stormy seas of burnout and look at some ways to help overcome it.
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What’s in your bag? It better be a mini digicam… extra points if it’s a fun colour!  Over the last year we can see that Gen Z have taken a liking to vintage digital cameras. Between our cult obsession with Mean Girls, low rise jeans and paparazzi style content, creating…
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The Dystopian Aesthetics of AI-Generated Art in Social Media Marketing In the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for grabbing the attention of today’s scrolling-savvy audience. A recent trend that has taken the digital marketing realm by storm is the use of AI-generated…
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In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, where our attention spans have dwindled to less than that of a goldfish (yes, you read that right!), making a lasting impression is crucial. But how do you captivate your audience from the get-go? It’s all about creating visuals that demand attention, leaving viewers in…
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Step into the enchanting world of colour as Pantone unveiled its mesmerising choice for the Colour of the Year back in December – none other than the sublime Peach Fuzz! Picture a velvety, gentle peach tone that goes beyond the visual to embrace your mind, body,…
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Is it that magical time of the year again where we dust off our crystal balls, wave our design wands, and predict the fantastical trends that will dominate the creative landscape in the upcoming year? Oh, you betcha! Grab your trend-tracking binoculars because we’re about to embark on a wild…
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Hey party people! Buckle up for another thrilling ride through the ad universe as we revisit some iconic campaigns that have left an indelible mark on our creative souls. Inspired by The Ad Professor’s thread over on X 🚀 First in the lineup is Chupa Chups…
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Today’s blog promises to be a treat as we delve into some of the most captivating Halloween marketing campaigns that brands have rolled out this year. Halloween, being one of the most creatively inspiring seasons (I might be a little biased due to my love for Halloween), is the perfect…
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AI - driven design is becoming ever-more commonplace, In today’s blog we’ll shine a spotlight on the recent #AdobeMax announcements and what this means for the future of AI design.
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AI is revolutionising the way we create, share, and interact with visual content on social media platforms. In this blog, we'll explore the fusion of AI and visual design in social media, highlighting its impact, benefits, and potential for the future.
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Dive into the enchanting universe of stop-motion animation! 🌟 Unleash your brand's story in a captivating and unique way. explore the captivating possibilities for your brand.
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AI and Design is an ever-evolving space, offering new frontiers of creativity. In the blog, we’ll concentrate on one new tool in the designers arsenal that’s set to flip the world on its head.
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Get ready to turn your social media ads into a real party! Social media advertising is more than just a promotional strategy; it’s an art form. It involves crafting tailored ads to reach specific target audiences on a wide variety of evolving social media platforms. Armed with insights such as…
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Are you ready to dive headfirst into a world where creativity knows no bounds? Hold onto your imagination because Procreate is about to take you on a journey beyond your wildest dreams!
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In today’s blog, our Design team share their thoughts, reflections and lessons learnt from Inmotion 2023, a conference for leading professionals across the creative industries.
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One size doesn’t fit all with social – but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that LinkedIn’s audience wants to absorb content the same way they would on Facebook, TikTok or Insta – not that it’s becoming a more visual platform, but for…
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Today, we're taking a daring plunge into the treacherous waters of "CREATIVE BURNOUT" – cue the dramatic soundtrack! 😱
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Step behind the lens and discover the captivating world of 'go behind the scenes' content creation! From unravelling audience desires to crafting unique angles that dazzle, we're diving into the art of sharing the magic that happens backstage.
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I’m sure we’ve all seen by now, Elon Musk’s rebrand of Twitter to “X” – I wanted to take this opportunity to have a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with… The Good. Is there? Taking such an iconic brand and changing it to something…
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A marketer and a designer walk into a bar… No, it’s not the setup for a joke. It’s the beginning of a beautiful collaboration that unleashes the power of visual storytelling that transforms campaigns from “meh” to “mind-blowing. In today’s digital days, capturing the hearts and minds of your…
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In today's blog we'll be taking a look at 3D Design. Once thought the preserve of blockbuster film-making 3D design, or CGI (computer-generated imagery) has never been more accessible, and now it's taking over our feeds.
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We're diving head-first into the world of vertical videos, the viral sensation that's reshaping the social media landscape, and we're not gatekeeping our best tips for creating jaw-dropping, thumb-stopping content that will have your followers begging for more.
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It feels like one company said ‘we need brand guidelines to make sure our logo is recognisable across the board’ – then a person at that brand moved to another company and the method spread and spread. In reality, ‘guidelines’ shouldn’t be rules – they’re a foundation for creativity. We’re…
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Here at Immediate Future, we love looking at dominant social media trends and really taking them apart. I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the increasing presence of stop motion on their TLs recently, especially in product shoots. It’s popularity – I believe stems from the fact that it…
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Instagram is testing out the ability to generate AI custom stickers based on text prompts.
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What is new and exciting in the world of social media? Let’s talk about it…
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TikTok's generative AI tool for avatar creation
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­Have you ever wondered why your social media posts just aren’t performing as well as they used to? Are you looking for ways to get across your information about your brand in a fun, accessible and thumb-stopping way? Maybe an animated video is the right way for you to go.
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The designers here at IF attended a super informative and inspiring virtual event hosted by Monotype, and I thought it would be cool to share some of the top typography trends to keep an eye out for this year. Match Maker This trend has several different…
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Over the past few months a debate has been raging on Social Media and across the wider internet on the ethical implications of A.I art. For those sitting in the back, or who have had their phones off for the past six months, maybe a quick précis is in order.
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Looking back at some of the iconic women in design history
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Hoo boy that was a long cold winter wasn’t it? O.K, it might still be pretty cold BUT at least its getting a bit lighter. Maybe its too early to say the “S” word just yet – I haven’t seen any blooming daffodils or gamboling lambs myself yet – but…
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What is retro rebranding and why does it work? In today's blog we take a look at brands who have done just that.
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It’s nearly that time of year again- the end of it! Today we’ll be looking at some tasty design trends for 2023. It’s always interesting to zoom out and take a look forward to the trends that we think will really stand out next. The fine folks over at…
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Some tips to help when you're in a creative slump
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YouTube celebrated its 17th birthday earlier this year and the platform announced a few new upcoming design elements and product features. The intention is to make the app look and feel ‘cleaner, more lively’, and easier to use for different purpose. The biggest update is ‘pinch to…
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Will AI take over the creative world? Or is it something we can use to help the creative process?
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Have you ever wondered what it takes to make your brand a world-beater? In today’s blog I’ll take you through the impressively deep thought given to colour choices used by the biggest brands.
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Do you find your engagement dropping month-on-month? Are you writing snappy copy only to have your posts sink like a lead balloon?  It might be time to re-think your design strategy. Our friends over at Brafton have come up with this handy infographic, (see…
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Meta hosted a pretty great and insightful webinar last week, Culture Codes: How Platform Native Advertising Builds Brands with Humanity and I wanted to take a moment to go through it a little bit and share some of my thoughts.
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Discover how to make visuals for social media go the extra mile and stand out from the crowd!
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Hulu lets independent artists and studios go wild with their logos for truly outstanding idents.
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Before you even think about design, start off with setting up templates for social. Here's how
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I thought it would be fun to look at campaigns from the past that have stuck with us over the years. No introductions needed… WASSUUUUPPPP This *really* resonated with people, you couldn’t go 5 mins without hearing someone shouting “wassup” and everyone else joining in. It permeated the ✨…
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The first thing you want to do is to create a cool animated gif!  If you’re anything like me, you love a good bit of animated text.  All those colours and fonts and sparkles and… Sorry, where was I?  Ah yes, creating your own animated stickers for Instagram. …
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It’s that time, once again, I chat to you about design and give you some (hopefully) useful tips to help your work stand out in a sea of creatives. Are you ready? Let’s go!! BE BOLD Kind of an easy one to start with, however, being bold with…
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Although we’re mid-way through February already, the trends for this year still keep coming. And this time it’s colour trends from the one and only Shutterstock.  Taken from data over the past year, mixed with insights from Shutterstock AI, the 2022 colour trends report details how each…
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Crafting thumb-stopping social creatives is hard, but it’s even harder if your briefs are too vague, or even worse, too prescriptive. Today, we’re taking you through the do’s and don’ts of briefing for social media, with an example of how we approach briefing as well. But first! What…
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  Before we begin, I need to ask you a simple yet divisive question. How much do you care about the look of your Instagram profile? The answer to this has changed over the years, being crucial in the early days where people would comment on the aesthetic of…
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Does your brand need to change perception through design or communicate sustainability values on social? Then keep reading this blog or watch this episode of Serious Social to discover best practices when it comes to design on social. Changing how your brand…
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  Ahh yes, we all love some trends, don’t we? And why not end the year with a look at some design trends for 2022 as predicted by the lovely people over at 99designs. 90’s Nostalgia: Who doesn’t love 90’s aesthetics?! With Gen Z bringing…
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At immediate future, we’re constantly testing new and exciting things to help us continue breaking the social boring. Especially when it comes to design. For both client-facing employees and our official designers, Canva is a great starter tool to get creative and super easy to use! What is Canva? …
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  Following on from the Figma discussion a few weeks ago, where we talked about the pros of using apps like Figma in your design workflow, I wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to some other very cool apps that designers…
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Trusting the process… what is it? And what does it mean for designers and social media? Earlier this year, IF’s digital designers, Ollie Farnden and Chantal El Bikai sat down to answer exactly that. We describe the process as a day-by-day series of steps, like making a cup…
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  Here at immediate future, we are always testing new and exciting things to help us continue breaking the social boring. Recently, the design team stumbled across a design platform called Figma. A platform that enables users to work on a single document at the same time, working seamlessly…
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  In light of World Mental Health Day, I wanted to take this moment to talk about creativity and mental health.   We’ve all been there with burnout. So often as designers, we think of this as a normal part of the creative process. But I’m just gonna…
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… to real growth A few weeks ago we talked about the importance of trusting the process and what it means to the design team here at IF. This week I want to talk a little further about some points we hit on in that specific live,…
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  Designers know more about ‘trusting the process’ than anyone else. Though what we all need to understand is, there is a process to everything that we do and without trust and patience, we can falter at the first hurdle. When it comes to ‘Trusting the Process’ on social…
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  On average, users post 6,000 Tweets every second on Twitter. As a Social Media Designer, standing out from the pack is crucial, and you probably dedicate a huge amount of your time to researching competitors, trawling through Facebook design groups for inspiration, or looking at the work of…
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  A few weeks ago we talked about the brand refresh, in which we touched on creative reasonings and processes. In this blog, I want us to delve a little deeper into designing with social media in mind. What it entails and how best to…
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  Who doesn’t love a refresh? Be it a new hairdo or a colourful wardrobe? In this case, I’ll be talking about our brand refresh – a labour of love for almost 8 (yes, e i g h t) months. Taking what we already had, simplifying it, and…
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Brands, we hear your plea… you want better engagement and higher conversions, right? What’s the secret [BBQ] sauce? It’s the consumer data. In social, there are billions of consumers chatting about everything under the sun, so you just need to listen, interpret the data and use it to…
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Building a relationship between you and your design team is imperative to creating social content that leaps off the screen and becomes ingrained in users’ minds. You should trust your designers to know what they are doing and keep the clients’ best interests in mind.  In…
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  As a designer, trusting the process is second nature. We have to work on specific elements, gradually building them up slowly and methodically until we get the final product. This is something that can make or break a design team, making sure that everyone has confidence in their…
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Yes, I absolutely did say that! And don’t worry farmers, this has nothing to do with you lot, I promise.   After years of our photos and artwork being subjected to weird cropping, Twitter has FINALLY rolled out their new image display for mobile, and let me tell you,…
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Social is a very visual medium, so why are brands still doing a bad job at communication through design? Whether it’s a boring, wallpaper image, or a message which doesn’t translate from print to social (we’re looking at you, Burger King), there’s no reason brands can’t take the…
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Last week we informed you that Facebook was looking to cash in on creating a rival product to the widely popular Clubhouse. While this is true, it seems that Instagram is still trying to catch up with other social networks and enable users to have more than two…
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In recent days, gamers have swarmed social media to show their disappointment in the launch of the highly anticipated video game, ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, some of which have been waiting over ten years for its release. To the dismay of many, the game released to platforms in an unplayable state, making…
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Over the years, as social media has become the be-all and end-all of where online content is consumed, the quality and style of creative imagery have continued to advance and achieve a wide range of results. As social is an ever-evolving landscape, trends and fads come and go from…
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Can you quite believe that we are a mere few weeks from the end of 2020! For many, it can’t end quick enough, but for brand marketers, we KNOW there’s never quite enough time to plan for the year ahead. We’ve just launched our…
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  Are you like me? Do you enjoy, nay, LOVE, Halloween season? It is by far the most enjoyable season (don’t @ me, I *will* fight you!) I absolutely love seeing the amount of creativity that goes into costumes, make up and media. I mean, even coffee get’s…
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New features galore this week – join us as we go through all the tools you’ll be playing with in coming months with our Social Snapshot:   Instagram has replaced Nametag Codes with QR Codes to quickly connect users Back in 2018, Instagram launched what it called ‘Nametag…
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The B2B landscape is an interesting one. There’s a common misconception that B2B organisations are low on usable content, but it’s simply not true. The landscape is actually flush with more information and eye-catching, challenging content than perhaps a lot of businesses realise. What do I have right now? Think…
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Last week, Facebook released a video on making creative impacts with text, timing and format. While focused largely on Facebook, the video has some general tips that are crucial for everyday social marketers looking to have their knowledge or current methods vindicated, and those that are trying to…
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Back in March, TechCrunch reported Instagram had seen a 40% increase in traffic due to the pandemic. With everyone at home, more time is being spent on digital platforms, and all social media platforms have been nurturing their growing platform in different ways – but…
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When it comes to conversion, the goal you might be setting doesn’t have to be a purchase – you might wish to measure conversion on increasing followers, engagement on your posts or sign-ups to an email list. Whichever conversion you’re measuring, we’ve got some top tips on what…
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Now is a time of rapid change – which can be scary. People are inherently resistant to change because it means disruption, even if it is beneficial. Can you remember Instagram’s old logos? The days when it looked more like a rounded-edged floppy disk? When Instagram’s logo was…
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We’ve all likely noticed the upswing in social media traffic – but we now we have hard statistics on the massive surge happening in recent months. A look at monthly traffic, Google’s new digital skills training sessions, Facebook’s redesign and more!   Media habits are changing Across all…
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We take creativity seriously at Immediate Future. Not only because we’re a team comprised of artistic people, but also because it’s needed to make social work. In an industry where audiences are flooded with an endless stream of promotional messaging, your campaigns need to stand out. Creativity is…
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It’s a question that really puzzles me. Along with ‘why do some businesses try to mimic the market leader?’ or, ‘why do B2B companies continue to use awful stock photography of people pretending to be businesspeople?’ or, ‘why do travel companies persist with blue filters?’. At the risk…
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In these times of social distancing and isolation, everyone is being affected in some way. Today, I’m exploring how coronavirus has affected artists.    Many freelancers have had projects dropped…
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Start with the ‘why’. This is [or should be] the mantra for any effective content marketing strategy. This is particularly important with social, where often the hard-sell message needs to take a backseat to genuine engagement and sensitivity when it comes to why social users are on that…
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Last week, while we were discussing Instagram ethics, the internet broke the story of the social experiment of all SOCIAL experiments. A youtuber revealed that a series of Instagram posts chronicling her seemingly luxurious holiday to Bali, was intentionally staged and planted to test…
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This weekend I had a genuinely delectable dining experience. The food was Persian, modern, and perfectly-portioned for a pair. The menu was small; with the heavy presence of pistachio and rose, as I anticipated. But what I couldn’t have anticipated was the polished approach to a Scandinavian-Mediterranean hybrid…
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At IF we love all things social. So, we’re always interested in staying up to date with the latest happenings and bringing them to you in our weekly social snapshot! Read on for a roundup of the best articles we just have to shout about…   Twitter’s…
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The world of social media is a wonderfully interesting place, with new features and tests being announced nearly every day. In case you missed out on any of the announcements over the past week, we’ve rounded up the best articles all in one place!   Snapchat looks to stay…
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Whether it’s a new platform update, testing a feature or ways to improve social strategy, we’re always fascinated to find out what’s been happening in the world of social media and learn new things. That’s why we’ve rounded up the best articles from the past week we just have…
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It doesn’t seem like long ago since Instagram announced it will be entering the world of eCommerce. And it definitely wasn’t long ago that users of the platform could create their very own AR filters. To maximise the usage of both features, Instagram is testing…
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Designers. Don’t you just hate it when you create an awesome asset to go out on social, but then you have that tedious job of having to resize it for all platforms – whilst still looking amazing!? Well, what if I told you, you may not have…
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The world of social media is a wonderfully interesting place, with new features and tests being announced nearly every day. In case you missed out on any of the announcements over the past week, we’ve rounded up the best articles all in one place, because you know, we’re good…
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It would be hard to make a secret of how far social media and technology have come in the past two decades. But let’s take a moment and look at the evolution and changes we had to go through to get where we are today. With the likes…
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