Today only (Wednesday, June 19, 2013,) I am making both books absolutely free to download. Click here to download for free on Amazon

Choose just one, or download both, and I guarantee that the strategies outlined in these books will help you attract more quality clients and boost your business like crazy.

Get Graphic Design Clients: Pro-tips for Landing, Impressing & Keeping the Good Ones

Click here to download for FREE through June 19, 2013, $4.99 after that

I wrote this book because I get so many questions sent in to my podcast from young or new designers asking us how they can begin on the road toward building a client base. I understand, finding clients is the most important aspect of any business, and unfortunately it can also be one of the most difficult.

Get Graphic Design Clients tackles the entire client process from start to finish. How you can find them, what you can do to make it easy for them find you, and how to work with them in such a way that they never want to hire anybody else but you. I delve pretty deep into some of my processes I have in place for how to deal with problematic clients, how to present to clients in a way that actually cuts down on revisions, and then how to ultimately get paid.

I also call out what I consider to be “Pro-tips” throughout the book. These tips are little nuggets that I have learned over the years that are either shortcuts to make things easier, or “above and beyond” measures that you can take to stand out from the pack.

Rock Your Portfolio Website: Pro-tips for Graphic Designers, Web Designers, Photographers & Other Creative Experts

Click here to download for FREE through June 19, 2013, $4.99 after that

Most freelance graphic designers tend to think small, and attract small clients because of it. When I set out to build my current portfolio site, I did a lot of research first to see what others were doing that was working, and where most were falling short. I made a lot of discoveries in terms of simple strategies that could be worked into any portfolio website to make it much more powerful.

I should let it be known that this book won’t tell you how to design your website, or how to actually code it and make it work.  What you will learn is how to use your portfolio site to set yourself apart as an expert in your creative field. When most of your competition is simply trying to show how creative they are, you can gain a serious advantage by being seen as the expert in a sea of ordinary freelancers.

These e-books will only be offered for free until June 19^th, 2013, so download them today. Have you read either book? Let everybody else know what you thought about them in the comment section below.

Brighten Things Up

A great way to break up the monotony of everyday life is to add a splash of color to everyday things. This can be accomplished in many different ways. If you are in an office, changing the color scheme of memos, spreadsheets, or even office supplies can be a nice change of pace. Of course you’ll want to keep things professional, but making things look nice does not have to be wild.

Adding plants to an office environment not only adds color, but helps provide a healthy atmosphere for creative thinking.

Go Out of Your Way

This piece of advice can be taken in several different ways. You can physically go out of your way by changing your daily route and routine. Do things in a different order than you usually do. Drive to work using the back roads. You may see things in a new light, and that can spark a ton of creativity.

You can also go out of your way to make others feel appreciated. Whether it is bringing in coffee for the person who sits next to you at work or just telling a coworker they look nice, small gestures can change someone’s day. Use those little odds and ends you’ve been keeping forever to make cute little gifts for those who may feel underappreciated at work. Send a quick personalized card or anything you might design to show someone that you are glad to have them in your life. Whatever you do, personalize it. Think about how you can use this item or message to communicate with the person who is receiving it.

Be Your Art

One of the best ways to share your work is to display it. The best way to display it is to have it with you all the time. If you make purses, scarves, or clothes, or something that can go on any of those, wear them! The same goes for jewelry. Pieces that you create are completely original. This means that people are likely to notice them. This may result in people asking you to make things for them, or in conversations about crafts that they do.

If you make decorations, bring some to the office. If you paint, see about hanging some of your work in the hallways at work. Many offices will be happy to add a splash of color to the walls.

Your art is not just a part of your life; you are your art. The more you incorporate your creativity into all aspects of your life, the truer you are being to yourself. Also, you will get more practice with your designs and crafts, which can only lead to greater skill.

Can you think of ways that you use your passion for creativity in your day to day activities?

 
Nancy Arnold is a graphic artist and writer, with a particular focus on producing romantic and beautiful designs for online invitations. When she isn’t working, her time is spent trying to build the perfect model ship.

Fonts are typically split into two types; serif and sans-serif. In Drew Eric Whitman’s book, Cashvertising he showed that certain fonts are naturally easier to read. 12% of readers were able to successfully understand a sans serif paragraph compared to 67% for serif paragraphs.

These differences can be exploited to produce print design with the most visual impact.

(Featured image by Derek Bowers)

More than Just a Great Body

Whatever you’re printing you’ll have a message you want to impart; be it your contact details, your company’s mission statement or your carefully designed fan-mail to Justin Bieber.

Don’t be tempted by a statement font for your body text, as this can make the most important points indecipherable. Also it’s best to avoid script or handwriting fonts as most seem to have taken doctor’s handwriting as their model, as so are difficult to read.

Serif fonts are designed with additions and flourishes that mean they are easier to read. The letters tend to flow together, so that the eye is drawn across the text. If in doubt, go with the crowd. Garamond is very popular with designers and is used for a wide-range of purposes, while Bookman is thought to be a good alternative. What’s key is to choose fonts that blend in, as an extreme choice will distract from the content. Avoid mono-spaced fonts as they draw attention to individual letters rather than words.

There are no hard and fast rules but the guidance is there for a reason; because it works. Serif fonts are thought to be more serious whereas sans serif fonts lend a more informal tone. Ultimately you need to make sure body text is readable. Express your extravagant side by choosing overstated fonts for headlines, logos and graphics.

The Art of a Good Title

Titles and headings are used to give order to a layout. Whether you’re a tabloid scanner or a broadsheet reader headlines are used to grab your attention and draw you in. For business or homemade birthday cards, the ultimate goal is to spark interest and guide the eye around the page.

Sans-serif fonts, as the name suggests, are without the serif trimmings. Readability is still important but there is often more freedom to use more decorative choices. However the tone of the design needs to be considered.

The feel of Comic Sans isn’t suitable for a letterhead but may be appropriate for a personal photobook. Whatever you choose be consistent. This is important to give a cohesive professional feel, rather just a collection of your favorite fonts.

To make your headlines stand out against your body text the take home message is contrast. This can be achieved using the distinction between serif and sans-serif. To make the most of fonts you need to realize that it’s not just about one font, but how they work together to form an impressive layout.

Can you see what I see?

It can be counter-intuitive to choose fonts for printing from a screen. Make sure your screen is showing what your printer will produce, using the brightness and contrast adjustments.

To be sure, once you have a short list of font combinations, print out headings and text to get a proper idea of its visual impact and suitability. To make sure they give the impression you are looking for show them to family and friends. They should give you an accurate opinion of contrast, size and readability.

For The Love of Fonts

Once you realize the power of the right font combination to elevate your projects, you may find time disappears as you ‘um and ah’ over different fonts. When you find an effective font or a great combination, save it. Write it down until you have a reference list that will save you time and headaches. BonFx have started you off with 19 font combination suggestions

The days of low-quality fonts are gone, even for the most inexperienced desktop publisher.  The wonderful world of the web means that there are loads of professional quality fonts to download and add to your collection, many of which are free. Smashing Magazine have collated the 40 best free fonts here.

Embrace your new found passion for all things typeface. If you can’t get enough, see them given the respect of an art-form on I love typography.

Despite the advent of online content and e-readers, print designs are still out there. The font your select can have an incredible impact on your message, tone and audience, so choose carefully. There is no right and wrong answer but for a tip on not what to choose – the Top 5 Worst Fonts For Printing might be a good first port of call.

Have you got any ideas on how to choose the best fonts? Share your comments below.

Elise Lévêque is a social media fanatic who likes to share. Although she spends a lot of her time online she’s still attached to her desktop printer and the possibilities it holds. She blogs for Cartridge Shop

Competition in the design industry is fierce. There are plenty of options for businesses to choose from when they want a new website, a new app or an email program.

What makes you different than the other options?

Something you might not have considered is offering digital signage design as a service.

What’s digital signage?

It’s actually one of the most common forms of advertising today.

What the Heck is Digital Signage?

Close your eyes for a second. We’re going to go on a little imagination journey.

Think of the last time you traveled around a city. If you stayed at a hotel right in the city you likely saw digital signage. In the lobby or by the elevators there are often digital displays showing advertisements for different restaurants and places to visit. The monitors display different images and presentations. It’s all part of digital signage.

Now, imagine the last time you entered a newer restaurant where you placed an order at the counter. As you looked behind the counter was there a digital display showing the latest options? This is another example of digital signage.

Finally, imagine walking into a college campus. As you walk into the main entrance you have a few options for your travel route. Usually just inside the entrance on a nearby wall there will be a digital display with information about the university including a directory.

There are many different places where digital signage is used. Doctor offices, government buildings, coffee houses and many others.

These businesses with physical locations appreciate the flexibility digital signage offers. Rather than printing signage for advertising, upselling or direction the businesses can invest in digital designs that can be implemented at a quicker pace so the content is always relevant.

Digital Signage Design as a Service

There are three reasons you should offer digital signage design as an additional service for your design business.

First, companies with physical locations need digital signage for various reasons. We’ve discussed a few of the reasons companies need signage – advertising, upselling and direction. There are other reasons as well. Companies have used signage in their offices and stores for decades. Today they appreciate the flexibility of digital signage and they need designers to create amazing presentations.
Second, digital signage design is very similar to Web design. The programming is very much the same and the design aspects should be familiar to you. In most cases you’re simply designing for a larger monitor, but there is still the focus of getting people to take action.
Finally, not many design firms are offering digital signage design as a service. This is where you can gain an advantage over the competition and really differentiate yourself.

For example, if there is a doctor office in need of a new website and new displays in their waiting room they are more likely to choose a single company that can handle both projects rather than hiring two separate companies that will struggle to keep designs consistent.

Digital signage design is an additional value you can add to your offering. Your clients will feel like they are getting more even though they will be giving you more overall revenue.

Next Steps

If you are interested in digital signage design the next step is to familiarize yourself with the process. You already possess many of the skills you’ll need to create the designs. As with all design the objective is to create an outcome that is in the best interest of the business and the customer.

For example, it’s in the best interest of a university for visitors to easily understand where they need to go. A digital signage display can show a directory of rooms and events. There will be no need for the university to have a secretary on staff for direction.

Digital signage is a Web-based solution. All presentations are hosted on a standard Web browser. The same coding languages are used. It’s a natural fit for Web designers and programmers.

Do you still have questions about digital signage?

Please leave your comment below.

Todd Hemme is a Marketing Director with Rise Vision. To learn more about digital signage please visit Rise Vision.

Increasingly, designers are turning to responsive web design as the answer. After all, what could be more convenient for users than simply having a site adapt to the screen they’re using without any effort on their part?

Of course, it isn’t that simple. Responsive web designs are much more complex than a standard site or a dedicated mobile site. They require more planning since you have to design the site to look good in so many different sizes and resolutions, and they also require more coding to ensure that the site is properly optimized regardless of the device.

This requires keeping a keen eye out for potential problems. Here are the top 3 that designers face and some tips on how to overcome them.

1. Slow Loading Speed

The main idea behind responsive websites is to provide convenience for mobile users, yet many responsive websites are not much smaller to download – despite the fact that they typically display less content. In fact, a recent study by Guy Podjarny at Akamai tested over 300 sites and found that the page size and load time results were nearly the same, regardless of the site being tested.

While it’s true that mobile internet is getting faster (with an average of 2.02Mbps), it’s still much slower than broadband (with an average of 2.6Mbps). And here’s the bad news: users aren’t very forgiving of that difference. A 2012 study by Google found that “users expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience.”

So what are some ways that you can help speed up your responsive design?

First, use smaller images. Some sites use larger images that aren’t necessary, or even multiple sizes of images. Also, be aware that even if you use coding to not display an image, it likely is still being downloaded. Also, avoid using JavaScript, if possible, since it is usually the largest asset on a web page.

2. Over-Resourcing

Many responsive web designs rely on multiple image sizes, CSS scripts, and more to get a customized layout for different screen sizes, resolutions, and devices. If you’re not careful, you can have users downloading all of this data even though they only need part of it.

Instead, you should use conditional loading. Make sure people load only the images and CSS files that are actually being used. This is crucial if you want your responsive web design to run as well as a dedicated mobile website. Double and triple check the coding, as well as getting outside opinions, to ensure that it’s fully optimized and running smoothly.

3. Poor User Interface

Website functionality that’s great for a desktop user may just not be as user-friendly for a mobile user. Don’t just think about aesthetics when creating a mobile web design. You also have to take into consideration the differences between user needs when visiting your site from different places.

For example, a user visiting an airline website on a desktop may be using it for a number of things: booking a flight, looking up baggage guidelines, or checking on their rewards program. However, it’s more likely that a mobile user is looking for one thing: flight status. It’s also likely that they need that information fast, so if your responsive design isn’t delivering it in an intuitive way, they won’t have a satisfactory experience.

So don’t just find the best way to display your standard web design for a mobile user – consider the entire experience. Get feedback from customers to find out exactly what they want to do on a mobile device vs. their desktop, and make sure your responsive design meet those needs.

Aileen Galsim is a blogger for Showcase Creative a UK based printing company that provides Custom Presentation Folders, calendars, and other printed presentation products. They can be found at http://www.showcasecreative.com

 1. Too Much Information

Nothing makes an employer’s eyes glaze over like a 5 page résumé full of writing. If your important skills and experience are listed on page 3 then it is likely the client won’t even make it that far and you will find your résumé relegated to the wastepaper bin. Keep a résumé short and snappy, and only ever include relevant information. Your current skills are far more important than the fact that you were Basketball Team Captain in high school so make these your priority, and leave out all the filler.

 2. Mistakes

You are trying to sell yourself as a designer who can provide attractive and professional content with which they can advertise their business. Even the smallest spelling mistake is going to overrule any experience you have and even the highest design qualifications. Clients will see mistakes on your résumé and assume that if you are sloppy with what you use to get jobs, then you will be sloppy in the work you do for them as well. Check and double check every inch of your résumé, and then get a friend to check it as well!

 3. Bad Layout

Even if you are a graphic designer who specializes in posters or logos, a résumé with a bad layout seems to show that you are not capable of recognizing what looks good and what doesn’t. You can say that you have a good eye for detail and know how to design a page, but don’t forget that your résumé itself is actually an example of a laid out page. If the layout is bad the client won’t give your résumé more than  a passing glance.

 4. Complicated Fonts

Although it is important that you show some kind of ability in the layout and design of your résumé, don’t be tempted to over-complicate things with outrageous fonts and images. You may have designed a wonderful font which is being used by designers all around the world but unless it is a simple word processing font then the client won’t be bothered to try to read it and your résumé will be ignored. You can always show examples of fonts and designs in your portfolio which will accompany your résumé, but try to turn your résumé into a work of art and it will start working as the exact opposite of an advertisement of you and your skills.

 5. Overselling

A résumé is there for you to show off what you have done and what you can do. You are fully within your rights to mention major achievements you have made since you became a designer in order to impress a potential client. But don’t overdo it. Overselling comes across as desperate and this can put clients off quicker than having your entire résumé typed out in Comic Sans. Mention your greatest achievements in list form, limit it to three or four at the most, and then move on. The achievements will speak for themselves and you won’t come across as needy.

Shaun Pagin is a social media expert at Discount Banner Printing and enjoys all subjects related to design.

1. Mobile Shift

The dependence on mobile web technology has never been stronger. Consumers are accustomed to searching for information and buying products from anywhere. Designers are continuing to implement mobile integration to their ecommerce designs through responsive design. This means that the webstore materializes and functions the same way across all browsers and devices, so shoppers don’t have to worry about a lower usability on their smartphone than on their PC.

2. Minimalism Takes Over

Because of the overwhelming shift toward mobile dependence and responsive design, simpler web designs are becoming the popular means of displaying products. Bold colors, flat illustrations, crisp edges and airy white space are replacing complex textures and skeuomorphic designs. With this will come simpler payment processes and browsing capabilities. See these case studies on how their ecommerce platform can help you achieve a simple and usable design.

3. Facebook Integration

The popularity of social media is one of the best advantages to ecommerce. Consumers can instantly share products with friends to influence buying decisions much more quickly than traditional marketing efforts might. Ecommerce sites are beginning to integrate their products/services with Facebook by allowing users to build wish lists on Facebook accounts, which are then shared with friends – thus sending more traffic to ecommerce sites.

4. Faster, Faster, Faster

Just as users expect to access online stores anywhere, they’re becoming less patient when it comes to site loading time. Shoppers used to typically abandon a page after waiting 7 seconds; now the average tolerable waiting time is considered 3 seconds. This is a challenge for ecommerce companies that offer a large number of products, because the more items on a page, the longer it takes to load. As a designer, you can help overcome this challenge by using a content delivery network to disperse information to users based on geographic location. Continually test your site speed to see how you can improve.

5. Advanced Personalization

Recommended items based on past buying behavior will no longer suffice for consumers. They want new product recommendations based on what will improve their lives, not on what they already own. Designers are developing more advanced algorithms to predict the needs of online shoppers through suggesting slight behavior changes. For example, instead of creating an app that enables users to record their fitness habits, suggest products that help them improve their fitness plans.

Examples of Trendy Ecommerce Designs

Burton

Nuts.com

Skinny Ties

Hunter’s Wine Shop

As you assess your own ecommerce design, remember to keep your users’ perspectives in mind as you utilize these trends to best serve their needs.

Rob Toledo lives in Seattle, Washington. He no longer supports IE7 design, worships Firefox, and wouldn’t know what to do without Instagram. He is working alongside Shutterstock photos and their stock footage brand promoting better web design. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo

Ideally, both sides will take the time to carefully listen and attempt to communicate clearly (the key word: attempt.) Hence the title, do you see what I see? It is a game we all play when attempting to explain our ideas, visions, or purpose.

Those who are super hero enough, can somehow climb into a person’s head, root around, retrieve the vision, then climb back out with a clear objective and purpose (quite a messy job if you ask me.) But, those of us who are not super heroes must struggle to find that common vision. The way that is accomplished is through listening very carefully and asking questions.

During that whole process, I already start forming strategies and my own vision. I pay attention to any red flags that were raised and then attempt to “guide” the client away from potential pit falls. By doing so you have crossed a line and added you opinion to the table. Now, whose opinion is more important?

Some would say the client’s is more important because they are paying the bills. While others will take the Steve Jobs stance and say… “[they] don’t know what they want until you show them.” Both perspectives have valid arguments but, in order to answer the original question let me ask another. Who’s opinion has the most weight and matters the most? (Answer: neither)

Technically, the most important opinion is that of the consumer.

A graphic designer’s purpose is to create effective visual communication for the consumer. Otherwise, our work fails as design. Frank Chimero said, “People ignore design that ignores people.” So, the real game of do you see what I see is played with the consumer.

As creatives, we can get all caught up in the design process. Focus on what we are trying to communicate and how it is being communicated. We also take pride in our work and judge it according to style and our ability to design something aesthetically pleasing. As a result, the project becomes tied to our ego. But the true way we measure success as a graphic designer, is determined by how our communication is perceived. In other words, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So, if we want to help “guide” a client toward an effective solution, we better have something more than an opinion in our back pocket. Because, In the end, most people won’t care who had what opinion. They probably won’t even notice all the blood, sweat and tears that were poured into the project. But, what they do care about is if the design moved them.

Yes, a graphic designer’s job sounds thankless and we may play the unsung hero role at times. But, at least we can walk away knowing that we are heroes.

Jake Miller is a freelance designer and blogger at jmdesigns.org

Featured image: Egg packaging for Den Stolte Hane designed by Tank

Starbucks

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52699517@N00/1559075835/

Starbucks’ cups are already a long-acknowledged master class in memorable, minimal design – the Apple of coffee shops. But they really scored a hit with their thought-provoking, occasionally controversial ‘The Way I See It’ series. A quote or thought from a great thinker adorns each cup, imploring you to stop and ponder the universe over your morning coffee.

Monopoly

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andymangold/3113731467/

This fab Monopoly reboot is a one-off by a Baltimore design student, and we like. Elegant, simple and trading on the brand’s most-iconic image while evoking thoughts of wealth and riches, this is a real winner. We’d be surprised if Mr Moneybags himself doesn’t come calling soon.

Cigarettes

These coffin cigarettes are the brainchild of two Ukraine-based designers, combining a serious social message with an awesome playful side. If only real cigarette packaging could be this inventive…

Chips

Sticking with ‘playful’ for a moment, Wanted snacks scored a direct hit with these spaghetti-Western inspired crisp designs. The retro feel is cleverly observed, while including enough nods to modern design to ensure the product never feels archaic.

Corn Flakes

Seemingly inspired by the 80’s punk packaging vision of Repo Man, Euro Shopper’s complete brand overhaul is a visually-inspired mix of stark minimalism and loud, attention grabbing brashness.

Whale Milk

A beguiling mash up of beautiful emptiness and one of Twitter’s many logos, the design for ‘Whale Milk’ has oodles of charm, while still remaining uber-classy.

Milk

Sticking with a theme, this calcium-filled alternative makes the most of retro postmodernism, feeling almost like a visual whirlwind tour of the best of the 20^th century. The stark lines stand in magnificent contrast to the plain white front, and the elongated shape does wonders for our hungry eyeballs.

Honey

Every now and then, a design idea comes along that is so breath-taking in its simplicity you can’t believe no-one thought of it sooner. This is one of those designs. Tiny jars of honey shaped to look like the creatures that produced their contents – this wins our vote for ‘cutest idea’ of the year.

Rivet

An energy drink for the blue collar crowd, Rivet makes an asset of its target audience’s perceived ‘roughness’, presenting itself in a battered old industrial can. Straightforward, subversive and bound to stick out from a mile away, this design’s a winner.

Spaghetti

You probably remember this image doing the rounds on the blogs a while back – put simply it’s a mind-bendingly inventive way to package something inherently boring, and even more impressive for knowing Alex Creamer was still in Uni when he did it. If his first big effort is anything to go by, that kid’s going to be winning every award from now until the end of time.

Water

What’s the best way to market ‘pure’ water? By letting the product speak for itself. Somewhere between a 1930’s throwback and blisteringly modern, this redone bottle design pushes all of our buttons.

Mayonnaise

Sometimes, simplicity is the best. This Hellman’s packet design does everything a package should do: it grabs your attention then rams the product name down your throat, without ever really feeling like it’s trying.

Beer

An old one and a good one, these generic ‘Beer’ cans both manage to be witty, informative and unforgettable. By simply playing it as straight as possible, the designers ensure the idea never falls over into kitsch or becomes too weighed down – a fine balancing act.

Tea

Tea storage meets doll’s house wardrobe design in this cute favorite of ours. A wonderful alternative to the smelly old tin you’ve been using for years.

Fish

A runner up at the Dieline Awards 2 years ago, this fishy design has everything we love rolled into a single package. It’s informative, unusual, a little bit cheeky and easily recognizable. Exactly what you want, in other words.

O.J. Randall is a writer and graphic designer at London print company Print Express. In his spare time, he collects vintage print discoveries and other oddities.

As effective as it is, a well-done retro web design can also be hard to pull off. Here are some examples of beautiful, well-executed retro web design to give you some inspiration on how to do it right.

Literary Bohemian

LiteraryBohemian.com is a great example of creatively using retro elements to convey a certain atmosphere. The design isn’t retro for the sake of being retro, rather it’s carefully calculated to convey a sense of nostalgia – a longing for a time when the written word held a different position in the world.

We’re reminded of a time when an editor had to tap out manuscripts with a typewriter, or when sending a letter involved taking pen to paper and meticulously crafting a message by a bare bulb, sealing it, affixing postage, hand delivering it to the post office, and waiting for weeks, even months for a reply. The retro elements contrast starkly with the reality of our world, where written communication involves hammering out a loosely edited stream of consciousness and clicking a mouse.

Von Dutch

While the Von Dutch website isn’t all that great for anyone looking to get information on Von Dutch products, it does an incredible job of promoting the Von Dutch brand message. Anyone unfamiliar with the brand will instantly associate the brand with timeless style.

Christmas at Biltmore

The Christmas section of Biltmore.com (Christmas.biltmore.com) does a good job of keeping the site in line with the look and feel of Christmas at Biltmore – a historic estate built by George Vanderbilt. By using some simple retro accents and vintage-style Christmas pictures, the site effortlessly conveys a sense of old-fashioned Christmas spirit while showcasing the Biltmore estate as a warm, friendly Christmas destination.

Mom & Popcorn

The retro design at momandpopcorn.com is very well executed and makes tasteful use of vintage elements to convey a sense of trust, nostalgia and timelessness. The retro look is perfect for a company selling popcorn, a product that most associate with childhood nostalgia.

Additionally, it’s interesting to note the “established” date in the Mom & Popcorn logo, which shows that the company was established in 2006 – thus proving you don’t have to be a centuries old brand to benefit from the trust signals associated with timeless brands.

Cantilever Fish & Chips

Fish & chips are another product that benefits greatly from association with the retro trend. In the case of Cantilever Fish & Chips, the site’s retro design demonstrates the fish and chip shops’ rich tradition. The use of vintage photos that demonstrate early fish and chip production are a nice touch, giving the reader the impression that Cantilever Fish & Chips has perfected a recipe of fresh sea fish dipped in rich golden batter and crunchy potatoes that has been enjoyed for generation upon generation.

Black Moon Design

Like the other examples of great retro design on this list, blackmoondev.com uses references to an older era – in this case within the gaming world – to convey a certain brand message. Their website uses pixilated font and an “old school” gaming montage to show that they are a small independent studio run by hardcore gamers who have been around since the early days of gaming.

Conclusion

Any attempt to use retro design elements in a website should follow the universal design maxim – form follows function.  Make sure retro design is the right choice for the brand message you’re trying to convey, and don’t go retro simply because it’s the flavor of the month.

And while you’re incorporating vintage elements into your site design, don’t take the retro theme to a point where the site becomes difficult to navigate. The home button can still be the home button, it doesn’t have to be the “Port of Call” or “Humble Abode” in order for a site to achieve that retro feel.

Simon is a blogger for the email marketing system provider Jangomail. You can check out more of his work on his digital renaissance blog.

1. Adobe Photoshop Express

Adobe Photoshop, in some form or another, is the tool many designers use to make the visual magic happen. But this is in the desktop environment. Adobe is hoping its software can make a similar impact in the mobile arena. Adobe Photoshop Express delivers a  bundles of simple, yet powerful tools in a package that makes it easy to touch up and enhance photos on the go. Users already familiar with the Photoshop interface will get up and running quickly with this one.

2. Paper

Created by software maker FiftyThree, Paper is quickly become on of the hottest apps on the design scene. This interesting tool supplies features that allow users to draw, sketch, outline, write, and color right on their device. There is also a mixing feature for blending colors and creating custom palettes. The combination of a built-in ink engine, retina resolution, and superb graphics enables this colorful app to shine brightly for creative doodling.

3. iMockups

Mockups are critical for freelance designers. In some cases, the ability to get them done in a timely manner can be the difference between securing and losing gigs. iMockups gives you the power to create those mockups wherever you are. This iPad app offers a beautiful user interface that meshes nicely with the device’s visually pleasing display real estate. iMockups is quickly proving its worth as a handy companion for web design and mobile app development projects alike.

4. TeuxDeux

Busy designers can benefit greatly from a tool like TeuxDeux. What many pros appreciate about this app is how it keeps things simple and more importantly, gets the simple things right. TeuxDeux lets you create and manage to-do lists in a way that, thanks to a beautiful interface, is both easy and elegant. You may feel it is a breath of fresh air in comparison to other to-do apps that cram too much functionality at the sack of usability.

5. WhatTheFont

Fonts can make all the difference in any design project that includes a shred of text. WhatTheFont helps designers expand their own personal font landscape. With this app, you can snap a picture of attractive fonts you might want to use in your project while out and about, and use its database to find them. You can also use fonts from any images that are saved in your device. Leveraging MyFonts’ world renowned identification service, WhatTheFont delivers font matches quickly, with impressive accuracy to boot.

6. Gusto

Gusto is an app made to simplify web projects executed on the trendy iPad. Strapped with a built-in code editor and robust FTP support, professionals have a powerful development tool at their disposal. The app recognizes all major web languages, most recently, CSS 3, so it can be used in tackling simple and complex projects alike. While FTP support is included, files can also be directly uploaded to Dropbox. From local previews to online editing and publishing, Gusto packs a heck of punch for serious developers and designers.

7. Instagram

While Instagram isn’t a design tool per se, it can be very useful weapon in a designer’s arsenal. It’s the perfect tool to use to share samples, progress updates, and other imagery related to your work. What’s great about Instagram is that it has its own community. That community, combined with the sharing of visual content in your other social channels can be huge for visibility, branding, and promotional efforts.

Artistic professionals know that inspiration can strike at any time. It could be while sitting in the airport, or stuck in the lunchroom. In a meeting, or on the beach taking a break from the business grind. Whenever time comes and wherever you are, it’s probably safe to assume that your trusty mobile sidekick isn’t too far away. These apps can help you stay creatively sharp and effective at all times.

Everyone has their favorites, so tell it: what are your favorite designer-friendly apps?
Chris Stevens is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading provider of event marketing services.

As web designers, when going in on a project, we are often tempted to sacrifice the legibility and readability of our textual content at the altar of aesthetics and usability. Truth be told, most web designers and usability experts have failed in this regard.  Despite the fact that the art of typography is one that predates the birth and existence of the web, most designers still pay little attention to it, and its poor application costs clients a lot through a subtle reduction in the effectiveness and conversion rates of their websites.

When it comes to designing for the web, as a designer, you should see yourself as an information architect of sorts. Most of your choices should be geared towards ensuring that your users get the textual information or textual content that that is intended for their consumption.

There are so many factors that could limit the ability of your users to consume content effectively on your website. Below are some of the factors.

Color

Assigning the right or appropriate colors to fonts could make a whole world of difference. Here is a simple rule, the color of your fonts and that of the background of its containing element should bear a striking contrast. Also, site elements such as links should be styled with contrasting colors so that their current state (unselected, hover, selected,) is obvious.

Appropriate sizing

Site elements like titles, headings, links and paragraphs should all have distinctively uniform sizes. The sizes should be proportional and uniform throughout your entire site.

Purpose

The styling that you apply to any block of text on your site should reflect the purpose that such a block of text is intended to serve. If a block of text is purely decorative, avoid using color tones that would grab the user’s attention. However, if the block of text is purely informational or functional,  you should consider applying a color tone that would attract and grab the user’s attention and cause him to act appropriately.

Trends

Following trends has it pros and cons. Young designers are the worst hit in this regard. If you have to apply certain styles to your fonts, you should double check to ensure that such styling wouldn’t affect the legibility and readability of your content. Certain fonts require more whitespace, letting-space and word-space than others. Some CSS styles are only best suited for certain fonts.

Agi Ogaga Fidelis is a web and mobile developer from Nigeria who hearts design and blogging in all its forms. He has an insane obsession for coding and enjoys experimenting with dynamic languages in his spare time.
http://www.aogaga.com 

 Agi on Google+

What is Type & Grids?

Type & Grids is a responsive HTML5-powered theme that focuses on grids and typography, which means it looks just as great on mobile devices as it does on your desktop or laptop. You can customize it to the hilt, and it comes with many pre-designed color/type combos already, which makes it even easier.

See some of the ways you can customize this theme in the screenshots below:

Don’t forget to leave a comment below with your email address to win!

It’s obvious why infographics are so popular among designers and others — having a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about a given topic is useful in its own right, but having complex concepts broken down into well-conceived, attractive, and digestible charts helps inject an unexpected vigor where it might not have been possible.

Still, be cautious about how you build infographics. Not all infographics by their design deliver the goods. Indeed, some can be rather daunting to look at, or could actually make an easy topic appear to be more complicated than it need be. Also, as the format proliferates in popularity, many infographics run the risk of being thin on data or a reason for data visualization. The format is just one arrow in your quiver when you’re facing lofty reports or heavy research that will require some elucidation in transmission.

For instance, Shutterstock recently released its annual infographic recapping 2012 and forecasting 2013 trends by using data from searches, downloads, and user activity on its website. You’ll find a breakdown of all kinds of categories like “what’s hot” and “evolving trends” that not only offer insight for the company’s marketing team, but also provide interesting and useful information about the industry for the consumer. At their best, infographics can tell a story in a way that raw data can’t, and we can all be better informed as a result.

Seeing what colors we collectively prefer or how we are using signage and typography helps designers and creative types to plan their projects with knowledge that stretches beyond Shutterstock or even the stock photo industry at large. A useful infographic gives you more than something pretty to look at: You walk away better informed and also more engaged with the topic at hand.

Like with all design, some styles work better than others. Here’s a sampling of 10 types of infographic vector packs that could greatly simplify your next design project. Here are some of the many examples you can download and use, or just use as inspiration:

Industrial buildings infographic elements:

The design should echo the information. Buildings come alive here.

Bright Idea:

Adding vivid colors and shapes keeps things interesting.

The Next Dimension:

Get their imaginations running with 3D visuals.

Child’s Play:

Cover a topic, like parenting, from top to bottom with big, catchy imagery.

Retro infographic:

Something retro can be both sleek and stylish.

World map infographic:

Global trends speak louder on one map illustrating the entire world.

Election infographic:

People will overcome biases if you remove the barriers to entry. Make election data that stands out.

Mobile World:

In an increasingly mobile world, here are handy design elements to talk about it.

Robot Factory:

Make manufacturing fun–data doesn’t always have to be serious.

Sky High:

the vertical format is a fresh way to visualize urban data.

Danny Groner is the manager of blogger partnerships & outreach for Shutterstock.

At this point, you’ve practiced your pitch in the bathroom mirror, you’ve got your documents in order, you’ve ironed your best shirt and you’re ready to go. So what could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, that’s what.

In this article, I’m going to share with you 5 of the biggest mistakes I ever made as a self employed freelance web designer and how best to avoid them.

Let’s go through them.

Mistake #1. Being late for meetings

There’s nothing more unprofessional than being late for an appointment. I recall being late for a meeting once by 20 minutes, and it cost me the job. I could tell through the clients body language that they weren’t impressed, and even after having apologized, I wasn’t comfortable throughout the meeting and as a result, didn’t get the job.

What you can do to avoid it

Make sure your documentation, notes and anything else required for the meeting is ready the night before. The reason I was late for this particular meeting was because I was desperately trying to complete the web design proposal just before the meeting, which took much longer than expected. Needless to say, it was pretty embarassing and thankfully, through a change in organizational habits, it hasn’t happened again since.

Mistake #2. Dressing inappropriately

I recall attending a meeting once with a rather large organization within the medical field. This particular client found me through a word of mouth referral and was keen to get started on a sizeable project. Knowing that I landed the job based upon a referral from a long time client, I decided to dress down a bit and attend the meeting in jeans and a short sleeve t-shirt.

I arrived on location, only to find myself in a large corporate boardroom on the 7^th floor of an inner city office block, surrounded by professional business people in expensive suits. Lets just say there were a few “odd looks” when I entered the room.

What you can do to avoid it

Regardless of whether or not you have the job, or think you have the job, always dress appropriately in formal business attire. This should include dress pants, suitable shoes and a business shirt. Thankfully, unlike the previous job, I did get this one, but only because my other client recommended me highly.

Mistake #3. Forgetting your client’s name

A sure fired way of losing any contract is by calling your client by the wrong name. Unfortunately I have been in this position whereby I spent an entire hour and a half calling my client “Andrew”, when his name was “Arnie”. I’m not sure why he didn’t pull me up on it sooner, (perhaps he felt sorry for me) – but in any case, it was pretty embarassing, and I believe it cost me the job.

What you can do to avoid it

Write your clients name down on your business card, or somewhere where you can reference it quickly and easily on your way to the meeting. Perhaps even say it a few times in your head before arriving. Be sure when you first meet, that you shake your clients hand firmly, look them in the eye, smile and greet them by saying their name.

Mistake #4. Technological distractions

Here’s another job killer. Technological distractions. Now you may be wondering what on earth I’m talking about, so let me give you an example of what happened to me one time whilst in a meeting with a client.

Being relatively new to the freelancing world, I decided to meet with this particular client, and take along my iPhone, my laptop and my iPad. I figured I could demonstrate some examples of my work on my iPad, and also show how my sites were suitable for mobiles as well. I then went about taking notes on my laptop while the client spoke, in an effort to gather the users requirements. Needless to say with all these “gadgets” on the table, that they did nothing more than distract and hinder the meeting.

What you can do to avoid it

Only take what’s absolutely essential for the meeting and leave the “gadgets” back at the office. You should be listening intently to what your client has to say, and more importantly – looking them in the eye while they speak. Its about giving them your undivided attention during the meeting – and not stuffing your face against a computer monitor while they chat to themselves in the background.

Mistake #5. Giving quotes on the fly

I don’t know how many projects I lost by doing this. In an effort to try and “speed up” the hiring process, I would literally just pull numbers out of my head during meetings, hoping that I would get the job. Often my quotes were grossly inaccurate and this led to clients raising their eyebrows, saying “Geez, that’s more than we anticipated”, and then disappearing – never to be heard from again.

What you can do to avoid it

Never quote for jobs on the spot, especially during your first meeting. Always get the requirements, then go about assessing the work involved, and then once you have everything you need, quote the job in a formal manner. Don’t ever feel pressured during a meeting that you have to give a price. Take your time and do it properly.

Have you made a mistake during a client meeting that other designers could learn from? Take a minute and leave it in the comments section below!

John Romaine is a freelance web designer, SEO consultant and full time internet marketer based in Sydney, Australia. John operates webdesignbusinesskits.com, which provides freelance web designers with a fast start business kit, and ready made contract templates. All included within the Web Design Business Startup Kit

Painting

Fine art is special in that it’s pure artistic expression. Of course everyone who looks at a piece of art takes away something different, but no one else is going to get in there and tell you what to paint. However there is much to learn from the patch-working approach for a painter.  All art, music, and design is based around taking something that you like and adapting and reinventing it to suit your needs and your tastes.

To apply this to your painting endeavors you can get some cheap framed art off of the internet. Pick something that doesn’t have a good focus or that you just find lackluster in some way. Then modify the painting, reinvent it, and make it better. This is basically the same thing that you did in your history textbook in 5^th grade when you drew mustaches on all of the faces, except now you’re going to do it convincingly, blending perfectly with the original artist’s work so that anyone looking at it won’t realize that it wasn’t supposed to be that way to begin with.

Graphic Art

This type of exercise is particularly useful for a graphic artist since you’ll often be required to “update” a design while preserving (often horrible) aspects of the old one, be it a logo or a web page. To find things to work on you can simply trawl through a few of the lower quality local business websites in your town. You’ll find no end of horrible fliers, logos, and general website designs to play with.

Before you go further, be aware that you should never ever use code or images that you’ve taken from the web for any business related use or for school assignments unless you have proper permissions, this is just for your own amusement. Take your logo or webpage and pick 6 different aspects (color scheme, general layout, inclusion of a picture of a dog, font choice, size etc…). Now roll a pair of dice and pick the two aspects randomly selected by the two dice. Those two absolutely can’t be changed because your hypothetical client loves them. Now, take what you’ve been offered and make the best of it, polish it up,  and create a marketable work of art. While a fine arts enthusiast is the epitome of unfettered self-expression, a graphic designer is a master of transforming bad art and bad design into works of genius (ideally… sometimes reaching “passable” is miracle enough).

Edward Stuart is an art and decoration enthusiast as well as an online publisher for Framed Art. He frequently blogs on the topics of art, art history, design, and home decor.

One day my wife heard that someone at a Great Big Company needed help. Now, this company actually has thousands of employees, in many different countries. They have divisions. And each division includes several large companies. We are talking the big leagues of American commerce.

My wife called them. We got a little project. They liked what we did. And then our wildest dreams came true.  We suddenly got an absolute avalanche of work, a project many times larger than anything we had ever previously done. We would be busy for months, billing, billing, and billing. We would make money, generate portfolio pieces, and earn mega prestige. What could be better? We were chuffed.

But, in the end, this created real problems for our little agency. Let me explain. Understanding these problems, and how to deal with them, will really help you.

Let’s say you do a booklet for a small company. You might start, complete, and get paid on the project all within the same month. If this is your typical job, when someone comes and says they want 40 booklets, you get pretty excited. But there are business concerns you need to keep in mind.

Estimating a huge job can be a challenge. You realize 40 booklets probably won’t take 40 times as much work as one booklet. A lot of elements and even some of the copy will be repeated. That will cut down on the total work. But you’re not sure by how much.

Now, if you’re used to small jobs that only take a few days, and you price a job too low, it’s not that big a deal. You finish the job quickly, and if you’re off in your pricing, it’s not that hard to eat the difference. Maybe you estimate it at 4 days, but it takes 5. So, you work extra on the weekend, get onto a new project right away, and the problem is quickly behind you.

But, what if you all of a sudden you are looking at a job that will take several months? Let’s say you think the job will take 4 months, and you price it at that, but instead, it takes 5 and 1/2? That can be a big problem. You could end up working six weeks for free. I’m sure you can imagine it’s tough to keep working on a project, week after week, when you know you’re doing it on the cuff.

And if you have been working on small projects, you might not be used to asking for deposits up front, or negotiating to get paid at project milestones. If you work on a job for a week, then get paid a week after that, cash flow isn’t that big an issue. You send out invoices frequently enough that your cash flow is able to keep up with your bills. But, if you do a project that takes 4 months, what are you going to do for cash in months 3 and 4? And what if you find out, when you’re done, and you send out your biggest invoice ever, that this huge company only pays invoices in 90 days? If you don’t get a deposit up front, you can be in real trouble if you don’t get any money for 7 or 8 months. Just imagine going 8 months without any money coming in, and you’ll see what I mean. At least arrange beforehand to get paid at regular milestones. Business-wise, it’s not great to spend down your personal savings to finance work you’re doing for a huge, profitable company. So, there are real financial challenges to suddenly having a huge project. You’ve got to anticipate them, beware of the pitfalls, and plan way ahead.

Another problem that comes up is workflow. If you work for small clients, you might only need to get one approval to move ahead on a project. A lot of times, you can email a design in the morning, and get approval and be in production that afternoon. It’s not that big a hiccup. But with big clients, pieces frequently have to move through many levels of approval, from several different people. And a lot of times those people are out of town, or in meetings, and things just take longer. With a big client, it might take 7 to 10 days to get an approval. Obviously, this slows everything way down. Including how long you have to wait to be paid. And how long you have to live off your savings.

Work on one project at a time, you can keep track of things. But do 40 projects at once, and workflow gets incredibly confusing. “Did this copy get approved? Did we send these pictures to the client yet? What about these sketches? Which booklet does this photo go with, anyway?” A few days ago, you thought you were organized. Now every time you look at anything you feel lost. You don’t know what goes with what. Learning to organize for big jobs isn’t easy, especially if you’ve been working “seat of your pants” on the little ones. Develop workflow procedures now that can grow when you get a big project.

Your relationships with your regular clients can suffer. You don’t have time to check in with them, to attend to them, and nurse those important relationships. They wonder where you went, if you’re sick or something. This doubt allows other suppliers to move in. Also, when you’re working all the time on a huge job, everyone sort of loses track of you. Part of staying employed is maintaining visibility. When you’re on a big job, that visibility turns to a mirage.

Month by month, your client list shrinks. You feel OK about it, since you have this one huge client, and the work for them is golden. You’re making more money than ever before. But without realizing it, you’re putting your business in a risky position.

If you have 10 regular clients, each one represents about 10% of your business.  But if you have only a couple clients, and one is huge, like 70% of your business, you are very vulnerable. With 10 clients, if a relationship collapses, you’re only off about 10% of your income. Which is survivable. But, if your huge 70% relationship sours, you are in real trouble! It’s very hard to make up that loss. It’s much harder to survive a 70% loss, than a 10% loss.

And relationships can collapse, for all sorts of reasons, even if you do an excellent job. A lot of aspects of business relationships are simply out of your hands, and you just can’t control them. Typically, when you work for a big company, you’re actually working for one contact person. That person orders the work; gets things approved, and gets your invoices paid. But that person can be transferred, go to another company, move up the ladder, or even get sick. All of which can kill this relationship with this company. So, if 70% of your business depends on this one person, you’re not really in control of your destiny!

Plus, when you only have one big client, it’s easy for them to push you around. To them, a little design agency is a tiny part of their business. But they know they are keeping you alive. It’s very tempting for a company to abuse this knowledge, and they often do just that. They have a thousand ways, like making you wait longer for payment, making you give big discounts, do more free revisions, etc. And you don’t have much leverage, if any.

Other bad things can happen. The company can go through a downturn, or get bought by another company. In the first scenario, a new CEO can come in, and slash every budget in sight. Including the one you get paid from. Or when the company is bought, or there’s a merger, or reorganization, a lot of times your contact person is replaced. And the replacement has another agency they work with, and you’re out in the cold.

Obviously in any business, nobody can afford to turn down a big job, with a big company. You want the prestige of working for them, and you sure do need the money. But, you have to be aware of the difficulties this can create for your company, and plan ahead.

Andy Ross works at StunningCreative.net

As a designer and entrepreneur you need to fully communicate and deliver on the services and products you will deliver.

What you are worth to your client is determined by the direct revenue you will produce for them. My least favorite proclamation is the value of beauty for beauty’s sake. A business owner wants to make money. If you tell your client this button will make their website look stunning you’re not speaking their language. “The look and position of this button will invite customers to click through to your checkout page.” or “I removed this feature because it was distracting your customers and slowing the purchasing process down.” Never position yourself as a cost to your client. Always think of yourself as an investment. Always communicate where money will be made.

Use the threat of obscurity to your advantage. Use Dr. Suess as your example.

One of the greatest business managers in a creative field was Theodor Seuss Geisel. Is he an amazing artist? Is he an incredible writer? He’s not bad, but certainly not the best. He was an incredible marketer and promoter of his content. Further, he created a brand/style. His drawings were unique and identifiable. That’s what made the difference. In one marketing stunt, Dr. Seuss was challenged by William Ellsworth Spaulding to write a children’s book using 250 words that he believed children should learn. Seuss came back nine months later with a book that included 236 of the words and it is known as, “The Cat in the Hat”.

Most clients envision a big billboard whenever they think about graphics. It’s completely wrong. Traffic comes to a Billboard. On the web, you gotta build the road. Some roads are straight, people talk about how smooth and easy the drive is. Some are curved and preferred by bikers. Some are even beautiful with mountain views. Decide the kind of road you want to build.

An example of a curved road would be George RR Martin’s website. It’s the most horrific website I’ve ever been to. This man has millions of dollars? His website’s background is pansy purple and crowned with spinning icons. I thought it was an auction site for dreidels on first blush. I got curious, so I Googled, “worst website designs”. His site’s on every single list. Mad traffic referrals! I’ve referred three other people (now you) to his site only because of how bad it was when it shouldn’t be.

In closing, I want to repeat that the most important thing for a designer is to make their client money. Sell yourself as that person. Not as someone that will make something look beautiful. To be sure, that matters. But selling yourself as someone that can build roads rather than billboards is far more relevant these days.

Jacob Williams. Designer

@jakedaywilliams

Most applicants stutter with this question. What I’m looking for is the notion that, although you may feel passionate about an idea of yours early on, you should pace yourself at your new job. Be patient. Spend at least a solid week or two observing, observing, observing. You have just entered a new work environment and, unless you are the only one there, it will have its own culture. Moreover, it’s usually difficult to grasp the full dynamics of a team in just a few days.

Additionally, I also look for the understanding that a good way to start up the ladder is at the bottom. Be on the lookout for any lower profile project opportunities; ones that could allow outside- the-box experimentation. Perhaps an internal memo, a newsletter, or a blog post could do the trick. And even if they don’t use your ideas initially, the simple fact that you get a chance to show your designs to someone can set the stage for things to come. Think of it as being strategic. The idea is to apply guerrilla style tactics and infiltrate the environment so you can eventually have some control or influence over design decisions.

Observe first, be respectful, and show consideration for the results a team has attained even if you feel they’re no good. No one wants to get their stuff trashed by the new kid even if he is right. Being tactful and exercising good judgment about when and what you say can be critical as to how successful you will be.

I can’t emphasize enough that this needs to be done carefully while grooming one’s reputation and credibility within the environment you are working in. Many times, depending on the company, this may not happen in a month. It may take more time until you have enough pull on things to start to “mold the clay“.

This awareness became crystal clear to me after a situation I personally went through as the recently hired graphic designer for a company specialized in eLearning solutions. Shortly after starting my new job, I noted that the background color, utilized throughout the project, was dreadful. “How bad?”, you may wonder. Try RGB (0, 0, 204) and see for yourself. At the time, I even heard silly explanations that “these colors kept the users awake”. “You’ve got to be kidding”, I thought.  I believe that what keeps a user awake is good, engaging content, not blinding colors.

Long story short— there were thousands of images in the library that needed to be repaired. A procedure for converting the colors was developed, tested and refined until it was solid. I developed a new color scheme for the images and created a few working samples for review and ran all of this by my boss which I, in the mean time, had been slowly grooming about the idea of modifying the color scheme globally which would not only improve quality but also improve user engagement. A year went by before I was ready to modify all images in the library [over 6000 images). By then approval to modify was instant. Converting the colors took one week plus another week to deal with animations.

Conclusion:

By starting the new job and first observing, I was able to know who had the authority and how open to change they were. By letting some time go by before expressing my discontent with the current color scheme, I didn’t come across as disrespectful to those who were already there and who had already put a lot of work into the project. As the days and weeks passed, I was able to establish my reputation with the team by consistently supporting them in any area I could.  By the time I was ready to implement the changes, everyone was “eager” for the change and there was no resistance. This was a victory for Design.

This is how this methodology works. Observe, establish yourself and gain credibility, groom the environment for change, create a sensible process with manageable results and then execute.

I can’t repeat this enough times to those entering the job market straight out of school. You have to be an observer. You have to be patient. You have to be strategic. And most important, you have to be respectful.

Mark Lewis is a lead designer working in the e-learning industry where he manages a design team working on several projects. In his free time, he enjoys photography, surfing, hang gliding and spending time with his wife and daughter. Check out some of his work at mdimensions.com.

1. HTML5 Pro Quick Guide

This app, created by Mobile Apps Maui, the maker of useful CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and PHP reference apps, is one of the most popular among web designers for a reason. HTML5 Pro Quick Guide starts with the basics of HTML5 and ends with the most advanced things you’ll need to know about the markup language. It also provides some nice CSS and HTML 4.01 reference information, and its section on browser compatibility will save you from having to pull all your hair out in frustration. Trust me. This app is available for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows mobile devices.

2. O’Reilly HTML5 & (X)HTML Mobile Reference

This beta app does a thorough job of going over the HTML5, HTML 4.01, and XHTML elements, attributes, and characters you need to know as a web designer. It’s easy to navigate, comprehensive, and makes searching for and finding the code you need simple. It’s built for iPhones, but it works on Android devices too (with a few bugs). This app is already pretty impressive, and we can expect it to be even better once it goes out of beta.

3. <HTML5> Tutor for Android

If you learn best by doing, this is the app for you. It provides tons of useful information about using HTML5 and lets you edit and test out code right from the app. <HTML5> Tutor for Android also goes into some detail about new CSS3 properties and JavaScript APIs. By the time you finish going through this app, you’ll easily be able to draw on HTML5 Canvas with JavaScript and use those tricky audio and video tags.

4. HTML5 Reference Guide for iPhone and iPad

This app is straightforward and comprehensive, like most of the things Evolonix makes. It lays out the tags, standard attributes, and event attributes you should know in a clear, precise manner. Its search feature makes locating tags and attributes simple. The examples of clean HTML5 code this app provides are especially helpful. This is definitely a solid choice for iOS users.

5. Learn HTML5 from WAGmob

If you’re completely new to HTML5, there are few better apps than this one. It uses flashcards, quizzes, and examples to teach you how to get the most out of HTML5. Additionally, it lets you bookmark things you want to reference later and search for specific topics. Learn HTML5 works on all the major mobile devices, and it’s a gem.

Don’t let HTML5 get you down. Check out the apps listed above and keep on creating mesmerizing designs!

Rachel Sanders is a freelance writer and designer who creates content for various education, design, and business websites. When Rachel isn’t writing informative articles and designing websites, she likes to read, research education trends, and discuss typography. Please leave comments and questions for Rachel below. She appreciates your feedback!

The Website is unresponsive

Most online sites should be designed not just for browsers in desktop or laptop PCs. Internet users now use many other devices to check out sites. An unresponsive Website can easily be viewed on different devices from traditional desktops to tablets and smartphones. User experience should not be hindered.

It is hard to update the site

Are you finding it difficult to update the Website on your own? You should ask your Web developer to integrate or install a CMS (content management system) so you can easily and readily update your site whenever you like to do so. CMS is included in the default settings of modern Website designs. It is a must because it facilitates instant and fast updating of sites. There can be many other benefits.

There are outdated and non-useful features

Some features are not useful anymore. They may not be as effective as they used to be and they may already be outdated. You might need to remove those non-useful buttons as those may just contribute to make your Webpages look cluttered. Some features can be replaced by their newer and better versions, especially those linked to social networks. Removing some buttons may also be necessary for a layout revamp.

The site takes a long time to load

If the Website takes more than five seconds to load, it can be an indication that it needs optimization. According to experts, Internet users usually lose interest and leave a site instantly if it does not complete loading the page in five seconds. The redesign should facilitate faster loading through removal of specific elements like unnecessary textures, background images, custom fonts, and poor layout.

Visitors neglect the home page

Sign up with Google Analytics so you can use its special analytics software that can give you statistical data about your site traffic. If your Website is losing visitors, it is more likely to be due to ineffective home page. You may need to redesign it to turn it into a more enticing and interesting one. A redesign can also be helpful when the site is not ranking high enough on search engines.

Richard has been working in the web design and web development strategy for several years, specializing in Magento websites. When is not working, Richard is an active contributor in developer forums and blogs.

Watch The Evolution of 8-bit Art on PBS. See more from Off Book.

Nostalgia

Even though the 8-Bit era of video games stopped right around the time that the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo made their debut, the art form itself endures. I’m not a hardcore gamer, but I have fond memories of playing Super Mario Bros., Metal Storm and Adventure Island after school. Nintendo Power was a regular on my reading list. Even my friends who are not designers or even art fans almost always appreciate a good t-shirt or print with an 8-Bit design on it precisely because they feel that same nostalgia that I do. For people younger than me, however, the nostalgia is different. They didn’t grow up with these video games, but those 8-Bit graphics and the corresponding music represent something that’s both approachable and somewhat alien—it gives them that intangible feeling of touching another era. When we played those games and looked at those screenshots, the era we were touching was the future. For them, that other era is the past. In this way, the 8-Bit aesthetic is preserved both at a concrete point in time and at a point that exists outside of time entirely. The 8-Bit exists in a unique place in our cultural hive-mind both because video games are popular and because it is simultaneously dated and timeless. The sheer sight and sound of those old games inspires both people older and younger than my generation to create remarkable art and music.

Constraints

8-Bit graphics were forged in the fire of limitation, and all art and music that those graphics have spawned carries the same legacy. As all artists know, working within set confines sometimes breeds excellent ideas and results. The 8-Bit aesthetic gives the artist, designer and musician a set of very unique and very fun building blocks to work with. At their very essence, pixels are building blocks that can be arranged in a finite number of ways and then colored from a limited palette. The simple, bold designs present in 8-Bit art works very well in t-shirts and posters because there’s not as much room to muddle it up with extraneous details. This sort of electronic minimalism provides enough ambiguity to let the mind wander a little but still paints a solid picture. These stripped-down images full of pure color fields, straight lines and hard edges are instantly commanding—but they’re also very Spartan and accessible. It’s a simple way to communicate an image, soundscape or an idea that other art forms just can’t emulate.

Digital/Analog

In 2012, there is a large distinction between “analog” and “digital” art. 8-Bit art itself is a byproduct of the digital world, but the digital world of the past bears no resemblance to the digital world of today. Those original 8-Bit video games are the inspiration for modern 8-Bit art and design, and they rightly remain preserved in their cartridges and floppy disks for future generations. There is great pleasure to be taken from translating those uniquely digital elements into the analog, which many artists do with the 8-Bit aesthetic. Injecting a collection of pixels with an organic, human element creates something entirely new. When 8-Bit art is translated into the world of the analog, it creates a dynamic that cannot be replicated by other styles. An artist recreating an iconic frame from Dig Dug with acrylics and canvas represents the same unique challenge that an artist faces when trying to render a perfect still life piece in MS Paint. It’s certainly not always successful, but translating this very specific 2D style into the limitless 3D world is a fascinating concept.

Subculture

I think the main reason that the 8-Bit aesthetic has survived as long as it has is precisely because of the subculture around it. It’s true that people who are not art fans, mainstream artists and famous musicians (Beck using a Gameboy, anyone?) are drawn to it, but they’re not the primary engine behind its survival and propagation. Aspects of this subculture are definitely invested in both retro and modern video games, but it goes far beyond that. In the world of the 8-Bit aesthetic, designers and artists have the tools to create a viable, striking alternative to mainstream art. 8-Bit art has a certain lo-fi charm, but it goes far beyond that. I think punk rock might be the best comparison to 8-Bit art and music. In the 8-Bit aesthetic, people see something that they can do themselves. They’re able to render something exactly how they want it to come out. For instance, a budding talent might be inspired by another 8-Bit artist and think “Hey, my favorite scene from Drive would look really awesome in the 8-Bit style… and that’s something I can actually do!” Just because anyone can do it does not mean there’s a lack of creativity—the technical elements of Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown” are quite simple, but they’re the only band that wrote that exact song, which is a vital part of the American punk canon. The 8-Bit aesthetic works the same way. This entire subculture is drawn to it because it’s empowering and it connects them to other artists.

Every artist and designer has his/her own reasons for working in the 8-Bit style, but there are some unifying elements that connect them all. As onlookers, we appreciate the simple aesthetics that whisk us away to another time and allow us to let our minds wander. The artists themselves appreciate those qualities as well, but they are also bound by the confines of the medium itself, the interplay between the analog and the digital and their participation in that particular subculture. It’s the product of a bygone era, but the 8-Bit aesthetic has laid down such strong roots that its lifespan will extend into many future generations.

 
Edward Stuart is an artist, writer, blogger, and decoration enthusiast. He writes for the canvas art supplier CanvasGalleryArt.com. Edward enjoys blogging about art, art history, design, and home decor.

Internet video can be dramatically more powerful in delivering a message than simple text on a page. However, some of the traffic- and business-building power of video might be wasted if a website owner doesn’t understand how to use it properly. Here are some of the most prevalent misconceptions regarding video content.

1. You Have to Use YouTube

While YouTube is free and great for videos of funny cats or skateboarders faceplanting into concrete, it is not necessarily the best place to host your videos. After all, you are subject to the whims of their terms of service, and they make money off of your content by displaying ads next to it, often without compensating you.

Instead, consider hosting video on a more professional site, or even hosting it directly on your own webserver. Video compression has improved to the point where even small files sizes produce excellent-looking streaming videos. Both Flash and HTML5 web-optimized formats allow resolutions that will look crisp and without the need for gigantic files, so skip the higher resolutions which eat up bandwidth and cause your videos to play with more buffering issues.

2. Long Form Videos Don’t Work

Some insist that videos above a certain run time, such as two or five minutes, will turn off viewers due to short attention spans. This mythical attentions span deficit is just that, a myth. If your video is engaging enough, no one will click away just because a pre-determined time limit has been exceeded.

In truth, the ideal video length is simply a matter of your target market and purposes. If you expect most of your audience to be highschoolers who watch on their cell phones, then shorter is definitely the way to go. For older audiences seeking how-to information, you can go longer, and even 30 minute videos for tech tutorials are common.

3. Video Cannot be Optimized for Search Engines

It is true that that video is great at grabbing the attention of site visitors, but if no one finds it in the first place when they search, it is useless. The solution is to think carefully about the text which surrounds the video on the page it is embedded. Make sure you not only put a description of the video on the page, but that you also fill out the meta tags with relevant keywords. You might also consider typing out a transcript for your video, so that search engines can find do a better job in sending visitors your way. This also caters to visitors who prefer to read rather than watch video.

4. Views Count Above All Else

An obsession with view counts is misguided, and more people are realizing how easily video view counts are manipulated. One quick check on Fiverr shows that over 10,000 video views can be had for only five dollars. While this is flat-out cheating, it is quite prevalent, and makes judging a video’s success by view count meaningless.

Instead, marketers should focus on other metrics, such as views-to-sales conversions and number of e-mail list subscribers rather than trying to impress others with a flimsy, easily faked view count.

5. It Costs a Lot to Make Videos

Need a high-definition video camera? Whip out your phone. Most smartphones are now capable of recording beautiful high-definition images, and many computers come with video editing software built in. Combine these with free or low-cost video streaming services like Vimeo, and you can broadcast lots of quality content for very little money.

Steven Chalmers is a grizzled freelance writer who has written for the tech industry for over 10 years. When he’s not busy writing, you can find Steven covering conference call technology. Click here for more information.

1. Write Good Content

Writing good content for the web is the best way to build a following on the web and through WordPress.  It’s one of the best ways to attract backlinks and provides plenty of value to your readership.  In order to write good content, you will want to ask yourself a few questions first:

• Who is my target audience?
• What does my target audience want to read about?
• What can I do to make my content or writing style unique from the rest of the web?

2. Leverage Plugins for SEO, Site Security, and Making Your Website More Functional

Must have plugins would include:

• Bulletproof Security
• WP Super Cache or Quick Cache
• Custom Contact Forms
• Easing Slider
• Akismet
• WordPress SEO by Yoast

3. Set a www or non-www Version of Your Website

Setting a www or non-www version of your website can help avoid a Page Rank split between these two versions of your website.  Search engines can actually view the www and non-www versions of a website as separate domains and will split ranking between the two.

You can set which version of your website you would like displayed through your General Settings in your WordPress Dashboard under the “Settings” tab.

Once you have determined which version of your website you would like displayed, you will then want to make sure that all inbound links that are pointing to your website have the right version of your website.

4. Comment on Other Blogs and Respond to Comments

One of the easiest ways to build a following and a readership on your own WordPress website is to comment on other blogs and see if you can attract new visitors to your own website.  If visitors then come to your site and respond to a post with a comment, write back to them.  This is a great way to maintain a consistent following and cement your website in the minds of your readers.

5. Promote Your RSS Feed

All WordPress websites come with RSS feed functionality built into the website.  An RSS feed is simply an updated feed of your website’s blog posts and can be a great way to build a following.  It’s a good idea to promote your RSS feed throughout your website and create a prominent button where users can enter their e-mail addresses and subscribe.

6. Re-write Title Tags, Descriptions, and Taxonomies

Using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast, you can re-write title tags, descriptions, and change taxonomies for how WordPress generates page titles.

By default, WordPress generates title tags that may appear to search engines as duplicate content.  You can re-write this title tags using this plugin in order to make your website more search engine friendly.

7. DON’T Install Poorly Rated Plugins

Plugins with poor ratings have poor ratings for a reason.  Any plugin with a rating of 3 out of 5 stars or less with more than 30 reviews should be looked upon with extreme caution and skepticism.  Chances are that there is a big reason why the plugin is rated so poorly.

8. DON’T Spam

Do not write junk content or create articles using article spinning software.  Google will find a way to punish your website, and it won’t be pretty.

Keep your content original and interesting.  This is the best way to get rewarded with a solid readership and competitive search engine rankings.

9. Use a Testing Server

One of the major mistakes that entry level webmasters make is trying to play around with their WordPress website while it is live on the web, which sometimes results in database errors that break the website.

If you are going to be editing any major functions in WordPress, it is best to set up a testing server on your local computer to work off of just in case something goes wrong.  Once you’ve managed to make the right adjustments on your testing server, you can then upload the changes to your website.

10. Update Regularly

While it can sometimes be a little tedious, updating your version of WordPress can help resolve a number of bugs and functionality issues that exist in earlier versions.  It’s generally a good idea to update your version of WordPress.

Steve Halvorson is the owner of a Twin Cities based internet marketing company called Blue Phoenix Web Design. He enjoys writing content for the web and is a big fan of WordPress and Firefox.

Web designers, who prefer creativity to usability, do so at the expense of their site visitors. Here are some tips to help veteran web designers, as well as the rookies.

Search Box – Integral To High Usability

For a website studded with quality content, visitors always want an easy-access approach. How do you help the site visitors to reach the piece of information they are hunting for at the site? A search box is of great use and is always appreciated by site visitors. Google Custom Search is a great option to facilitate the site visitors.

Content Readability – Make It Easy

A stellar web design may attract visitors, but its the content that keeps them engaged and helps them in making a quick buying decision. How to make the content readable? Here are some suggestions!

• Sans Serif typefaces are excellent to be used for body copy.
• Limit the font sizes up to a max of three: for header, sub-header, and body content.
• On any given web page, there shouldn’t be more than 3 typefaces.
• Text emphasis should be used sparingly.
• Alignment should be either left or justified (depending on the way content is being presented).
• Paragraphs should be kept on the short side.

Content Organization – Pay Heed To It

Content writing is the task of writers, but organizing the content on pages is the job of designer. Here are some helpful points.

• Present the content first that address to the visitors’ unique needs and issues. The information should be made easy to access.
• Follow the way your visitors think and present the content in that logical manner.
• Arrange the content while keeping in mind the differences of the targeted audiences.

Updated Content – Make It a Priority

A website grows with every passing day, so the content should be updated regularly to appeal to the targeted customers. The best approach in this regard is to acquire some maintenance services from a web design firm to update the content on regular basis and to remove the outdated content.

Smooth Navigation – Make It Possible

If you want your visitors to stick around, this is critical. If they are hampered by difficult navigation, it could become an easy reason for the visitors to leave your web page. What makes for smooth navigation? Here are some tips!

• Links should be labeled with easy to understand names
• Keep the hyperlinks highlighted in the text body
• Remove any of the dead link from the site

Web Design Consistency – Consider It

Creativity is good for a website, but it should be used wisely. Simplicity should be the priority to grab the attention of the targeted visitors and to make consistency possible in a web design.

Scroll Bar – Keep It Vertical

While designing a site, screen resolution should be kept in mind. 1024 x 768 is the optimized desktop layout. Horizontal scroll bars are irregular and most find them irritating. One can get help from Google Analytics to know more about the monitor resolution used by the visitors who visit the site. Mobile based visitors should also be considered while thinking about the screen resolution.

More White Space – Never Ignore

Above the fold information is the real eye catching thing for site visitors. White space should also not be ignored and should be made attractive and professional.

Audio Music – Avoid It Or Keep It Limited

While using audio music at a site, a designer should think about the main purpose of the site. Music almost always annoys visitors to the point of clicking away immediately. If it’s necessary to add music, then audiences should be given the complete control of that whether to start or muteit. It shouldn’t be changed with each page.

Pagination – Use It Wisely

Pagination can be a good element of web design if it’s used at an e-commerce site, having pictures to display. For an article, pagination is not recommended. Although, for an article, pagination is used to increase the page views, which determines the improved revenue, but it affects SEO efforts and the readers negatively.

Contact – Make It Easy

To solve any of the visitors’ problems, a contact form should be made easy to access and should be in working condition.

Registration – Excess Is Bad

Many websites demand users register before accessing the site, which is a major mistake. If you must ask visitors to register, always ask for the bare minimum of information, as asking too many questions will cost you many of your visitors. Think of every question as a barricade between your potential customers and your site. The fewer you have, the better.

Are you committing any of the blunders related to the points mentioned above? If you can think of any more usability tips that I have forgotten, please leave them in the comment section below!

Peter North is a passionate writer who loves to write about technological stuff, mostly about web design.

3D printing as a whole is still in its early stages, but some of the things that have been made possible in the few short years it has existed are really jaw-dropping. There are some seriously cool things you can already print out using this technology so I thought I would list a few…

Artificial bones

As a whole, the process of 3D printing has potentially enormous implications for medical treatment. One very way that this is the case is the way that doctors have already restored a patient’s bite by printing them out a synthetic lower jaw. While there have been hands and other limbs printed out as well, it will be the question of whether working organs can be created which is of great interest to the medical industry.

Cars

The Urbee is an electric car model capable of running an extremely environmentally sound 200 miles to the gallon. The car is made even more impressive by the fact that the majority of its body was printed using a 3D printer. The first Urbee went on public display in Canada in 2011.

It should also be noted that car enthusiast Jay Leno uses a 3D printer in his garage, which he uses to print out rare auto parts for his collection of vintage cars that would be near-impossible to find elsewhere.

Historical Artifacts

3D printing can be of two main uses when it comes to learning from historical artifacts. Firstly, the process can be utilized to create accurate replicas of the internal structures of particularly delicate pieces so that their inner workings can be studied. Secondly, the Smithsonian Institute has digitized and then printed out replicas a number of its more precious artefacts in order to be able to take them on educational tours.

Chocolate versions of people’s faces

Slightly strange maybe, but this collaboration between David Carr and MIT’s Media Lab has a lot of potentially great uses. Imagine giving your loved one a box of chocolate versions of your own face for Valentines…

Buildings

Inventor Enrico Dini has taken the idea of 3D printing and made it much larger in scale. Creating a huge machine that creates solid structures by layering liquid adhesive, sand and a solid catalyst, Dini has potentially fundamentally changed the way we look at construction. The process is so impressive someone even made a documentary about it and its creator.

Perfectly working clocks

Clocks involve quite a lot of complex gears and internal mechanisms, so for a single machine to be able to produce one that works and is ready to be used is not only incredibly worrying to clock makers everywhere, but also impressive in its own right. This is an example of the potential commercial applications of this kind of technology if it were to become more widespread, with consumers buying templates from retailers and then printing out the actual product at home.

A life size model of your unborn child

How are you going to top givng your lover a box of your face chocolates? Why, by giving them a life size model of the unborn fetus in either yours or their womb of course! A clinic in Japan has been offering parents the chance to freak out their friends at dinner parties since last year.

Burritos

OK, that was a slight exaggeration. The Burrit0bot can’t actually print out an actual burrito, but can provide you with all the sauces that you will need to kick your cooking up a notch. Whether this is a great human achievement or another self inflicted blow that will mean that even more of the global service industries are replaced by machines is currently open to debate.

Bikinis

…and finally, the company Continuum Fashion’s N12 bikini is made from lots of tiny plastic plates printed using a 3D printer and connected by tiny springs. Fashion retailers have got a close eye on this because it could mean that in the near future consumers would go into a shop and simply select the style of clothes they wanted, which would then be printed out to fit their bodies perfectly.
Are you excited about what the future holds yet? Just think about the possibilities if all of the stuff above can be printed out right this second using a 3D printer! Does anyone have any great ideas about some problems we could solve with this technology? Leave them in the comments section below.

A couple of years ago, Elise Lévêque moved from the North of France to Bristol in the UK, and has not looked back since. She is working as a freelance translator but finds the time to write blogs for Cartridge Shop  to share her passions for social media, design and technology. She can be reached at @Elise_GKBCinc

1. Dropbox

For any design business, keeping track of files across multiple designers can be a huge headache. Not to mention that backing up all of your design files can be hugely time consuming. You don’t have to worry about sharing files or backup anymore when you use Dropbox. This tool allows multiple users to save files to the cloud, which can be accessed from any computer.

Since your files are saved on the cloud, you no longer have to worry about losing your data. Dropbox also includes a desktop shortcut, which makes it feel like you’re simply saving your file in a folder on your desktop. Dropbox is also essential if multiple designers are working on the same project, because it allows everyone access, so you don’t have to email files back and forth anymore.

2. PayPal

You can’t have a design business if you can’t get paid. There are a variety of options for accommodating nearly any method of payment that your client prefers.

On the other hand, you may be a tech expert, but many of your clients could still be stuck back in the online-banking Stone Age. PayPal is an easy-to-use, reliable and secure method for making and receiving online payments.

The global ecommerce site doesn’t offer much in the way of finance-tracking bells and whistles. At the same time, if you have a client that likes PayPal, the nominal service fees may be worth it if signing up for a new online payment portal causes your client balk — or threaten to take their business elsewhere.

3. Xero

Most business owners know that tax time rolls around quarterly. Without proper planning and preparation, a new designer can find himself in a precarious financial bind every four months.

At one time there were just one or two acceptable accounting software suites for managing small businesses. Today, tech companies are focusing on this area of software development in effort to reach the growing population of contract workers. Xero Accounting is a software suite that imports bank statements and tracks cash flow, helps streamline and manage your invoicing and payroll system, offers up-to-date bill payment and reporting. Their guide to invoicing is also extremely helpful for those just starting out in the business.

Selecting the right accounting suite will free up time you spend on bookkeeping and increase your billable hours.

4. Harvest

This awesome time tracking tool allows you to seamlessly bill time to various projects throughout the day. If your designers switch from client to client several times throughout the day, Harvest allows them to simply click on a different client when they switch projects, which keeps your billing very accurate.

Harvest also allows you to send invoices from the same application. It’s very easy to use, and there’s nothing to install. This tool can help you dissolve all of your pesky billing issues easily.

5. Trello

Trello is the organized, online version of a giant task board. It’s great if you have multiple designers working on the same project, and you need to divvy up and assign tasks.

Trello allows designers to assign tasks and archive them when they have been completed, which allows everyone to visually track project progress. You can create multiple boards for various projects, and invite individuals members to each board, so people are only assigned to projects they are actively working on.

Rob Toledo lives in Seattle, Washington. He no longer supports IE7 design, worships Firefox, and wouldn’t know what to do without Instagram. He is working alongside Shutterstock photos and their stock footage brand promoting better web design. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo

1. Poor structure and design

Design is subjective – we all have our own tastes. But poor design can immediately create a barrier to site success. Design isn’t just about making it look pretty – it’s about how the site works too, and by making your customers think about what to do or where to go next, you are bound to increase that bounce rate.

Equally, if your site looks like it was built in the 1990s (that’s officially vintage, you know), you can send the wrong impression to users no matter how good the content is.

2. Poor/unusable navigation

Not every user will find what they want immediately. But if they can’t navigate your site easily, they’ll leave. Make it easy for users so that they invest the time to find what they came for.

‘Mega menus’ may look good, but if they make it impossible to navigate easily, they defeat their purpose. Make sure your site structure is clear and to the point. As the saying goes, ‘Don’t make me think.’

3. Slow loading pages

Speed is a hot topic, with both search engines and users judging websites by how fast they load. If you have slow loading pages, you’ll see increasing numbers of visitors give up before the content has fully loaded.

Every second you knock off your loading time can make a huge difference to your conversion rate, as various studies have shown. Faster content means greater visitor satisfaction. So, keep it simple. And make it snappy.

4. Not built for users

Don’t build your site for search engines, build it for users. They are the people who will share and link to your site.

Long gone are the days where stuffing your page with low quality content will help you in the search engines. In fact, it can harm your ranking and annoy your visitors. Make your content for your users and you’ll see a much better return.

5. Cross browser issues

Simply put, if your website doesn’t work in the popular browsers then you’ll drive visitors away. Cross browser compatibility is a big issue.

Be sure to test in all popular versions of browsers. If you’re running Google Analytics, you can see exactly which browsers people are using to visit your site.

Let this guide your test plan. There’s nothing more damaging to conversions than having 40% of your traffic coming via Internet Explorer 6, and your website not working in that browser.

Conclusion

These are just five of the many web design mistakes that can drive web visitors away. Getting people onto your website is hard enough, so don’t lose them with silly mistakes and overlooked development issues. There are many other things to look out for, but remember; if your website is built for users and is clear and to the point, you won’t have many issues.

This article was written by Gerry Arcari from Vivid Creative in Sheffield. Vivid is a leading web design firm in Sheffield. Outside of the web & branding, Gerry is a very keen cyclist.

Studies have shown that a website has ten seconds to capture a visitor’s attention before losing them forever. A video on your homepage will help do this, keeping visitors on your website. It also negates the need for them to read long chunks of static text that can be extremely off-putting.

Videos can be a hugely effective way of conveying information quickly and effectively when done well. Say you’re selling a product or service, what better way is there to do this than letting your customers see it in action?

Text on a website only conveys a limited sense of the personality of your company, whereas videos give you an opportunity to show viewers exactly how you look, sound and act. They’re a great way to project your core values. Are you young and fun? Bold and assertive? Using video allows you to reach out to your visitor in a more personal manner and really let them get to know you. These videos do not need to be expensive either. Most companies who don’t have million dollar budgets are able to easily accomplish an effective video with little more than a video camera and a YouTube channel.

Videos are dynamic and interactive. They engage your visitor, which in turn encourages them to spend more time on your page, precious time you’ve then got to sell yourself or your product. I could go on, but by this point I hope that I’ve managed to convince you of the value of incorporating a video into your homepage, so here’s how to make it as captivating as possible.

1. Clarify Your Objective

Your video needs a hook, a purpose, usually echoing the objective of your website. Make sure this is as clear and compelling as possible.

2. Utilize a Narrative

When I talk about narrative I don’t mean a full blown story, but your video needs to create a situation that your visitors relate to. You want them to understand your product or service and be able to picture themselves using it.

3. Call to Action

By now you should be aware of the importance of a strong call to action in any marketing efforts. You want your visitors to do something, be it purchasing a product, downloading a trial or simply filling in a form. Make sure that they know what this is.

4. Production Value

Poor production value will not instill confidence in your visitors. If you haven’t invested in yourself, why should they? Fortunately it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to include a high quality video.

Here is a great example of what a homepage video should be, courtesy of DollarShaveClub.com:

Rob Toledo lives in Seattle, Washington. He no longer supports IE7 design, worships Firefox, and wouldn’t know what to do without Instagram. He is working alongside Shutterstock photos and their stock footage brand promoting better web design. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo

Think about the Colors

This is the easiest thing to check for and to fix. You should avoid putting more than 3 different colors into a design (unless you know exactly what you’re doing), two tends to be better. Your design should look interesting even in black and white, especially if it’s for your business and you intend to reuse it for other things (some of which might not be in color).

Have a Vector or High Resolution Raster Image

Using a low resolution .jpg to try to print a larger picture is like trying to build a snow man out of ice cubes. It just doesn’t work. Ideally you will have a vector (.eps or .svg) file which can be rescaled to any size without becoming pixelated since it doesn’t have pixels. If you don’t want to bother with a vector file you need to have a high resolution raster image (.jpg, .png, .bmp). If you only have a low resolution raster file you should probably look into…

Making a Vector Image

If you have illustration software like Adobe Illustrator or Corel you can make a vector file by taking your smaller raster image and tracing it with a pen tool as shown in the tutorial below.

Making a High Resolution Raster File

The problem with a raster file is that the pixels in it are all the information you have. If you make it bigger you just get bigger pixels. Zooming in and “enhancing” it like they do in the movies to any size you like is technology that simply doesn’t exist any more than a Star Trek replicator. To get a higher resolution you need to make a higher resolution in the first place. There are a few programs out there to try to fill in the missing data by guessing what’s supposed to be there when you increase the size, but naturally they’re only of limited use.

Show it to a Professional

The people who are going to make your shirt look at these types of designs all day and will be able to assist you. Show them your design and ask for feedback before you submit it. If you don’t ask for an honest opinion you will likely just get polite smiles, which is to be expected from people who need your business, so reassure them that you don’t need to be coddled.

Alice Jenkins is a graphic designer and blogger. She enjoys blogging about her work and enjoys providing insight into the design world for the uninitiated. She currently writes for youdesignit.com, where you can make custom design t shirts online.

Like I wrote, when people asked me what I was going to school for and had to describe what graphic design was, to simplify I would say “I make pretty pictures.” I was bombarded with posters, ads, commercials, and magazine covers that amazed me and I wanted to make things like that. So I tried to make things that were pleasing to the eye. The problem that I ran into was I felt that I wasn’t just making pretty pictures, that’s art. I was learning how to sell products and ideas. This allowed my definition of design to change and become the idea that I’m selling something and it should be nice enough for me to want to hang it up on a wall.

After some time thinking about design being ads that I wouldn’t mind hanging up on wall, I started to do a lot of research for my work. And by researching I was exposed to a lot of great design and I was building my vocabulary in the process. I spent most of my class sketching and flipping though the small little library in my classroom. I realized that I was supposed to communicate something to the person looking at my work, not just show something looking amazing and hope they remember it.  So, instead of worrying just about what a person saw, I had to think equally about what I was saying as well. I didn’t always get it right but this was a big leap forward in my thinking and understanding of design.

My late sophomore/early junior year is where design as problem solving clicked for me. I had been doing some intensive work for school and decided to also immerse myself in the world design; I read books, listened to podcasts, went to conferences and I took as much in as I could. With all this exposure the idea of design was constantly being discussed. A design wasn’t just a poster that sold shoes, it could also be a poster that brought awareness of a need for shoes. And the definition of what a designer was was also expanded upon; It wasn’t just people who did web or print or motion, it was people who saw a problem and tried to fix that problem. The idea that design isn’t about making things pretty or selling products but about defining a problem and figuring out how to best fix it was such an amazing thought to me.

Since then, I’ve been wanting to do something that matters. I want to help make the world better through my design. I know this is an extreme approach to the idea, but the beauty of this definition is that it works for a wide range of things, from selling goods to saving lives. It can be described and interpreted in many different ways and it’s not limiting. David McCandless gave my favorite definition of what design is in a TED talk, he said, “Design is about solving problems and providing elegant solutions…” I think that sums up what we should want to achieve as any type of designer.

What did design school teach you about design? What does design mean to you? Leave your experiences or thoughts on this topic in the comments section below!

Joseph Serrani is a senior at the Robert Busch School of Design at Kean University. He loves talking about & critiquing design. His favorite glyph is the ampersand.

This infographic, (courtesy of Dot Com Infoway,) presents all the relevant facts and figures regarding internet usage on desktop as well as mobile devices in an easy-to-understand format.

Here are the top five mistakes you will want to avoid when designing for mobile devices:

1. Too much text

One thing to keep in mind is that websites that will be viewed in mobile devices should not be cramped with text. The tendency when the overall look is bombarded with words is that things seem so tight and cramped that it is not pleasant to read, or even to look at. It is best to learn to use techniques like bulleting or perhaps simple rephrasing to shorten word lengths. Technically, web programming using language like HTML have common commands like line break (<br>) or paragraph break (<p>) to dissect and arrange or bind words for a clean look.

2. Clickable icons or links are too close to each other

Many mobile devices (especially Apple and Android products) employ a physical touch screen for control and navigation. Users’ fingers will be a typical tool for navigation so consider a layout that supports human finger control. Clickable objects or targets in general should be 30-40 pixels in size for ease of touch, and both icons and links should never ever be set too close to each other. A minimum separation of 10-20 pixels will do.

3. Not considering device screen size

Cooking food for two  and cooking for ten are two similar yet very different things. The basic techniques employed are the same but the amount is not to accommodate the number of people. Same is true with website layout design, as you should consider the size that your content will be contained in. If you target to accommodate those iPhone 4/4S users, consider a web layout that fits nicely in a 3.5 inches 960×460 screen.

With that info in mind, size your objects correspondingly to ensure it fits your target device’s screen width. To accommodate other devices, create a website that can adjust to any screen width, and HTML command like (content=”width=device-width”) is a way to do it.

4. Slow load times

Chances are that on the go mobile device users may not have the same patience as PC users. Avoid embedding heavy image files or unnecessary background images for faster data and page load times, and for maximizing readability in certain lighting conditions. If icons and images should exist there, you may opt to combine them into one file to reduce http requests and use CSS to position them neatly.

5. Not Optimizing User Data Input Method

Again, time, patience, and convenience of users should be king. Forms and the like should have the minimum amount of data input so take time to think and include only significant fields for user data input. You could also consider using radio buttons or check boxes with corresponding choices to eliminate the need for users to type choices. Also, employ the ability to store user cache data that allows users to not input his or her information or choices when upon coming back from a closed session.

More Mobile Website Design Principles:

To further help your cause, let us discuss things that you should observe to further have the best mobile website design possible.

For a technical look at things, building a mobile website is similar to building a normal full scale website. But remember to do some tweaks by adding these meta tags: “HandheldFriendly”, “MobileOptimized”, and “Viewport”. Place these at the <Head> section of the webpage that tells the browser that your website is to be viewed in a mobile browser. Those are the basic codes that can help you drastically.

Here are a few other things to consider in designing a mobile-friendly website:

• Good ergonomic design
• Easy to code
• User friendly
• Compatibility
• Faster for user to input data
• Easy to physically navigate
• Simple design
• Don’t forget to test!

If you can avoid all of the mistakes mentioned, and keep the above points in mind,  you will be on your way to developing a website that is efficient for those mobile device browsers that all those tech junkies can’t resist!

Celina Conner is a Yoga Instructor, an alumna of Multimedia and Graphics Design at Martin College Australia and a mother of a beautiful daughter, Krizia. She has a passion in cooking and formulating vegan recipes. Follow her adventures on her Twitter.

Getting Facebook to work for you.

500 million people use Facebook. That’s 8% of the world’s population. It’s a resource businesses can’t afford to ignore. It doesn’t matter what type of business; it could be a bakery, a bar or computer software. All are beginning to understand that Facebook is that giant, delicious pie we should all be getting a slice of.

Generally the same factors for “regular” SEO also apply to SEO for Facebook.

• Your page will need to be unique,
• You’ll need other high quality pages to link to you
• You’ll need to include the terms that you want to rank for on the page.

The successful combination of all these factors will mean that your business ranking highly on the search engine of your choice.

This is how SEO works in general and really, this is exactly how a Facebook business page should be run. The first step for a business is to create your own page. This immediately gives the company an identity and a platform from which to use social media.

Getting the name right.

Take some time to think about the name of your page. If it’s too long and specific (because for example you’re trying to mention all of the services you offer) then users are less likely to like the page and you really don’t want that.

Likes are the Facebook equivalent of links, the more likes you get the more Facebook pages link to your business page and the better you’ll rank.

The best name for your page is probably your business name although if you want users to know what you do then this isn’t always the case. Take Duarte Inc as an example. They do some great work designing presentations but you couldn’t tell by their Google search preview:

In this case if Duarte wanted regular users to know what services they offered then they’d give their page a more descriptive title – like “Duarte Inc – Beautiful Presentations”.

Get the look

Have some fun with the page and don’t be afraid to experiment. Obviously as a designer you want to show off your skills and on facebook it’s doubly important to make your pages engaging. More engaging pages means more likes, more likes means more links to your pages and consequently better rankings on search engines.

Here are a couple of my favorite Facebook business page designs:

DagDesign – I do appreciate a monogram.

AmanitaDesign – personally I just like the logo being mirrored in the banner image.

Cubiqdesign- I do work for these guys.

The little things

Further details on your page should include location and a Facebook web address. This makes it easier for people to remember (and reference) your page in the future.

Use related apps, along with offering incentives and promotions for your page visitors. People love incentives and they love promotions. It can increase the potential for engagement with your visitors, and therefore increase the ‘likes’ you get.

Of course, it’s important that you also link your Facebook page to your actual business site, and vice-versa, which is a very simple matter that takes a few minutes. For those who aren’t as SEO savvy, don’t worry about it, as Facebook offer a resources section that contains a load of information for you to mine in order to make your page as good as it can be.

Finally, once you get off the ground and running, it’s vital that you keep on top of the development of the page by utilizing the analytics package. Using this to see changes in user size and trends allow you to stay flexible with your content and check what is working and what isn’t. Bear in mind that you must have a minimum of 30 ‘likes’ before you can use this package.

By linking your business to Facebook and creating your own page, you open yourself up to a sea of possibilities and a large slice of that pie.

By day, Ben works for the Cambridge based web design firm Cubiqdesign. By night he trawls Pinterest looking for sock octopi.

Creative blocks sometimes happen because you are distracted by other things, physical or emotional. Two prominent Los Angeles psychologist, Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, who pride themselves for having patients with 40 Oscar awards between them, wrote a book called “The Tools” that is supposed to help with creative blocks, and teach you how to turn your problems into courage, but there is nothing new under the sun; their tools have been in use by many creative people for many years.

1. Force yourself

As much as you don’t want to hear it, forcing yourself is one of the ways to get over creative block. Force yourself by having a ritual that leads to work, force yourself to sit by your desk even if nothing is coming into your head, or force yourself by doodling or writing something on the screen. Sometime the creative juices start flowing when you doodle aimlessly.

2. Block out negative thoughts

Most of the time we are distracted by negative thoughts. This will never be good enough/I’m a terrible writer/designer/I’ll be fired as soon as I show my work/they don’t like me here… Recognize those thoughts? I bet you do. No creative person that brings something new into the world is devoid of those thoughts. Learn how to block them. If you can commend your brain not to think about them, your creativity may begin to flow.

3. Go for a walk or a run

Physical activity is one of the things that might wake the brain up. Murakami, the famous Japanese writer is a runner. He claims that running almost every day clears his mind because he doesn’t think about anything while he runs. He listens to his breathing, to his footsteps, to the wind in the trees but hardly ever thinks about what he is about to write.

4. Take a nap

I have heard that trick from many writers. When they are stuck and nothing comes up they take a short nap. Sometimes ‘sleeping on it’ works and things become clearer. Even if they don’t become clear, at least you are refreshed now and can sit for another 2 hours by your desk.

5. Meditate

In other words, again, empty your mind and don’t bother with your feelings. Concentrate on something outside of you – a word, a rhyme, a color inside your eyelids. Sometimes you might fall asleep and that brings us to the benefits of a nap. Sometimes you will wake up feeling rejuvenated.

Even though we wish we could bring creativity on demand, and sometimes we are required to do so, it will not always happen. Avoid distractions, and God knows there are so many of them now – cell phone, surfing the web, e mails, shopping online… Creativity is a great thing, but it will get you nowhere without discipline.

Ferina Santos is part of the team behind Open Colleges, Australia’s provider of graphic design courses. A feisty nerd at heart with an obsession for vanity, she captures all her random musings with daily photographs in her blog, A Pink Banana.

A lot of people who never got around to trying out the beta version are probably wondering what the big differences between 5 and 6 are before they decide to fork over either $1300 for the Design Standard version or $2,600 for the Master Collection that features everything Adobe has to offer. That said; let’s go over some of the design related changes that distinguish Adobe CS6 from CS5.

Listen to our podcast episode where we talk about what’s new in Adobe CS6

General Overview

In short, Adobe has really upped the ante with CS6. The new creative suite introduces changes in almost every single one of the 14 different design products both it and CS5 come with. Notable and major upgrades have been made to all the major design programs like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Flash Pro, Fireworks, InDesign/InCopy, Premiere Pro and Encore among others. Photoshop, for example, has been upgraded with 62% more new features from the CS5 version.

Aside from expansions to existing features of CS5, Adobe has also added two completely new applications to its Master Collection and Production Premium versions; Prelude CS6 and SpeedGrade CS6. The first of these is a tool for video logging that helps transcode footage quickly and SpeedGrade is a professional color grading system for video editing.

The programs that haven’t changed between CS5 and 6 are: Flash Catalyst, Contribute, OnLocation, Device Central,Acrobat and Flash Builder.

The best way to examine such an enormous amount of changes is by having a quick run through some of the key differences in major design programs.

Photoshop

Key new features of Photoshop include a new and improved user interface, new Camera Raw 7, save for background and Auto-recovery, intuitive video editing, redesigned 3D and Vector engines, an excellent new video editing system for many formats and a completely re-engineered crop tool. These are just some of the completely new features in Photoshop CS6; there are many more.

Illustrator CS6

Illustrator CS6 also comes with a re-engineered user interface, new creative tools for creating patterns, image tracing ability, gradients on strokes, a customizable interface and the Adobe Mercury performance system for 64-bit support on Windows or Mac. Other new features for web, video and mobile uses are also included.

InDesign CS6

The versatile desktop publishing software has been upgraded to be easier and more efficient than ever. Time-saving tools include split window ability, content collector tools quick access recent fonts, grayscale and alternate layout. Other new features such as PDF form field creation and HTML content pasting or placing are also part of InDesign CS6.

Dreamweaver CS6

A fluid grid layout for cross-platform design, HTML5 code rendering that includes liveview and multi-screen preview; optimized FTP performance, enhanced jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap support (A bonus for mobile apps development) are just some of the new features in the new Dreamweaver. The latest version of this excellent page design software is sure to make web design easier and more intuitive than ever.

Fireworks CS6

With Fireworks you can create extraordinary website and app designs quickly and easily; knowing how to code isn’t even required. New features in the latest Fireworks include screen layout tools, jQuery Mobile theme skinning, CSS3 code extraction, increased memory management in Windows 64-bit editions and improved redraw performance for Mac.

In Conclusion

The New Adobe CS6 is truly a large improvement from its previous incarnation; the changes and new features that have been created for CS6 are numerous enough to fill a dozen pages and what we’ve explained here only covers the more important design oriented parts of what’s been done.

Whether CS6 is worth the $2600 USD price tag for the complete set of programs and apps is a subjective decision. The Adobe website itself offers per-program upgrades for those designers and programmers who just want to change up for only a few of their CS5 apps. This offers a nice budget option for enjoying the new features of CS6.

Amanda Gant is a respected, award winning technology writer and has been covering the tech industry for many years. When she’s not reviewing eCommerce web design in Chicago, she’s busy writing her autobiography and practicing her violin.

A Brief History

• 20s-40s – Pulp sci-fi and fantasy covers have their roots in the world of pulp novels and magazines from the 20s, 30s and 40s. These books were the young men’s magazines of their time and their covers were meant to sell a copious amount of copies. They depicted dashing men, sinister gangsters and beautiful women engaged in various acts of violence. Their titles were big and bold, and their taglines grabbed attention with phrases like “She was betrothed to a dead man” and “One beautiful dame, two kill-crazy thugs and three million dollars.” They were similar to many movie posters, but they were much more graphic in terms the sex and violence they suggested. Though these novels and magazines were consumed as avidly as people consume reality television today, the cover artists and designers were often given no credit for their work. Ironically, these non-credited covers were often the strongest selling point of the entire publication. In fact, publishers’ opinions that covers were the most important part of the pulps were tendentious—sometimes the stories themselves were written to reflect the covers instead of the other way around. It must be said, however, that many artists who worked in the pulps went on to become household names.

• 50s – In the 50s, science fiction and fantasy emerged as a strong entity within the pulp scene. Many covers in this decade showcased a combination of art deco style and a sort of Cold War Futurism, depicting space age cities, flying cars and a variety of rocket ships. This era also saw some classic novels republished with more fantastical covers, which is a trend that has never quite went out of style. Toward the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, some covers began taking on abstract imagery, as demonstrated below.

• 60s – The mid-60s marked a serious turning point in pulp cover design. As the rest of the world turned psychedelic, the pulps also took on many of those characteristics. Wizards, spacemen and alien worlds were all rendered in striking arrangements featuring strange colors. This decade moved away from the fantastical realism and faux futurism of the 1950s in favor of headier concepts and the pursuit of weirdness. Even Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy got a makeover courtesy of Ace Books, as demonstrated below.

• 70s – In the 1970s things really began to take off. Many people see this as the golden age of heavy hitters like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo, who rendered rugged astronauts and savage barbarians with stunning realism. Depictions of monsters became more terrifying, landscapes became more hellish and the violence moved toward a new level of gruesome spectacle. Images of horror started to take center stage, and things just got plain weirder as evidenced here.

• 80s-Present – In the 80s it seemed like science fantasy digests and novels either moved away from the realm of pulp entirely or took it to an even greater extreme. Since then, the pendulum has moved back and forth several times as far as pulp popularity is concerned. As we will discuss in the next section, many elements of these pulp covers live on today and still hold up very well from a design standpoint.

Common Elements

Though some pulp covers were horrifically messy and poorly designed, the vast majority of them are quite strong, especially considering their typically frowned-upon subject matter. These were great artists and designers who understood that their work needed to function as both the cover to a novel or magazine and a great piece of visual art. Let’s consider the following:

• Lettering – Besides the art itself, the book’s title was its most important feature. Titles were almost always rendered completely in capital letters, and often feature primary colors outlined in white. They make good use of both traditional fonts and jagged or bubbly fantasy fare. The title is often placed over negative space (which is sometimes a misty landscape, strange night sky or actual outer space) or offset from the image entirely in a field of its own. Unlike many modern book covers, the titles featured on good pulp fantasy work always stood out and were never obscured with poor color choices or busy imagery.

• Colors – Complementary colors were sometimes used to great effect—a blue background picturing an alien world or underwater civilization might feature a yellow title plastered across it, boldly proclaiming the book’s outrageous name. More often than not, backgrounds were dark and foreground images, particularly the skin tones, were set in a glowing, bright hue against them. Color contrast was generally strong, but adhered to years of tradition to remain tasteful.

• Layout – Pulp covers usually featured one dominant image, generally depicting one person or object, two people, a person and one object or a person and a creature. There are exceptions to this rule that were very successful, but for the most part this formula was adhered to. This main image was then surrounded by a strange background that might contain moons, castles, ghosts, skulls, mountains or architectural designs. Sometimes the image itself only comprised part of the cover, and the rest would be reserved for a solid color, upon which the title and credits would be imposed. Layouts, above all, allowed the title of the book or magazine to stand out even among startling or sensational images.

• Imagery – Though the images presented in pulp fantasy can be either extremely reserved or feverishly explicit, there are some standard themes that persist throughout the three decades. Astronauts, armored warriors, robots, barbarians, magicians and women in various states of undress were the usual subject matter. They were paired with terrifying creatures, spaceships, cities, castles and weapons. Doorways and planets were also common, as were images of body horror and violent conflict.

The Beauty of Perseverance

A good designer can take something useful away from any strong design and there are plenty of strong designs in these old pulp covers. There are elements of these designs, however, that retain prominence in modern pop culture. Many novel covers carry on the strong tradition of depicting something that never happens in the story, which is a holdover from the golden age of pulp fantasy. Comic books carry this torch as well, all the while adhering to the principles of logo placement, layout and imagery established all those years ago. Movie posters often strive for a retro design, and they often look toward these pulp classics for inspiration.

Fantasy art might always remain outside the ‘canon’ of fine art, but these treasures and relics prove that there is value in what high society might consider camp and schlock. These are extremely strong and memorable designs that convey exact ideas and generate immediate consumer interest—and isn’t that what good design is all about?

• For a gallery of great pulp covers from all eras, check out Hang Fire Books on Flickr.
• For some great analysis on specific pulp sci-fi and fantasy novels, visit The Cheap Science Fiction Book Covers Gallery.
• For an amusing list of pervasive imagery in pulp sci-fi and fantasy, check out this article by The Crotchety Old Fan.

Adam Farwell is an online publisher for the custom design t-shirt printer Blue Cotton. He blogs about design, marketing, art and the various creative projects he’s involved in.

Eye-tracking studies can reveal where your visitors are focusing – and what they’re missing.

Want to know if your visitors are focusing where you want them to? Eye-tracking technology will actually follow their eye movements as they view the page, providing a gaze map which tells you where they look and where they stop to read. Data from multiple users is then combined to give you an overall picture of where they are focused the most. Typically, you’ll see that people start by scanning the main sections to see what the site is about, and they pay the most attention to the top most section of the site, particularly the upper left corner. However, each layout will give you different results, so it’s worth running a test. If you have many photos, lots of text, or a multiple column layout, you may find that your readers react very differently to your content.

Red is better than green for call-to-action buttons.

Okay, this may not be the case across the board, but that’s what one study from the website CareLogger found through A/B testing. The simple change increased their sign-ups by 34%. It may have to do with contrast. Green may match better with the rest of your site, but that can actually be a detriment. It may blend in a little too well. Choosing a color that sticks out from the rest of the design can draw your user’s attention to it.

Photos of human beings perform better than graphics.

Two separate A/B studies found that images of people can make a big difference for your conversion rates over other types of graphics. The site Medalia art found that when they swapped pictures of the paintings they were selling for photos of the artists, visitor engagement improved by 90%. The website EmptyMind replaced a large phone icon for the contact us page with a photo of the site owner, and conversion rates jumped 48%. Why? It may have to do with people emotionally connecting with the image of another human being.

You have three seconds to get your visitors’ attention.

Studies have found that, on average, people make decisions about the page they visit in three seconds – or less! That means you only have this short window to convince them to stay on your site or to take the action you want them to (like heading to the shopping cart or signing up for your newsletter). When designing, take a step back and look at what information you can glean from the site in that short period of time. Is it clear what the site is all about? Are you drawing attention to the right things?

Jake Downs spends most of his time reviewing digital printing technology and researching the best web design and SEO practices. When he’s not doing any of that, he’s usually golfing.

Dotcominfoway has just published this handy infographic explaining the ins and outs of HTML5, so study and enjoy!

Understanding Bleed

The biggest and most common issue I witness between designers and print shops is “bleed.” Bleed refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the final piece. It can be extremely confusing to a designer when a piece is meant to bleed but does not have any extra space around the edge. Often times, a shop has to teach a designer about bleed, frustrating both parties and sometimes even adding days onto a project’s deadline. Here are some simple tips to avoid such delays:

After printing, the bleed is trimmed away, so the final printed piece has full ink coverage that runs all the way to the edge. For designers, the bleed should be thought of as the background for pieces that require having full coverage of ink (or photograph.) Most printshops require each edge to have 1/8 of an inch added to all four sides, so add ¼ of an inch to both the width and height when creating a new document. Then, once the file is set up, draw guides delineating the edges, or bleed,  which will get cut off in production. Respect the 1/8” border on all edges, then push all text and important elements slightly closer to the middle. When a printer is producing large quantities, the image will sometimes slightly shift around on the page. The variation is usually very minimal, but it is safest not to design a piece that is too close to any of the four edges.

Stepping an Image: Multiple Up and Cut Marks

Another common miscommunication I encounter concerns multiple images and designer-provided cut marks. Often times I have seen designers provide, for instance, a business card repeated four times on a sheet with cut marks. It is best to provide all print shops with a single image because they will fit the image on the largest sheet of paper possible. Some will use an 8.5” x 11” sheet, but most will use  11” x 17” and beyond. This minimizes paper waste and keeps prices low because fewer sheets run through the equipment.

Also, the print shop’s software will generate cut marks, using a determinate amount of space between each image, so they can easily, precisely, and quickly cut the product down to its final size. As a general rule, keep it simple and avoid assumptions. Providing a single image, free of cut marks is the best policy.

Designing Brochures and accounting for folding space

Differences between designing and printing brochures can also be tricky. Designers must be careful to account for folds in the paper. For example, consider an 8.5” x 11” tri-fold brochure.  When unfolded, the right panel should be the largest at 3.816″, the middle is 3.669″ and the left panel is the smallest at 3.604″. When the brochure is folded, only the cover should be visible. The middle and last panel should fold neatly into each other,with no hangover beyond the cover.  Remember that you want enough space built in between all the panels so the text doesn’t fall into the fold.

Booklets: Printers Spread versus Readers Spread

It is very important for designers to understand the difference between “printers spread” and”readers spread.”  A whole article could be written on this subject alone.  I know that a quick google search will yield some very helpful information.  If the pages in the proof for a booklet are numbered, that will flush out any confusion when assembling a booklet. But, if a designer is confused about the different spread styles, It’s best to do a bit of research or even stop into the print shop to have them show you a physical copy of a booklet that has been folded and saddle stitched.

Asking for a Proof

A must for any designer dealing with a printer is to ask for a “proof,” aka a single sample from an order. If the proof is correct, the entire order should look the same. It keeps the printer accountable for delivering an identical product.  The larger the job, all the more important the proof is to the job being correct and your reputation as an organized designer.  Also, as I mentioned above, avoid assumptions and stick to the rule of keeping it simple. Remember, the print shop usually has expensive and sophisticated software which will set up your file for their own printing needs and preferences.

Of course, the most important thing to keep in mind is communication. If there is ever any confusion, avoid elaborate and time-consuming frustrations by communicating with the print shop.  Frequent communication between clients, designers, and printers can save days worth of time and a lot of money.  I hope you find this helpful and have fun designing!

Eric Foster attended school and graduated from Buffalo State College in 2005. For four years, he worked in a print shop doing everything from Design, to driving the delivery van, and everything in between.  Most recently he has gotten into the world of Freelance Design.   He enjoys riding a bicycle and writing songs on his electric guitar.  He draws inspiration from film, music, art and his fantastic, loving and creative friends and family members.

What is Crowdsourcing?

Imagine a company or organization looking for a new logo and devising a way to cut costs by creating a “contest” (through a third party rep) where they offer a cash prize to the winning design. Imagine the amount of spec hours spent by the design collective, all hoping to win recognition and fame. Imagine that, and you’ll see what crowdsourcing is all about. A real contest is where people submit their work to compete against one another with the result of a single winner. Crowdsourcing uses this formula and perverts it by adding one more element to it; they keep the work, even the work that didn’t win, and use it for their branding and marketing benefit in any way they see fit.

Why It’s Bad For The Company

The company is obviously looking for a way to get thousands of options for very little out-of-pocket-costs. They think they’re going to get a product that will serve their branding endeavors, because they believe that design is about how you want to look and in reality it’s all about how you want to be perceived. There is no design brief so you can’t do any research or do a background search on the company’s competitors. Also, the designer’s careless involvement with the project lacks a proper engagement with the client. Plus, the designer’s know they’re working for free, so they turn out a quick piece of work in hopes of gaining instant fame. The company is oblivious to the fact that their new logo lacks effectiveness and value. By skipping the design brief and the client/designer relationship, you are essentially writing a biography without knowing anything about the subject. The result is an ineffective and mediocre piece of work.

Why It’s Bad For The Creative

You just won the contest and the cash prize. Awesome! You should be congratulated, but instead you’ve made your life much worse without knowing. By taking this shortcut called crowdsourcing, you’ve participated in telling the whole world that what you and the rest of your design brethren do is push buttons. You’ve helped reinforce to the ignorant that what we do has no value and that this is the way design services should be commissioned. And the worst part is that you’ve made it harder for all the other designers who aren’t participating in crowdsourcing.

You can’t skip the starving-artist phase of your creative growth process. You have to go through the hurdles of finding your clients, designing for them, dealing with them, sometimes getting into it with them and making them happy. If you don’t value what you do as a designer, no one will. It’s your responsibility, as part of the design community to help educate people on the benefits of design and the creative process.  Taking part in these phony contests cheapens what we all do.

Final Thoughts

Butterflies and moths are pretty similar, with the butterfly being the prettier and most popular of the two, but did you know that when a moth emerges from its cocoon it can spin silk? A butterfly can’t do that. Moth’s are faster, stronger, but struggle twice as much when breaking through their cocoons. That struggle is necessary for their survival. Without it they would be too weak and die. The struggle is nature’s way of strengthening the moth and as designers, we’ll definitely struggle and go through some hard times. We’ll even take on less-than-exciting projects at the beginning of our careers, but I encourage you to embrace the struggle and become exceptional.
I promise that every tough step you take is incrementally moving you closer to the designer you want to be. Give yourself that chance and never participate in crowdsourcing. And most importantly, spread the word!

Happy Designing,

Dennis Salvatier

Dennis Salvatier is the principal and lead designer of Salvatier Studios. When he isn’t providing graphic design and illustration services at Salvatier Studios, he’s creating fun illustrations as Tanoshiboy. He is a fan of comic books, movies, doodling on napkins, his lovely wife and connecting with other creatives, so say hello! Read Dennis’ blog

Those of us who don’t rely on outdated, spammy tactics don’t have much to worry about. The update is mainly affecting websites that have little to no quality content, and are abusing inbound linking strategies in order to game the system and get undeserved traffic.

Glenn Gabe at G-Squared Interactive has been researching those websites that have been hardest hit over the past week, and has come up with some thoughtful observations regarding the specific issues that webmasters should concern themselves with. If any of these SEO strategies apply to your site, you might want to address them sooner than later.

Exact-Match Domains

This involves companies that want to rank well for a certain set of keywords, and buying domain names with these words in the title. Having a keyword-rich url is a good tactic for showing up high in the search engines. If it makes sense to do so, it is probably fine, and you won’t see any penalties. But some companies do abuse this, by buying up numerous urls in order to dominate a given market, and this crosses a line. At this point, it is unclear if the Google Penguin update is actually going after this, but experts do believe that even if they aren’t targeting exact-match domain abuse now, future updates will.

Paid text links with exact anchor text

Google makes it very clear that they don’t condone paying for links. When a site has an unnatural number of inbound links with anchor text that is just “too perfect,” it raises a red flag. When a site gets a natural link to it, usually the anchor text is varied, since (in theory,) different people are adding the links. In most cases, these types of links are paid, and Google is well aware.

Comment Spam

I run a blog on my website, and the amount of comment spam I get is insane. It is usually auto-generated and stuffed with keywords and links, and nothing to say. It is easy for Google to see this, and penalize sites that use such tactics to generate backlinks.

Guest Posts on Questionable Sites

Guest posting has always been a great way to build quality backlinks. In most cases, guest authors are actually contributing to the online community, and that is exactly what Google wants to see. Where people can get in trouble, however, is by adding posts to websites that are set up purely to make money on the guest posts, based on the links they would generate. Not all blogs are created equal, and guest authors should focus on writing for quality sites.

Article Marketing

Article marketing often involves webmasters writing a very under-developed article which focuses heavily on keywords and anchor text links within the article. They are usually not necessarily written to be read by humans as much as by the search engines, and are often mass-distributed around the web. Article marketing has long been a link-building mainstay, but its days are numbered.

Final Thoughts

The main thing to remember is that Google is getting smarter every day. SEO tactics that worked in the past, may still work now, but as we move forward, they are going to be continually phased out. It goes without saying that Google wants good quality content to be pushed to the top of the pile, and the only way to do well in search engine rankings for the longterm is to create good content that people will want to link to. Then promote the hell out of it.

But it inspired me to pick up the slack and start a podcast of my own. I contacted several designer friends that I have known over the years, as well as some new friends. Two amazing designers (Brandon Voss & Mikelle Morrison) stepped up to the plate to help me out with this undertaking, and are now my co-hosts on the newly launched “The Deeply Graphic DesignCast.” I think the three of us have a great chemistry together, and between us we have a lot of practical advice to offer based on lots of personal and professional experience.

We are currently in the “New & Noteworthy” top 3 in the design category on iTunes, and are getting very good reviews so far. So far it has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and most importantly, we aren’t going anywhere for a while. So feel free to get to know us, subscribe on iTunes, and please write a short review or give us a star rating if you enjoy the show.

Also, we answer a listener question on each episode, so send your questions to questions@thedeependdesign.com and if we pick yours, we will be sure to notify you so that you can listen to our answer.

You can enter your site (or any other site you come across) by using the form located on the website design awards page. Just fill it out, including description, and upload a screenshot. The winner will receive a permanent link on this site, as well as a badge that they can display on their site.

Good luck, we can’t wait to share your submissions!

Original article by Peiter Buick for Smashing Magazine. Read original article here.

Designers seem to fall into two different camps. The sketchers and the ones who take their creativity straight to the computer. I used to say that I belonged to the latter, but more and more, I find myself starting out the old fashioned way. While my sketches are far from perfect, I do find it helpful to put my ideas onto paper and just see where it takes me.

According to Peiter Buick of Smashing Magazine, you don’t have to be good at drawing to sketch your ideas. Rather it is about establishing a hierarchy, and figuring out what needs to be emphasized over other elements. In his article, he writes:

“When evaluating your sketches, ask yourself, ‘How could I better communicate these thoughts?’ Getting caught up in evaluating your drawing ability is easy, but try to separate the two. Look at your sketch as if it were a poster. What’s the first thing that’s read? Where is the detailed info? Remember, the eye is drawn to the area with the most detail and contrast.”

In case you doubt your ability to sketch effectively, Peiter goes on to show his method of sketching in layers in the video above. This is  a technique that I plan on adopting myself.

Do you sketch your ideas out when you kick off a project?

I bought my iPad last year for the sole purpose of using it as my portfolio. It has proven itself as useful in countless other ways, but I love using it as a showcase of my work when meeting with clients. I can show print work, just like I always did in my printed portfolio, and now I have the added bonus of my web work looking great in meetings as well.

Another advantage of an iPad portfolio vs. a printed one is that you can save different versions of your portfolio to appeal to different types of clients. When I was putting together my old book, the one thing that I heard over and over again was to not show the same work to everyone. Its important to put together a custom experience for each interview or meeting. That’s absolutely true, but it was always such a cumbersome and tedious task to rearrange everything for each viewing. Most iPad portfolio apps allow you to drag and drop portfolio pieces in different orders, and save different versions. I have about 10 different variations of my portfolio that I show, ranging from “corporate websites” to “creative logos.” And if I run into a situation where none of my current versions is quite right, I will make a new one, and save that for future use as well.

The one caveat is that since the iPad doesn’t support Flash, I can’t show any of my animated web banners or several of my sites that use Flash elements. But since we are kind of getting away from Flash more and more, it is becoming less of a problem.

Do you have any experience using your iPad as a portfolio? Or do you prefer the traditional printed kind?

When designing a dedicated mobile website, either for yourself or for a client, you must keep the above rules in mind, but there is no rule that says it has to be a bare-bones snore-fest either. I would compare it to decorating a studio apartment – its a limited space, but if you work smart, you can still fit in all the essentials, and make it inviting as well. Here are ten examples of mobile sites that have done an amazing job with a limited amount of real estate, and are simple and easy to navigate.

Mode

Branding & interactive agency

This site does a great job of presenting eye-catching work in a straightforward grid, with 2 simple navigation items at the top.

Hacker Group

Business to business and consumer direct marketing agency

Simple navigation is boosted by a strong focal image with a clear marketing message.

Hooppps

Dribbble’s mobile site

This fun and simple offshoot of Dribbble takes their clean interface and makes it even cleaner for mobile, letting the showcased work take the lead.

Big Bite Creative

Digital creative design studio

Minimal and retro, this page features an easy dropdown menu and homepage mini-slider.

Quaintology

Web development portfolio

Super quirky and retro, this mobile site has a rich feel, but it still employs a pared-down navigation to keep things simple.

Warface

Digital designer portfolio

The colors, the typography choices and the imagery all add to the fun, clean nature of this designer’s mobile site.

FXNINE

Visual creative group

Big menu items and even bigger typography make a big impact on this site. I also love the subtle use of lighting effects on the navigation.

Moiré

Marketing partners

Bold use of color and shading not only brand the site very well, but make it really easy to find your way around as well.

Tyler Michaud

Music producer, DJ and record label owner

With a dramatic full-bleed background image and prominent navigation placement, its easy to catch up on this guy’s music, and even download podcast episodes.

Formas Do Possivel

Graphic design portfolio

With a simple yet striking interface, you know exactly where to go to check out this guy’s work, contact him, even add him on Facebook or LinkedIn.

What do you think of these examples? Have a favorite, or another one to share?