When you ask what is memorable about a site, few people mention the footer. Since viewers don’t regard the footer with much importance, neither do designers – “end of site, out of mind,” so to speak – but this kind of thinking is old-fashioned. Your website’s footer can be both eye catching and functional, and with a little work it can become an essential part of the design.

Why Include a Footer at All?

Traditionally, the footer is the place to put copyright information, your email address and sometimes your mailing address. Contact information is typically also included in a contact section of a website, though, and you could probably work the copyright into a different spot if necessary. Short of giving your pages a distinct end, why should you really even include a footer?

Footers have several advantages over any other section of the site:

• Like the navigation bar, they repeat on every page of the site;
• Unlike the navigation bar, they are not required to contain only navigation links; and
• They’re at the bottom of the page, where users naturally end up after scrolling down to read each page

How to Make a Footer Useful

In a nutshell, your footer should contain only things that you want the user to be able to access instantly, no matter what page of your site they are viewing. This isn’t the place for witty text (trust me, even the best joke in the world gets dull after you read it 10 times) or heaps of pictures (remember, they have to reload each time the user visits a different page, even though they look exactly the same!)

Things commonly found in website footers:

• Contact information (email address, mailing address);
• Simple contact form;
• Link to the site map;
• Copyright information;
• Links to other sites the user may enjoy; and
• A link back to the top of the page

In essence, give the user something to do or somewhere to go in the footer, and you can hardly go wrong.

Clean Design Is Key

Clean, high-contrast text with large headlines makes your footer easy to scan, which is perfect for the viewer who has just finished reading the current page and needs to know where to go next. Another tried-and-true technique is to divide the footer into several columns to provide more white space. White space makes the text easier to read at a glance, and looks nice and clean, too.

Put the “Fun” in “Function”

Now that your footer is easy to read and provides useful information and links, you’re free to get flashy with the design. Another advantage of footer design is that it’s actually encouraged to make the footer mismatched from the rest of the site.

Ways to make your footer more eye catching:

• Easy-to-read fonts;
• Colors contrasting with the rest of the site layout; and
• Content more interesting than a copyright notice

In Conclusion

Great information with bad presentation or a gorgeous design with useless content are equally ineffective. Aim to catch viewer’s attention, then give them something worth paying attention to, and you’ve succeeded at designing a useful footer.

We’ve recently shown you our picks of both red in web design and the use of strong earth tones. It seems a lot of designers find these collections inspiring in different ways, so this time we’ve had a look at blue. The color blue is often related to sky, water and referred to as a natural universal color. It can be used to have a design look both conservative and modern in combination with the right elements and typography.

Now, let’s have a look at our picks this time.

And remember, as usual we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on this. Also, don’t forget to share the article if you like it. Enjoy!

Steven Little Design

Phoenix Web Design

Koormann

Drag City

The Bigger Design

Reichweite

North 2

Yiipu

Made by Many

NoseRub

Iceberg

Spaceship Collaborative

Talker

BestPass

Today’s Document

Nudge Design

Root Creative

Quero Meu Cloud

Icelab

Lead Zeppelin

Keepio

iiNTENSE Media

Eskalation

Festival Creative

Edward Dark

Worry Free Labs

Box.net

Designstraw

Tweetsicles

Jenny Karlsson

KeyFruit

Mighty Dream

Biba 2010

Simple Storage

Pocari Sweat

Dj Pony

Maria Gardell

Established 1986

Blue Sky Resumes

Applicom

Blue Awesome

DD Consulting

Drk

It’s Our Water

Bohemia

Ballistic Publishing is proud to announce EXPOSÉ 9, the ninth edition of the premier annual artbook celebrating the creative talents of digital artists worldwide. EXPOSÉ is the digital art industry’s premier annual publication, featuring the finest digital artwork the world has ever seen.

Ballistic Publishing is now calling on artists to submit digital images for consideration in EXPOSÉ 9. Images can be created in any 3D or digital illustration application. Photoshop and digitally manipulated photography is also welcome. We are interested in digitally-created fine art, whether it be 2D or 3D, for commercial use, or personal satisfaction.

There is no cost or limit to enter work for inclusion in EXPOSÉ 9. As with all Ballistic Publishing showcase publications, artists with work published in EXPOSÉ 9 will receive a complementary copy of the book and will enjoy worldwide exposure in the premier collection of digitally-created artwork to ever be published.

You’ll have until February 28, 2011 to submit your digital artwork. Good Luck to submitters!

…”EXPOSÉ series of book are the industry’s first annual art book celebrating the creative talents of digital artists worldwide. It grew to be a global success receiving critical acclaim from all quarters of the digital art industry. Selected by a panel of industry leaders these books showcases the finest digital artwork in the known universe…”

Free is good and better yet when the freebies are of high quality. Searching the web I found a website with a great collection of 105 logos and they offer free PSD sources with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. There are some very nice logos that can inspire you for any design.

The site Shaboopie is the today’s star for offering such great free resource with direct downloads links.

Here is a small preview of these beautiful logos:

Hope you enjoy this resource.

Web design showcases are many and they’re a very popular way of getting new inspiration when you’re trying to be creative with your own work. This time we’ve once again looked through hundreds of designs to find some of the best dark ones. These succeed using dark palettes to capture the viewers attention. As you’ll see these darker designs can work really well with some stronger highlight colors or stand alone well. When having a dark website, the content many times stands out as much stronger and easy to focus at. As always we’d love to hear your feedback in the comment. Which one is your favorite?

Let’s have a look!

Pound & Grain

Antoine Wette

Leaflet

Physical Productions

Xhtml-lab

Notio Web Design

Fluxar Studios

Jose Luis Merino Parra

Marko Cvetkovic

Tunnel Bravo

Chuan Film

Born with Design

Private Grave

Phobiahz

Qube

Kode Hurts My Brain

Almosh82

Diego Huerta

Otterball

Akufen

Element gallery

Hinton Group

Psynai Design

Kapone

DonQ Rum

Abstraktion

David Fooks

Westbrook Brewing

Jesse Dodds

Blue Collar Interactive

Dead Pixel Studio

Okimok

Future of Web Design

The Toke

Corking Design

Jet Cooper

Mediasoldier

Efingo

Jordy Joel

Natalie Sklobovskaya

Wrkborn

Foobi

Blake Allen Design

Leah Haggar

Black Estate

Soiree Studios

The Old State Blog

Dallas Web Design

Build

Postmachina

Design: The Most Important Element for Websites

Design is the big thing these days, both on the web and in multi-media. Of course, down through the ages, design has always been important, whether one is speaking of the Sistine Chapel or Ford’s Model T or even film posters.

In today’s world, we are inundated with good and bad design through many different avenues, including the aforementioned movie posters, billboards, television and most recently, the Internet. Most of it we take for granted, yet design is a key factor in the making or breaking of any product or event.

For a professional and attractive web presence, excellent design is crucial. If you want your website to be taken seriously then good design is the key element on which to concentrate your efforts. So, whether you are a professional designer or an amateur developing your own website, there some great resources in the Internet world, that you definitely should become acquainted with.

Design Resources

When the Internet was younger, quality design tools were not only mind-blowing, they were also pretty expensive. Many of the staples of design are still at our fingertips and although they have been around a while, they have stood the test of time and are certainly great products. Obviously, one of the most well-known and useful tools for design is Photoshop. This incredible and popular design tool is famous for great image editing capabilities. Of course, Adobe Illustrator is always a fantastic design tool and is especially useful when using or creating vector illustrations.

Free Resources

Nowadays, one can still buy these renowned design tools but luckily there are also some open source alternatives that are free, And if you are willing to work through any free alternative’s digital process, which can sometimes be a little less user friendly, they may be just what you are looking for. One popular free program, similar to Photoshop, is Gimp. Inkscape is a program that is similar to Adobe Illustrator and is also a free alternative that is excellent for creating vector illustrations.

Speaking of vector illustrations, Dezignus is another resource for free (that’s right FREE) vector illustrations. The site has an incredibly large selection available for downloads and is continually increasing its available inventory.

You Want Color? You Got Color!

If you are looking for great color, and support in making your site’s colors work, then the best choice is Colourlovers.com. This site will provide the help you need to make your site color scheme attractive. Another superb source for design tools to complement the color is deviantART.

Don’t Forget the Fonts

And of course, the use of typography and the various fonts should be your No. one concern when planning your website, so do not neglect this important aspect of design. Dafont.com is a font resource website that has an incredible array of free and easily accessible fonts. This site is a must for all designers.

So, there is your list of some great design resources on the net. Now you have no excuse to not create a fabulous site!

Sonia Mansfield is the content editor for PsPrint and editor of PsPrint Blog

Christmas is just around the corner, so get your holiday design juices flowing with some inspirational resources. The collection below contains everything from Photoshop brush sets to stock photos to fonts and images. If you are looking to decorate or design for this winter holiday, then you must check out these downloads; most of them are free!

Free Christmas Fonts

Check out FontSpace for some impressive fonts perfect for Christmas designs.

Free Vector Christmas Icons

These beautifully done free Christmas icons are exactly what you need to decorate your website or desktop.

Christmas Clip Art

Here you will find many links to Christmas clip art, animation, graphics, wallpapers, and more.

Seamless Christmas Patterns

Find over 100 downloadable Photoshop patterns with a Christmas theme on this amazing site.

FreeVectors.net

Need images that can be used on a variety of projects? Find some cool Christmas themed vector graphics, backgrounds, banners, greeting cards, and more. Make sure to check out all 9 pages to see more vectors than you could ever use for this holiday.

36 Holly Jolly Textures

This collection of 100×100 textures for Photoshop will easily add some holiday fun to your designs.

Free Christmas Animations

Any piece from this stunning collection of animations from Seven Oaks Art would be perfect for adding holiday spirit to a website or email newsletter.

Sparkle Christmas Images

Check out these gorgeous Christmas graphics with extra “bling” on Can Stock Photo. There are sparkling Christmas images and cards, all royalty-free and downloadable for a small fee.

Free Social Networking and RSS Feed Icons

Take advantage of one of these 6 free Christmas icon sets for your RSS feed or social networking account. All are high quality and quite stunning.

35 Beautiful Christmas Icon Sets

Find amazing Christmas icon sets on this site. From social networking icons to file folder icons to graphics perfect for adding to your holiday scene for greeting cards.

Free Transparent PNG or Paint Shop Pro tubes

View this collection of generously donated Christmas images for use with Paint Shop Pro or as transparent PNG files.

23 Photoshop Greeting Card Tutorials

Learn how to create Christmas cards using Photoshop with one of these helpful tutorials. Then use your newly learned skills to design your own custom greeting card for the holidays.

15 Christmas WordPress Themes

This nice list of free Christmas themes for WordPress will really get your blog readers in a festive spirit this year.

45 Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials

Find Christmas tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator in this incredible collection. Whether you need to design wallpaper, greeting cards, illustrations, or backgrounds, you can find it here.

Exclusive Free Photoshop Brushes

This thorough list of brushes includes snowflakes, ornaments, frosted snowflakes, Christmas trees, holiday stars, swirls, and fireworks.

Spice up your Christmas designs with some of items in the resources above. Or simply enjoy some holiday design inspiration to get you in a festive mood. Happy Holidays!

One thing that most designers and creative minds have in common is the ability to feel inspired by looking at other people’s work. Many different types of design even interact with each other and use similar styles. This time we’re going to have a look at something that for many is a great inspirational source: Typography. Typography is a wide term that includes everything from the layout of old printed books, signs, ads and even digital art.

Where typography in the past was something used to front content it has today grown into an art-form of it’s own. Sometimes typography has a clear message and many times designers use strong words or quotes accompanied by a certain type of letters. Other times the word(s) included are more or less random and the strong use of different effects is the meaning behind it.

The showcase we’ve out together here is one with a lot of colors included. These great pieces will show you the great diversity of typographic art, with lots of colors and different techniques.

Get ready to have a look at some truly inspiring colorful typography.

Enjoy!

Instant

Life type

Typo-graphic dope

Colorful peace

Duplex

Day Dreamer

Be happy

I love art

Desire

Great work works

Joy

Green

Share design

Smile

Creativity typo

3D typo effect

Cosmique

CMYK

Deja vu

TypoGraphy

Addiction

720

Wander

Freedom

Kick it

Colors

The good old days

.CMYK

Art

Angelpunkt

Maxon

Easy drive

Just do it

Love is gonna tear us apart

Paint

Summer

Dance for ever

First sun

Disco labamba

Cmyk

Those were our picks of 40 amazing and inspiring colorful typography pieces. We hope you’ve been inspired!

We’d also love to hear your comments. Which piece is your favorite? Do you have any typographic art you’d like to share with us?

Thanks!

If you’ve been freelancing for a while, you’re very likely to have seen a lot of challenges along the way. In this article we’ll have a look at some of the most common struggles and give some tips on how you can deal with these in a better way. This article is meant as help for those that need a little boost in their situation and to prevent this from becoming problems for new freelancers.

Image by Svilen Milev

Is being a freelancer worth it?

When we’re referring to challenges and struggles you may be asking yourself if it’s worth it to keep going. Most of the time the answer is yes. If you have an open mind and are prepared to work hard to get your routines cleaned up, you have the potential to make freelancing work very well for you. If you’re not open to changes and are in this to work as little as possible for a huge income, you’re in the wrong place.

Now let’s have a look at the challenges and how they can be dealt with.

1. Long work hours

Image by Benjamin Earwicker

Dealing with long work hours over time will be challenging to any person, especially if you’re a designer that is expected to come up with new creative results all of the time. After a while most of us will meet the wall and when you get to that point it can be really hard to get back on track. The best way to deal with this is to take charge of the situation before you’re all burned out. Go through your schedules and evaluate what you’ve done recently. Your long work hours are likely to be result of either you taking on too much work or bad efficiency. Once you see which one it is you can start working on that specific problem. Basically you’ll need to take on less work or have a look at how you can become more efficient.

2. Problems meeting deadlines

Image by M Nota

If you often tend to work 24/7 the last days before a deadline or just in general find it hard to get things done in time, you’re in trouble. This will affect how you’re feeling, your time off and the relationship to clients. You’ll need to have a look at why you’re having this problem. The most common reasons are again efficiency or just the fact that you keep setting too optimistic deadlines. Make sure to always set deadlines that are realistic. An extra day or two is always smart to put in there in case anything unexpected comes up. This could be anything from you getting sick, clients wanting additional work done or last minute changes. Always give yourself some extra room in the plans and both you and your clients will be happier.

3. Unstable creativity

Image by Leonardini

If you’ve gone from working 9-5 at any other job, you may struggle a bit when you’re supposed to start working with only your speciality all day long. This can lead you into a period of ups and downs when it comes to creativity. This is completely normal, but there are several things you can do to make this work for you. A whole article could be written on how to boost your creativity, but we’ll look at a few simple things. Make sure you have enough time off, that’s when you recharge your batteries. Read up on articles related to what you do to get new ideas and inspiration. Remember to spend time doing things you love that are not related to work. Look for more variety in the projects you’re accepting. There are many more things you can do, but if you keep an open mind, these tips can be very helpful.

4. Bad efficiency

Image by Piotr Bizior

We’ve already mentioned this as it can be the cause of several challenges. Your efficiency itself can be a challenge. Dealing with it depends on where it fails. Some general tips would be to plan your days in a realistic way, leaving out all personal business, making sure to not check social media and do too much “non-productive” work. The best way to fix your efficiency is simply to log a couple of days and evaluate them. You’ll quickly see where the problems are to be found. Maybe you’re doing too much at once, planning badly or letting other distractions ruin it for you?

5. Marketing your business properly

Image by Sachin Ghodke

Especially when you’re starting up it can be hard to figure out how to get the time and money to market yourself well enough to get enough clients. Many struggle with this and there are freelancers going out of business before they even get started. Planning well ahead is important along with understanding that it takes time. Use the contacts you may have, do as much as possible yourself and put your best work into everything. And when you get your projects, have them become great marketing for you by showing great work and word of mouth can help you in getting forward.

Conclusion

Want to Use Flickr to Promote Your Design Business?

In the design world, Flickr has become the place to network and to promote your particular kind of design talent and professionalism. The interesting thing about this is that Flickr does not allow its members to promote their products or sell any kind of artwork or photography, which seems like the antitheses of good business.

However, the network community is so strong that using Flickr properly can be a great way to generate interest in your particular expertise while also connecting with other like-minded individuals and professionals.

If you are not already using Flickr, here are a few steps to help you get started:

Have a Professional Screen Name

Don’t be cutsey.

Make your screen name professional and easy to remember. Whenever a member is searching for groups or member pages, your screen name will pop up. Someone searching for specifics with a professional flair, will be much more attracted to “georgebrownwebdesign.com” than “hottie_geo.com”.

Make Your Web Address Clear and Clean

Short and simple is the rule. Using this rull will ensure that you are easy to find and it will not be hard to copy your address. In addition, using your screen name is always a plus.

The Buddy Icon

This is the icon that is shown whenever someone is searching for like-minded members. Make this either a decent headshot or one of your favorite designs. Don’t go with anything silly or in the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” vein. This will kill your professional possibilities with Flickr members.

Your Profile

Make sure you write a good profile. Think of it as a casual resume, explaining you and your talents. You want it well written but, at the same time, catchy and easy to read. Don’t forget links to websites, blogs and so on. Include your best design work on your page, so that your profile looks like a stellar portfolio. Never include unprofessional work or silly snapshots. Make sure that you include a concise description of every design you include.

Tag Time

Include “tags” that help search engines find you. These can include your name, screen name, location and specific keywords that will drive people to your site. If you are a web designer, then use words that are specific to that medium. Don’t underestimate the importance of keywords and their ability to help you gain visitors.

Promotion, Promotion, Promotion

Once you have established a beautiful profile page then it is time to promote yourself and your talents. Make sure you link your Flickr page on your website or any blogs you have. Utilize other social networks to link back to your Flickr page. Join in on the Flickr fun and find other groups where you can network.

Flickr is well known for its design and photo communities so find them and begin to ease into those group memberships. Groups are usually either private or by invitation only, but as you promote yourself, you will begin to find acceptance.

And the last thing? Keep promoting and never give up!

Sonia Mansfield is the content editor for PsPrint and editor of PsPrint Blog.

Here is the SmashingShare.com semi-annual “must have bookmarked” design and development blogs online. Thanks to our audience and friends online for making this list possible!

365icon.com

aext.net

animhut.com

area1.info

artfans.info

blogwebdesigner.com

designer-daily.com

designerslist.info

designrfix.com

designartwall.com

designyourway.net

cocut.cn

psdvault.com

pixeltango.com

pvmgarage.com

queness.com

recave.com

smashingapps.com

smashinghub.com

thedesignwork.com

tooft.com

underworldmagazines.com

webdesigncore.com

yourinspirationweb.com

Thirtyblog.com – Internet Marketing Blog

Keep up to date with ThirtyBlog.com | Facebook Page |  Twitter @thirtyblog |  Subscribe to RSS Feed

Today we see a lot of different types of web design, simply because almost anything is possible. Everyone have high speed Internet and we can browse websites that we couldn’t even dream of ten years ago. The trends change and today there are several different ones that are popular.

This time we’re having a look at some websites that use some of the more uncommon color-schemes related to earth tones. These are usually soft and easy on the eye and can be popular amongst many different readers.

Here’s a selection of 50 earth toned web designs that we hope will help you get inspired for your own work.

Enjoy!

Espresso apartments

Snagly

Matias Mancini

Journeys with no return

Greenlane winery

The legacy companies

Quipsologies

Passy

Cakemail

Gran Fibra

Sadama Turg

Alinga

Cure

Hey Indy

Musicians corner

Boho girl

International storytelling center

Third culture studios

Transformology

Tenthmil

Spring

Karl the gorilla

Creativepayne

Paul Ramirez

Iris Diamant

SimpleBits

BBQwar

Pic fresh

Unconventional guides

BlackMoon design

Michela Chiucini

Word refuge

Kevin Lucius

Filcka

All for design

The energycell

Brookside resort

Cuisine saine

Art in my coffee

Rich Brown

Washtenaw community college

New adventures in web design

Vector stories

Shawnelle Cherry

Sc41 Furniture

Matt Dempsey

Tales from the yoga studio

Brewfest 2010

Wireframe plus

Ten out of tenn

Those were our 50 picks of web designs with heavy use of earth tones. We’d love to hear your feedback and maybe you have some nice websites using this type of colors to share with us?

Leave us a comment, and remember to share the article if you enjoyed it.

Thanks and good luck with your designs!

The design of your web represents your missions and the messages your trying to convey to the web visitors. Normally, through the web design, the visitors can directly learn what kind of products and services your offering. Showcasing humans are the most common inspiration of the web design. Humans are symbol of creativity, activeness, sharing, and collaboration. Therefore, people illustration is an ideal choice for webs that are targeted to invite people’s participation.

Below are twenty-five showcases of web design with people illustration as the inspiration. They are amazing inspirations for those who want to promote their websites to the right customer segments. They represent web designs for commercial websites or personal websites or blogs. The themes are varied, including restaurants, gaming, religious themes, sports, social networking websites, diaries, education, commercial aviation, and many more.

mrthemer

fatburgr

answerjam

burza

football made in africa

nasibriyanilounge

iwit

mysnowbuddy

hambodevelopment

octwelve

meomi

photoshoplady

blogwhatdesign

studioespace

stoodeo

avion

429jp

thecolorcure

forrst

matthamm

davidhellmann

slavikdizajn

gettingcrazy

takeabenylinday

veboolabs

Easy identification of the themes is the main characters of the presented showcases, in the sense that no ambiguous meaning is provided to the visitors. This facilitates in building the trust. It is true that the visitors firstly valuate your performance based on the web design. Interesting designs are more likely to invite more participation. Now, take a look at the designs, what do you think of them? Do you think the choice of colors represent different meanings to the observers, and why? Please put your comments below.

There are almost 7 billion different people currently living on earth. Most of those won’t be potential users of the site you are developing, but identifying the user groups plays an important part in creating a usable website.

Creating user personas is one way in which web designers can come to develop a better understanding of their target users, as each persona represents a different kind of consumer.

Unfortunately due to the vast, ever-changing nature of humanity, there are no simple sets of personas that can be followed right out of the box. Instead it falls to each individual developer and website owner to identify the persona related to their specific niche and product type.

User Persona Conceptualization

The first step is to consider your websites target audience. Start by asking yourself (or the web site owner) a few basic questions about the characters of the people you want to attract to your site:

• What sex are they?
• What age are they?
• What part of the world do they come from?
• What level of education have they received?
• What is their background?
• Are they employed?
• How much money do they make?
• What interests do they have?

It can be very easy to generalize when it comes to answering these questions. However, try to be as specific as possible. For example, it may well be that you are trying to attract both men and women between the ages of  16 and 35, but within that broad range of people there are some much more specific targets you could be presenting to yourself.

Instead you should try to answer each question in turn, applied to a single small group, repeating as many times as necessary until you are confident you have identified them all.

It is a common (and very useful) practice to use pictures and names to help better visualize the process. Once your done you should have something that looks like this:

	Marge is a thirty something housewife, she juggles looking after her children and keeping the home with trying to lead an active social life. College educated she worked full time until the birth of her second child, now her husband earns enough to support the family, though boredom is causing Lynda to go stir crazy. She has some disposal income and would be happy to invest it to get more.
	Mark is a teenager living in the US. He attends high school and lives at home with his parents. He has a part time minimum wage job and likes to spend his money on video games.
…	…More personas go here.

For most sites you will probably end up with anywhere from 3 to 10 or even more different persona’s. Once you’ve etched out the details, try to simplify them into categories that represent the persona’s most basic form. So for example, I would label the above persona’s into the user categories of Student Gamer Mark and Motivated Housewife Marge.

Conceptualization vs. Reality

Of course, its not enough to just conceptualize who you think your target audiences may be. It is also vital that you have a firm understanding of who your actual visitors are. Most modern websites try to manage this by installing comment or review sections, though the truth is that the vocal minority don’t normally give an accurate picture of all the different kinds of people that happen to pass by.

To get a real idea of viewers on-site browsing habits (like what pages they visited, how long for etc), most webmasters install analytic tools that allow for the accurate tracking of visitors.  Software like Google Analytics lets you know how people connect to your site, where they came from before visiting you, what part of the world they are from, what browsers they are using, and much more. All pieces of a puzzle that can be put together to better understand the needs of your core audience.

Knowing where your visitors come from and how they read your site is only half of the information you need from them. That still doesn’t tell you much about the people behind your hits, their likes, dislikes and so on.

Using a call to action you can encourage your viewers to tell you more about themselves. Polls, Quizzes and Survey’s are all great ways to delve deeper into the psyche’s of your sites audience. Using incentives (such as humor or prizes) to convince people to leave this kind of feedback is often the best way to go, after all your goal should be to get as large a sample as possible from your captive audience, so as to see what is and isn’t working on them.

There are various third party quiz and survey sites available on the web, most of which can be embedded on other sites with no trouble. ProProfs is one such site, which has free and paid membership options, allowing users to create online tests with pictures and videos, as well as giving them the ability to view detailed analytical stats relating to people who have taken their tests.

By using the website analytic tools combined with the successful implementation of various personality quizzes and site surveys, you should now have a solid idea of who exactly your target market is.

Practicing User-Centric Web Design

So finally you have this great information about your consumers, now its time to put it to good use. Some of the things you should definitely  consider using the collected data for are:

• Utilizing more appealing persona driven  web design
• Personas: Matching a Design to the Users’ Goals: By closely adhering to the goals of a specific persona, the designers satisfy the needs of the many users who have goals similar to those of the persona.
• Web Design Personas: This article explains approaches to develop a web design personas to create a more customer-centric web site.

People have three ways that they gather information, are motivated to buy, or make a decision of any kind.

• Visual
• Auditory
• Kinesthetic

A magnet is something that the potential client can touch and feel as well as see. When you add a Kinesthetic element to your brochures or your envelope mail outs, you increase the possibility that the recipient will open the envelope and read the brochure. You have given a potential client also something to put up on their file cabinet for easy reference.

Advantage of Marketing with Magnets and Stickers

The advantage of marketing your graphic design business with magnets or stickers is that, again, it showcases your skills. A technical writer cannot send his or her skill set in the form of a 40-page manual as a marketing ploy. But you, as a graphic design professional, can send a showcase of your work that the potential client can have in his line of vision daily.

Graphic Design Magnet

A magnet is heavier that a sticker so will draw more attention but should be used inside a 3-fold brochure that is stapled to mail or in an envelope. Companies are receiving so much advertising mail that a large percent will hit the fancy little wooden trash can in the boss’s office. But if the boss feels something thick or a bit heavier, he or she will not be able to resist the curiosity to see what it is.

Graphic Design Sticker

You can put a magnet on a postcard with a little sticky spot but you run the risk of losing valuable marketing pieces. It is better to put a sticker on a postcard adhered with the same stick spot. A sticker is still effective but does not have the life that a magnet does. Still, the sticker can have a creative graphic design on it to draw attention.

Designing Your Magnet

You will be designing the magnet to showcase one of your favorite graphic designs. The design can be in color, sepia tone or gray scale. Either one of these styles will be eye catching but if you want to take it to the next level, do the gray scale but have one object in vibrant color. Besides that you do need to have your company name, a one liner mission statement and at least one contact.

The Surprise Element of the Magnet

When you spot stick the magnet to your brochure you can print underneath the magnet the words, “Remove the magnet to reveal a secret.” Under the magnet you can put a couple different things. You can put your website address or a discount code for the current month under the magnet. This tantalizes the potential client to touch, feel and hold. It puts some energy in the otherwise boring marketing tool. Suddenly, the recipient of magnet takes a look at the brochure also.

Marketing your graphic design business with magnets and stickers takes the impact value of every brochure you send out directly up. The surprise element of the discount code, etc. should be big enough to move the recipient to make a decision.

Post image sources: 1, 2, 3

This is a guest post by Jennifer Moline.

For all of us who blog whether on our own site or as a guest blogger, we put in the research and start planning the pre-writing phase then once we have everything we need we write it up and it gets published, our thoughts, ideas and tips to share with the world.

But who is going to see it? If you don’t circulate your article and draw new readers in, effectively your article isn’t getting the attention it truly deserves.

Are a number of methods for drawing traffic to your new articles, but today I’m going to cover designer social bookmarking resources.

A number of these sites also offer external voting buttons which you can use on your own site or blog.

Design Float

Design Bump

The Web Blend

Design Poke

DZone

Cypher Box

Joyoge

Karma Codes

Designgizer

ZaBox

Pixel Groovy!

Faq Pal

WPScoop

Graphic Design Links

Design Shovel

Web Mee

DesignVote

Fav Share

Developers Niche

Inspired News

And although strictly they are not for design articles only, the following sites have a good following and have excellent design sections:

Mixx Design

Digg Design

Blog Engage

If branding is about creating stories, then brochures are the fashion industry’s storybooks. Every page a reader turns in a fashion brochure should enrich the brand’s latest story in her mind. That brand story must be embodied not just in the elegance of the clothes, but also in the tastefulness of the brochure design. When done right, fashion brochures can expose the beauty and fierceness in the couture collections they advertise.

The following images are 50 examples of stunning fashion brochure design, made to be fresh and fabulous eye candy for their season. I hope you appreciate not just every cut and swatch of fabric they were made to advertise, but also their stylish and harmonious layout and design.

Example of Fashion Brochure Designs

We offer testking E20-001 tutorials for beginner as well as professional web designers to help them boost their expertise in web designing. Download testking 350-018 guide and testking 642-661 demo to learn how to create fantastic websites.

Clean web design techniques can mostly achieve high level of usability, legibility, and visual appeal, the use of plenty of white space and organized elements gives a professional look at the website.
In this collection, you’ll find 50 Clean Portfolio Web Designs for your inspiration, that let you see more examples about clean web design.

1. Creature

2. SketchyMedia

3. Haus

4. Shyama Golden

5. Neuromodule

6. Simon Corry

7. Vandelay Design

8. Usman Group

9. Shape

10. J. Pink Design

11. Read & Destroy

12. Square Box Studio

13. Jad Limcaco

14. John Likens

15. Studio Breakfast

16. Big Guns Design

17. Veronica Wallstrom

18. Elegantweb

19. AD Creative Group

20. Brett Chaney

21. Medusateam

22. Ola Syse

23. Conway Anderson

24. Creode

25. Schema

26. Ogvidius

27. James Deer Design

28. Deliciously Creative

29. Time Will Tell

30. Creative Agency for Emerging Media

31. Awesem

32. The Church of London

33. Buffalo

34. Borderleft

35. Core8

36. Favela

37. Creative Feed

38. Danstyled

39. Torchbox

40. Espresso

41. Jump Media

42. Digital Visions Queenstown

43. Nordkapp

44. Stark Web Design

45. WeSaySo

46. Pixel8

47. ProudCloud

48. Solv

49. Frish Design Studio

50. Clockwork

Learn all about web designing with test king and gain the best expertise of the field using testking ccnp demos and testking ccda study guide.

A party flyer can fill the dance floor with the perfect combination of creative font and other visual elements. Looking for new and different flyers will definitely hype you up to create a wonderful mix of designs on your own.

Club owners today are looking for new styles and designs in party flyers to attract a huge crowd. As a designer, it is important to look for up-to-date and striking designs for party flyers that will help you go out of the box. This is your lucky day! We’ve collected 50 awe-inspiring party flyer designs for you to look at and be inspired from.

Let’s start the party pumping with this roundup of 50 party flyer designs that will help boost your creative mind.

I really don’t like people who base their opinions about somebody or someone only on first impression, but in a world where all around us you can find multiple opportunities this could be decisive. When we are talking about the online world then a logo is equivalent to the first impression. Thus judging the great importance of the logo is revealed…but another question is how to judge the quality of a logo?

There are two components of judging the quality of a logo:

1. A subjective one that depends on the style, mentality or the culture of the judger. This can’t be predicted…all is very vague; each person has his own preferences. It could happen (the laws of Murphy are respected) that a very bad logo which doesn’t match the rules of design to be greatly appreciated by a client… it accomplished his/her/their demands and of course, like it; what impresses them is the logo and not if it respects the rules of design or not. The subjectivity wins over the principles of design in the most cases.
2. An objective one means that it is based on the rules of design .The problem regarding the rules and the number of it is still open…here are the ones which are the most important.

1. A Quality Logo Should Be Easy Rendered On All Possible Media

All the rules should be logical or have a commonsense. In most of the cases the clients are initially asking for a logo to put on a website… some of them believe that it is less expensive; in these conditions the restrictions are almost zero, or the creativity of the designer; few moments after finishing the logo he remarked that it will be perfect for him to have the logo on a business card and that could be a disaster. A logo only for a website could have some shadows, highlights or gradients and these are hard/impossible to look well or barely the same in print.

It is possible that the client wants the logo printed/painted on a T-shirt in an aggressive campaign of promoting and here other particularities arise. In these circumstances it is a mark of professionalism to realize a logo that has the same features on multiple media.

2. Try To Avoid Shadows, Highlights Or Gradients

This piece of advice has a connection with the previous one and the reason is clear to not recommend using these even if the overall design seems to suffer.

3. A Logo Should Look Well In Black & White Format

An important feature of a quality logo is the capacity of it to look well in black and white. This is so important because in this format the concept is highlighted and not the design. In the judging of a logo the primordial fact is the concept… colors, fonts can suffer some small modifications along the time. Problem of this: the trends in color??? These are changing every year and maybe the client wants a fresh look: he can change the nuances keeping the project. It is easy to notice and to understand a logo being fine in black and white has no problems in changing the colors.

4. Few Colors And Few Fonts

The great majority of high quality or well-known logos are using no more than three colors and one-two fonts, which are known by most of all users.

This recommendation is the one which makes the connection between composition and the concept of the logo. A logo should say everything about the owner: who the owner is, his field of activity, the quality of services and so on; all these should be conveyed in few shapes and two-three words. You may ask yourself… why that?

We all know that a human being can’t retain everything that he saw along the time of his life; in these conditions a complicated logo with a lot of colors, multiple fonts which are hard to distinguish and many shapes surely won’t be memorized by someone even if the services or goods provided are very good. Also keep in mind that a normal person has no interest in memorizing logos.

5. KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid

This is the most important. Maybe you could ignore the all previous rules, but ignoring is synonym with poor quality. Look at the great showcase of logos on the web and you will see that this rule is respected by all. Here are some places to visit and see great works:

6. Make It Recognizable

Obviously, no one except maybe the logo designers want to study logos. When you create a new logo, always keep in mind this statement; we live too fast and have too many opportunities to easily bring back some graphics in our memory. I recommend you to do something that can’t be learned, there works only of our talent and creativity but this is sure to be important: try to make it recognizable as much as you can…. but how can you do that? Simply, here the difference between a very good designer and an inexperienced one is made. There is no piece of advice, and I am afraid I could do nothing for you and once again, here works only talent, creativity and experience.

I am really excited to hear your principles of judging a logo or how to bust you skills in creating masterpieces.