Category: Blog

Getting the right typography for your graphic design work is really important, the standard fonts that come with a computer isn’t great for creatives and so sites where you can download free fonts and typography ( if you don’t or can’t design your own ) is really important. In this post I give you 10 links to free fonts websites. I recommend you bookmark the page so you always have this resource available to you.

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1. Dafont.com

dafont.com is a great little website that regularly updates with free fonts that can be used in many creative projects. Before you go ahead with downloading a font make sure you have read the license in case you are not allowed to use the font in commercial work or you could land yourself in trouble from the creator.

2. Typekit.com

Typekit is a website from Adobe that provides fonts for use on websites. It is free, technically, for only one website using 2 of the fonts otherwise it costs some cash but it s a good place to get some really well designed typefaces for your web designs.

3. 1001freefonts.com

This site probably started with 1001 free fonts when it was launched because I believe it has more than 1001 fonts nowadays! Check it out, you are spoilt for choice, be warned though, some links ( particularly on the menu bar ) open new links to fonts to purchase! Cheeky sneeky sales technique 😉

4. Font Squirel

Font Squirrel is another great little website that regularly updates with free fonts that can be downloaded for free but again check that the typeface you are downloading has a license for free use before considering using them in commercial works.

5. Urban Fonts

Not only can you find lots of free fonts here but you can ALSO get free dingbats, you know, those typeface that look like little vector images? A very useful font site I think you will find!

6. Font Fabric

Warning! Not all fonts on this website are free fonts. The owner of the site has been a good chap ( or chapess! ) and shown a little red free icon in the corner of the image to not confuse things. That is always useful for the free seeker in us.

7. Fonts2u 

This website has a very similar layout and design to dafont.com so shouldn’t be a problem when you are looking for free fonts that work with your design work. Not only this but there are so many fonts! A great resource of fantastic typography this is.

8. PC Fonts

Are you still reading these descriptions about free fonts? Just visit the sites folks and make sure to use the bookmark feature so whenever you need free fonts you know where to come. 🙂

9.  Fonts for Web

Are you the owner of a wordpress CMS website? You are going to love this site then! Not only are these fonts free but they are also compatible with a plugin made for WordPress sites to make applying the fonts to your pages simple. I haven’t actually tried it out yet but it sounds like a great concept to add that extra bit of personality to your site.

10. a to z Fonts

On this site there is no messing! It clearly stats that you will find 100% free fonts, very useful if you want to make sure you aren’t breaking copyright laws.

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The typography you decide to use in any part of your graphic design work has incredible psychological effects on the viewer. Whatever the message is you are portrating the typography can re-enforce the feeling of the product or service you are trying to advertise so make sure you either a) find a typeface that works well with the message you want to communicate or b) sit down and design your very own font, probably the best way of getting a free font and adds a truly personal touch to your work.

What is your favourite font and what is your least favourite? Please leave a comment in the box below.

Your business isn’t just a grey box, paperwork and turnover, your business is a piece of art and a brand. The brand is the personality that identifies your product, service or company against your market rivals. Get it right and it will attract the consumers you are seeking, get it wrong and it could detract your potential customers away from doing business.

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2012 Olympics Brand Identity

If your brand is designed in such a way that provokes human emotion it can even get excellent media attention

Remember the 2012 Olympics Logo and games mascots? They were controversial and many people verbally communicated just how much they didn’t like it. By being controversial and so different to previous Olympics logos it was give huge media coverage which made the brand awareness and attention to the games itself very high on an unprecedented level.

Ugly is pretty

In my opinion it was an excellent brand design because it got people talking regardless of whether it was liked or disliked by the majority of people. What people experienced was something that was different, unexpected, pushing boundaries and futuristic.

It even grabbed the attention of conceptual extremists with suggestions of aliens making an appearance or there being a major terrorist attack. Bizarrely, this  increased the success of the brand design by spreading the word of the 2012 Olympics in all communities interested in these things and further put the Olympics into people’s minds.

Choosing a colour

The importance of choosing the right colour cannot be undermined. Colour have so many meanings to us on a subconscious and cultural level that different combinations can convey and symbolize a different emotion and concept.

Once you identify the colour combination that you like best and convey the message you need your designer MUST adhere to the EXACT colours so your brand is easily recognisable.

Conceptual symbol

Next to consider is the most familiar object of branding – the logo.

I believe that a good logo design must be able to communicate the product or service being sold in a conceptual but not literal way. Another words if you sell ice creams don’t simply use a clipart of an icecream and forget to edit it, instead consider your target market and what may attract someone to do business with you rather than go to one of your competition. What makes your ice cream business different from the rest? Can it be inco-operated into part of the logo design?

Style your advertising

After the design of the colour combination & logo a good brand designer will know the importance of creating a style guide so it easy to follow for future designs. The style guide is created so that any future branding works (such as advertising) relates and is identifiable as your company.

When designing a new advert this style guide should be consulted; it doesn’t mean it should restrict your creativity but instead keep your company looking professional and re-enforce the brand in peoples minds consistently wherever they see something to do with your business whether it is a compliment slip to a large billboard advertising it should speak you.

The importance of a well designed business identity

A well designed business identity isn’t just important, it is crucial to your business! When you start your company hire a designer you must make sure they are professional and understand how delicate an operation a well designed brand is and takes time to perfect.

The branding designer should be able to design everything that your business identity will appear on from letterheads to websites it should all have a consistent feel but also convey a message, even have a life of its own it has that much personality!! Don’t take your business identity lightly consult a branding designer today, you will find it is one of the best investments you make in the early stages of your business.

Blogging is something I decided to take up on my website only this January and I have found it to have many benefits not only to my website’s traffic but also in many other areas of my professional and personal life. In this post I discuss why you should,without hesitation, take up blogging on your website.

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Search Engines will love you

What search engines love is content and the more you blog the more content you are generating for robots to munch on.

The reason this is so good for your business/profession is that the more topics you write about the more keywords that are generated to get your website found and the only way to generate more business is to gain more brand awareness. For example, right now I have created just over 100 blog posts and gain roughly 2,000 unique visitors per month and it is all thanks to my blog.

Reach a larger audience

By blogging you are diversifying who you get your message out to in two different ways. The first way is that you become an international man ( or woman ) of mystery just like Austin Powers! The audience that visit my blog aren’t only British, actually the majority of my visitors actually come from the USA, people who would have been very unlikely to have ever heard about my work otherwise.

The second way is it attracts both the fellow professional advancing their skills but also those who need an expert to help them complete simple tasks. Imagine, for example, a lawyer comes to my site visiting “Add social media icons to your email signature” but is impressed by the free knowledge and so see’s what other services I offer. Realising he has wanted to rebrand his logo for a while he notices my service and makes some enquiries…and thus a lead is generated.

Encourages Learning

Blogging really encourages you to learn new things. As a regular blogger I want to create content that others are really going to benefit from, increase their own knowledge and also be quite entertaining. I have found the more I blog the easier it becomes to find new topics to write about and more interesting ways to present information.

Shows you are knowledgeable

You may think that giving away your knowledge of how to do things is absolute suicide for your business but you would be wrong. By sharing your knowledge it shows others that you have a good ability in what you have chosen as a profession and it also shows that you have confidence in your ability so aren’t scared about others gaining your knowledge.

Gives you a standing in your industry

When you write about topics that interest you you are also inadvertently becoming a respected professional in your industry. At first, you will only have a few blog posts about your particular topic but if you manage to blog every day for a year that will be 365 blog posts and a lot of shared knowledge, you could become the Gandalf wizard of your trade.

Question yours and others opinions

When you start blogging you will find yourself reading others websites and blogs quite often. What you read you won’t always agree with and it can spark your blogging creativity. For instance I read a blog post about five things to make a perfect logo and one of the points was that a logo must be timeless and I considered this to be rubbish! If you are interested in why I think this you can read the blog post here.

Look at things from different perspectives

If you read the last blog post I just referred to is, I know, opinionated ( but unlike the real world, being opinionated is quite important when blogging ). Even though I have my belief it is important to be able to try and see particular topics from different points of view. Learning to try and see things from more than one perspective makes for great reading and is also a skill that is useful in day to day life as it makes us become more compassionate and able to weigh up the pro’s and con’s of every situation, whether business or friendships.

An asset and a resource

When learning about new things and sharing it via your blog you are also creating a directory of resources that you can use in your future works. For example I created a blog post called 11 Free Texture Websites ( which interestingly was shared quite a lot via tumblr & twitter ), this is a really useful tool for fellow graphic designers and actually, from a selfish stand point, very beneficial to me too!

Keeps a curiosity

Life is about change and everything is constantly changing. By blogging it forces you to stay abreast of what is changing and converse your own views and experiences of what you are learning as time, tech and trends change.

Curiosity is great for creativity and if you think of the most curious people in the world…they tend to be children because they have a keen desire to learn!

Blogging allows you to become that curious child again, we should all be living lives as Peter Pan characters!

It can be a lot of fun

Above all blogging can be ( and is ) fun!

If you are a creative person then sharing what you know with others can be great entertainment and really good use of your time, so rather than watching some television switch it off, get your laptop out and start typing.

It has more benefit to your professional life than being spoon fed by a television program.

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So why should I blog on my website?

If you aren’t already blogging and you are the owner of a website I hope this blog post has given you an insight into why it is so rewarding and a no brainer to take some time to create at least one or two blog posts a week. I can promise you that you will not regret it.

Do you have any experiences of blogging you would like to share? Please comment in the box below

You may have noticed a gold symbol on my website and social media accounts, this is my logo and the start of my own brand. Designing a brand for yourself as a designer can be more difficult than designing a brand for somebody else as you have to be more self-critical and more analytical without the feedback of anyone but me, myself and I. In this post I discuss my brand name reason and the conceptual theory behind my logo design.

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Choosing the name

When I first considered what to identify myself as I remember reading Duncan Bannatynes autobiography and why he decided to brand his businesses with his own name. He decided to brand his gyms with his name because if anything went wrong it would be on his names reputation, it shows confidence in what he is able to provide and should criticism arise to correct the problem that caused the negative feeling. I  was inspired, I considered it to be a noble and great idea so borrowed the idea.

Inital Name

Considering the concept by Mr Bannatyne , my initials JAW and my profession as a specialist in communication design, I took them both and used my initials in a literal sense of “jaws” that we use to speak and communicate. This was the basis of my idea, to inco-operate a mouth into the design of the logo. My name would be “Jawz of design”…

Taking Shape

I decided to begin playing with shapes, shapes that could convey a simple modern idea but with traditional influence. I worked with several shapes but decided upon a square, a shape that is very symbolic in many countries with similar symbology of perfection.

A square can also represent accuracy, integrity and righteousness. After I delved deeper into symbolic meanings it believed that the four sides of the square represents aspects of human inspiration. Angelic, diabolic, human & divine. It has been believed these four elements underscore the potential duality in everything and encourages balance.

All of these elements combined invite us to do precisely what the square implies :

Implement a plan

Build on that plan

Manifest ideas into our reality

The square is a balanced plan that allows creativity to flow without risk or error thus the square was chosen

Drawing on the concept

Having established I wanted a mouth and to use the square I came up with some very basic sketches ( see below ).

I then chose my favourite few and developed them further. No 14, 15 & 16 where my favourites as they were less literal and quite tribal looking. I also liked the idea of the long hair/antenna like line, representing the flow of creativity coming from the square.

Considering whether the logo should be flat or a cube and whether to include teeth or not was also something I considered. After careful consideration I decided to leave the teeth out as it would have looked less professional.

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Colour Choice

Colours have psychological meaning and depending on the part of the world you are from can have greatly different values so I did some research. I wanted my logo colour to appeal to the vast majority of the world not just my country and I discovered that the colour gold had the most positive impression with the most of the world.

The colour gold is the colour of success, achievement and triumph no matter where in the world you come from. It can be associated with abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance. It is also said to inspires knowledge, spirituality and a deep understanding of the self and the soul which I like to sometimes write about in my blog. To read more about the colour gold please click here.

A year later I altered my name

I felt using a z instead of an s in the JAWZ section of my brand was what creative people do who are trying too hard to be different and I didn’t want to be Jaws otherwise I would make people think of a deadly killer shark!  I decided to make it simple and called it JAWilson Design instead, my name so it still kept the idea that I borrowed from Mr Bannatyne for his brand and ending it with the word design to easily identify what the website was about ( which also works well for seo ).

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It took quite some time to develop my own identity, although a logo is small and “only” one image a client must remember that it needs to be adjusted and developed and given some time to reach its perfected state.

A good branding identity will look so effortless that those who are not from creative backgrounds will look at it, recognise it and even be influenced by it ( apple ) and believe it is “easy and simple” but the truth is the best logos MUST be developed and at least a few iterations of the original design produced before reaching its final destination.

If you require a conceptual identity please get in touch and we can discuss your requirements further.

If you follow my Twitter Account @JAWilsonDesign you may have noticed that my profile picture background has changed to promote the #timetotalk hashtag from the time to change campaign helping stop mental health discrimination.

I decided to become a time to change champion because I know what it is like to suffer with mental illness.

I have suffered quite badly over the last decade with severe mental illness but eventually, began to recover.

Why am I writing this post? I am writing this in the hope that my story might help others who are suffering with feelings of hopelessness, depression or/and anxiety to know that you can get better and things can improve. I am not trying to be presumptuous I just want others to know there is a way out of the dark place of depression and this is my story…

Continue “Why I became a time to change champion”

Having an email address that isn’t @hotmail or @gmail whether for business or applying for jobs is really quite important for several reasons. In this blog post I plan to explain the issues surrounding not having a branded email address.

Continue “The importance of a branded email address”

Choosing the right hosting provider for your website is HUGELY important and probably the most important part of your website. Like a house, if you don’t put in the right foundations in at the start then your house is going to start getting problems and it just won’t be a good construction. Hosting is the same, choose a hosting provider that is below par and your website will see the effect. In this blog post I discuss why I had no choice but to leave my hosting provider.

Continue “Why I changed my hosting provider”

I recently read an article on the web about 5 principles to making a good logo design one of which one was that it is important that a logo is timeless. To quote

“Nothing about your logo should be trendy or connected to the style of the time. The best logo designs are iconic …” Indelible Branding

In my opinion nothing could be further from the truth and here is why.

Continue “A timeless logo is not important”

I realise that not everyone enjoys reading and some prefer a more visual approach to learning. Video blogging is something I have been interested in doing but never got around to trying out. Now I have decided the time is right to venture into YouTube to try and share some of my knowledge in a different format. Why not check it out in this video below : –

Now you have seen my first free tutorial if you have any suggestions what you would like to learn in Photoshop or other programs then please suggest ideas in the comment box below and I will try to adhere to your needs. Look forward to hearing from you guys and follow my rss feed or youtube channel for further free youtube photoshop tutorials 🙂

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You have probably heard it over and over again “is your business online yet?” or “create your own online presence”, but where do you start? Do you hire a web designer or do you try to save your money and design it yourself? One area to consider if going for the web designer option is the website hosting you choose.

In this post I am going to share what you should consider when first developing a new website and what to do as your website contenet grows and hopefully, your audience and profits increase, I have wrote the post in a fashion from the very start of a websites life to the large succesful website. To begin, lets discuss what website hosting is …

Continue “What type of hosting is best for my website?”