Tag: graphicdesign

Who should setup a LinkedIn Company Page?

LinkedIn is the ‘business’ social media platform and is used directly for business purposes rather than just being ‘social’. Being able to connect with fellow professionals in your industry as well as potential clients, LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform for startup businesses to gain insightful knowledge from leading experts and for those company’s that are B2B ( or in another words , businesses that do business with other businesses. E.g Service providers, commercial builders, Lawyers etc ). If you sell a product that is more inclined to be a B2C ( business to customer ) such as retail outlets then LinkedIn is possibly not the perfect platform for you.

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If after reading the introduction you think a LinkedIn Page will benefit your business then you have to ensure your current LinkedIn Profile meets the requirements.

Before you even start to begin to consider adding a company page for your business to LinkedIn you MUST have all of the following as stated on the LinkedIn Website :-

[quote name=”LinkedIn” meta=””]

You can add a new Company Page only if you meet all of the following requirements:

1. You must have a personal LinkedIn profile set up with your true first and last name.
2. Your profile strength must be listed as Intermediate or All Star.
3. You must have several connections on your profile.
4. You’re a current company employee and your position is listed in the Experience section on your profile.
5. You have a company email address (e.g. [email protected]) added and confirmed on your LinkedIn account.
6. Your company’s email domain is unique to the company.

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Now if you are happy that you have all of the above then we can move on let’s get down to business!

Create a LinkedIn Company Page

To start you will need to navigate to the tab Interests > Companies and you should be greeted with a similar page to that below. Design Milk is one of the companies that I follow being a designer it is something I find particularly interesting, don’t worry if your screen is slightly different all you need to do is click the yellow button in the right sidebar ‘Create’.

Once you have clicked the magic button you will be greeted with a new screen where you need to add your company name and ‘professional’ email address. Once you have done that you will be greeted with several more panels, this is where you place your company information.

 Company Description

This is where you should put your company description. Think about giving a basic overview of your services and possibly previous clients you have had as well as the kind of people who would find your services most beneficial. Consider your target audience as much as possible.

If you do get confused or get writers block when you create your LinkedIn Profile I suggest researching and looking at other LinkedIn Company Profiles for ideas, particularly competing businesses in your industry. Take the best elements and of course, remove the not so good ideas.

Designated Admins

If you have more than one employee, possibly a social media manager then you can have more than one admin which can be useful to prevent updating the channel taking up unnecessary periods of time that could be spent doing other things. Pleaser note, you have to be connected on LinkedIn in order to be able to suggest the other admin.

 Image

Image appears at the top of your company page so is an opportunity to brand up your LinkedIn Page and create a call to action. Make it clear what your services are visually or maybe consider using a recent project. However you decide to communicate with your potential followers make sure the size of the image you create is 646 x 220 pixels or larger, a jpg, png or gif and the file size is no bigger than 2mb.

Standard Logo

Lets cut to the chase! The standard logo size Is  120 x 60px

 Square Logo

Just like the above image it has measurements you must adhere to which are 50px x 50px

Company Specialities

Of course this is elf explanatory but you should put the things you are best at and well-known for first and your other services towards the back as viewers will naturally think the order has some relevance.

Company Type, Company Size, Company Website, Main Company Industry, Company Operating Status, Year Founded

All these things are pretty self explanatory so I won’t bother wasting your time just go fill it in! Go go go!

 Company Location

This is the place where you put your registered offices and contact details. Maybe you don’t have an office as such because you are a freelancer or for some other reason, don’t worry, it’s not a compulsory section of the page.

Alternatively if you are a fairly successful global company and have over 10 offices then you will have to be chose your most prominent offices in the world as LinkedIn allows up to 5 locations to be added.

 Products and Services

To add your products and services to your company page there is a tab near the top of the LinkedIn Page ( seen in the image above ) click it and it will reveal some more new panels to complete. Below are examples of ideas provided by LinkedIn.

• Products: The printers you sell or the book you wrote.
• Services: Your financial consulting packages or a list of your marketing services.
• Other: Events you’re organizing or your company’s mobile apps.

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So that’s it, pretty simple really isn’t it, if you do have any trouble with your company page or images please do feel free to contact me and I will do my best to help you. Do you have any suggestions what makes a good LinkedIn company page? Please leave your thoughts in the comment box below and if you create a company page please feel free to link to it from this page.

P.S. Don’t forget to visit my new LinkedIn Company Page and follow it, I will be posting all my future posts so you’ll have easy access to all my future tutorials, creative pieces and thoughts. Click here to visit my newly created page, I look forward to connecting with you.

Free fonts for use on web are quite useful for the professional or student web/graphic designer using font face css and knowing where to find free fonts to use in your designs is even better! As a man who believes sharing in knowledge with others I have compiled a list of websites with varying free fonts for use on web below. I have also added a few where you have to pay and a couple of other tools for those who are wanting to develop websites to the latest html5 and css3 standard. If you know of any others please feel free to include it in the comment box below the post.

Free fonts websites

Please check that the fonts you are downloading are suitable for web before you use them, I know most of you will understand this but for those just starting to learn about web design check that the font will be a) compatible with all browsers and b) not slow down your site considerably.

Fontsquirrel

So you want to download fonts for free, well then fontsquirrel.com is a great starting point! A font on this site range from the fancy fonts, handwritten fonts to sans serif fonts. You can type in some text to their website and see font examples with each type face.

font files

The league of moveable type

free cool fonts are available on the league of moveable type, check them out, they believe in freedom of design!

cool fonts

Google Fonts

Google web fonts are totally free and really gaining in popularity. When choosing a font from the google fonts website make sure that its size isn’t going to effect the performance loading speed of your site. Google have also gone to the trouble of comparing different fonts with the google fonts making it easier to see google font combinations as not every font will match easily and it might look quite strange if too different but also if they are too similar this can be a problem also. google fonts google fonts download google fonts

NOT free fonts for use on web

Although its great getting free fonts sometimes paying a little fee can help you get fonts that really perfect the look and feel of your website’s brand image. Obviously there is is only so far free fonts can go and sometimes paying just a small fee for a custom font may not be so bad especially if you have many clients. The following websites are fee based but still worth a look.

Typekit

Fontdeck

Fonts.com

Webtype

Webtype is another place where you can download fonts for a fee.

http://www.webtype.com/

Other things to consider when selecting fonts for use on web

There are several things you must think about when selecting the fonts you use in your design and these are as follows : –

• Readability
• The mood the fonts give
• Font Compatibility
• Tracking/letter spacing
• Vertical Rhythm

Readability

Readability is all about how easy it is to read the font. At the end of the day it is important that the user feels that they can read the font easily, if they can’t then its kind of defeating the object of the task at hand. Make sure the free font you choose is easy to read.

The mood that the font gives

Even though readability should always be the number one reason for choosing a font ( in my opinion ) different types of typography give a mood or feel. Ask yourself is the font you have chosen given the appropriate mood or should you keep on looking for an appropriate typeface?

Font Compatbility

Font compatibility is also an issue, the modern way of typography expects two or even three different fonts to sometimes be used on a website. Making sure these fonts are compatible is really important. When I talk about compatibility I am talking about how they blend together. It is said that two font types shouldn’t be too different but at the same time they musn’t be identical either, there needs to be a good balance and on the likes of the Google Fonts website they give some suggestions of how you can pair certain fonts together.

Tracking/letter spacing

Tracking or letter spacing of a font is also important, if it is too close together it can look too cluttered and if it is too exposed it can be hard to read. I suggest that having a large space between each letter should only be used in titles if possible.

Vertical Rhythm

Vertical Rhythm is the hidden lines that make up a composition in a piece of writing. By using a vertical rhythm you will create a better UX and more likely to get the user to read your text. To find out if your website has vertical rhythm you can use a free bit of code from this website basehold.it

Earlier last year I did make another blog post about free fonts for web. Please visit the blog post here for more suggestions. I hope you find this post useful, please do share it and feel free to leave a comment in the box below.

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Strategies and techniques used in marketing today have almost taken on a life of their own, especially with the use of the Internet as a substantial tool in any company’s marketing arsenal. While you are worrying about effective link placement, properly designed landing pages, lead generation, blog content, and how to increase your visitor-to-customer conversion rates, don’t forget about the often underutilized marketing tools that still pack a powerful punch.

Continue “6 Tips For A More Impactful Business Card”

As my Twitter following has slowly began to gain in size in 2013 I have been connecting with people of all business varieties and from all corners of the world, one of whom was two lovely American ladies who were in need of an identity for their new business.

Fran and Hannah work in construction and wanted a logo concept and design, they already had a good idea what they wanted to call the business ( a combination of both their surnames) so they simply required a way of putting their startup idea into a visual form and that is where connecting on Twitter led to me helping with their logo.

International connection

This was my very first international design proposition I had ever been given but any hesitation to work for someone thousands of miles away was blown away with just how easy it was to communicate and work with Fran and Hannah.

Beginning the design

Once we had discussed the brief, I’d understood their business and background and discovered what they were looking for I set myself to working on creating some Identities.

To begin the logo design I created over twenty variations of a logo, I didn’t include any colour at this stage as it is important to not let  colour influence design decisions. Above is the very first stage of playing with shapes and concepts. Being contractors communicating this in the logo seemed quite important, so a font that was quite bold and structured looking was the initial decision.

Also, with the business being owned by two ladies the idea to differentiate the typography would help re-enforce this message clearly, in the fourth column this message is further enhanced by the inclusion of two stars.

First Response to initial logo designs

After a few days Fran and Hannah gave some feedback about the ones they liked the most and four in particular where the ones they wanted to take further into development ( see four images circled below).

Their responses where always very positive and they were very pleased at how many different varieties of logo they had to choose from and this was only the first stage! I could tell this was going to be one of the most enjoyable freelance jobs I’ve had thus far.

Stage 2 : Developing the logos further

Once I knew which logos to experiment with, combine and explore I asked Fran and Hannah if they had any idea what colours they liked as a work around. They informed that green and charcoal are the colours they envision their business in and thus I began stage two redeveloping the logos with these two colours in mind.

Below is the results of stage 2 and again the logos have been circled that the client liked best, their response was humbling…

Stage 3 : Refining the logo design

What my international clients wanted was now becoming clearer. So I played around a little more sending two variations of the house within the moon and the two stars.

Stage 3 : Finalising the design

This was the final stage, bringing it all together in different file formats for both print, screen and vector for enlargements.

The charcoal and green I felt were good choices for the logo, charcoal for a nights sky and part of the gradient for the moon and the green for the meadow, building mostly out of wood and green is symbolic of growth which is perfect for erecting new properties.

Looking at their favourite logos rather than having a moon literally how it looks in story books by putting it on its side it looked less like a story book and more conceptual as well as having the double edged concept of also being similar to a smile.

Hearing that the client wanted to use three logos , one being the text on its own for letterheads and the others for their vans and uniform I adhered to their requests and below is the finished product.

The CIW Web design Professional Certification program

As the 2014 has started and the wed designing field has become very advanced and in order to cater the demands of the increasing requirements as well as standards of the web designing sector, the need for certified and competent professionals have also accelerated so that they can handle the complex mattes and criteria for this sector. The companies, enterprises as well as the firms are in search for the professionals who can develop and design cutting edge web pages and designs for them. The CIW is a popular vendor of many webs designing certification series. The CIW Web Design professional certification is one of them. This certification is a very important and powerful web designing certification which is also recognized and accepted by the best employers of the world.

Getting the Certification

In order to get certified in this valuable certification, the individuals have to pass the two exams:

• CIW Web Design Specialist
• CIW E-Commerce Specialist

The CIW web design specialist exam is considered more important for the web designers. By passing each of these exams the individuals can get certified in each certification. But by passing both these exams successfully the individuals can get the status of CIW Certified Wed Design Specialist. This status is very important for getting several secure career options. The exam preparation is for the CIW web design specialist professional is very crucial and the individuals must prepare themselves for the certification.

The Targeted Audiences of certification

This certification is a professional and advance level certification program. The certification successfully targets the wed designers for advancement of their career. Several other individuals related to this field can also take certification for securing several higher paid designations with job security. The following are the targeted audiences of this certification:

• Art Directors
• Web and Graphic Designers
• Creative Directors
• Web Marketing Professionals
• Advertising Professionals

These individuals can take this certification program for advancing their current employment status to a secure way and can also gain several other professional advantages. By getting this certification the individuals can also increase their competency and credibility in web designing services even in the complex and critical environments.

The scope and value of the certification

We can summarize that in the current market situation, the CIW wed Design Specialist Professional Certification program can offer a wide range of occupational benefits to the individuals. This professional level certification programs are also recognized by the best employers around the world and top organizations. The employers hire and prefer the certified professionals to develop cutting edge designs. The web designing services offered by the certified professionals can provide advantages to the employers so, they provide higher salaries to these certified professionals. But in order to get this useful and important certification the candidates can take help from the Selftest Training website. This website is considered as the best certification exam preparation website. Individuals can get sample questions and preparatory references by visiting this website and can get guaranteed results.

Featured images:

•  License: Image author owned

By Mary Desilva

The Writer is Internet Marketing guru, blogger and writer, She is writing from last 3 years on many different topics, she also loves cooking, dancing and movies.

Many people believe that creativity will come to you, and that inspiration is something you must wait patiently for — and that’s simply not true. If you have a creative job, you’ll know that waiting around for your muse is impractical and unproductive. Thankfully, making a few small changes to your daily life can mean the difference between feeling despondent and feeling inspired. Here are five tips to improve your creativity and concentration using exercise and diet:

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Drink more water

Sitting at a desk all day can be thirsty work, but most of us reach for the coffee, which dehydrates us even further. A glass of cold water can wake up your brain just as efficiently — without the crash that comes with caffeine consumption. Rather than setting yourself a target amount of water to drink, just make sure you’ve always got a glass on your desk, and refill it whenever it gets empty.

Take short walks

It doesn’t matter how cold it is outside — you’ll definitely feel the benefits of a brisk walk when you return to your desk. Some people find that it helps to think about creative problems whilst walking, whereas others find it best to let their mind wander. Taking a shower has the same effect, but is somewhat less practical!

Have a smaller lunch

Struggling to keep your eyes open after your lunch break? You might be eating too much. It’s almost impossible to concentrate when you’re drowsy, so prevent this by avoiding carb-heavy food like bread and pasta. Instead, opt for something lighter like a tuna salad. Fish is excellent brain-food, and can help you feel more energised and inspired for longer.

Try yoga

Yoga exercises your mind as much as your body, and can dramatically increase focus and concentration. Mindfulness, better posture and deeper breathing can prevent work-based frustration from building up and blocking your creativity. Even if you work better under pressure, stress can still be bad for mental well-being and creative thinking.

Go swimming

Swimming is an excellent form of exercise, and isn’t too strenuous — and this is exactly what you want when trying to solve a creative problem. If you swim too fast, you’ll be too focused on the activity to think of anything else, but a calm and leisurely swim can really free your thoughts and help you make difficult decisions.

Snack

Nuts and seeds are the perfect work-day snack: they improve cognitive function, boost your brain power and can even help stabilise your mood. Walnuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews and pumpkin seeds are best for this, and are delicious mixed with energy-boosting dried fruit.

Of course, food can only do so much to alter your mood. If you’re constantly finding yourself down and unmotivated when at work, it might just be that you’re doing the wrong job. Many people find that their creativity returns upon finding a more rewarding profession. There’s no such thing as the perfect job, so don’t feel that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t enjoy work as much as your colleagues. What suits one person won’t necessarily suit the next, so don’t be afraid to find a career that works for you!

Featured images:

•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1126222/?forcedownload=1

By Sam Wright

Sam Wright is a freelance writer working for Brand Republic. He’s been freelancing for six years, and faces a constant battle to keep focused.

Recently I had a message from a young Graphic Communication students about to graduate in need of some current designer’s viewpoints on her dissertation topic. Being someone who likes to help people whenever possible I answered her questions. This is the conversation that unfolded : –

Hi there! I was wondering if you would be able to answer 4 quick questions for me if you have a spare moment? I’m a third year Graphic Communication student and would really benefit from designers like yourself answering a few short questions to help me with my Dissertation!!Hope you can help! Thank you

Can you describe what ‘persuasion‘ means to you in terms of design?

Sure, persuasion for me is a subconscious effort when it comes to design, you don’t necessarily persuade people consciously through design you simply create a desire that is so immense that it becomes so unavoidably attractive that you are persuaded to act on the design whether it is a new product, a message or an interesting new architectural design. Persuasion is about tapping into our human emotions of desire and/or the hunger to improve our lives :).

 Can you describe what ‘manipulation’ means to you in terms of design?

Manipulation is similar to persuasion as every time we design something we are trying to manipulate people to act, we want to almost control the actions and thoughts of the viewer with our designs. Designers want to convince consumers through their own emotional experiences in life that they simply cannot live without our design, knowing it may correct a problem they have or have had,make them become more desirable or simple make them feel happier with their life. As designers we try to manipulate the customers to buy our product or service to enhance their experiences of life, albeit sometimes artificially.

 Describe a situation where you think you have been persuaded & manipulated by design

I am not sure when or if I have been persuaded by design. Being trained to think creatively, artistically and analytically you are constantly aware of design so it is difficult as a designer to be persuaded by ‘concious’ persuasion as we know that we are trying to be convinced to buy. Saying that, if a product is well designed ergonomically and I can see it is manufactured well then I am drawn to it more rather than through clever branding such as apple.

Maybe I have been persuaded or manipulated by design but without actually knowing about it because the best graphic design will only subtly persuade you without the viewer actually realising it is doing so. An example of this subtle manipulation is the marketing message in the Budweiser advert.

Example of subconcious manipulation in advertising

Budweiser used to sell mainly to white middle class Americans but they wanted to expand their market to include the young ethnic market so they released the wassup advert.

In this video every actor has a funny conversation where each friend says wassssuuuup and every one of these people are from the new market group targeted. The fact the advert is funny attracts everyone regardless of race and subconsciously makes it acceptable for people other than the white middle classes to drink Budweiser, a clever design by the advertisers of Budweiser.

Conclusion

There are many times when I look around and can see many manipulations and persuasive messages on billboards and shop windows that are so consciously trying to persuade that they have no effect on those who are creatively trained but like the advert above I found it fun and remember saying wassup to my friends yet didn’t realise the subliminal message that the company wanted to portray that their beverage was for everyone.

Therefore it is possible to suggest that we are being manipulated and persuaded to every day, whether a small advert on a website or a poster on the tube or told a believable marketing messages such as ‘Apple is the best in creating technological advances’, all things that we have been persuaded or manipulated into believing by advertisers and marketing firms.

So next time you are out and about just take a moment to study what you are looking at and be more prepared to analysis what the message is that is trying to be communicated to you to make you act in a certain way.

What are your views on persuasion and manipulation in design? Please comment in the box below.

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Graphic designers are always looking for new and interesting apps to help with their work, and Canva is the latest cloud tool to fit the bill. Canva is designed for people who have no interest in Photoshop yet need attrative graphic design and illustration for their work. If you can work in Canva, you can sell your services to a whole new audience.

Here’s a quick guide to the brand new Canva site. It’s still in beta at the time of writing this review, but it’s slowly bring opened up to new members.

What Is Canva?

Canva is essentially a graphic design toolkit boiled down to its simplest components. Users can combine text, images, layouts and more into quick graphics for practically any purpose. It’s of particular interest to marketers because its presets support sites like Facebook and Twitter, so you can quickly knock up a header image that will fit.

Canva is built on presets, but you can expand the library of images for a small fee. You’re not limited to the Canva selection; you can upload your own graphic design work and play around with it on the Canva site. Canva supports your creativity with layouts that can be adapted, or you can start from a blank canvas and build your design from the ground up. There are thousands of fonts available for designers to use, and Canva says that its images are compatible with popular graphic design software. (We assume that this comment refers to Photoshop).

Sharing Graphic Design Work

Need to get approval on your design or show off your ideas before they’re developed? Canva makes sharing simple. Just send your ideas to the client before paying for the content you need from the Canva library.

The really clever thing is the fee system on Canva; it’s free to share and create, but you have to pay to download the finished image. That means graphic designers can protect themselves; their clients could be asked to sign off a creation before its paid for to ensure they’re 100 per cent happy with the work. Only then can they use it on the web or in print. If they don’t like a font or a component image, you can swap it out before you’ve paid for it, keeping your client happy in the proces.

Going One Step Futher: Making Money With Canva Content

Graphic designers can also make money from Canva by uploading their own design work. Every time a Canva user chooses their uploaded content for a graphic, the original designer gets a cut of the licensing fee.

If you want to join Canva’s rapidly growing designer network, it’s easy to get started. But remember: your content will be jostling for attention among more than a million other library items. In order to make serious cash, you’ll need to spend time developing quality content.

Canva is prioritising access to professional graphic designers; the information is on its Designers page. There’s also a page for illustrators and photographers. Get started now.

Featured images:

•  Photo provided by: Guest blogging community

By Sam Wright

Sam Wright is a creative writer with an interest in new gadgets and apps. He writes on behalf of Brand Republic.

When the British coalition government decided it was going to make cuts to the services of  towns and cities across the country a library located in Woolton Village, Liverpool was one of the things marked to be closed. A devastating choice for a village that has a high level of elderly and families living in the locality who relied on the service.

But with Woolton, having such a fantastic community a few of the people living in the village got together to keep this much loved and much needed facility open to the public and is still open today with the help of volunteers and independent funding of the local community. Being born and raised in the village I felt a duty to help in any way I could so offered my logo services to the people of Woolton free of charge. Here is the meaning behind the WCRC Ticket to Read logo.

The new name of the library

With the ending of publicly funded library came an opportunity to rebrand and expand the services of the library. No longer would the library be simply for books but many activities would take place in the library, for this reason they rebranded themselves as a resource centre with a strapline “ticket to read” a play on the Beatles hit “Ticket to ride”.

As the Woolton community are quite a diverse society and the new resource centre would also be a hub of activity it was felt that it was important to make the logo as universal as possible without references of age, gender, sexuality, race or service.

Recording the library heritage in the design

As explained earlier the facility had always been a family library and the main purpose to store and borrow books for the local community. For this reason I wanted to represent that in the logo. The typeface used reflects the san-serif fonts that are usually found within printed reading books.

Communicating symbolism within the WCRC Logo

After observing the activities that take place at the WCRC it became evident that the WCRC allow its users to communicate in different ways. Community building, poetry reading, acting, art, group debates and even reading a book is a form of communication thus the use of speech marks was considered suitable for the design as it also removed gender/sex specific notions.

Strong community represented in logo shape

The Woolton Community are a strong people and this was something I wanted to represent in their design.

Considering shape the circle is considered an unbreakable shape. A shape that has no bends, no kinks, no corners and usually can represents ‘the whole’, in this case the whole community.

By selecting the circle to represent Woolton people it displays that nothing breaks the spirit of the community and they have a unity, friendship and helpfulness to each other that is difficult to find in general.

Colour of communication

Finally the colour that was selected was blue to represent the communication. Blue is the colour of the throat chakra within the human aura and it is believed that blue conveys the ability to communicate well.

Although a simple logo in design the concept and theory behind its appearance is not as simple, similar to the character of this village in Liverpool. Maybe simple in appearance to the onlooking visitor but underneath the surface there is a lot more than meets the eye.

It was a pleasure to work for my boyhood village. Woolton is a place that will always be dear to my heart, I had many fond memories reading books in the library and growing up in this neighbourhood.

It is a very pleasant place that is worth a visit should you ever be visiting the city. It was the home of John Lennon ( which can still be seen on menlove avenue), the place where the Beatles first performed at a school concert ( Bishop Martin School ), the location where the song Strawberry fields was inspired from.

Now the home of a few premiership footballers such as Brazilian Lucas Leiva and also to prehistoric standing stones that are older than those in Stone Henge!

Are you from Woolton or is your community feeling the effects of  the government cuts? What do you think helps build a strong community? Please feel free to leave any comments below.

When making new Photoshop imagery it is useful to know where to find some free images to use for your creations. In this blog post I will share ten of the best texture websites out there.

Continue “11 Free Texture Websites”