All posts in articles

6 Characteristics of the Successful Designer

05/11/2009 | articles, Design

New graphic designers often worry about their tangible skills. Am I a master of the pen tool? Am I adept enough at HTML & CSS to offer my services? Can I design a print piece to print specifications? Rightfully so, these are areas that all designers should be concerned about (amongst others). However, being a Creative Suite whiz does not guarantee a successful design career. Much can, and should, be made of efficiency, business sense and more; however, in this article I’d like to focus on specific characteristics that a designer must have (or develop) to truly be successful.

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Examples of Excellent Blog Post Formatting and Styling

05/11/2009 | articles

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While front pages are usually the part of blogs that get showcased, blog design includes a lot of other details that can add to the overall look and appearance of the blog, not to mention usability. The pages of individual blog posts provide opportunities for design and styling in a number of different areas.

In this post we’ll look at a few aspects of blog posts and showcase some design elements that are used to make the post more helpful, inviting, or attractive.

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How To: Successfully Launch a Web Design Startup with Social Media and No Budget

04/11/2009 | articles, web design

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This time on Inspired Talks we invited David Perel from Obox Signature Series to give some insights and tips for the creative community. Warning: lots of useful advice for freelancers and startup owners in the design niche.

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Recently we launched a theme company called the Obox Signature Series. After two months in a ‘saturated’ market it’s become profitable. The reason we believe it became successful so ‘quickly’ is because of the power of Social Media.

Our total marketing budget at Obox Design is about $100 a month. Usually at the end of the month we have $92 left. The only thing we have spent money on so far is a subscription to PeaShoot App… which we barely use.

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Website Maintenance Tips for Front-End Developers

04/11/2009 | articles, Development

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One of the biggest advantages of online media over print is the ability to change, update, and enhance online media at virtually anytime, with virtually no negative side effects. In fact, if a website or web application does not continually offer its users an ever-evolving and growing experience, that site or application would soon become insecure, unusable, and out of date.

Have you beautified your code, validated your markup, and made your XHTML more semantic? Have you implemented basic SEO best practices, spell-checked content, and removed legacy code? Have you ensured JavaScript is unobtrusive, applied the principle of graceful degradation, and minimized the use of Flash? If you’ve done all those things (and possibly more), what comes next? Are there things you can do to improve your site’s overall effectiveness beyond those?

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15 Best Advertising Programs for Design Bloggers to Mint Money Online

04/11/2009 | articles

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These days’ advertisements have become an integral part of any marketing campaign, then be it image banner advertisements, text banner advertisements or any other creative practice. Designer’s community is one such creative community, which along with other business domains is optimizing this moneymaking opportunity and using it well.

Web designers, illustrators, photographers, bloggers and freelancers use their own blogs, websites, tutorials and galleries to share their work, creativity, knowledge and information. This brings more and more eyeballs to their websites and hence a classified set of visitors. This set of potential customers makes organizations/companies/firms to use these available platforms for their advertisement purposes and provides the opportunity for creative heads to earn some green bucks.

With the rise of these online money making mediums, a competition has sparked between the advertisements companies providing a range of choice. Below are some online advertising programs that helps individuals to earn and manage their wealth from their blogs/website:

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How To Keep Up With The Flow Of Information

03/11/2009 | articles

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Today I want to present 5 ways you have to help you keep up with the huge flow of information on the internet!

So this is quite the subject in nowadays internet world, but what I want to talk about is the specific area of web & design. There are literally hundreds of new links everyday being announced on Twitter, Facebook, and other link aggregators like designbump or designmoo, but the question is: how to keep up with this information flow and most important, how to get something out of all these articles and resources?

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Web Design Trends for 2010

03/11/2009 | articles, web design

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With a new year on the horizon, it’s time to pack away the old, worn web designs and prepare for the brave, new face of tomorrow. Although trends don’t start and stop on January 1st, there is a definite shift from what we craved at the beginning of the year to what we are seeking tutorials for at the end of the year. Most of the time, this shift is subtle. It’s a perfection or re-interpretation of a currently hot trend. Trends help us evolve as designers. As we master the skills of design aesthetic, we continue to push forward to what’s next or what needs to be fully discovered.

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5 Ways to Make Money with Your Blog

03/11/2009 | articles

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Maintaining a blog can be quite a job. Writing new, interesting articles and providing resources for your visitors can be a hassle, even though you enjoy every part of it. I am sure you’d like to earn a little something after your effort. This post looks into some easy ways to start monetizing your blog.

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6 Ways To Take Your Webdesign From Good To Great

03/11/2009 | articles, web design

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The difference between good and great webdesign is relatively small. The average person may not be able to explain the tangible differences that make up great design, but they can usually spot a design they like. By examining some awesome sites, I’ll attempt to put my finger on some of the small details that make up the difference.

A little while back I wrote an article about the 4 Principles of Good Design for Websites, this article is somewhat of a continuation of those principles. In that article I went into detail about the important roles that contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity play in webdesign. This article will piggy back on those principles as I examine 6 ways you can take your webdesign from good to great.

This post is chock full of awesome examples. I made a conscience effort to only pick sites that were great all the way around.

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