Award Winning Design With A Fresh Breath of Creativity

Resources

Web Based SEO Applications and Online SEO Tools

sheerseo

Share As we move more and more into doing things via ‘clouds’ and online web based applications; one of the few things that I have yet to find is a truely comprehensive intermediate web application for search engine optimisation.. I soon came across one that seemed to fit the bill.


5 Quality UX Blogs Designers Should Read

UI Trends_1281175784792

Share Being a web designer should hopefully come with an inherent want to produce and design websites that are great to use for the end-user. As such it makes sense to stay up to date and informed on recent developments, assertions and techniques in relation to User Experience.


WorkSnug – Finding Places To Get Design Work Done On The Go

Share WorkSnug is a really cool augmented reality iPhone app that enables you to find great places to work nearby, from cafes to coworking spaces, complete with reviews.


Polishing Photos Off With Shadows & Sharpening (Video Photoshop Tutorial)

1

Share When people look through my photography, they often ask what I do in my post processing to achieve the subtle exaggerated shadows to result in somewhat dramatic / ‘epic’ and overall better looking picture…


14 Great Design, Marketing and Freelancing Blogs

Package Design Blog - TheDieline.com_1280080686762

Share Hi all, I thought I would post up 14 blogs that have sat in my subscribe list on Google reader since the dawn of the time. Why do i think these blogs are so special? They actually provoke thought.


Quote Robot – A Nifty Little App!

Picture 1

Share Quote Robot is an app that I came across recently that seemingly streamlined the tedious task of writing proposals for lots of freelance designer’s out there. Intrigued, I signed up and have been giving the free trial a run for its uhh… money.


Essential Resources For The Starting Freelance Designer

Share Hi all, thought I would share a list of resources which help me along my way. From business to the theory of branding, there is a lot contained within these great resources by their respective authors. Take the time to have a good read through them and if you find the list useful make [...]


20 Impressive Sites Powered by Drupal, Joomla, Magento and Zen Cart

20-ethical-party-bags

Share Websites are no longer expensive and difficult things to create. The open source movement has given web users and web designers the tools they need to create sites for free, and the possibilities are almost limitless. Just take a look of some of these fantastic sites created using Drupal, Joomla, Magento and Zen Cart [...]


5 Articles to Help with Goals in Google Analytics

Share Thanks to a smashing article on six revisions about setting up goals in Google Analytics – we delved further into the subject and found these great 5 articles to help you get to grips with just the same.


50 Freely Available Professional Fonts For Your Designs

Share Being designers we usually need more than just the usual font collection. Many typefaces are made available online for free it can be very helpful for designers to build up their type arsenal. Of course many would argue that designers should avoid using free grungy typefaces and instead apply type treatment to existing and [...]


20 Free Grunge Like Fonts For Your Creative Projects

Share Everyone seems to be talking about grunge nowadays. Are you a fan of worn out and destroyed style aswell? If the answer is YES, I am sure you’ll enjoy this little collection of 20 free grunge fonts from fonts2u.com that I have built up below. I am sure few of them will become your [...]


Design Community Survey

Share Below is a questionnaire that will take you no more than 5 minutes to complete. What I hope to do is when enough have filled it out is make some insights into the design community and get my maths boffin friend to compile some lovely little pie charts and comparative graphs.


How do your organise yourself as a freelance designer? – Part 2

Share Hi all.. Welcome to Part 2 of  the first post: How do your organise yourself as a freelance designer? This is more of a search for ideas and methods than an informative article. No matter how often I tidy and plan ahead, my desk after about 2 weeks always seems to revert back to [...]


Graphic Designer Arguing With Client Video

Share Hi all, found this video in my travels of a graphic designers conversation with a client! Hilarious! Be warned Language is very strong in the video!


Aurora Borealis Typopgraphy Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial

Share I recently created this wallpaper for Lucidry an online inspirational, business, social media and creative professional website. I thought it would be great to share my process in a tutorial! You can download my version here. Hope you enjoy. Step 1 Create a new document that is the screen resolution of your PC/Laptop Screen [...]


5 Free Web Design Proposal Contracts

Share I recently wrote an article: what to include in a design project proposal. Which helped me think through the things I normal include in say a branding project. However, for the web its evident different things are involved. In my web travels I have found the following sample contracts and proposal examples – thought [...]


Freelancing From Home and Staying Productive

Share If you have chosen to work from and not from an office, then you are probably faced with the same problems that I am, most notable is the problem of staying productive! More experienced freelancers have probably long tamed the beasts that tempt us when working from home… how do you stay productive at [...]


Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 2 – Marketing

Share Welcome to the second installment of this series – Marketing. You can view the other parts here: Long Term Freelancing Success. Marketing is one of the key elements of any business and as a freelancer it should be a huge part of your strategy towards growth and success. So in this post I’m going [...]


Give Old Photos A Punchy Stylistic Feel – Photoshop Tutorial – with Video

Share I found a number of old photos and after scanning them in – they had a grainy finish and had lost the punch and impact they once had. So I devised this little process to give them their punch back! Hopefully its of use to yourself. You can follow along with the screenshots or [...]


5 Articles To Understanding Your Websites Bounce Rate

Share Understanding your website’s bounce rate can be the key between creating a more user friendly or profitable website. The 5 articles below should hopefully help you to do that: How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website Getting users engaged with your content can result with a sale, subscription, bookmark and [...]


Interview With Will Kay of OddKingdom – Becoming Your Brand

Share When first starting out in any of the creative arts as a freelancer or sole designer; marketing is one of the biggest concerns. Getting clients, letting people know that you exist. Many of us started out and drudged through the first year or so through referrals, family and friends and exhausting every contact we [...]


Factors To Consider When Pricing For A Project

Share One of the things I suffered from in the beginning when pricing clients is often forgetting to bill for all aspects of a project and thus half way through I was feeling cheated or clients were commenting on how remarkably low my prices where in comparison to other quotes they had received. We all [...]


5 Essential Books For Running A Successful Freelance Design Business

Share Christmas approaches as does the end of the year, below are 5 great gifts you can get yourself. These are books that I have personally read, so they definitely are receiving my full recommendation – full of tips and great answers towards running a successful business and making money from what you love doing! [...]


Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 1 – Dedication

Share Hi all, welcome to what I hope to be a series about some factors I think will be key to long term success..The first is to address your working discipline. Read many interviews of freelancers and a common answer to ‘what do you love about being a freelancer?’ – one of the expected answers [...]