Articles - Page 219

Browse hundreds of articles, tips, and inspiring design collections. Find helpful design advice, or the perfect resource for your next project.

Business / 13 Dec 2010

How to Cut the Crap and Actually Be Productive as a Creative Person

Today we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite subject: productivity. More importantly, we’ll discuss why your current system doesn’t work, why traditional company structures suck and how to wrangle your creative brain into submission.

If you’ve been waiting for an eye-opening discussion into what’s really wrong with your workflow and why your $50 todo list app isn’t fixing it, this is your lucky day.

Business / 10 Dec 2010

Freelancer or FTE? 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Deciding

As a designer, you have a much higher likelihood of confronting the freelancer vs. full-time employee dilemma than most people. No matter which side you’re currently on or have been on before, there are several key questions that you should ask yourself before deciding where you fit in best.

Below we’ll take a look at ten such questions that you can use to assess your career aspirations and long-term goals. We’ll also offer tons of advice along the way about how to interpret your answers to each question.

Graphics / 9 Dec 2010

Design a Fun Baby Announcement Site in Photoshop

Designing a baby-centric site isn’t an easy task, especially for people like myself who usually favor masculine themes, colors and textures in their designs. Today we’ll tackle this task head on by creating a fun and unique baby announcement site that’s far from typical.

Feel free to follow along and be sure to download the PSD so you can have a look around or even use it in your own site.

Inspiration / 8 Dec 2010

Trends for Creating Extravagant Website Templates

Website template designs are very popular among modern web developers. Working within a template design can save boatloads of time when under the deadline crunch. Not only this but most source code is created within HTML5/CSS standards and allows for simple customizations.

There are a few techniques which can be utilized to develop the best templates. Designers and developers alike frequently create templates and offer them for free download to the community. Color theory, grid design, layout structure, and content development all play key roles in the creation process. Check out some of the tips below and see how you could integrate these ideas into your work.

Typography / 8 Dec 2010

12 Stylish and Free Slab Serif Fonts

Slab serif fonts are quite stylish and attractive and are versatile enough to be used in many different contexts. They’re also currently very popular among web designers everywhere.

If you’ve been wondering where other designers are snagging these great slab serifs, look no further than the collection of twelve free fonts below.

Business / 6 Dec 2010

12 Brilliant Direct Marketing Pieces You Have to See

Direct marketing is all about connecting with customers in a real way. To accomplish this effectively, you often have to come up with some crazy unique and inventive ideas. The next time you’re in a meeting where people are ideating about direct marketing ideas, use these as inspiration to wow the group!

All of the examples below are from Ads Of the World, an excellent online source for all kinds of real and conceptual advertising and marketing examples. This is a truly invaluable inspirational resource for anyone involved with printed marketing deisgn.

Business / 3 Dec 2010

5 Ideas for Earning Money Beyond Web Design

Freelancing is an interesting profession. The flow of work is referred to by many as “feast and famine,” meaning that you can generally expect periods of complete overload followed by extended periods of little to no work at all.

With much of the world still attempting to rally from a global economic crisis, many freelancers have taken a serious hit or have even been forced to give up their ventures altogether. Today we’ll go over a few ideas for opening up your horizons and finding sources of income outside of web design.

Graphics / 2 Dec 2010

Design a Rockin’ Band Website

Earlier this year, we put out an article outlining 5 Reasons Band Websites Suck. Today we’re going to follow up that post by creating a band web page design that steers clear of the problems encountered by most sites in this category.

We’ll create the mockup in Photoshop and learn about a few features as well as some solid design theory along the way. Let’s get started!

Business / 1 Dec 2010

Productivity Management Tips for Freelance Designers

Working in freelance web design is like nothing else in the world. You are able to set your own hours, spend all day working to create beautiful designs and can even practice some of your skills. From the outside this seems like the artist’s dream job, though there are a few downfalls.

The largest is, quite blatantly, lack of drive and interest in work. Over time you can become burnt out from so much design work and lose focus on projects. I’ve gone over a few productivity tips below which will help novice and professional alike.

Business / 26 Nov 2010

Building Your First Professional Portfolio: Thoughts and Considerations

After graduating from college, how you present yourself to the job market can have a huge impact on your future career. If you’re sending potential employers to a portfolio website, you want to make doubly sure that you’re putting your best foot forward.

Today we’ll be looking at a real portfolio site and trying to see how we can improve upon not so much the design but the strategy in place to leverage the resource. You can use these lessons to analyze your own portfolio site and gauge whether or not you need to make any changes.

Business / 25 Nov 2010

20 Outstanding Tools to Maximize Your Time

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m off stuffing my face with copious amounts of poultry and mashed potatoes but I planned ahead so that you don’t have to miss out on your daily dose of Design Shack!

If you’re like me, the holidays drastically cut in to your work time. You don’t get the luxury of having less to do, only less time to do it! If this sounds like you, check out the 20 amazing tools below to help maximize your time. Dedicating yourself to using just a few of these will boost your productivity levels to an all-time high.