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As a freelancer, your role can often be that of a customer service professional as much as a designer. If you want to keep clients coming back for more, you must create a competitive advantage for yourself through building strong client relationships.
Below you’ll find ten ways to help you make your clients think of you as their absolute best option for design work.
Making your website accessible to everyone is not only a moral duty, it’s a legal obligation. Many organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, have been sued for not making their websites accessible enough. With 50 million Americans suffering from some disability or other, improving your site’s accessibility makes clear commercial sense too.
Congratulations to Grant Russell and Francesco, the winners of a 1 Year Reseller Hosting Package! You’ll be receiving emails to confirm, enjoy your prizes! A big thanks to everyone who entered, check back soon for more giveaways.
We are proud to announce that today’s competition is one of our biggest to date. It’s a worth a whopping £300 (Approx. $458) per prize! And we’ll pick not just one but two winners this go around.
Read on to find out how you can win a One Year Reseller Hosting Package from Heart Internet!
In design, the simplest of options are often among the best. Using a photographic background is an easy way to make your site beautifully eye-catching. Below you’ll find 30 examples of sites from all over the world using strong photographic elements as background pieces. Some use pure photography while others mix in illustrations, Photoshop effects, and text. Use these as a leaping point for your own ideas the next time you need a fresh design.
The advancement of web technology has led to some incredibly impressive improvements in online application interface design. Below we’ll look at 20 web apps that aren’t only extremely useful, but indisputably attractive as well. I’ve subdivided the applications into four categories: Design, Business, Productivity and Miscellaneous.
Protecting your intellectual property has always been a difficult task and the Internet has only served to complicate matters. The web has become an unoriginal designer’s one stop shop for endless material to shamelessly ripoff. Today we’ll take a look into some of the reasons design theft is so rampant online and explore some answers to the essential question of what to do if someone steals your design. A big thanks to Von Glitschka for providing much of the content and advice seen below!
For many developers, launching a site is not the end of the design process. To continually improve the success of their design, these developers turn to A/B testing. This relatively simple process can teach you loads about what your users are looking for as well as what they ignore or find unimportant.
Today we’ll take a quick look at what A/B testing is, the benefits of implementing it, and some tools to get you going.
This post began purely as a showcase of well-designed band websites. Naturally, to begin my search I opened up my iTunes library and Safari and began checking out the sites of the bands in my collection. What I discovered shocked me; nearly every site I came across was profoundly lackluster or altogether horrid. I’m at a loss as to why record companies, who spend countless dollars promoting their big money makers, seem to be incapable of finding web designers that match the remarkable talent of their artists.
At this point the nature of the article changed entirely. Due to the wealth of ugly sites to choose from, today we’ll examine some of the reasons I think the band website industry really needs to step up and make some major changes. We’ll conclude by analyzing some examples to follow if you want to create a band site that doesn’t suck.
Designing out in the open can be quite intimidating.
You’re basically swinging the doors open wide and hanging up a huge sign that says “Harsh Criticism Wanted.” However, the benefits of utilizing this particularly transparent method of design can often outweigh the grievances.
Today we’ll look at seven reasons to consider designing your next project in the open.
Congratulations to @torstennn, the winner of our LittleSnapper competition! We hope you enjoy the free software. Thanks for entering everyone, check back soon for more competitions!
This week’s giveaway includes the best Mac application around for cataloging screenshots and online inspiration.
Read on to find out how you can win a copy of the amazing LittleSnapper from RealMac Software (a $35 value!).
Due to the success stories of mega blogs like Smashing Magazine, the professional blogging world has really exploded in recent years. There is a thriving network of free content online spanning nearly every hobby or profession you can imagine. Driving virtually all of these sites (or at least those focused on profitability) is one thing: ad revenue. Consistent and rewarding ad revenue is the holy grail among the blogging world.
Knowing when and how to integrate ads into your site can be quite difficult. Today we’ll look at some tips to help you know if the time is right for you to jump into the world of advertising and what your options are for doing so.
Brainstorming can either be a creative gold mine or a time wasting disaster.
Brainstorming is often discussed in relation to a business environment. In college, nearly every one of my business school textbooks had an entire chapter dedicated to the concept. Though creative brainstorming is in many ways a different beast due to its visual nature, many of the same concepts apply.
Today we’ll take a look at ten tips to consider before you pull your creative team into a brainstorming session. When applied properly, they can drastically increase productivity and quality of results.