Search Results For: event

Business / 16 Oct 2015

How to Hold a Meeting That Gets Everyone Excited About Design

The dreaded project kickoff meeting. It’s on your calendar. You can’t avoid it. But you can make it a more memorable event that helps generate creativity among the members of your team.

The start of every project should be marked with excitement and anticipation. It’s the time when you and your team get to learn about a new client or idea and really get to go back to the basics of brainstorming and idea generation. It can, and should, be one of the most important parts of a design project and it needs to be anything but boring.

Freelancing / 1 Jun 2015

The Importance of a “Leave-Behind” for Clients: Top Tips & Advice

As a freelancer, your name – or business name if you have one – is your brand. Just like with any other company, it takes marketing chops to make sure clients know about you, your services, and how to make contact if they are interested in working with you.

That’s where having a good leave behind comes in. Don’t have a good leave behind yet? Here’s everything you know to get started. (Bonus: This post is full of fun leave behind items from designer portfolios, make sure to click on the links and explore for even more inspiration.)

Inspiration / 14 May 2015

20 Design Quotes… and What They Can Inspire

Some days are just about inspiration. This is going to be one of those days. There are so many good ideas and thoughts and design practices out there that deserve to be shared.

So we have put together a roundup of 20 quotes that pertain to design or the creative process or the business itself as a conversation starter. This collection is from all over the world, from a wide range of sources and across various eras. Here are 20 great thoughts about design… and what they can inspire in each of us.

Business / 11 May 2015

Code Free Web Design With Webydo

Web design can sometimes be frustrating for those who are not fluent in HTML or JavaScript or other programming languages. This is especially true of responsive web design. Webydo is here to help.

The website building platform offers designers (and pretty much everyone) the opportunity to create a responsive website with a great design without knowing the first line of code. Without any technical knowledge, just about anyone can publish a website backed by a full content management system.

Inspiration / 28 Apr 2015

How to Design the Perfect Award or Certificate

Do you ever catch one of those oddball assignments in your design career? Creating a great award or certificate design is one of them. The piece seems like a small task, but has a long shelf life, and is of high value to the recipient, making it important to design well.

But how do you even design a good award? Where do you start? Here’s a primer that takes a look at a few of the most important things to consider with award and certificate design.

Graphics / 16 Feb 2015

6 Tips for Designing Signs and Billboards

Your next project assignment: designing a sign for an upcoming event. It will be displayed on billboards around town and printed on smaller yard signs as well. If you are already panicking at the idea, don’t worry — designing a sign is not much different than any other project.

The big difference is scale. It’s going to be a lot larger in size than what you might be used to. Other things to think about when designing signage are location, color, typography, contrast and material the sign will be printed on. Thinking about each of these factors in advance can make for a better sign design experience.

Graphics / 12 Feb 2015

How Color, Type and Space Can Impact Mood

Do you ever think about mood when you are designing? Mood has impact in two ways – the mood of the project itself and the mood of users. Together they create an experience that connects each user to the project.

While you can’t always account for the mood of users, or their good and bad days, you can create an aesthetic that emphasizes the right mood for your project. Three basic design techniques – color, typography and space – are key components for establishing the mood of a project.

Graphics / 21 Jan 2015

10 Tips for Designing Static Ads

Designing the perfect static ad is no easy feat. It might even be impossible. Designing ads can go against many of the things you think as a designer. Many companies want to cram as much information into a space as possible and many users put up roadblocks when it comes to viewing ads.

The catch is creating something that people want to interact with, despite the fact that it’s an ad. The advantage of a static ad is that is seems less obtrusive than some animated, audio or video options. They also have a classic style about them that makes designing fun. Here are 10 tips for creating an ad that people will look at, with some ads as they actually appear on popular websites.

Graphics / 3 Nov 2014

The Designer’s Guide to Visual Punctuation

Punctuation is more than just periods and exclamation points. In terms of design, punctuation can be anything that causes a reader or user to stop or pause. It can happen while reading text or as the eye moves from one element to another. These bits of visual punctuation are everywhere and are vital parts of any design concept.

The key elements of visual punctuation include common readable punctuation marks as well as space, lines, rules, icons and color.

Inspiration / 29 Sep 2014

Getting Started With Letterpress Printing

Have you ever picked up a printed work and taken a minute to admire the feel of it? You hold the paper and get a feel for the thickness and texture while noting the impressions of each letter? That is the beauty of letterpress. This style of printing presses the image into the paper in a technique that has a special feel and quality to it.

While letterpress looks and feels sophisticated, it is something that is an option for most designers working on print projects. You just need to find a printer in your area (or invest in letterpress machinery yourself) and understand the intricacies of preparing a design for this printing method.

Freelancing / 9 Sep 2014

Freelancing 101: How to Collaborate When You Work Alone

One of the biggest misconceptions of working as a freelancer is that it means working alone. It’s actually very much quite the opposite. How would you ever expect to do business if you don’t work with anyone?

The reality is the more people you work with, the more successful you are likely to be as a freelancer. And just like when working for a firm or agency, freelance designers should make a point to collaborate with others regularly. Here are 10 ways you can put your head together with other designers (or clients) to better get the job done.

Layouts / 18 Aug 2014

Designer’s Guide to Printing Book-Style Items

One of the most complex jobs you can take on as a designer is getting something ready for book-style printing. Not only will this type of project include a lot of pages, it can also come with options not available for other types of design projects and its own set of terms and lingo.

What are the terms you need to understand when getting something ready to be printed book-style? We’ve got the answers so you can tackle your first book-style or bound printing job.