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Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category
Thinking About Rebranding
Since I’ve started freelancing and set up this website my skills and knowledge of web design have changed drastically. I’ve had time to look over other web designers websites and have been envious of there designs. Now whenever I look at my website there are so many things that I want to change but just haven’t had the time to do. I think it’s time to set aside some time for myself and my brand and work on a new design for my website, brand new logo, and everything else that comes along with it.
Problems with my current brand
Logo – I used to love my logo, now not so much. I’m not quite sure what’s happened from then till now, but I think I’m looking for something a little simpler.
Website isn’t dynamic – Since I created my current website my skill set has increased greatly. A few things that I’ve added to my belt is some php, wordpress as cms, and a bit of jquery. I want to create a dynamic website using these new found tools.
More social integration – Right now my website is behind a few years mainly because it doesn’t have any kind of social integration i.e. twitter, facebook, digg, and all those others. I use these things but don’t have a way for people to know about them when they visit my website.
Overall visual appeal – My website right now is too dark, I want to get away from that with my new design. I want to make it look more professional but also let it show more of my personality, maybe showcase a bit of my illustration skills.
Inspiration
I’ve mentioned that I’ve been inspired by a few designers websites, so here they are:
After seeing these don’t you want to redesign your website!?
Free Goodreads Icon Pack
I frequent Goodreads a lot it’s a great social network where I can go and talk about books with the great community that’s there and also find out about new books.
I’ve been designing a lot of websites for authors that are on goodreads and one thing that I always like to do is show more social networking on their websites. I haven’t found any good icons for goodreads so I made some. I hope you enjoy them!
Odd Jobs for Web Designers: Easy Ways to Make a Quick Buck
As web designers we’d like to be doing web design work ALL the time but that’s just not the case. Here are some ways to make some extra money as a web designer:
Sell Stock
Everyone now a days owns a pretty decent camera and can take nice pictures and upload them fast. Instead of having them sit on your computer collecting e-dust (?) why not see if any one of the image stock sites will take them. Some of them have fairly high standards but some of them don’t. Basically though if you know the rule of thirds anyone can make a nice stock photo. It’s nice to be able to upload a photo, forget about it and be able to make some money on it.
Design/Sell T-shirts and Other Stuff
Web design is a very creative field of work but sometimes you just want to design something that you like and not have to worry about what your clients think so If you’re feeling a bit more creative you can design t-shirts. There are a couple options, you can enter design contests and win prizes like on threadless or you can design anything you want and put it out there for sale and make money off of commission like on zazzle.
Design/Sell Templates
We are web designers so I’m sure you, as I do, have some unfinished projects lying around or designs that didn’t make it to the cutting board. Why not try to sell some of those. You’ll have to make it more user friendly (or not) but it’s a good way to make some cash out of those unfinished projects. In my opinion it’s not worth it to create templates from scratch and sell them to these places because if you think about it I’d sell a template for say $750 but they will sell it for $10 plus you usually only get a percentage of that let’s say it’s %60 so really you are getting $6 per each one sold so you’d have to sell 125 templates to make up for what you’d sell normally. Just my opinion though.
Design/Sell Fonts
This is something you can do but you have to have a bit of a different skill set to do this. Meaning you’ll need to learn a couple of new things but if you’re into typography this can be lucrative for you.
Search Job Boards
Job boards are not only a decent way to get new web design clients but also to do odds and ends jobs. Some easy quick ways to make a buck through job boards are:
- ebook formatting
- banner design
- simple website fixes
- button design
- photo touch up
- and much more
Here are some job boards that I frequent:
My Favorite Website This Week
This is one of the most useful generators I’ve come across recently. Finally a generator that will create CSS sprites automatically, no more loading images in photoshop and piecing them together (although I love photoshop). This makes it quick and painless to reduce the number of http requests on the page for smaller images.
Question for the Freelance Designer World
I’ve been trying to figure this out, maybe somebody can help me.
For most freelance web designers designing comes easy. That’s what we’re here for…to design! It would be nice if that was all we had to do, but it’s not. Sure we get to be our own bosses but we also have to be entrepreneurs, accountants and much much more.
An important aspect of freelancing is deciding how much to charge for web design. Here’s my question:
Is it okay to charge differently depending on who wants your services?
Let me explain. Say I charge $30 per hour on average (I don’t actually charge by the hour buy I make sure it comes out to that) because I’ve calculated that’s how much I need to live off of plus expenses. Is it okay to charge more for bigger companies and less for say an individual? Or should I keep it a flat rate?
My moral standing on this is that for most individuals this might be breaking their wallet where as it won’t for a big company. But another factor in this would be that most design work comes from referrals from past jobs. Individuals know other individuals. Big companies know other big companies.
So more specifically my question is should I change my rates depending on the wallet of the client in hopes of any work and pick and choose or should I keep my rates at a comfortable level and potentially not get a lot of work?
Discuss.
My Favorite Website this Week
DesignBump:
Just found this website this week that lets designers submit your articles and “bump” them up if they like them. I believe this has been the thing behind my boost in traffic, so I’ll be continuing to use it to get myself out there.
My Beautiful Workspace
Since I don’t have much time to write today. I thought I’d show off my workspace. As a freelance web designer that works from home it’s always pertinent to have your own quiet workspace. Currently mine is in my dining room, and my husband often plays WOW on the PC, forgets that I’m in the room working and yells at the screen. But currently it’s the cheapest workspace I can afford right now. As you can see I’ve already got the best computers, so I couldn’t afford an office if I tried.
Oh yes, it comes with a cat too!
Equipment:
Micro Velocity PC with LG screen Windows 7 OS
uses: Gaming, IE web design troubleshooting
Dell Laptop with Linux OS
uses: Some serious programing!
iMac with Leopard OSX and Wacom tablet
uses: All my designing goes on here along with web surfing.
Oh yes, that poster in the background..I’m not supposed to talk about it. :)
I love my set up. I get a good couple hours of it to myself while my husband is at work as long as my cat isn’t sitting on the keyboard that I’m using (she has to use the one I’m at, seriously?)
So what does your workspace look like?
20 Amazing CSS Resources and Time Savers
Here are a few CSS resources and time savers that I find really helpful.
CSS Inspiration
For those days when you can’t quite figure out what you want to do, it’s nice to look at other people’s work and who knows what will trigger your muse! Just be careful not to be a copy cat.
Web Tricks that I’ve Learned Today
On my adventures through Web Design I often find myself stuck on certain things and how to do them. Thanks to the world wide web and it’s many many blogs often a search or two on the great Google will help me figure things out.
Here’s a few that have helped me out today:
How to Add Twitter to your blog (step-by-step)
This one was great! I hate the clunky look of the widget twitter generates for you and wanted a simple way to add / customize it for a website. This is so simple, two plugs and you’re done.
I was having trouble figuring out how to have double quote image to line up with text. This tutorial provided an easy fix to my hour of frustration.
IE Conditional Comments
So you’ve created this beautiful design and it works in the most up to date browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome) and then you look at that little runt in the family IE and your design looks like it’s been made by a 12 year old. You can’t just ignore it because 80% of your clientele use IE (Why do they still use it? Don’t ask.) That’s where IE conditional comments come in.
IE conditional comments are a way to selectively “comment out” any portion of your page in a way that only IE can interpret or the other way around.
Here’s a general example of what you would see in your code:
<!–[if (conditional) IE (version)]>
comments here
<![endif]–>
Conditional variables:
! The “not” operator.
lt The “less than” operator.
lte The “less than or equal to” operator.
gt The “greater than” operator.
gte The “greater than or equal to” operator
example:
<!–[if lt IE 7]>
<link href=”style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<![endif]–>
In this example style.css would be used on any browser less than IE7.
Filed under: Web Design, tutorials by Afarr
Tags: code, comments, conditional comments, IE, if, Internet Explorer
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