Tasks That Your Small Business Shouldn’t Try Yourself Unless You’re An Expert
Throughout the business world, there are things that a lot of business owners are tackling on their own that they probably should not be trying to accomplish. There are several different tasks, namely marketing, that shouldn’t be done without prior expertise. Of course, there are some small business owners that are adept in marketing their own business, but most are not. In instances where you’re not an expert in Internet marketing, you should probably look into hiring an expert. An example of this would be hiring a PPC management agency...
read moreTips for Working with Clients
Graphic designers must incorporate collaboration into all of their projects. While the graphic designer is an important entity in the equation, they cannot take the lead and produce something that goes against the desires of their client. They have to discuss the project with their client until they can determine their vision. It is only then that they can satisfactorily complete the project for which they are assigned. Before the current age of convenience, graphic designers used the telephone to communicate with their clients. The telephone...
read moreHunting Hidden Treasure on Dell’s Website
Dell wants you to join their Treasure Hunt and follow the clues to win a new Dell XPS 15z laptop. You can start your search by visiting the Dell laptop page to find the first active clue. There are a total of seven clues altogether, and the first person to reach the end of the hunt and Tweet or blog the correct location of the XPS 15z landing page on Dell.com will be the lucky winner. That’s not all, however. Dell will also be giving away ten gift certificates worth $499 that can be used toward any Dell purchase of $500 or more. To enter,...
read moreThe Structure of a CSS box-shadow
As you can see with the first shadow, we’re setting it to inset so the shadow appears inside our element. To create the shadow outside our element, you need to omit inset all together. Nothing needs to take it’s place as an outside shadow is the default. The x-offset tells the browser how far to move the shadow horizontally and the y-offset vertically just as you’re used to doing with background image positioning. The value which follows that however, gives you control over the blur of the shadow. For our button we’re creating a...
read moreA Fun Approach To Creating More Successful Websites
Meomi.com is a site that goes all out in adding fun to their website experience. The website’s entire design is filled with fun characters that move and respond as you scroll over them. The overall experience is one filled with discovery and delight as you explore. I am especially fond of the website’s footer and what lurks behind those trees (go and see for yourself). I also love the fact that as busy as the site is, I quickly knew what it was about due to the tagline placed towards the top of the page — “A little design studio...
read moreTips for Designing a Functional House
It’s amazing how apartments with standard layout can take a totally different look when the homeowner’s needs are taken into consideration during apartment renovation. A skilled architect can make every usable space work for the family by strategically planning rooms in consideration of every family member’s unique needs. A functional house must be designed to increase activity efficiency of the home dwellers instead of homeowners adapting to the existing layout and design of the house. Even tight spaces must be designed to...
read moreFinding Good Google Fonts
Webfonts services like Typekit are great, but for a lot of cases they’re just not practical. For example, if you’re developing a WordPress theme, you can’t ask potential buyers to buy a monthly subscription, and you can’t bundle a font with the theme either unless it’s free. For those cases, Google’s Webfonts service remains the only way to use non-standard fonts in your designs. By the way, this post was inspired by Matthew Butterick’s own critical look at Google Web Fonts. Matthew makes some good points, but overall...
read moreDesigning Promotional Flyers That Stay Out of the Trash
Small and home based business owners have three main avenues to promote themselves. There is face-to-face contact, word of mouth and the printed piece of paper, otherwise known as the flyer. Anything beyond these three promotional methods is usually extremely expensive and probably unobtainable. The only advertising information that the business itself has full control over is its flyers. For this reason, the promotional flyer design must be effective. In reality, the quality of the design for the flyer could make the difference between a...
read moreHow Merchandising Can Boost Your Brand
Merchandising can be a challenging piece of the branding puzzle, particularly if your business doesn’t seem to be a perfect fit for using this branding strategy. For example, you sell… hot tubs… should you even bother with some type of brand merchandising? If so, where do you start and how can it actually strengthen your brand, and do you need an interactive agency to guide and direct the effort? Let me clarify the context of this article. We’re not talking about improving your merchandising methods if merchandising or retailing is...
read moreGraphic Design Trends
Everything inside the design world is permanently changing, evolving and adapting into new ways of expression and communication looking to satisfy the new consuming needs and set innovative exchanging channels. 2010 made a huge closure for the final year of the first XXI century decade, we witnessed the rising of tablets (iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tablet among others), the demise of Internet Explorer 6 and the absurd fanaticism towards Flash (though it’s losing a lot of fans), which is going to be slowly replaced by HTML5 (we’re not saying...
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