7 Great Rip-offs—and How to Avoid Them! [Work Smarter] Almost all web developers find themselves chasing payments from certain clients in any given year. Some circumstances I’ve endured more often than others. In this article, I’ve identified seven of the most common ways web professionals fall into the payment trap, and suggest ways of overcoming these pitfalls. The Problematic Payment Equation (or Half + Half = Half) Common—and commonly frustrating—payment terms for site builders usually consist of this equation: half the total amount up-front, and the other half paid at the completion of the project. The trouble with these terms is that it’s often the client, rather than the developer, who determines when the project is approved and concluded. So the developer may have completed the whole project and presented it to the client for review, without having seen any money since the initial deposit months before.
Unless the client agrees that the site is complete, the developer is unable to send a final invoice for payment. Ultimate Guide To Grid-Based Web Design: Techniques and Tools - Nov 10 2009 Grid-based layouts are generally more aesthetically pleasing and balanced than those not based on grids. While there are definitely great designs out there that don’t use a grid-based layout, they are more difficult to create and often end up falling into some sort of loose grid structure anyway.
So why not just design based on a grid in the first place? This post offers up a complete guide to designing with grids. There’s plenty of basic information here, as well as tons of links to more in-depth information on specific aspects of grid-based design from other sites. The Basics of Grid Design Virtually any website you design should be based on a grid.
Basic Principles and Ideas Most grid systems are split up into either 9, 12, 16, or 20 columns. Many designers feel that grids are only appropriate for fixed-width layouts, but grids are versatile enough to be used in fluid layouts, too. Best Practices in Grid Design Use only enough columns as you need for your design. Fluid Grids. Premium WordPress Themes and Design Blog | WPswitch. Getting Clients: Approaching The Company - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement A defining factor in any freelancer or agency’s success in gaining new business is their ability to market their skills effectively. In this three-part series, we will explore ways in which designers can strategically promote themselves to get new clients. Securing new business by approaching companies can be a very challenging process, full of pitfalls. Here, we will look at 10 steps to impressing potential clients and avoiding the most common mistakes.
Step One: Be Focused A focused approach to work is paramount for success. Freelancers often take on every job opportunity that presents itself. IndustryBy specializing in a particular industry, such as health care or retail, you build a portfolio of relevant experience. Step Two: Be Insightful Once you have established the kind of organizations you would like to work with, learn how their businesses work.
Who do they work with? Step Three: Be Personal The power of face-to-face contact should not be underestimated. Conclusion. The 4 Key Elements of Successful Ad Copy. 10 Awesome Techniques and Examples of Animation with jQuery. jQuery can pretty much do anything you can think of. All you need is a creative imagination and some time to learn the simple and intuitive API. In this article, we share with you some innovative uses of jQuery in animating web design elements. You’ll read about some interesting techniques, tutorials, and examples that will show you how to create similar effects on your own websites and web apps. 1.
Puffing Smoke Effect in jQuery This example by Dutch web developer Gaya Kessler features an impressive animation effect of cartoonish smoke emanating from factory smoke stacks. Live Demo: Smoke Effect 2. Sam Dunn of the web development duo, Build Internet, wrote a tutorial on how to create an animated landscape using transparent PNG images. Live Demo: Animated Postcard 3. In this tutorial, you will learn how to animate image elements in a smooth and fluid manner. Live Demo: Realistic Hover Effect 4. Live Demo: youlove.us (web page header) 5. 6. jQuery Blend 7. Live Demo: Scrolling Clouds 8. 9. 10. Realistic Hover Effect With jQuery — Adrian Pelletier. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) & Internet Marketing - Firs. Alastaire Allday - Creative Communication.
Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices « Smashing M. Advertisement Call to action in web design — and in user experience (UX) in particular — is a term used for elements in a web page that solicit an action from the user. The most popular manifestation of call to action in web interfaces comes in the form of clickable buttons that when clicked, perform an action (e.g. "Buy this now! ") or lead to a web page with additional information (e.g. How can we create effective call to action buttons that grab the user’s attention and entice them to click? Best Practices for Effective Call to Action Buttons Designing call to action buttons into web interfaces requires some forethought and planning; it has to be part of your prototyping and information architecture processes in order for them to work well.
Draw user attention with size In web pages, the size of an element relative to its surrounding elements indicates its importance: the larger the element is, the more important it is. Size of call to action button versus surrounding elements. Blogging For Freelancers – Start Now Guide | Hi, I'm Grace.
Black business card - Design Templates - GraphicRiver. Elegant Gold Business Card - Design Templates - GraphicRiver. Great Portfolio! One Page Portfolio. Understanding The Concept Of Search Engine Marketing The concept of search engine marketing is slightly different from traditional marketing. A business that wants to take advantage of marketing potential of search engines need to understand various techniques used for this purpose. Marketing for search engines involves a combination of different types of marketing, advertising and optimization methods.
Even website optimization is placed under this category. In simple terms, any type of marketing, promotion and advertising that can be noticed by search engine bots can be placed in this category. It is already a known fact that people nowadays first search a product or service through the search engine before buying. Most of them do not search more than the first few links that appear in the search result. Website owners need to increase traffic to their site using various traffic generation methods. Read More Choosing Between CSS And Flash What is CSS? Advantages of CSS What is Flash? How To Be a Consultant, a freelancer or an independent contracto. This is a series of pages that guide you through the creation and operation of a successful consulting business. I’ve written this after running a fairly successful consultancy business in the mid-90’s and reviving this business in 2008. I’m primarily active in software, so some of the things in here will be skewed in that direction, but I’ll do my best to keep it general, and to make it ‘location independent’.
The reason I wrote this up is because on the Hacker News forum people will post questions regarding freelancing, and given the nature of the medium it is not always feasible to put all the time and effort into writing an answer as good as possible. So, this is dedicated to all those HN’ers that help me with my questions, I hope this balanced the scales a bit. This book assumes several things: that you have a skill that this skill is marketable that you are willing to work reasonably hard that you have some self discipline You will also make a half decent living. 10 Wonderful Letterpress Type Tutorials. The letterpress type treatment (or as I call it, inset text treatment) can be easily done in Photoshop. In this article, you’ll find a collection of tutorials from various parts of the web that will teach you how to create this awesome text effect using common graphics applications (and a couple using just CSS).
Check out my own tutorial here on Six Revisions called How to Create Inset Typography in Photoshop. You may also want to peruse the Beautiful Examples of Inset Typography in Web Design collection for design inspiration and usage examples. 1. The Line25 Web Design blog has a tutorial and showcase all-in-one article that features great examples of the text effect as well as a method for creating it in Photoshop. 2.
MyInkBlog, a great resource for graphic and web designers, regularly publishes awesome tutorials and one of them that features a see-through letterpress text effect. 3. Creating your text in Adobe Illustrator lends you flexibility in resizing it without loss in fidelity. Welcome / Indianapolis Web & Graphic Designer / Photographer. CSS: Design Out Of The Box. Are you tired of your typical columned and boxed layout? It is time to learn how to break out of the box and do something creative. In this post, I've collected some of the best examples that are designed out of the box.
I've also provided some quick CSS tips with demo files on how to break out of the box by creatively using background images and the CSS position property. Example 1: Huge Inc What really captured my attention on the Huge site is the header design. Additional Screencaps: 2 , 3 Example 2: Jason Santa Maria With the amount of effort and details that Jason input on his site, no doubt it is one of the best designer sites around. Additional Screencaps: 2 , 3 Example 3: A Brief Message Similar to Jason Santa Maria's website, each post on ABriefMessage.com features a different image and CSS stylesheet.
Additional Screencaps: 2 , 3 Example 4: Trent Walton TrentWalton.com puts the focus on the header, where each post displays a different background image and typesetting. Example 6: Fox. How to Create Inset Typography in Photoshop. By Jacob Gube In this beginning-level design tutorial, I’ll show you how to apply a beautiful and super-easy text treatment in Photoshop: the inset text effect. It’s also often called the letterpress effect because it looks similar to text created by a Letterpress printer. Final Result Here’s a preview of what we’re about to create. Creating the Photoshop document 1 Let’s start with the basics: setting up the Photoshop document. Open up Photoshop and create a new document (Ctrl + N).
Styling the Background Layer 2 We’ll add a Gradient Overlay layer style onto the default Background layer. 3 Double-click on the Background layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. 4 Double-click on the left Color Stop and enter the color value of a dark blue shade (#003471) which will be the color at the bottom of the canvas. 5 Lets give the background a light source from the top left corner of the canvas. 7 Set your Foreground color to white (#FFFFFF). We’re done! Online portfolio of freelance web designer Cristiana Bardeanu. How to Get Web Design Clients: Five Factors You Must Address - W. The first thing you notice when you become a freelance web designer is how quickly you also need to become a salesman. Web design clients do not come floating through the door, you have to go out and get them. And the second thing you notice when you become a freelance web designer is how darn hard this process can be.
In this post I am going to give you some crucial tips on how you can get a web design clients by addressing some extremely important factors. If you fail to communicate these issues to the potential client they will, undoubtedly, become uninterested. The very first thing you need to address is how your website is going to make that business more money. Money is all a small business cares about. The wonderful thing about selling a person a website is that you never have to lie. Here are some basic ways you can introduce them to the idea that a website will make a business money: Always bring it back to how this website is going to make them money.