How to Identify a Font

What is the font used for the title of Friends? How about the typeface of that old copy of Moby Dick you picked up at that garage sale? The back of your Starbucks pastry bag? And please tell me, how can you find the font on a worn out birthday card that your client wants you to replicate?

Graphic designers are consistently asked to use a client’s nameless favorite font. Thanks to the typeface renaissance spurred by increasingly fantastic font tools and talented foundries, the font identification game is getting harder by the minute. Unless you happen to be a first-class typeface aficionado, you probably aren’t going to be able to call the latestGothicsans serif, such as Avenir, Geogrotesque, or any of the approximately 100,000 other fonts available today, by name. (more…)

Read More

Increase Your Website’s Effectiveness with Confident Copy

Want to increase your website’s effectiveness? To have a higher conversion rate: more of your website’s visitors become subscribers, customers, members? You can increase the likelihood of that happening by having your message be more clear and confident. In other words: increase your website’s effectiveness with confident copy.

It might seem like forehead-slapping common sense, but a lot of web designers, freelancers, and entrepreneurs get caught up in design tweaks, form designs, and other details that don’t matter nearly as much as simply being more confident with their message. By simply having more confident copy, you can increase the likelihood of that next visitor converting into a new subscriber, customer, or member. (more…)

Read More

Simple Flow: Minimalism in Web Design

There are so many techniques when it comes to web design, it’s hard to get a full grasp on all of them. Minimalism is one of the few which stand out from the crowd in a seemingly ubiquitous flow. The trend follows the concept of keeping things simple and easy to work with.

Removing clutter from pages helps users focus their attention on the things that really matter. Page content, images, contact information, and the presentation hierarchy that removes gradients and web 2.0 distractions. Check out a few of the ideas below in regards to minimalistic designs and see how you can incorporate these into your own projects.

(more…)

Read More

Bing vs Google: A Usability Face-Off

We all know Google and Bing, and probably use one or both of them on more or less a daily basis. Search results are generally the defining factor that makes us have a good experience, and I suspect most of us don’t give too much consideration to the usability of the services.

However, with hundreds of millions of people using both of the services each and every day, even subtle changes in the usability of the two could add or shave off huge amounts of time for the two, and each small change can lead to a more enjoyable, more usable experience.

(more…)

Read More

Must Know Usability Tips for Web Designers

The hot topic in design news is all about usability. Developers must concern themselves with properly functioning interfaces and applications via the web. However as designers we must tackle projects from a different angle, trying to design beautiful webpages which also run smoothly from a user’s standpoint.

It’s not to say these ideas haven’t been around over the past few years. It just so happens that recently the web has undergone a paradigm shift and we’re entering a powerful new information era.

(more…)

Read More

3 Simple Ways to Get Paid More by Clients

As freelancers, we all want to make more money. But freelancing doesn’t scale, so there’s always a ceiling. There’s a limit as to how many clients you can take on, right? So how do you make more money, if you can’t or don’t want to take on more clients? Well, if you’re better than average in what you do and can put in just a little bit of extra effort, you can get paid more by clients. (more…)

Read More

Designing Typography for the Modern Web

As web designers, it is our job to grow with the trends of the Internet. As new technology emerges, it’s our position to jump on board and see where it can take us. This includes trends all over the web, typography being a major player.

Many designers don’t consider type as a field of interest or focus. Ironically, typography is possibly one of the most important parts of our dynamic web. It helps deliver a website’s content to users from all over the world and it truly is an art to study.

(more…)

Read More

How to Promote Your Design Business on the Cheap

Ah … the life of a freelancer. It’s not enough that you’re creative and technically savvy. No, you have to be a clever businessperson as well. No matter how talented you are, when starting out you probably won’t get clients unless you pound the pavement for them. But you likely don’t have the time or money to engage in any sophisticated advertising campaign. Fortunately, these days there are plenty of ways to market your business for little to no cash. (more…)

Read More

A Beginner’s Guide To Website Copywriting

When writing for the Web, writers should always keep one analogy in mind: the Internet is a jungle and Web users are information foragers within it. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen championed this comparison based on his studies that found that the majority of Internet users only scan websites in their quest to find useful information as quick as possible. According to Nielsen, the success of website writing depends primarily on conciseness, scan-ability and objectivity. But these aren’t the only guidelines to follow to make your writing successful on the web. (more…)

Read More

Five Goals to Strive for with Every Site You Design

Goals are important to have in life. They are especially important for website design, because without any goals, you have nothing to shoot for in the end and nothing to measure your success by. Goals help designers focus on the important things and not lose sight of what you want in the end; goals are what help designers deliver outstanding sites every time. (more…)

Read More