Viewing Archive for: April 2009

Myspace vs Facebook: Is Myspace Still Relevant?

It seems like it was just yesterday when Myspace was the rave. Users could customize their own backgrounds, add music and videos and write on each others’ pages. Yet with the rapid growth of Facebook and now Twitter, it seems that Myspace has just been left in the dust. This begs the question, is Myspace still relevant? Should you even consider deleting your Myspace account?  Like all social networking sites and especially new startups, Myspace has come up against some bumps in the road, including... 

15 Places to Find Awesome Free Photoshop Brush Sets

Even the best of us creative types struggle with what I like to call “designer’s block,” staring at a blank canvas in your favorite graphics editing program for hours. It can be downright difficult to find inspiration when starting a design from scratch. I have often found that one great source of inspiration are Photoshop brush sets. Depending on the type of website, I might choose to create my design based on a set of grunge brushes. Or for a more artistic website, I could choose... 

5 Ways to Advertise without a Budget

You’ve decided to go into business for yourself as a freelancer. You have your business idea, your preferred niche, and some contacts and potential clients. How do you get new clients without paying a lot for advertising? Here are five tips for advertising without a budget:  Read More →

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap!

Whether you’re designing an artistic website or searching for images to post on your blog, sites that carry not only free but awesome stock photos may very well come in handy. Utilizing the correct set of photos for any project is key, especially if you’re designing an ad for a client, you should always put in your best effort as well as the best images you can find fit for the job. Many of the designers I’ve come across like to download most of their images from 2-3 of the largest... 

Eye for Travel’s Social Media Strategies

I recently had the opportunity to go to Eye for Travel’s Social Media Strategies Conference in San Francisco (there’s another one coming up in June). The conference featured presentations from companies that included Disney, Priceline, Linkedin, Southwest Air, TripAdvisor, Bebo and more. Although the conference focused primarily on travel, it included social media strategies that everyone could take advantage of. The two-day event showed that there are many people who are positively using... 

Easy Keys to Great Graphics in PowerPoint

PowerPoint is all about making information interesting — and visuals have to do a lot of the heavy lifting.  So incorporating graphics is one of the most important aspects of presentation development. Creating a great graphic is the result of two obvious steps, plus one that people often forget . . . 1.  Make it or find it 2.  Insert it AND 3.  Polish it! Step 1 is outside the scope of this tutorial.  But choosing the right images is crucial to success, so here are a few reminders:  Read More →

How to Install a WordPress Blog Using Fantastico

So you’ve heard all the buzz about WordPress, probably have some friends that use it and sing its praises and now you want to give it a spin for yourself. All you have to do is sign up and you’re ready to go with your WordPress blog, right? Well, not exactly. Some blog platforms like Blogspot, are really easy to sign up and start blogging because they have taken out the work of having users host the blogs. This makes it easy for the user, and Wordpress.com offers this type of simple,... 

15 Places to Find Great Fonts

Free fonts are used in a wide variety of areas such as web design, graphic design, print based work and more. They can come in very handy at times when you’re caught between the desire to free yourself from the stock fonts your PC arrives with. The art of creative font usage is called Typography. Whether you’re creating a website, blog, business card, flyer or illustration, you can use fonts to artistically embed creativity into your design. There are sites that are gorgeous even without... 

Get Motion-Vated! Animate PowerPoint Charts

So, you’ve worked hard to create an interesting, informative PowerPoint show. It looks good! Your presentation is well-organized, visually effective, and nicely paced. But on presentation day, some people in the audience are still looking at their watches, staring out the window, or sneaking in some email responses. What’s missing? Maybe it’s motion. Humans are actually programmed to pay attention when something moves, in case it might be something fierce. So take advantage of that fact... 

Writing a Query in Four Easy Steps

Suppose you have a project in mind for a (potential) client but no current contract with them. Short of waiting for them to contact you, what can you do? Write a query. A query is a question. Based on this, a query letter is a business letter asking someone to let you work for them. You can use the SLAP method of four steps to writing a query:  Read More →

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