10 Gift Ideas for Designers — Most Under $50

If you have friends or family who are designers, here's a list of gift ideas they would love to get. (Ahem. I know I would.)

My List of Useful Graphic Design Sites

Over the years I've developed a modest list of websites I use on a daily basis. They help me with my graphic design work and with my skills. In this article I wanted to share this list with you, hoping it would be helpful in your work. Let me know if you find this helpful, or if something else would be more helpful.

4 Strategies to Use When A Client Gives You Crappy Art

One time a client of mine gave me a logo he pulled from his website and placed in Microsoft Word. Since it was for a print piece, I asked him not to embed it in Word, but rather give me the original high-resolution logo itself — preferably a vector EPS file, if he had it. The client quickly got back to me with an EPS file that had the same low-res raster image blown up and embedded within it. Thinking he was helping me, he just resaved the same low-res raster logo as an EPS file himself. It looked horrible.

Organizing Photoshop Files

Last time I talked about how you can organize computer folders to work more efficiently.

Here is a great resource I've referred to often for organizing Photoshop files and naming conventions. Make sure to bookmark this:

Photoshop Etiquette

How to Design HTML Email: 5 Steps to a Good Beginning

I can understand why marketers really love email so much. Research has shown that revenue from email has increased proportionately by 28% in one year, and companies are attributing 23% of their total sales to email marketing, compared to 18% in 2013. It's a low-cost and effective marketing tool. So, over the last few years I've picked up a few good pointers from other HTML email designers and marketing experts that I've used in my process. And over this time I've been able to hone my process.

Back to School Ideas for Designers

It’s that time of year again where everybody is returning to classes or have kids in school. By this time everyone is in full swing here in the U.S. This is a great time to consider upping our design skills and education. Here are few ideas:

4 Good Slideshows About Color in Design

Here are a few SlideShare slideshows about color that I like. Hope you do too:

The Power of Color in Branding from dezinegirl creative studio

Color For Dummies from ade chrisnadhi

Design - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly! from Ethinos Digital Marketing

CSS3 Colors from Russ Weakley

5 Great Sites for Design Inspiration

Every now and then I scour the web to get inspired by good design. And there are plenty of places to get inspired. But I wanted to share a few that I find pretty valuable and useful. What makes them great go-to resources is that they have good search-ability, constantly

3 Ways to Grow as a Designer

In some careers the key to professional growth can be as simple as education, experience, and advancement. But graphic designers are a different breed in the sense that we really want to be better designers and produce better work.

So here are 3 ways to grow in these ways:

1. Read all sorts of books and articles

My first recommendation are books and articles about the history of design. You will gain a greater appreciation of how design has evolved and been influenced by historical events and advances in media. And, of course, read articles about contemporary design trends. So, you can keep abreast of what is current, what is becoming cliché, and what is becoming mainstream.

5 Tips on Selecting Fonts for a Design

Recently I came across an interesting question by a fellow designer. "What font [should I] use in [an] annual booklet design?" This was a good question because there's more to selecting a font than just picking something cool. Here are 5 tips to remember

How to Build a Design Career When You Aren't Trained in Graphic Design

This is the last of a series of articles on how to prepare for a graphic design career. In the last article we looked at a strategy for getting prepared for a design career while you are still in school.

Now we want to examine how those with no experience or training would get prepared for a career in design. I have to say that if you are a part of this group it will be a little more complicated

How to Build a Design Career When You're Fresh Out of School

This is a continuation of a series of articles on how to prepare for a graphic design career. In the last article I introduced the dilemma of having to have experience to get a job that requires having experience. And we looked at what a current graphic design student can do to prepare

How to Prepare a Design Career While You Are Still in School

When I was a junior in college I realized I was headed for a dilemma. How do I leave college and go into a job without any practical experience? If you think about it, how does anybody leave school really prepared to make money working as a graphic designer? Worse yet, what happens to people with no training in design at all? What do they do?

The Wonderful World of Color

Color makes or breaks a design. It evokes emotions. It identifies a brand. It is argued over. It has favorites. It has haters. Here are some cool resources to harness the power of color:

Color Theory

Color Theory for Designer, Part 3: Creating Your Own Color Palettes

Color Symbolism

Color Tools

How do people with color blindness see color?

Color Scheme Generator

0 to 255 (A simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color.)

Converting Pantone Colors To RGB

Color Organizations

The Color Association of the United States

Pantone

Color Marketing Group

10-Step Checklist for Hiring a Graphic Designer

Whether for a full time position or for a freelance project basis, hiring a graphic designer can be a critical step. But it often can be time-consuming and full of uncertainties. How do you know when you are getting a good designer, or a hack? When is a good designer not really necessary? How much will it cost?

I've created this checklist to help make the process a little easier. Let me know

How to Plan a PowerPoint Presentation

Many times when people do a presentation, they craft their presentation right in PowerPoint software. They do this because they believe they are saving time, by building the presentation right in PowerPoint. However,

Placeholder Dummy Text and Images for Designers

Creating templates or mockups can get pretty dull. But every now and then, putting in a bit of humor or unexpected twist can bring the process to life. And creative dummy text is one method.

However, I have to say that there are many times it isn't a good idea to plop some beer songs into your designs. Clients will often freak out

Free Online Goodies and Resources for Graphic Designers

There are several online resources I make use of quite frequently. I've been thinking for a while about sharing at least some of them. Well, here they are:

Designers Toolbox for a lot of cool reference material designers need.

Email design guidelines from Campaign Monitor

FontStruct to build your own fonts online and download them.

Create flowcharts online.

Create an organizational chart or find another company's organizational chart online.

How about a Photoshop-like online color-picker.

Generate great color schemes online.

Oh, and of course, one of my favorite online photo references.

Photo courtesy earl53 or Morguefile.com