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- Blogs: Mad About Design offers graphic designers hundreds of inspiring ideas for your blog, or your client’s blog
- Discover the branding power of Stone Serif, Stone Sans, and Stone Humanist
- New white paper design template opens new profit opportunities for graphic designers
- What features would you like to see in a white paper template?
- Free Font of the Month helps graphic designers build their font library and design attractive ads, brochures, logos, newsletters, & websites
- Blog Business Summit
- Chuck Frey’s Innovation Weblog
- Chuck Frey’s MindMapping
- Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind
- David Meerman Scott’s Web Ink Now
- Design & Thrive - Maria G. Nozza’s Design & Thrive blog and site offers graphic designers resources for both sides of the brain.
- Designer’s Who Blog
- John McWade’s Design Talk blog - Design philosophy and tips from Before & After’s publisher of
- John Thackara’s Doors of Perception
- Laura Ries’s Origin of Brands
- Membership Site Planner - Ideas and tips dealing with selling information on a subscription basis
- Mindjet Blog
- My Graphics Notebook - Graphic Designer
- Published & Profitable - Blog tips for authors planning, writing, planning, and profiting from books
- Seth Godin’s Blog
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Dec
30
Those interested in graphic design resources for self-improvement should get to know John McWade. John publishes Before & After, which has been sharing his practical approach to graphic design since 1990.
John’s writing resembles his simple and to the point design philosophy. His examples emphasize color and type.
One of the best ways you can familiarize yourself with John’s work is through his Design Talk Blog, which began earlier this year. You can sign-up for free to receive John’s latest blog posts for free via e-mail.
You can also choose subscribe to either the PDF or printed and mailed version of Before & After; subscription details here. Either way, you’re bound to learn.
Dec
22
Design & Thrive offers graphic design and marketing tips for freelance graphic designers who want to improve both their design skills and their ability to earn a good living. Often, talented graphic designers only manage to scrape by, leading to inevitable disappointment and burn out. Why does this happen so frequently?
According to Maria G. Nozza, a Montreal-based graphic designer, the problem relates to thinking styles. As she explains, “To be a successful and thriving graphic designer, you need a balanced combination of left-brain and right-brain skills.”
“But,” she continues, “often graphic designers over-emphasize one type of skills, at the expense of the others, rather than developing all of the skills needed to not only create and produce attractive, effective designs, but also promote and manage a successful business.”
That’s where Design & Thrive comes in
Maria G. Nozza’s Design & Thrive teaches graphic designers the 4 distinct skills they need to thrive:
- Promoting. Design & Thrive offers the advice and tools you need to get the word out about you and your company, and close more sales.
- Designing. You’ll learn how to apply timeless design principles that have been proven effective time and time again in order to remain constantly inspired and creative.
- Producing. Detailed efficiency tips will help you produce your designs as correctly, effortlessly, and quickly as possible. .
- Managing. Graphic design success involves running of your business so that you don’t waste your time on trivial stuff and get paid fairly–and on time!
Free Graphic Design Success report!
Maria G. Nozza invites you to visit Design & Thrive and sign up for her free weekly design tips. You’ll also get access to the HTML version of her monthly newsletter filled with detailed promotion, design, production, and managing tips.
In addition, as a sign-up bonus, you’ll also receive a copy of Maria’s 24-page Secrets of Graphic Design Success report, a detailed guide to ways graphic designers can profit from both their left-brain and right-brain skills. Visit Design & Thrive and sign-up today for her free weekly tips!
Dec
21
It’s a snowy day in NH, and I was checking out recent tweets on Twitter.com, when I discovered a Guy Kawasaki reference to “great typography,” which turned out to be Henry Jones’s 33 Amazing Typography Posters and Illustrations. I highly recommend a visit.
Seeing these examples reminded me of one of my first examples of poster marketing. I was working for a Harvard Square, Cambridge, audio store, and I commissioned a well known Boston cartoonist, David Omar White, to create a series of posters that exhibited the “idea of enjoying music at home.”
We dry mounted and hung copies of the posters throughout the store, and gave copies to customers.
As I write this, I’m looking at a beautiful example of poster artwork by Doyald Young hanging on my wall. It’s called Parts of a Letter. He gave it to me seven years ago, and it’s still hanging there.
What other type of marketing sticks around so long?
Dec
18
E-mail tip: tiny URL’s save space and can improve the appearance of your e-mails
Filed Under Graphic Elements, Websites
Tiny URL’s, like those you can create for free at http://tinyurl.com can improve the appearance of your e-mails and eliminate problems when long URLs wrap to additional lines. Tinyurl.com is just one of several free online locations where you can enter a long URL–perhaps to a particular page of your website–and reduce it’s length.
Compare:
- BEFORE: http://blog.publishedandprofitable.com/2008/12/create-a-social-media-marketing-planning-calendar-worksheet-for-2009/
- AFTER: http://tinyurl.com/4nd7sk
Both take you to the same blog post, but notice how much better the URL “after” example looks, and how much less space it occupies. The “after” example won’t visually dominate your e-mail and there’s less chance of the link not working.
Other benefits
If you frequently post on social marketing sites like Twitter.com, you’ll also appreciate the ability to reduce URL length. If you’re an online affiliate marketer, you’ll also appreciate the ability to camouflage affiliate links.
Dec
17
Janice (Ginny) Redish’s Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works offers invaluable advice for graphic designers and their clients. An internationally known website usability expert whose clients include numerous Fortune 500 firms as well as numerous government agencies, Letting Go of the Words emphasizes the close connection between content and design.
“Websites are conversations,” is a theme that runs through many of the chapters. Website success is not about the association, firm, or individual sponsoring the site, success comes from creating an on-going conversation that answers the visitor questions in a concise and easily-located manner.
Writing Web Content that Works includes hundreds of annotated illustrations and short, helpful lists of do’s and don’ts. It’s a book that will change your view of website design and help you and your staff create better, more productive, websites.
Dec
17
Listen as Annie Jennings tells why some become famous, others remain unknown
Filed Under Uncategorized
Nationally-known publicist Annie Jennings will describe the differences between fabulous careers and careers that fizzle, when I host the next Guerrilla Marketing Association call.
Annie and I will be discussing the techniques that authors and subject area experts can use to promote themselves. Annie comes highly recommended:
- FAST COMPANY says: “Annie Jennings PR is the place to go to learn how to become a bestselling author.”
- JOURNALIST’S RAVE: “Annie Jennings does a wonderful job of grasping the essence of the story and finding exactly the right people,” says Peggy Noonan, USA WEEKEND Magazine Journalist
Our call takes place Wednesday, December 17, at 7:00 to 8:00 PM EST. To attend, visit the Guerrilla Marketing Association website or e-mail Roger@publishedandprofitable.com.
Dec
17
The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites, 2nd edition, goes beyond the vast majority of web design books. All too often, web design books are which are “portfolio” books intended to advance the author’s career by showing off samples of their previous work for clients. Many titles cover familiar ground. Others are so “profound” that they’re nearly unreadable.
The Design of Sites, however, has no obvious “career” agenda; it goes deep into website design issues without sacrificing readability. The co-authors, Douglas K. Van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong, have created an unusually comprehensive book. It’s a big book–981 pages–but it reads surprisingly quickly.
Avoid temptation
When comparing books online, there’s often a temptation to instinctively avoid expensive books. On the surface, it might make more sense to buy 2, or more, lesser books. Try to avoid that temptation. In this single book, you’ll find more genuinely helpful, carefully researched, and easily locatged information than the vast majority of lesser books.
The Design of Sites proves, once again, that a single outstanding book is worth far more than multiple less-expensive books. It’s an investment that will repay you and your co-workers in advoce amd ideas for a long time to come.
Dec
9
Arresting color photographs from around the world are on display at Ellen McCormick’s Environmental Grafitti posting. Definitely worth a visit.
Site was recommended by Guy Kawasaki on Twitter.
BTW, Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Rogercparker
Dec
7
White paper success is as much based on based on as much on graphic design as it is based on your writing skills. White paper creators who fail to effectively use the power of graphic design to attract and retain readers are less likely to successfully generate leads for your business or build your e-mail list. The following graphic design tips will attract new readers, enhance your firm’s credibility, and encourage readers to keep reading. Here are a few simple tips:
- Use white space to frame your message. When creating a white paper, avoid running text completely across the full width of the page. Instead, use a 2-column format, with a wide text column, and a narrower column to the left. Download an example.
- Typography. Choose the right typeface, type size, and line-spacing for your white papers. Choose serif typefaces, like Adobe Minion, for extended reading and sans serif typefaces, like Frutiger for headlines and subheads. Download the above example to see Minion and Frutiger in action. Or, see how I’ve used the same typefaces in my PDF newsletters.
- Colors. The best white papers use a limited number of colors, but the colors are used consistently and with purpose.
- Visuals. Avoid adding “decorative” graphics to your white papers. Instead, identify ways to use graphics to replace text. A chart, graph, or timeline communicates information better than the same information appearing in paragraphs.
See white paper design in action. Download my White Paper Design that Sells report. In text and layout, White Paper Design that Sells describes the basics of attractive and reader-friendly graphic design. You’ll learn valuable graphic design tips that will help you design and produce your own white paper. You’ll also know what to look for when you’re hiring or supervising others who create white papers for you.
You’ll discover graphic design tips that you can put to immediate use creating newsletters, proposals, reports, and other attractive, easy-to-read print communications.
Jun
11
Free teleseminar offers marketing and pricing assistance for graphic designers
Filed Under Uncategorized
You’ll gain valuable insights into marketing and pricing graphic design services, plus learn how to write a book that positions you as an expert in your field, to your target market. (This approach, for most authors, is far more important than trying to writing a mass market best-seller.)
The interview takes place Friday, June 13th, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 Noon EST. We’ll be discussing questions like:
- Attracting the right clients. The keys to effectively targeting your market and promoting your expertise to the right prospects.
- Customer acquisition and customer retention. How do they differ, and which is best for you?
- Setting the right fees. How to ask the right questions and accurately estimate each job, without giving yourself away or overcharging.
You’ll also learn how Ilse Benum and Peleg Top wrote The Designer’s Guide To Marketing And Pricing, Topics we’ll be discussing include:
- The book’s origins. Why did they target freelance graphic designers as their niche market?
- Selecting a publisher. How did the authors decide which publishers to approach?
- Writing. What was the hardest part of writing the book? What was the easiest part?
- Marketing. When did the authors begin promoting their book?
- Profiting. What other services do the offers offer? of their book’s success? (See www.marketing-mentor.com.)
The interview takes place Friday, June 13, at 11:00 AM. All Published & Profitable friends and members are invited to attend. For details, visit Published & Profitable or email Roger@publishedandprofitable.com.