Graphic design career

A graphic design career is a perfect job for an individual who is both creative and is knowledgeable in using media software. Their job is to send across a message through their graphic design. The designs are mainly used for different marketing purposes by organisations or individuals. A graphic designer should be able to execute various tasks including designing business brochures, logos, business cards, banners and other forms of advertisement.

They also work very closely with their client to create an idea of what their client is trying to achieve or who they are looking to target through their graphic design. They must be able to communicate well and ask the right questions to get the information they need to create a design that meets the end goal of their client.

Design Software

Graphic designers are highly skilled and knowledgeable on different kinds of digital software as their main job is to be able to use them effectively. The most popular software are from the Adobe programs including Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. There are thousands of tutorials online on how to use these Adobe programs.

Jobs

If you decide to follow these career path, then know that graphic designer can work in different places. For instance, graphic designers can work for various types of companies including advertising agencies, printing companies and publication companies. You may also look into joining a small firm who are outsourcing their design services to other small organisations. Or you may decide to freelance and be self-employed.

Landing a job

To apply for a graphic design position, you must be able to provide a portfolio that highlights your skills and showcases designs that you have previously made. Portfolios can be provided through print or online. You can build your portfolio by creating projects of your own or freelancing online.

Top free tools for creating social media graphics

Image contents on social media have now become a massive factor for attracting more people to your page. It’s essential that your images are created in a way that can catch people’s attention. Images can also be included and combined with text to provide information for your followers. With so many tools available, for some, you won’t have to spend a penny on creating your own social media posts. To help you get started, we’ve gathered the best free tools that you can use right away for your social media page.

Adobe Spark

The adobe spark provides you with ready-made templates to choose from. Each template is divided into size, category and design types. What’s great about these templates is that each detail can be customised to your preference. If you’re looking for royalty-free images, then look no further. They have plenty of royalty free images on their library, and you can easily upload them to your template.

Canva

Canva is the easiest and fastest tool for creating your social media contents. Their drag and drop tool is most useful for beginners for designing a high-quality content. The interface provides you with ready-made templates for your chosen social media. They have a huge range of templates, illustrations, icons, images and font styles.

Snappa

Snappa is best used for image contents that requires a lot of texts. The tool will help you design your background by using effects and customisation. Their font texts are also editable to the full extent. They have a variety of fonts available too.

Desygner

Desygner is an app that you can use straight off from your phone. It’s q quick way for creating a simple content for your page. Their platform is easy to use, and it allows you to share your images quickly.

Big Mistakes To Dodge When Redesigning Your Site

The shelf life of a typical website is probably only three years or so. As a result, you might feel as if you constantly have a new design in the works. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean your site design might not get the full attention it deserves.

It’s hard to look at your new website with fresh eyes after spending a while working on, but you need to be objective in order to spot when you’re making some of these common errors…

Skipping the planning stages

A solid and strategic plan will be needed in order to move forward with your project and allocate resources to it appropriately. Without this, expect your website design to fail at one of the first hurdles and end up stuck in development hell.

Letting creative energy take over

It’s well worth getting stuck in with the creative side and bringing as many original ideas to the table as possible, but you can’t let this take up too much time or move your website in a direction that doesn’t match your original objectives.

Poor conversion optimisation

If you don’t focus on encouraging your website visitors to support you and become paying customers, then you have to question why you invested in the site to begin with. Don’t let designers function completely independently of your marketing staff, as their online success will depend on the design process and vice versa.

Undoing SEO progress

If you want to make structural changes to your site or revise the content, be aware that this could undermine the positions you have earned on organic search results. For example, if you change the URL of a page to something shorter and snappier, remember to redirect the old URL to the new one using a permanent redirect if you want to retain the SEO value of any links pointing to that page.

Removing successful features

If you have found a formula that works, don’t get rid of it until you have a tried and tested replacement. You’re not bound to use the same design forever, but until you have evidence that your new version performs just as well, you shouldn’t axe it just because you’re bored and risk cutting off a revenue stream.

5 Essential Finishing Touches To Perfect Your Web Design

When you’ve completed a complex website design, the last thing you need is for small details to compromise the overall effect. It’s definitely worth taking an extra look at the finer details before you go live, as these finishing touches could make all the difference.

Even if you consider yourself an expert, are all of these points on your to-do list when you complete a web design project?

1) Set anti-aliasing to Sharp

An essential tool when working with typography is your anti-aliasing menu. This allows you to pick from a variety of preset modes for your text, with the intention of keeping it as clear as possible and preventing loss of quality. For most cases, changing the default setting of None to Sharp will greatly improve the quality of your website text.

2) Use a grid to align everything

It’s best to make sure of the built-in grid in your design program to make sure everything is aligned and straight. If it’s off, something won’t look quite right. If you’re using the latest edition of Adobe Photoshop CC, for example, snapping to grid lines automatically is easier than ever and you’ll see matching measurements appear automatically on your screen when you place things correctly.

3) Ensure everything looks consistent

From your choice of fonts to your branding, everything across your website needs to match if you want to look professional. Don’t just try to match the colour of your logo by eye – if you want it to look the same, use a colour picking tool to get the exact hue.

4) Eliminate rogue formatting

Sometimes when copying and pasting in content from different sources or changing your mind about formatting as you go, some elements may not match up properly. Make sure you iron out any discrepancies before launching your site, again to ensure consistency.

5) Consider the sales funnel

Whatever your exact customer journey is on your website, you need to make sure your web design facilitates this. People need to go from awareness and understanding of your brand to being persuaded to purchase a product or service. To help them on their way, optimise your design for conversion with plenty of calls to action and a clear path to the finish line. Design is just as important in this mission as content, and indeed any other strategy.

Design Trend: Watercolours In Graphic Design

Taking inspiration from watercolour painting techniques has really caught on in the last couple of years, and is still increasing in popularity. Here are a few tips on incorporating this trend into your print and online designs.

Virtual or real?

Firstly, you’ll need to decide whether you want to work with real-life brushes and paint to create your watercolour design, or use software to digitally create a similar effect. If you have the required skills, Photoshop is a great platform to experiment with a wide range of different brushes and styles.

Choice of colours

The final effect of your design can vary significantly depending on your choice of colours, so don’t randomly cycle through bright primary colours while you’re working. Instead, think carefully about what has worked well for you in the past and try to be original at the same time. If you’re promoting a brand, you need to consider the existing colours in their logo and corporate design scheme to ensure consistency whilst not blending into the background too much.

Creating texture

If you use real paint and scan or photograph your work to use in digital form, you should be able to capture a rich and attractive texture. This isn’t automatically present when you use virtual paints, so you’ll need to add a pattern or texture mask to bring your design to life. Try to vary the hue you use so the finished effect is more realistic and vibrant.

Adding typography

Ensure you choose a font that isn’t too fussy if you’re overlaying text on your watercolour. The background is the focus here, so the text needs to be very clear. In most cases, matching the text colour to your background will have the best results in terms of emphasising the colours in your paintwork.

Keep it simple

Overall, the best examples of watercolours being incorporated into web and print design have one thing in common: they only use exactly as much of this effect as required. Going too far with this technique will make your work look messy. You need to maintain a balance with clear and sharp lines to keep everything structured and in order. Small bursts of watercolour effect, however, can draw attention to the most important points.

Popular WordPress Themes

When building your website, one of the most important decisions you will make is choosing a theme. The competition online is large, and the standard is at its highest. It’s crucial that you ensure your website have a high-quality design. The contents and the organisation need to be on point as this is the first thing people will see.

WordPress is the best platform for everyone. It is great for content management. It’s easy to use and reliable therefore you will save a lot of time when managing your website. Currently, it is the most popular platform for both beginners and experts.

Below this paragraph is a list of the most popular WordPress themes. Each theme has their own characters that you can use for your website. All themes are also customisable to your preference. With that in mind, you will surely find a theme that’s most suitable for you.

WordPress themes example:

Divi
The Divi theme is specifically designed to help you quickly create the kind of layout you want to achieve. The Divi Builder allows you to change anything from layout, icons, colours to post formats and page. It’s a smart way of creating your personal interface without using any code. It enables you to drag & drop any interface anywhere on the page. Most of all, the theme is extremely responsive to any device. Furthermore, if you don’t feel like customising your own, you have the option to choose from pre-set layouts.

Oshine
Oshine is probably one of the most used themes for businesses of today. By choosing this theme, your website will instantly transform into a professional-looking design. Its key features also include a responsive layout, functional, static, and interactive. Join the bandwagon and get a fast and perfect theme in an instant.

Specular
Specular is another innovative and well-designed theme from WordPress. It’s highly responsive and flexible. It also possesses a powerful setup and a stunning adaptable design that can manage all types of industries.

Focuson
If you’re looking for a theme, that’s creative, fresh, versatile and colourful choose focuson. It’s a popular tool for website users with or without coding experience. In addition, the theme is full of amazing features like drag and drop, slideshow and widgets.

4 Great Website Design Tips

Just like fashion, web design is changing with fad and trends coming and then going at a rapid rate. When it comes to designing of a website, that creates a professional impression, you must ensure that it is up to date and on trend. This is the only way that you will be in a position to keep up with the high competition in the modern market. When creating a site, here are a few website design tips to follow.

Ensure it is clutter free and clean

The world has become cluttered in the modern days and the internet is no exception. Icons, ads, banners, pop ups, signs and so on can become a bit heavy. “You must ensure that you provide your visitors with a break from such clutter,” advised David Smith, a website designer & SEO consultant. “You need to embrace things like white space and flat design as they do wonders for websites. It is important that you keep everything simple or even minimal with the only crucial content highlighted on the website. This will make is easy to your visitors to navigate through the site in an easy way.”

Do some website research

Just like any other project that you have, it is good to ensure that you do some prior research so that you make a website that will assist your business attain its goals fast. Look for different website in your own niche to find out how they are designed, so that you can some tricks from them and know how to make your website look unique from them. As you do the search you will come across many sites and whatever you find appealing in them, you need to apply the same on your site. Continue reading →

The Graphical Web

Graphics and Design