Designer of the Month Winners – Feb. 2011

February winners have been announced for the Designer of the Month contest on CreativePublic.com.

View Winners!

Music Loops Entitled: “Epic Congregation” and it’s alternate “Epic Congregation With Choir”

“Epic Congregation” – Sound File

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“Epic Congregation With Choir” – Sound File

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8 Reasons to Hire a Proofreader

A proofreader can make web copy shine, and clients will take your web design business seriously as a result. It never hurts to have a second pair of eyes review your work for grammatical and spelling errors. It’s easy to miss errors when you’ve spent hours working on a website. Hiring a proofreader can pay dividends, and here are 8 reasons why:

Reason #1 – Retain Clients

Some of your clients may jump ship because you’ve made a poor first impression. Web copy that contains errors will make you appear untrained and unprofessional. It’s hard to get clients, so if you can keep more when you hire a proofreader, it’s worth the cost.

Reason #2 – It’s Better than Spell Check

You might think that you can get away with using spell check in your word processor, but it does miss some things. For example, a common error is to interchange “you’re” with “your.” The spell checker may not pick up on that mistake, but a proofreader will.

Reason #3 – Save Time Learning Rules

When you hire a proofreader, you expect them to know the various rules of grammar. For example, a proofreader should know the rules about when to use commas in a list or before the word “because.” The time it would take you to research and learn those rules yourself could be time better spent on web design.

Reason #4 – Improve Your Writing

A proofreader will suggest ways to improve how sentences are worded. It will result in quality work for your clients. Working with a proofreader will also improve your writing after some time.

Reason #5 – Everything is in Cyberspace

Once you publish content online, it stays in cyberspace. Clients doing research on your company and looking for some of your sample work may come upon it. The last thing you want is for them to find poorly written web copy. You can avoid losing prospective clients when you hire a proofreader to make sure that everything you publish online is your best work.

Reason #6 – Spare Yourself the Pain

If writing and editing is not your strong suit, you can spare yourself some of the pain by hiring a proofreader. It can be frustrating to review content multiple times to ensure accuracy because it’s not the work that you’re accustomed to. A proofreader is used to it, and many even enjoy it.

Reason #7 – Outshine the Competition

The truth is that too many web designers publish work that contains spelling and grammatical errors. Prospective clients do take note of that and will pass them by. When they come across your work that contains quality writing, they will be more likely to hire you. It’s a simple step you can take to beat out the competition.

Reason #8 – Don’t Frustrate Customers

A typo on web copy can frustrate the customers of your clients. It’s easy to transpose digits in a telephone number or write the wrong email address that can result in lost business to the clients you’re designing the website for. A proofreader can verify contact information to make sure that it’s accurate.

Before you hire a proofreader, compare their prices as well as their experience. Try to find someone who charges a flat rate so that you know how much to budget.

“Another Episode” — Therapeutic Audio Therapy

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CreativePublic Announces — New FREE Music & Sound Category!

CreativePublic.com is partnering with Joshua Hardin, a very talented music composer to provide our members and visitors with FREE sound and music files. Check back frequently for new free downloads.

Click here to learn more about Joshua Hardin

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Designer of the Month Winners – January 2011

Checkout last months winners. Send in your site for a chance to win!

http://www.creativepublic.com/design-contest-01-2011.php

Why Use Independent Contractors for Your Design Business?

You shouldn’t substitute the use of independent contractors for the sweat equity that’s required to launch your business. There will come a point though, when it makes economic sense to outsource some of the tasks you take on in your business. If you have so much client work that you find yourself neglecting some of your clients or important business tasks, then you should consider outsourcing.

Avoid the Legalities of Hiring Employees

Be prepared to jump through a lot of legal hoops if you hire part-time or full time employees. Whether it’s keeping up with the tax requirements, paying for health benefits, or following laws and regulations for treating employees, you’ll soon find out that taking on employees is a huge responsibility. You could end up losing or making less money in the process. You don’t face those challenges when you work with independent contractors. They are responsible for paying their own taxes, acquiring their own benefits and you are not subject to employment laws. The one requirement that is imposed on you is to report their annual income on Form 1099 to the Internal Revenue Service once it reaches a certain amount, and provide them with a copy of it. You also have to make sure that you’re not treating them as an employee. It’s important to sign an independent contract agreement with them, but also follow the guidelines provided by the IRS in Publication 1779 (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1779.pdf).

Bill More Hours

Whether you charge a flat fee or by the hour, independent contractors can free up your hours so that you can do more work. You can utilize some contractors to work on sales and marketing for your business, so that you can do more web design and graphic work for clients. You can use other graphic artists and web designers as subcontractors to complete some or all aspects of your projects, so that you can get more work. In the beginning stages of your business, it might be better to do all the work yourself and not lose money to independent contractors. The exception to that rule is if you’re working with an independent contractor on a commission basis. For example, a sales independent contractor who is willing to earn a commission for pay is worth hiring from the start.  Once your business starts to grow, the use of independent contractors in order to complete more work is a great move for your business.

Achieve Work-Life Balance

If you can’t get everything done in your business and meet your personal responsibilities at the same time, then you should consider making changes. One change you should consider is delegating work to independent contractors. It sounds simpler in theory than in practice, especially if you’re the type who prefers to retain as much control as possible over your business. The right individual can help free up your time to spend with your family and friends or to pursue your hobbies. If delegating your work scares you, start small. Delegate mundane and routine tasks that you don’t like to do anyway, and test out the idea of outsourcing for a short period. Once you build trust with one independent contractor, you can give them more duties and responsibilities. Before you know it, you may be working with additional independent contractors to help you grow your business.

Before you enter into relationships with independent contractors, you should sign an agreement. It should state in plain English that the person is coming on board as an independent contractor and not as an employee.

Understanding Vector and Raster Graphics

Choosing the right design, the right designer and the right graphics is essential. Selecting the right business, the right platform and the right time is crucial. If you have an artistic hand but don’t know how to write, or you have beautiful voice and you don’t know how to sing, you may have a gift, but a paralyzed one.

You have a website and don’t know what its composition is; you have graphics and don’t know how they are designed; just the lack of this information you may lose your business.

Simple, yet complex, are the pages of your website containing graphics all together in every space. And those very graphics can hamper you, if not properly designed for an impressive deliverance to the customer.

If your site loads slowly in a browser, if your logos are not eye pleasing, if the fonts are not stylish, if the color combination and outline architecture is not smooth, you might be irritating your own costumer rather appealing to them.

Graphic design elements that are in your websites primarily are of two types; Vector and Raster.

Vector graphics is a geometric modeling of images, widely being used in Computer Graphics today. Vector graphics applies geometrical standards i.e., lines, curves, and polygons to represent images, while Raster graphics or a bit-mapped image, which is based on pixels in a grid, and contains information about the colors to be displaced in “bits”. Due to this raster graphics have fixed resolution, thus cannot be resized without losing image quality.

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What is Graphic Design?

Graphic Design is a visual communication, an art, a profession, and a process of bonding text, images, signs, symbols, photography, colors and diagrams to communicate an effective language with the observer. It is an architecture where visual sequence is arranged in shape and structure, as a result graphic design eloquently guides more than a text statement. It is a combined force of writer’s words and designer’s design to enhances and integrate an effective communication.

Graphic Design arranges information visually, utilizing typography and illustrations in such a way, that it successfully projects the concept to visual appearance. Graphical elements facilitate expression of thought to visualization, and snatches attention of the watcher pleasing and mesmerizing their eyes.

Today, Graphic design is practiced in various fields of media, distributing its effective message through logos, graphics, signs, brochures, posters, and other type of visual elements. Main industries encompass this creative work of art in media, such as: websites, print, advertisement, publication, digital media, motion pictures, animation, product design, packaging, information signs, etc.

With a purpose of lucidity and efficient message conveying to the viewer, graphic design can be powerful, purposeful or sometimes just a distinctive artistic presentation. It can be just an imaginary drawing or a realistic creative revelation.

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Brief History of Graphic Design

The very first written word of mankind was the beginning of Graphic Design! And its native land was none other then ancient caves and caverns! The very first symbol they had sketched through cave drawings, paintings, markings on boulders, bone, and ivory are the foremost indication and evidence where graphic design was born, nursed, nourished and grown! Nevertheless, the term Graphic Design was named by William Addison Dwiggins in the early 20th Century.

Anthropologists studying prehistoric periods on cave paintings leads us earlier than the Upper Paleolithic period from 40,000 – 10,000 B.C., where our ancestors were learning how to design signs and symbols that could be communicated visually; moreover they were successful on leaving their marks. The pioneers of graphic design are non other then our own ancestors, who had lived in the caves and sketched their drawing on rocks.

History of graphics design roots to our own ancestors of ancient era where civilization was cultured in caves, and left their drawings and sketches for us on their canvas of cave walls and ceilings.

The earliest drawings known today are from 6,000 years ago, are that of carved stone and pottery containers. Drawings contained in Egyptian pyramids with signs, symbols and letters are known to all and it leads us back 5000 years.

Furthermore, from 600-250 BC evolution on geometrical shape and structures in Europe played a major role for the development of designing and sketching. As an applied art of arranging images and text for an attempt of visual communication; the hand written copy of the Christian Bible “The Book of Kells”, created by Irish monks in 9th century AD with rich illustrations is a good example of the evolution of graphic design.

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