Artboards in Illustrator

According to Adobe's "Illustrator CS4 Classroom in A Book," "artboards represent the regions that can contain printable artwork. Artboards can be used to crop certain areas for either printing or placement purposes. Multiple artboards come in handy when creating a variety of things, such as printed pages with different sizes, etc."

Artboards include: 1. Printable Area; 2. Nonprintable Area; 3. Edge of the Page; 4. Artboard; 5. Bleed Area; and 6. Canvas.

1. Printable Area- The printable area is bounded by the innermost dotted lines and represents the part of the page on which the selected printer can print. Many printers cannot print to the edge of the paper.
2. Nonprintable Area- This area is between the two sets of dotted lines and represents any nonprintable margin of the page. The printable and nonprintable areas is determined by the printer and selected in the Print Options dialog box.
3. Edge of the Page- This is indicated by the outermost set of dotted lines.
4. Artboard- This is bounded by solid lines and represents the entire region that can contain printable artwork. By default, the artboard is the same size as the page, but it can be enlarged or reduced. The U.S. default artboard is 8.5" x 11", but it can be set as large as 227" x 227".
5. Bleed Area- Bleed is the amount of artwork that falls outside of the printing bounding box or outside the crop area and trim marks.
6. and Canvas- This is the area outside the artboard that extends to the edge of the 227" square window. Objects placed on the canvas are visible on the screen, but they do not print.

Dreamweaver and External Style Sheets

There are several different types of web design software available on the market today. One of these types is Adobe Dreamweaver. With Dreamweaver, designers can create multi-functional web sites using html, cold fusion, xhtml, css, etc.
When designing a website in Dreamweaver, it is always a good idea to design your html in one document and attach an external style sheet to each page to style the content.
Using an external style sheet is beneficial to designers and others viewing the code because it not only keeps css separate from the html code providing easy readability and makes the code neat, so it can be edited easily, but also when you need to make a change in the code after it has already been attached to the html page, you can just add the code into the css and save it and it automatically updates all of the html pages that the external style sheet is attached to, which saves designers a lot of time and frustration. Had a designer needed to make changes to the CSS without the use of an external style sheet, they would have had to edit each page separately eating up a lot of time that could have been saved to work on other projects.
There are other benefits of using external style sheets as well, but these are just a couple of the main benefits.

Copyright Law

When touching on the issue of copyright, there are a few things one must keep in mind:

• First off, according to copyright.gov, copyright protects original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, architecture, and computer software.
• However, copyright does not protect, facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation; although it might protect the way these things are expressed.
• Also, according to copyright.gov, copyright can be defined as a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression, and covers both published and unpublished works.
• Work becomes protected under copyright the moment it becomes created and fixed in a tangible form, that is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
• The Web site goes on to say that copyright protects original works of authorship, while a patent protects invention or discoveries. A trademark protects words, phrases, symbols, or designs by identifying the source of the goods or services of one party and distinguishing them from those of others.
• Registration is voluntary. You are required to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.
• There are a number of reasons why registration is recommended. Many people register their works because they want to have the facts of their copyright on the public record and have a certificate of their registration. Works that are registered, may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees in successful litigation. If registration occurs within 5 years, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law.
• "Poor man's copyright." This is the practice of sending a copy of your own work to yourself. However, there is no provision in the copyright law regarding this type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.
• Copyright privileges in other countries. The U.S. has copyright relations with most of the other countries in the world and as a result of the agreements, they honor each other's citizens copyrights. However, the U.S. does not have copyright agreements with every country, so you need to check beforehand if the country has an agreement with the U.S.

These are just a few tips that copyright.gov highlights about copyright to help get you started with the process of copyrighting your work. However, copyright law is extremely complex so you will want to look further into it than this if trying to gain a copyright for your artwork.

Content Management Systems

According to www.wisegeek.com, "content management systems are electronic systems that take data and organize it, such that it can be retrieved, searched, and updated easily, and shared throughout an organization."
There are 6 main types of content management systems including: Enterprise CMS (ECMS); Web CMS (WCMS); Document management systems (DMS); Mobile content management systems; Component content management system; and Learning content management system (LCMS).

• Enterprise CMS (ECMS)- is a software that manages written documents. Generally, this type of software can be found in big corporations. Two classes of Enterprise CMS exist: web content management; and business process content management. Both of these provide features and functionality that is designed to improve the management of documents.
• Web CMS (WCMS)- is a system that is built to help people update their web sites via a web interface.
• Document Management System (DMS)- is a computer system used to track and store electronic documents and images of paper documents.
• Mobile Content Management Systems- is a type of CMS capable of storing and delivering content and services to mobile devices.
• Component Content Management System- is a type of CMS that manages content at a granular level rather than at the document level.
• Learning Content Management System (LCMS)- is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs.

Accessibility

With web accessibility, people with disabilities can use the web. People with disabilities can perceive, interact, understand and navigate the web. This also allows them to be able to contribute to the web as well.
Accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affects web usage. These disabilities are: visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive and neurological.
Many people in the world today have disabilities that cause them to have difficulty using the web. Most web sites right now have an accessibility barrier making it difficult and sometimes impossible for people with disabilities to use the web.
However, web accessibility can also benefit people without disabilities (i.e. people with broken arms and people with changing abilities due to aging).
Overall, accessibility is important because it is an important resource in many aspects of our lives today in areas such as: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation and more.
Without accessibility, people with disabilities would not have the same opportunities in their lives as everyone else; and that I would think could be borderline discrimination because they should have the same opportunities as everyone else when it comes to education, employment, health care, etc.

Professionalism

When working in an environment that demands a certain level of professionalism in order to operate one must take into account these tips:

1. Proper Dress Attire- (i.e. business suits, dresses, ties, skirts that are knee length, etc.)
2. Behavior- (i.e. attitude and how a person conducts his or herself in the workplace. For example one that works in a doctor's office would not make a scene by arguing with patients or other co-workers).
3. Hygiene/Appearance- Nails should be clean and cut, make-up should be conservative, and one should be showered and have clean brushed teeth. For men, most oftentimes hair should be short. Body piercings, besides ears should be removed and tattoos should be either covered or removed.
4. and Ethics- All businesses have a code of ethics and one should know this policy and follow it. People should know right from wrong when working in a professional environment.

There are of course other ways to conduct professionalism in the business world as well; these are just a few of the more important aspects.

Search Engine Optimization

There are many ways web designers can optimize their web sites. Below I've listed just a few ways to help designers get started.

1. Fine tuning the TITLE page to include some of the sites keywords
2. Filling out all META META tags (i.e. keywords, description, and title) appropriately; meaning that the words used are relevant (oftentimes these words are part of the keywords)
   
3. Create gateway pages that are specific to the focus of each site
4. Ensure that site technology won't confuse the search engines
5. Perform maintenance checks
6. Include keywords in H1's. H2's and H3's and in the body of the web site
7. Adding tags to images also helps optimize web sites
8. Link to other sites that aren't competition
9. and Link back to yourself

Essential Graphic Design Tools

When aspiring to become a graphic designer, one must have the proper tools. These tools include:

1. A computer either a MAC or a PC- Choices are solely based on preferences because either will work.
2. Graphic design software- Adobe products are industry standard. Adobe software includes: InDesign; Illustrator; Photoshop; Flash; and Acrobat. Jobs in the graphic design field will expect designers to be familiar with most, if not all of these programs.
3. Graphic Design Books- Having a collection of graphic design books around the house can help to inspire designers; offer aide to solving technical difficulties; and help to maintain the designer's business. A designer can never have too many graphic design books. Some recommended graphic design books are: The Graphic Artists Guild Handbook- Pricing and Ethical Guidelines; Los Logos; The Little Know-It-All- Common Sense for Designers; and Tell Me Why- The First 24 Months of a New York Design Company.
   
4. Sketchpad- Sketching your ideas before creating them is a great idea and helps keep your thoughts organized. Also, sketching takes less time than trying to mock something up on a computer. A good idea would be to keep a small sketchpad handy for whenever you get any ideas so that way you can sketch them out before you end up forgetting a potentially great idea.
5. Other Creative Professionals- There are three reasons having other creative professionals around is important; 1. It is hard to critique yourself; 2. If there are others around helping you brainstorm it can help bring your best ideas to light; and 3. When you get assigned projects that are more involved, you are going to need the help and you will need people to collaborate with.
6. and last, but not least, CREATIVITY! In order to be successful in this field you must be creative and you must always keep an open-mind.

This is a list of the essential graphic design tools any aspiring graphic designer must have. Of course, there are other tools and programs available to help aide aspiring graphic designers as well, but this should get them off to a good start once they learn how to operate the tools and organize their ideas.

Social Media and the Marketing Mix

What is Social Media?
According to the Web site, Technology in Translation, "Social media can be defined as a set of Internet tools that enable shared community experiences, both online and in person."

Social media also plays a key role in the marketing of products for businesses.

Some of the types of social media that are used in the marketing world today include:

1. Social Networking sites
2. Social Bookmarking sites
3. Blogs
4. Wikis
5. Photo sharing
6. And Presentation sharing
   

Other areas of the marketing world where social media fits in includes the 4 P's:

1. Product- This is the combination of product, service, and experience
2. Price- The value that the customer perceives translated into money
3. Distribution- This is putting the offering in an arms reach of the consumer
4. Promotion- Communicating the offering

ADVANCED STRATEGIES:
According to the Web site, mashable.com, "Advanced strategies introduce or reinforce marketing messages, while pushing a user to another profile or business site." Below is a list of some of these "advanced strategies."

5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies that Mashable.com Suggests Using:

1. Multimedia Usage
2. Integrating Offline and Online Advertising
3. Message Adaptation
4. Local Social Networks
5. And Contests and Discounts
   

How to Market Your Web Services

When promoting a Web site, there are several categories of strategies that can be used. Some of these categories include: search engine strategies; linking strategies; social media strategies; traditional strategies; email strategies, other miscellaneous types of strategies, and paid advertising strategies.

Search Engine Strategies:

1. Writing description META tags
2. Including your keywords in your different headings (H1, H2 ,and H3)
3. Promote your business on the Internet, and create web pages based on each of your target keywords
4. Write a keyword- rich page title; position your keywords in the first paragraph of your body text
5. Include descriptive keywords in the ALT Attribute of image tags;
   
6. Use keywords in hyperlinks
   
7. Make your navigation system search engine friendly
   
8. Create a site map; fine-tune with careful search engine optimization
9. And promote your video, images, and audio
   

Linking Strategies:

1. Submitting your site to key directories
   
2. Submitting your site to trade organization sites and specialized directories
   
3. Request reciprocal links
4. And write articles for others to use in web sites and newsletters.

Social Media Strategies:

1. Beginning a business blog
   
2. Becoming part of a social media community
3. Promoting your site in online forums and discussion lists
   
4. And asking visitors to bookmark your site

Traditional Strategies:

1. Including your URL on stationery, cards, and literature
2. Promote using traditional media
3. And developing a free service.

E-mail Strategies:

1. Installing a "signature" in your E-mail program
2. Publish an e-mail newsletter
3. Aggressively ask for E-mail sign-ups
4. Send transactional and reminder e-mails
   
5. Send offers to your visitors and customers
6. And exchange E-mail mentions with complimentary businesses.

Miscellaneous Strategies:

1. Announcing a contest
2. And devising viral marketing promotion techniques.

Paid Advertising Strategies:

1. Advertising in an e-mail newsletter
   
2. Beginning an affiliate program
3. Purchasing pay per click ads (PPC)
4. Listing your products with shopping comparison bots and auction sites
   
5. And rent targeted, commercial e-mail lists.

What to Look for When Choosing a Good Web Hosting Company?

There are several aspects you should look at when choosing a good web hosting company. Some of these aspects include: 1. Reliability and speed of access; 2. Data transfer; 3.Disk space; 4. Technical support; 5. FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL, and crontabs; 6. SSL (secure server) shopping cart; and 7. Email, autoresponders, POP3, mail forwarding.

According to thesitewizard.com, for reliability and speed of access a web hosting company should guarantee its uptime of at least 99.5% and should provide a refund if the uptime falls below that percent.
The Web site also goes on to say not to trust any commerical web host site that advertises unlimited bandwidth because the host has to pay for the bandwidth and if a person consumes a lot then the host will charge the person for the amount consumed. Another good tip the site suggests is to look for details on how much traffice the package allows.
For disk space the Web site syas that most sites need less than 10MB of web space, so don't let more MB space be a big factor when comparing web hosts.
With the aspect of technical support, don't choose a web host that doesn't offer 24/7 support 365 days a year and also be aware that even though it says 24/7 that might not be the case. Instead the Web site suggests that a person test them out by emailing them on a saturday or sunday night and see how long it takes them to respond and make sure that they are technically competent meaning that they know how to fix the problem.
When paying for a site a person wants to make sure they have FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL, and crontabs. PHP and Perl are necessary because they allow you to implement a feature on your site. .htaccess is necessary if you plan on doing things such as customizing error pages or to protect your site from bandwidth theft or hotlinking. Telnet or SSH is necessary if you plan on testing programs or maintaining databases. If you want to run a blog MySQL is needed. If you plan on running programs at certain times of the day then a cron is necessary to have.
If you're running a business Web site and taking payments via credit card, you will need to check and see if the web host provides SSL. To obtain a Web site that provides SSL normally means a higher priced package for the purchaser, but is essential for business Web sites.
When purchasing a Web host you need to check to see if the host provides and email with the package. Also, you need to look and see if the host provides you with a catch-all email account that allows any email addresses at your domain to be routed to you. You also need to check and see if it allows an autoresponder, which allows you to set an email address that will automatically reply to the person who sent it with a preset message. A couple other questions the Web site says to ask yourself is: "Can you retrieve your mail with your email software?" and "Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address?"

There are several other aspects a purchaser should look at as well when searhing for a good web host. The above mentioned are just a few of these.

What is Graphic Design?

According to Blue Moon Web Design's Web site, graphic design can be defined as "the applied art of arranging image and text to communicate a message. Graphic design can be viewed in many different mediums such as publishing, video game design, or even architecture.
In publishing, graphic design plays a role in page layout and design (i.e. font type, color, images, graphics, etc.).
Video game design is immersed in graphic design through the creation of the game and the design of the characters, weapons, level, scripts, etc.
Architecture has a hand in graphic design because of the fact that architects construct their buildings from the ground up based off their own designs (i.e. building materials, layout, color of interiors and exteriors, height of buildings, how many levels, etc).
There are many other mediums/ professions that graphic design can be applied to as well. When you view the surroundings around you in the world today, take a second to really look and consider how these objects came to be; how they were designed and then contemplate why they were designed this way. I think you will come to find that graphic design has more of an impact on today's society than most people tend to notice.

Critiquing Web sites

When critiquing Web sites there are some things that one should look for. The first thing to look for when critiquing Web sites is proper grammar and spelling usage. Besides, spelling and grammar there are some design and functionality aspects to keep an eye out for too. 

Web sites should be easy to navigate and each page should be accessible from the other pages. Links must work and link up to the right things. Also, the page layout should be neatly organized and be appealing. 

Layout and design also bridges onto color choices. The flow of the page depends on how well the information is put together and organized as well as the color choices for the font and background. It should be appealing to the viewer and catch their attention enough to keep them coming back for more.

Also, there needs to be enough accurate information to get the message across and tell the viewer instantly what the point of the webpage is. There should also be good use of graphics and pictures, as well as ways to contact the organization.

Images need to be properly sized so that it doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth and cause slow downloading times. If pages load slowly because of pictures or graphics, the viewer probably will leave the Web site and not come back.

Other than that you should look to see if the designer added any multimedia to the page such as videos to help peak the users' interest. It's is always a good idea to include things on a Web site that will allow some interactivity for users.

These are just a few tips to be aware of when critiquing Web sites; there are many others as well.

How to use Social Media to Find A Job

It's no secret that networking is one of the best ways to get a job and social networking sites help make job searching that much easier. Web sites such as Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter allow users to connect with people and companies .
Also, with Myspace and Facebook you can submit posts, which allows companies to post job listings and allows users to reply to the post if interested. Facebook also allows users to post notes which users can use to post notes about their situations and if they're looking for work so in case someone on their list or elsewhere sees the note and can help them they can drop them a line. There are many other ways that social media can help you find a job as well. The few that I listed above are just some of the more common ones.

What Makes A Good Web Site?

When developing a Web site there are several factors a designer needs to be aware of in order to make the Web site a success and keep users coming back.
The first aspect is "usability" and "findability." When users go on a Web site they want to be able to locate things quickly and easily and be able to use the programs, tools, etc. without any confusion or difficulty on how to operate them.
A Web site also needs to be well organized and neatly laid out, which goes back to "findability," and "usability." If the Web site isn't neatly laid out, structured and organized users don't stay on the site very long because they are not able to find what they're looking for quickly or easily. This problem causes both the designer and the Web site to lose credibility and also steers potential customers away from the Web site causing site revenue to deplete.
In addition to being well organized, structured and neatly laid out, the Web site also needs to be visually appealing. A Web site needs to use colors that complement each other and that help portray the message of the Web site. When the user is on the site they need to feel like things are well designed and that it catches their eye and helps hook them to keep them on the Web site longer and help ensure their return to the site.
A designer also needs to check and test the links for the Web site to make sure the links are in proper working condition and that they link to the right page. Users won't waste their time on a Web site if the links aren't properly working or if they link to the wrong thing.
Also, a good Web site normally contains some sort of search engine or links to other Web sites or links to other forms of entertainment such as different messengers and links to check e-mail, or links to social networking sites, depending on the type of site you are designing and what purpose the site is for.
These are just a few of the aspects that help make a good Web site.