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.