Help is on the way

I blogged recently about my favorite distractions on the web, and today I’m going to talk about the other end of the spectrum: resources. Both online and off, there are a plethora of inspiring and informative resources for web designers and business owners. I have broken this post into four categories of resources: inspiration, education, design tools, and performance.

Inspiring Logo Designs

Inspiration
Just like writers suffer from writer’s block, as a designer I am sometimes at a loss for ideas. The great thing about design, though, is that you can draw inspiration from almost anything. I have the most success designing for clients if I know the background of their company or industry, their personality, or some other detail that can serve as a starting point. In the case that this information is not readily available, or should it prove uninspiring, I search elsewhere for ideas. One such source is The Big Book of New Design Ideas. This is one of many collections of skillful and encouraging designs, ranging from logos and font choice to websites and media kits. Another source that I draw inspiration from are other designers on the web. Browsing through the portfolio of a designer I admire will get me motivated and excited for a new project in no time.

Education
An crucial aspect of any creative industry is keeping your work fresh and up to date. One of the best ways to keep growing is to keep learning. Education has been an important part of both the business and creative sides of my company. I started my design education and experience at the University of South Carolina with a BA in Visual Communications. In addition to the technical classroom lessons I took away from my degree, an equally important benefit was working among so many creative minds. Both professors and peers helped broaden my creative horizons and introduced me to new design perspectives.

My education did not stop upon graduation, though. After college I decided to focus more on websites than print design, and in order to do so needed to hone my skills in this area. I turned to W3Schools, Lynda and CreativeTechs to learn the skills needed for a career in web design. W3Schools offers free online tutorials on basic design and coding topics. They have a great collection of beginner to more advanced tutorials, and also offer certification in HTML, JavaScript, XML, ASP and PHP. Lynda.com offers online software training for a reasonable fee. There are different levels of instruction and payment depending on your needs. CreativeTechs is a Seattle based company that has video tutorials both free and for charge. Their live classes (free) definitely contain some trial-and-error approach and can be a little frustrating, but by the time everything is edited down in the for sale version they’ve gotten the kinks worked out.

Design skills are not the only expertise necessary to run a website business, however. In August of 2009 I took a 6 week SELF Employment Training course at the local Business Development Center, LBDC. I highly recommend a business course for anyone considering starting a business. No matter how well you’ve mastered your trade, you cannot succeed without proper legal, financial and marketing knowledge. Even if you plan to hire a legal, financial or marketing professional to handle these aspects for you, a basic understanding of these fields is invaluable as a business owner.

Fonts are an integral part of design

Design Tools
There are a number of important design resources that make executing a website possible. First, there is the absolute basic necessity of software. I use Adobe CS4 Master Collection, my most frequently used programs being Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator. I also use Adobe Lightroom 2.2 for early photo processing. While Adobe is not the only creator of design software, it is certainly the most widely used and my preference.

Some online tools that aid in the web design process include web safe color resources. This article on Wikipedia, Web Safe Colors, as well as the color matching website ColorCombos.com are both helpful. The internet is limited to 256 web safe colors, so choosing your palate wisely and correctly is important. (See Tips & Tricks: Color for more information and resources on color selection for the web.)

In addition to color there is the issue of web typography. Most browsers displays only a handful of basic fonts including a few Serif and Sans serif selections. This is mainly because not everyone has the same fonts installed on their computers, so we generally stick with a few universal and easy to read basics. There are ways around the limited font selection, however, including Flash and images. For headers and areas of a website that should stand out to readers, a special font, like the one pictured above, may be in order. For a collection of free fonts I often use DaFont.com. Whether downloading new fonts or merely searching for inspiration, font libraries can be a great resource.

Performance
Website performance can vary depending on a number of things. Browser issues and search engine ranking are just a two of infinite influences on the performance of any given website. Browser issues can be dealt with using Conditional Comments for IE, and mistakes can be caught and corrected using Browsershots.org.

Google Analytics is a great resource for tracking your site’s performance. (Similar services include StatCounter, among others.) A free traffic report from Analytics shows a breakdown of who, when and where your visitors are, along with details about the computer (or mobile device) that they are using to view your site. Mobile devices are a fairly new issue for web designers. For some companies phones with small screens are common among viewers, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started the Mobile Web Initiative to encourage web accessibility for mobile devices.

I hope you will find these resources to be helpful and informative tools for your website and/or business. Do you have favorite resources that I left out? Let me know in the comments!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 9:04 PM and is filed under graphic design, links, resources, web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.