Graphic Design Jobs
Design Wiblet of the Day
Jan 8th
This is a header that I designed for Photo Super Hero, which is a photography website dedicated to bringing you news about photography, great products, helpful advice all in one place. It’s been touted as ‘way less stuffy than other photography sites’ and I suppose that is because it’s written from the perspective of a photographer, who started by buying a DSLR and figuring everything out by becoming self-taught. That advice is passed on through the posts in order to help others.
Aside from that wiblet of the day, I have a ton of projects to get to including designing another blogger background for a client, as well as a business card mock-up. I look forward to when I can present my designs electronically to a client in person, in a swish ultimate mac office, complete with LED screens on
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Blog Banner for a Personal Blog
Dec 16th
The brief was for a blog banner, for the month of December. However, since the blogger resides in the Southern Hemisphere, the banner had to reflect the fact that although it was Christmas, it was also in fact summer. Come to think of it, it *is* rather stupid that we Southern Hemisphere dwellers give one another Christmas cards with snow and reindeer and snowflakes on for goodness sake, when to us, Christmas has more to do with barbequeing, lazy days by the swimming pool, oppressive heat (in most cases) and long daylight hours, spent enjoying the beach.
This particular blogger is a huge fan of the beach, so I used it as the starting point for my design. Now this is not the final one that the blogger chose for this month, but the end result was based on this, and featured her and her family inserted onto my clean and spacey virtual beach, with a slightly enhanced Christmas tree, and different text. I liked this version, purely because it’s a clear indication of my taste. Clean lines, with a bit of whackiness thrown in for good measure.
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Job Hunting
Dec 6th
If and when you ever decide that freelancing is not for you, chances are you may need to perform a job search. There are many avenues open to you in order to do so, and perhaps since you last worked in formal employment, some more ways have come to light.
First and foremost, one of the best ways of finding formal employment again, is the ‘who you know’ principle. It may even be a former freelance client, who is now looking to hire someone to work in-house, in order to streamline their process. Or it could be someone that you meet at a networking function.
Undoubtedly many large corporates are beginning to understand the fundamentals of social networking, and are recruiting for staff *that* way.
Whatever method you choose, nothing beats ’seeing what is out there’ better than a good old internet search, as this can give you a good feel for what skills companies are looking for right now.
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Design Diversity
Nov 23rd
The Design field can really take you to strange and exotic places, in terms of product that you are designing for.
I’m willing to be that many of us sitting in design school rarely sat back during typography classed and dreamed about designing bottle labels for acne products! But regardless of the product, if it causes you to use your imagination, employ your design skill, and develop your creativity further, then why should it be considered a ‘bad’ project. After all money is money, and as a freelancer, you take it where you can get it. Far be it from us to judge a product, rather give it the best cover possible, to ensure repeat business.
So bring on your varied and interesting products, because as long as you pay the bills, I’ll keep designing for them!
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Awesome Design Discovery!
Nov 17th
One of the most fun discoveries I have made since using my new 21.5″ iMac
It was when I loaded my backed up playlists into iTunes, and activated the ‘Visualizer’ for my 4 year old son, who loves to sit in front of it, and we (the Other Parental Unit and I) always joke about how Apple are probably brainwashing him into never *ever* buying a PC (just in case my own efforts fail or Microsoft have an original thought), and I sat back, completely, and UTTERLY MESMERIZED.
They have given it a complete overhaul, and frankly I have never seen anything so spectacular in terms of design algorithms and special effects. The actual process with which those are designed, is not my field of expertise, but it actually occurred to me, that somewhere, there is someone who works for apple, who gets paid to do amazing things! Which reminded me of a quote that Steve Jobs said, “Not everyone can work in an environment where excellence is expected.” Did you know he’s just been named as CEO of the decade? Yes, I am an unashamed, pom-pom waving Steve Jobs acolyte.
Don’t believe me about those visualisations? Check this out…
Yet another reason that Design influences the way we live, and interact with each other.
Now, go and fantasize about having as great a job as where you get to think about this stuff all day!!
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Jobhunting: Where do you look?
Nov 4th
When you make the decision to move into a new position, where is the first place you look?
That is, if you aren’t being headhunted that is, which of course, is what will happen first, because you’re cool enough to be reading this post.
Searching online used to be a total dud around these parts. People didn’t update their listings fast enough, and the jobs on offer were long gone.
Do you have a favourite online job advertising site? One that would help equally well if you were searching for jobs in philadelphia pa, or in New York City? Or Sydney, Australia? Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Stonetown, Zanzibar?
Is there really one true global search engine, for job hunting that works? Is it linkedin? Is it Xing? Am I missing the best of the best?
What are your thoughts people!?
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Working On the Road
Sep 28th
With the advent of PDAs, it really has made the lives of freelancers like myself *so* much easier.
Just recently I upgraded my cell phone contract to a Blackberry device, and suffice it to say that the availability of push email and unlimited internet access has helped me to save countless hours which formerly was ‘time wasted’.
Doing the ’school run’ in the past used to suck at least an hour out of my work time, now I arrive a bit early, and I immediately use that time to go through my latest emails, make voice notes about any thoughts I’m having on current projects. Of course if I don’t feel like working, then it becomes my Mp3 player of choice and with 2GB of memory it basically holds my entire library of music right there.
Oh yeah, and it’s a phone too… guess I forgot to mention that!
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How To Establish Rates for Graphic Design
Sep 24th
Standard Rates For Graphic Design
By Marcus Peterson
Graphic designing is a profession where the raw material is creativity and the output is art. Calculating the work done in terms of money most of the times becomes an arguable issue. The fiscal calculations of a project depend on many aspects, though rough but different standards are established for various types of graphic designing.
Web site designing costs can be broken down to depending on the type of site, wherein sites are classified as low end, mid range and high-end sites.
A low site offers a 2-4 pages content and uses existing graphical themes or sock graphics are purchased. The designing package does not provide any animation page or any database interaction feature. The standard rates of such low-end site range approximately from $500 – $2000. On the other hand a mid range website costs approximately $2000 – $ 5000.
The website includes 5-7 pages of content out of which some is developed. In addition, the designer provides with 2-4 original graphics and a standard layout with some customization. Animation includes JavaScript mouse over changes but data interactions are not provided.
A high-end website involves a high cost and the standards range from $5000 – $10,000. A designer provides 12 or more pages of content, or even contents that are pragmatically/dynamically generated. The design has a unique layout and extensive graphics with navigation schemes. The animation is often done in JavaScript, Animated GIFs, Dynamic HTML, and Flash. In addition, designers also provide with SQL or Flat File database interaction.
The services of most graphic designers can also be calculated in hours. For instance the standard rates for basic graphic design are approximately $ 80 per hour, for custom graphic design $160 per hour, for 3-D graphic design $250 per hour, and for prepress correction and graphic adjustments $ 80 per hour.
Such types of calculation have greatly simplified the rate and cost problems of designing projects, as the designer is getting paid rationally if a certain project requires more time. Similarly, a client can give work in contracts that are based on hours.
Graphic Design provides detailed information on Graphic Design, Graphic Design Schools, Graphic Design Jobs, Graphic Design Companies and more. Graphic Design is affiliated with Graphic Artist Salaries.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marcus_Peterson
http://EzineArticles.com/?Standard-Rates-For-Graphic-Design&id=429015
Technorati Tags: graphic design
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Do You Have Gravatar?
Sep 8th
What is a Gravatar you ask?
The word is an amalgamation of the words Globally Recognised Avatar. Think of it as your Facebook profile photo, without the photo. It’s an image to represent you online, when commenting on blogs etc Each email address ‘persona’ that you have, can have it’s own image. So for example, when I comment on graphic design specific blogs, I use my graphic design identity. When I comment on photography blogs, I use my professional photography email address.
It’s just another way to show your identity online, and keep all your branding in line.
Here’s a gravatar that I’ve just done for this photography website.
It’s in keeping with the Photo Super Hero theme and colours, and now when the admin comments, the comment will be decorated with this cute button. Fun huh? Sometimes I am amazed that I get paid for having this much fun!
Technorati Tags: Graphic Design, Gravatars, Design for Web
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Marketing Postcard
Sep 7th
I’ve been working on a marketing postcard for the photography arm of my business.
Now because *I* am the client, AND the designer, it gets really hard! I can’t stick to my own brief, and I keep changing my mind. I eventually forced myself to pick a colour swatch from Adobe Kuler, and stick to it. I also went with a more elegant background, with a more modern shiny twist to the photographs in the foreground. I think things would be much easier if I were designing a marketing postcard for a Tacoma car accident lawyer! Because at least then *they* would have the final say.
It is indicative of the kind of photography that I do anyway, classic, beautiful, with a modern edge, so I suppose the brief is bang on! Well, at least I hope that my clients (both existing and new) will respond to it, and make bookings.
The back of the postcard contains details of my latest rates, and services, and of course all my contact details.
I’m tempted to add some contact details to the front page, and then turn it into a magnetic photo frame (the existing photographs get cut out) for people to put on their fridges with their favourite photos. It’s a good way to keep my contact details front and centre in their daily lives.
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