The week is coming to an end and that means it is time for us to look back on the week that passed, the best design news, resources and other goodies. This week we look at CSS and HTML tutorials, vintage and retro design, great globe logos and much more.

Practical Tips From Top WordPress Pros

Recently I shared with you some advice from the WordPress community to beginners. But what about if starting out is already a dim and distant memory? What if you’re already so immersed in the world of WordPress that you dream of trac and bore your partner with talk of the latest thing you’ve achieved with custom post types?

Cool Globe Logo designs

Without further a due, we share to you 45 Cool Examples of Globe Logo Design that can help you sail to your vast imagination and maybe arrive at land of great ideas for your next project.

15 websites with vintage and retro design

Vintage and retro themes in web development are becoming extremely popular these days. However, this doesn’t suggest particularly complex elements in design. On the contrary a simple use of old black & white photos or some old fashioned music played in the background may do the trick. It will also make sense to play with a color palette and with its help add a retro feel to your design.

Awesome 3D Photoshop CS6 tutorials

Before the release of adobe Photoshop cs6, many designers have suffered from the 3d conception in the program, something that pushes adobe improve these functionalities in its latest version, they have made a handful of tweaks that will significantly improve your workflow and enhance your tool set. Theses new features include a way to generate bump map textures from flat artwork, smoother previewing of soft shadows and more. Fortunately, there are already a number of online tutorials that will help you to learn more about 3d features. Today, we will take you through some of the exciting Photoshop CS6 tutorials that illustrate how to use these brand new tools to create amazing 3D effects.

20 Free business HTML and CSS Templates

Business templates are commonly used for business/company related websites as they are quite decent, minimalistic and chic. The Free Business HTML/CSS Templates.

15 Great CSS Tutorials

15 of the best hand picked CSS tutorials for you to get your hands dirty.

AngelHack announces worldwide hackathon

AngelHack, the organiser of “largest hackathon startup competition”, has announced the project has “just got bigger”. The next AngelHack kicks off in a month’s time, with events on April 27 and 28, in both Los Angeles and London. Global events will continue until mid-June in destinations including Paris, Moscow, Sydney, Seoul, Guadalajara, Santiago and many other cities.

Getting started with Edge Animate

In this tutorial, we’ll be getting started with Adobe’s new animation tool, Adobe Edge Animate. Edge Animate harnesses the power of HTML5 animation, and allows the user to create dynamic, exciting web-based animations in a quick, easy and fun way, using a user-friendly timeline-based interface as opposed to blocks of daunting code.

5 simple tips to SEO optimize WordPress

WordPress themes are a terrific solution for clients with smaller budgets. They give these clients the ability to make ongoing changes to their site using the #1 CMS in the world. They give you, the developer, the ability to deliver a website that looks great and has a quality user experience at a budget price point. Everybody wins. But what if you could deliver even more value to these clients? You can by doing some simple SEO optimization of the theme you customize and develop for your client. Here are 5 simple steps you can take to optimize any WordPress theme template.

The post Weekly News Roundup – 29 March 2013 appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

This week and next week we will share with you how to optimize your e-commerce web design in order to make the shopping process as seamless and easy for your customers as possible. Today we will present 10 tips on how to create a better e-commerce website, next week we will present the remaining 10 suggestions.

The post How to optimize your e-commerce web design – Part 1 appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

Over the past few years white space has become immensely popular. Many people use white space whether it is in their headers, footers or simply to create space between elements, as a way to give their website a more simplistic and cleaner look. We have compiled a list of 20 great examples of white space in web design.

Apple

Ultra 16

Google

Theme Jug

Jamie Gregory

Session M

Frieze

Dropbox

VolksWagen

Box

Cult Of Mac

Nintendo

Roundhouse

The Old Fashioned

37 Signals

WebKnit

Hey Designer

Checkout

Tiffany & C0.

Smart Car

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The guys at WebHostingBuzz have just released their latest infographic and it focuses on the state of social sharing in 2013. For web designers it is always important to know what social platforms are available as well as their popularity. The infographic states that 90% of companies with 100 or more employees use social media in their marketing mix.

When designing a website you should take the most popular social platforms into consideration, not only are they very important for advertising your website, but they can also be on vital importance for word-of-mouth advertising, it doesn’t take much for a website to instantly go viral on Twitter. As you can see below currently the eight most popular social platforms are:

- Facebook
- Twitter
- Pinterest
- LinkedIn
- Google+
- YouTube
- Tumblr
- Instagram

Click here to view full size image.

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No business owner wants their logo or marketing materials to appear like an amateur has put them together. When a potential customer goes to compare to like companies, the one that appears more knowledgeable and appealing will often win them over. Attractive marketing materials are essential since they are often the first impression a person has of a company or business.

Unfortunately, hiring a talented graphic designer involves quite a bit of money. Many budgets cannot bend their budgets to accommodate this type of service. So, how does a company ensure they are not only hiring the right designer, but that they are getting them at the best possible price?

Shop Around

Do not feel like you have to sign a contract with the first graphic designer you come across. Look around. Don’t be afraid to do cost comparisons. Bring these findings with you when you meet new designers. Not everyone will be willing to budge on their price but perhaps a designer you just love will agree to bridge the gap here or there. You have to negotiate. Perhaps they are firm on their estimate but are willing to throw something extra in. Or there is  a package deal with services you weren’t going to purchase but the bundle cost is too good to pass up. As in anything else, the best way to save money is to spend the time beforehand doing prep work.

Knowledge

Knowing what you are looking for and what you want beforehand will save you not only time, but also money. The more proofs, edits and redesigns you require to get the desired final product – the more you will pay a designer for their work. Take some time to do some research on design, recent trends in design and to really map out what you are seeking for your logo or marketing material. Coming to a designer with a plan with make proceedings go so much easier, thus saving you money.

Experience

Often those who want the best designers have the money to back up their wish. However, not every company can afford to hire the most skilled, most experienced or most wanted designer on the market. If you are working on a budget, your dreams of having a top notch designer may seem out of reach. However, you can find a great and talented designer without having to take out a second line of credit. Once you get past having to have the right ‘name’ behind your work, you can focus on upcoming designers who have loads of talent. These new designers may not have the experience or notoriety, but they can still produce stellar work that will grab the attention of your client base. It will require research to find the right designer, but it will be worth it in the end.

Protection

As a business owner, you need to protect yourself. Look for a designer or company that has been around for a while. Check their feedback rating at places like the Better Business Bureau. Ask your local Chamber of Commerce if they have heard anything about the company. Do an online search to see if there is anyone online talking about the designer, their work or their design firm. If you cannot find anything doing this research, ask the designer about insurance. A serious graphic designer will carry some type of liability insurance. Having insurance is a strong indication that the designer is serious about what they do.

Combine Services

Many companies offer in-house design services as part of their packages and deals. Instead of first seeking out a graphic design, considering choosing your printing company first and ask them to add on design services. Often this arrangement will save you money since the printing company is seeking first and foremost to acquire your printing needs and is offering design as an added bonus.

There are multiple ways to save costs when it comes to procuring a graphic designer for your needs. Doing the necessary research beforehand will go far when it comes to saving money and sparing your budget. Avoid rushing into making a decision and don’t be scared to negotiate. These techniques will ensure that you trim unnecessary fat from the cost of design and get the marketing pieces you are hoping for.

The post Budget Suggestions for Hiring Logo Design Company appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

The week is coming to an end and that means it is time for us to look back on the week that passed, the best design news, resources and other goodies. This week we look at CSS3 and HTML5 tutorials, what journalists need to know about web design, jQuery mobile for beginners, as well as great examples of typeface combinations in web design.

30 Really Useful HTML5 Tutorials

Almost everybody is talking about latest enhancement in web industry. Yes, it’s HTML5 and CSS3. Really these languages expanded the possibilities of web design. There are lots of web designer s and developers who have started using HTML5 into their designs. Here we’ve rounded up 30 really useful HTML5 tutorials that will definitely help.

Vexing Viewports · An A List Apart Article

“The Web is Agreement.” Jeremy Keith’s eloquent statement neatly summarizes the balance that makes it possible for us to build amazing things. Each week, new devices appear with varying screen sizes, pixel densities, input types, and more. As developers and designers, we agree to use standards to mark up, style, and program what we create.

What journalists need to know about Web design

Fifty milliseconds. That’s how quickly visitors can form strong, long-lasting impressions about your news or information website. But they aren’t sizing up the quality of your content or the sophistication of your code. They’re making nearly instantaneous, mostly subconscious judgments about how your work has been designed.

50 Helpful Typography Tools And Resources

We love beautiful typography, and we appreciate the efforts of designers who come up with great typographic techniques and tools or who just share their knowledge with fellow designers. We are always looking for such resources. We compile them, carefully select the best ones and then prepare them for our round-ups.

25 Web development resources to help you create better websites

As a developer I am always on the hunt for time saving resources, anything that can save me just a few minutes of time is a great help in an already hectic schedule. Compiled here is a list of 25 resources that are bound to make your life a little bit easier

Top 10 Free Online Tools for Creative Minds

In case you missed it, WordPress release 3.4 included a very exciting new development: the Theme Customizer. This allows users to tweak theme settings using a WYSIWYG interface and customize the theme so it includes the colors, fonts, text — and pretty much anything else — they want.

50+ Examples Of Drawings and Illustrations in Web Design

For a quite some time, web designers have used hand drawn illustrations and typography to give websites a non-digital look and feel and a more human touch. Right now, however, there is a strong web design trend coming with focus on keeping interface design minimalistic and flat.

A Complete Guide of jQuery Mobile for Beginners

There’s no doubt about it. Wherever developers look and whoever they talk to, mobile is at the top of the list. Talk to a C-level executive, and the conversation turns to mobile, and the question “How do I get me some of that?” comes up. Talk to other developers, and they tell you they’re targeting mobile devices. Mobile has become a big deal as smartphones have taken hold in the consumer marketplace.

10 Superb CSS3 Tutorials for Awesome Design

Many designers all over the world believe that CSS3 is a technique which has unbelievable potential which will in the future be used to create wonderful designed websites. At present, it is not being used variedly all over the world due to a number of limitations – obsolete browsers being one of them. In this post we’ve collected 10 Superb CSS3 Tutorials for Awesome Design, this can be proficiently functioned using markup, HTML, and some improved properties of CSS3.

40 Best Typeface Combinations in Web Design

When it comes to prints or Web Design, typography is one of the most important part. So selectng the right type of typography for your web design is one of the most crucial part. Keeping the small textured detail in mind while designing a website can sometimes be enough to get amazing results.

Providing responsive images with Drupal

In this tutorial, we’ll be solving this problem four times, thanks to the latest version of the Drupal CMS, 7, and its vast, user contributed module library. We’ll be looking at the adaptive image module, the adaptive image styles module, the client-side adaptive image module and, finally, the responsive images and styles module. These represent great solutions to optimising your Drupal website for bandwidth starved mobile devices; all modules used employ the techniques listed above.

The post Weekly News Roundup – 15 March 2013 appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

Surfing the net from a dedicated gaming console is not something new, in fact the ability to connect your gaming device to the internet was first introduced back in 1997 with the Game.com which allowed user to connect a dial-up modem and then check their email and browse the internet. However still to this day many designers ignore or pay very little attention to game console browsers when designing a new site. However there are some things that you need to remember when you are designing for a gaming console, added here are some of the most important things to remember, feel free to let us know if you think we forgot something.

Perhaps the biggest reason why so little importance has been given to the gaming consoles is that even though many households own either a Wii U, Wii, Xbox or Playstation, there is still a relatively small number that uses these devices to surf the web. The biggest problem is that these devices were not built for internet browsing and therefore they simply feel clunky when used to navigate the web.

According to StatCounter, the Sony PS3 accounts for just 0.1% of all web activity. Wii and Xbox browsers don’t even appear in the chart, although that’s possibly because they’re intermingled with Opera and IE9 statistics.

What consoles should be tested?

So the first thing you should decide when making your website more console friendly is what consoles will you test your site on, of course we know that you will not be able to test your site on every gaming device on the market, however it is recommended that you test on at least two major platforms so you can create as user friendly a website as possible.

1. Consoles that plug into a TV screen, such as the Nintendo Wii, Sony PS3, and Microsoft Xbox 360.
2. Handheld consoles such as Sony’s PSP, PS Vita and Nintendo’s DS and 3DS.

Different Consoles, different Challenges

Each different console brings with it different challenges, the biggest challenge is that even though the resolution is often higher than normal screens gamers sit much further away from their consoles, furthermore since they are not using a mouse to control the browser their clicks might not be as precise, another problem is that many game console browsers don’t support flash or CSS features.

What can designers do about it?

As more and more users will visit your website from a gaming console you can use different progressive enhancements that make it possible for people to access your site’s content even on a device that doesn’t support certain features. Another thing you can do is make sure your website loads as fast as possible. Even though some users will visit your website from a TV capable of showing HD quality you need to remember that not everyone has a Smart TV and therefore you should make sure your site also looks good on older screens.

console.maban.co.uk is really a great resource for information on how browsers function on different gaming systems, UK developer Anna Debenham created the site that provides descriptions, controller details, screen resolutions, user agents, JavaScript support, Flash versions, HTML5 test scores and a wealth of other information.

The post Things to remember when designing websites for gaming consoles appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

Even though many people dream of going freelance they often forget that it is a very challenging career choice, unlike a regular 9-5 job you are not certain that you will add money to your account at the end of the month. The biggest problem for any freelancer is not getting paid on time, or heaven forbid not getting paid at all. In this post we have added some suggestions and guidelines for making sure you will always get paid for the work you complete.

Often freelancers are more worried about providing a great service than they are about getting paid, many of them simply assume that if the client is happy with the job you do that then that equates to getting paid. However the truth unfortunately looks very different, in a split second a project that has taken many hours can go down the drain leaving you searching through the couch and jeans pockets for pennies that will pay the rent for next month.

Discuss payment before project start

Money is one of those touchy subjects, not everyone feels comfortable asking for money. However remember that the reason you are working freelance, or working at all is so you can pay your bills at the end of the month, there is nothing working with asking about payment in the same meeting as discussing the project details.

You should never start a project before the payment details have all been discussed, if the client gives you a suggestion that is too low then tell them so, remember you are running a one man business here and as such need to make sure you are getting paid what you deserve.

Use Contracts

This can really not be said enough, you need to have some form of contract with the client, otherwise you have no proof of actually having completed the project. On a personal note I once wrote an article and sent it to the client, never got paid however two weeks late I saw the same article on his website, since we didn’t have a contract I had no way of proving that I actually wrote the article. If you don’t know how to draft a contract look through Google there are a lot of sample contracts out there.

Contracts are beneficial for both you and your client, so work with them on the contract, make sure it is a win-win situation for both of you. Trust me a good contract will go a long way down the road. Of course make sure to keep a copy of the contract incase the client suddenly change their mind then you can refer to the contract.

Payment methods

It used to be that freelancers were paid either through wire transfers, by cheques or even in cash, however we are in 2013 and there is no reason why you can’t get paid through the internet, my recommendation is using PayPal, since they are the most reliable and consistent.

The great thing about PayPal is that once the client transfers the money they are automatically added to your account, yes it does take a few days for the money to get from PayPal to your account, but it is much safer than many other payment methods.

Keep Emotions at Bay

Every freelancer will tell you that they are passionate about a current project, sometimes you will want to sit up all night to work on a project, it can be near impossible for you to remove yourself from a project. However remember that you are still on a schedule, and you are most likely working on several projects at the same time. You need to be able to look at a project for what it is a paying gig and not your new baby. Don’t tell the client that you will make changes for free unless you absolutely messed something up, don’t keep reworking parts of your project because you are emotionally attached.

Let the client know if they are late

As with discussing payment upfront many people don’t like telling clients when they are late with a payment, but you need to remember, it’s all about cash flow. If you don’t get paid then you can’t pay your bills, and so on… You need to device some sort of follow-up strategy.

Often a simple email reminder is all it takes for the client to remember that they still need you pay you, if your email doesn’t work don’t be afraid to call them and let them know that you are still waiting for your money.

Conclusion

Being a freelancer can and should be a profitable undertaking, remember that since you are working for yourself you have no one but yourself to make sure bills are paid on time. If you feel we forgot something feel free to drop us a line in the comments below.

The post Guide for getting paid on time as a freelancer. appeared first on Design Reviver - Web Design Blog.

It used to be that the more information you could cram onto your main site the better, however today all of that has changed, today websites need to be as simple and sleep looking as possible. However often designers are wondering just how to simplify their design, therefore here is a post with five ways to keep your web design simple.

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