What is a brand? Is it a name or logo? Is it the company slogan or look of the website? Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that our brand is what we look like or the message we communicate. While those things may influence our brand, it is more than that. Continue reading
A Brand vs. Branding
Creative Logo Design – Four Principles of Effective Logo Design
What makes an effective logo design? A great logo is simple, appropriate, connects with the qualities of your company, conveys the intended message, and is relevant to the target audience. Have you also noticed that you can see excellent logo designs from a great distance? Take for example: McDonald’s, Nike, Walmart, Sears, Apple, Hertz, and 7 Eleven. These logos work well in different sizes on a variety of mediums. So, it’s no surprise that companies spend millions of dollars developing their identity and branding it everywhere. Creative and effective logo designs have made companies more distinguishable and memorable. So make sure you apply these logo design principles (in no particular order):
The Ten Most Overused Fonts in Graphic Design
You’ve seen them over again. They haunt you when you sleep and when you design. No matter how many times you tell designers not to use these fonts, they still use them anyway. You cringe when someone asks you what you think of their logo design that includes one of these fonts. Continue reading
The Best Kept Secret: OpenResources.org
A new website for churches worldwide to download and use an entire library of creative materials – absolutely free. Materials include sermon audio, countdowns, promotional design graphics and opening videos from a wide variety of message series and churches. Download free church media.
Google Analytics – Five Reasons Why You Can’t Afford to Have a Website Without It
Most web hosts offer free basic statistics for your web traffic. However, if you’re relying on these primitive website bonuses, you’re going to miss out on tons of traffic. Below are the five most compelling reasons you should use Google Analytics to monitor and measure your website traffic. Continue reading
Web Design Essentials – Discover the Ingredients That Will Make Your Website #1
Web design is an art and a science. Not only are you trying to captivate new visitors but you are also trying to convince search engine robots to rank your website. So, the question is: how do you measure the effectiveness of a website? In this article on Web Design Essentials you’ll learn how to evaluate your website’s effectiveness and how you can improve it. Continue reading
Photoshop Videos – Master Photoshop in Minutes with these Training DVDs
Photoshop Vidoes are a great way to learn Photoshop quickly and become proficient with all the techniques and tools. Usually produced on a DVD, these training videos allow you to watch the masters like Scott Kelby, Dave Cross and John Falke and get inside their heads’ and learn the how’s and why’s behind Photoshop’s amazing power. You can pause and rewind if necessary to master the tricks and techniques at the same time you see them. Continue reading
Before You Sign the Web Design Contract – What to Ask Before You Sign on the Dotted Line
Don’t make the same mistake one friend of mine recently made when hiring a design company to do his organization’s website. Continue reading
Building a Highly Ranked Website in Google
Google. Millions of keywords. Billions of web pages. Competition like never before. So, how does Google (and all of the other search engines) select which page gets ranked #1 for a particular keyword, while another webpage gets ranked #10,567? Although, the exact formula for calculating Google’s search engine rank remains a mystery, there are a number of known factors that contribute to a page’s ranking and several more the are debatable. Continue reading
How to FTP – and Make Your Website Public
You’ve finished building your website in one of the popular software programs and now you’re ready to take your website public. You may have a domain name (www.yourname.com) or you may not. The question is, what do you do next? How do you take the website on your computer and allow the whole world to see it? Continue reading