Here are the way neato links I checked out this week.

Design

Ten Things I Have Learned by Milton Glaser

Ten logo design tips from the field

How to (and not to) work with a designer

Your Logo Makes Me Barf

Web Design and Development

10 Web Typography Rules Every Designer Should Know

Funny

The Bloggess

Tremendous News

Technology

Google Wave redefines Email

Freelancing

7 Ways To Research Your Freelancing Target Markets

Here are the coolest, most interesting links I checked out this week.

Design

50 Best Sites To Get Design Inspiration

25 Sites to Download Royalty-Free Stock Photos and Textures

55 Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers

Top 37 Design Blogs to Follow

Web Design and Development

How to Spot Quality within Web Design: Examples & Tips

25 Important Web Design Tools

8 Layout Solutions To Improve Your Designs

30 HTML Best Practices for Beginners

9 Signs You Shouldn’t Hire THAT Web Guy

Blogging

5 Ways To Stop Your Blog From Going Viral

How To Write Headlines For Google Vs Twitter Vs Digg

13 blogging lessons learned from Stephen King’s On Writing

How to Write Magnetic Headlines

Internet Marketing

5 Effective Linkbait And Link Generation Strategies

Freelancing

101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

Get an A+ in Photoshop

• imitate something from real life (e.g. how shadows and light really work, how glass and water bend light).
• guess with reasonable accuracy how a particular effect was created by someone else in Photoshop.
• troubleshoot your own errors as well as someone else’s.
• manipulate pixels non-destructively.
• work efficiently through the proper use of shortcuts, panels, actions, and tools.
• know how and when to use most of the features in Photoshop.

Here are the 10 things I recommend you do if you want to be a Photoshop expert.

#1: Own the latest version of Photoshop

It’s pretty hard to really experiment with Photoshop if you don’t have your own copy at home. Having the latest version is important too. Particularly with the last two versions, CS3 and CS4, new features are added all the time. These features usually either make your job easier (like the Adjustments panel), or give you tools that didn’t even exist in prior versions (like some of CS4′s 3D capabilities).

I do recommend you purchase your own copy. Please don’t used pirated stuff. If you are a teacher or student who is not using Photoshop for commercial purposes, you are allowed by Adobe to purchase the educational version at about half-price. It is as fully-featured as the non-educational version. You can usually buy this version at college book stores, or online at sites such as creationengine.com.

You are allowed to run your Photoshop software on two machines. I have one copy on my desktop PC and one on my laptop for travel.

#2: Play and Make Mistakes

Experimentation and play is the key to learning something beyond the basics. Try out all kinds of tools and filters, and see what they do with different settings. You can’t really ruin Photoshop. And if you do, you can reset all the defaults by closing Photoshop, then pressing and holding the Shift+Ctrl+Alt keys (Mac: Shift+Cmd+Opt) while Photoshop restarts.

Take a bunch of photos from your camera (or online) and throw them together. See how blend modes change an overall image as layers are moved around. Try all of the layer adjustments, and every filter combined with another filter. Don’t worry if it’s ugly. You’re learning. And there’s always the History panel to allow you to back up several steps and try something else.

#3: Take a Class

To be honest, I had an awful Photoshop teacher. He did little beyond schedule what we were supposed to complete in the textbook. I stopped going at one point. I had learned how not to teach, and four years later I was teaching Photoshop. What a good teacher can do is give you assignments you never dreamed you could do (and enjoy!) More importantly, a good instructor can give you personal guidance when you don’t even realize you made a mistake, or there’s a typo in the textbook, or you accidentally skipped something, and something goes wrong.

Finally, a good instructor will give you projects to do that give you real-world scenarios and specifications. This prepares you for making real money with Photoshop. Here are some projects I assigned my Photoshop and Illustrator students this year and last year.

#4: Go to Seminars

Kelby Training provides absolutely fantastic seminars all over the United States. I have had teachers such as the amazing Bert Monroy and Dave Cross. These seminars have increased my creativity and efficiency in Photoshop beyond belief. The day-long seminar is always fun and very inspiring. Go to one of these seminars if you can, or find something comparable in your area.

#5: Read Photoshop Magazines

Photoshop User Magazine from NAPP is the undisputed master when it comes to American Photoshop publications. You can find it for $10 at book stores, or you get an automatic subscription when you become a NAPP member. You will need that NAPP membership to access the tutorial files online. Each issue has a bunch of tutorials at all levels, plus reviews of products and news about the industry. The magazine caters to photographers, designers and hobbyists alike.

Layers Magazine is great too, but does not cater just to Photoshop users. It addresses almost all of the Adobe design products. It only has a couple of Photoshop tutorials per issue. If you work with Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, and Dreamweaver as well, this mag’s for you.

I also like to buy those really expensive ($15) imports from the U.K., such as Advanced Photoshop and Photoshop Creative. These can be found at book stores too. Unlike Photoshop User, they include a CD-Rom with every issue that provides all the resources for the tutorials, plus brushes, textures, and the like. These magazines sound like an awfully big expense at first, but they are so worth it. The tutorials are always very well done, and gorgeous to boot.

#6: Read Photoshop Books

Some Photoshop books out there are not so great, but most of them are really top-drawer. When considering a Photoshop book for purchase, look for three things:

• Are the images really beautiful or interesting? I have a book here I taught from before I really evaluated the images. They are bordering on ugly. Find a book that makes you feel like you can’t wait to create those images.
• Is the book written to your level? It can be really frustrating if the instructions are too easy or too hard for your experience level.
• Does the book match your learning style? Some books use blocks of text and others make each step into a bullet point. Some have more step-by-step images than others. Decide what works best for you and look for books written that way.

I do have three specific book recommendations. Each of the books below contains wonderful tutorials, and is written very well.

#7: Do Online Tutorials

I love doing online tutorials. Some good places to find Photoshop tutorials are PSD Tuts+, Good Tutorials, Pixel2Life, and Tutorialized. I also have some here. If you work with online tutorials enough, you find some favorite writers. Look for tutorials writers who provide enough images, proofread their work, and don’t leave steps out. You should be able to create a result that looks much like the one promised by following exactly what they have written. As with books, look for tutorials written to your skill level. But push yourself to do more challenging stuff than you’re used to.

#8: Be a Community Member

This can take many forms. Sometimes I like to check out online Photoshop forums and see if anybody needs a question answered. I often find cool ideas for myself as well. I also hang out on Twitter, and follow a large number of fellow graphic and Web designers. They are always feeding me new links to incredible online resources. I have RSS feeds I read from my favorite design blogs, and I comment on all of the articles that move me. I read everything by Smashing Magazine and Minervity.

There are design communities in the offline world too, of course. I am a member of the local group called ADAC. When I had more time a few years ago, I was even a board member. Real-world design clubs are a great opportunity to learn all about design in addition to some of the business aspects of freelancing (ADAC once had a great talk from an intellectual property attorney about copyright law for artists.) More importantly, you can come away inspired with fresh ideas by looking at the works of others.

#9: Learn Other Adobe Programs Too

Photoshop rarely works in a vacuum for most designers. There are many times when a Photoshop project is enhanced by the contributions of artwork done in Illustrator, for example.

Learn how to save your work for the press using Acrobat. Learn how to create vector artwork in Illustrator and import the paths into Photoshop. Learn how to place your Photoshop files into InDesign. Learn how various Photoshop plugins can expand your design horizons or make your work easier. These are but a few examples. A thorough understanding of Photoshop must include an understanding of how well it plays with others.

#10: Teach Photoshop

I wasn’t a Photoshop expert when I started teaching Photoshop. I am now, thanks in part to having taught it. Teaching Photoshop helped me develop my expertise in ways that no other experience can. When you have to communicate how to do something to someone else, you come to understand it in a way that sets it in concrete in your brain.

I often get my students to find something new to learn, and then have them turn around and teach it to another student. And when both students make mistakes during this teaching process, they both learn more. Writing tutorials – and finding out if someone can follow them – takes this concept step further.

Do you have any other ideas for building Photoshop expertise? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!

Invitation

Today we’ll look at an invitation for a child’s birthday party.

This invitation was originally designed by my friend in InDesign. Since her background is in photography rather than design, she asked for my feedback. I wanted to help her tighten up the design without losing its playful, colorful personality.

Before

Now, my first impulse when looking at a design that has multiple fonts, multiple colors, and center alignment is to view all three as problems.

However, this is a special design meant to appeal to a child’s heart. Having many colors and fonts gives the invitation a fun, festive feel that is desirable here.

And while center alignment is usually a big no-no when attempting to create connections between elements of a design (left and right alignment are much stronger), this is an invitation. We commonly find center alignment on invitations, particularly those of the wedding flavor.

So we’ll leave those design features alone. Let’s see where there might be some bits to improve.

Before

Refer to the numbered callouts in the image above.

1. Repetition is a good design principle. Here we see the sandals repeated top and bottom. However, they are dissimilar is size and placement.
2. Items such as the address, date and time, contact person, and phone number are all over the place. A child’s parent will be hunting all over this design, trying to find the information so they can get their child to the party on time.
3. This sentence fragment is important, but it’s too long and too passive to really get the point across.
4. The word “does” is incorrect grammar when supporting multiple nouns (“week”, “zoo” and “swimming”).
5. This one is a subtle and common mistake. When you put a dash between two times, it means “from __ to __” Adding the word “from” before it is redundant. This bit should either say “from 11am to 2pm” or simply “11am – 2pm”. There is also a big gap between the two 1s in the number 11.
6. This paragraph has been justified (aligned both left and right). It clashes with the center alignment in the rest of the design. Justification has also caused another problem. When the line width only allows a handful of words like we see here, we end up with giant spaces between words.

After

First, we made the sandals the same size and moved the top sandal image up to overlap the corner border as it did on the bottom. This strengthens the repetition and makes the design more unified.

After, Step 1

Next, we pulled all the time, location, and contact information together into one group. This is the design principal called proximity, which means that things which are similar are next to each other. When we look at an invitation, especially when we are driving to the event, we tend to expect all the pertinent details to be in one place.

After, Step 2

Here we streamlined the safety text so that it is active, unmistakable, and stands as a statement on its own.

After, Step 3

We changed “does” to “do”. Then we removed the word “from”, and tightened the kerning between the 1s in the number 11.

After, Step 4

One small but important detail. My friend told me told me that lunch would be provided, and asked if that would be automatically understood by parents because the party would be at lunchtime. I suggested it would not, so she added that useful information. I sure would want to know that!

After, Step 5

Finally, we center-aligned the middle paragraph. This alignment gave us more natural spacing between words. It also gave the design a bit more white space.

After, Step 6

And here is the final design:

After

This is my second installment of “Saturday Round-Up”, where I showcase all the cool stuff I have found throughout the week that relates to Web and graphic design. Enjoy!

Freelancing

“40 resources to become a freelance Graphic/Web Designer”
from HeinMaas, February 18 2009

Hey, today i will try to help those who wants to make it as an successful Freelance Graphic/Web Designer. I’m 90% convinced that when you’ll visit these 40 resources carefully then you will be successful, these resources are covering all types of tips, tricks and sites where you can get some passive income and the most important where you’ll learn from the best of the best. Read more »

“25 lies told by freelancers and clients”
from Flying Solo, May 13 2009

Liars are everywhere, but they’re hard to spot, even if their pants are on fire. Never fear, I’ve researched the top 25 business lies told by freelancers and clients. Actually, there are only 14, but 25 will attract more RSS and Twitter readers. Read more »

Video Humor

“Your business card is CRAP!”
from YouTube

Words of advice from the greatest pitchman alive today. Watch the video »

Marketing

“50 Simple Marketing Ideas All Freelancers Can Use”
from Freelance Switch, May 1 2009

As a freelancer, you have a wide variety of marketing options available to you. Just which ones will bring you the clients you prefer to work with depends — it’s important to make sure that the methods you use allow you to reach the places prospective clients will be. Read more »

Networking

“Why I’ll Only Follow 500 People On Twitter.”
from Gordie Rogers, May 11 2009

I know I’m going against the trend by limiting myself to only following 500 people on Twitter, but there is a method to my madness. Hear me out. Read more »

“85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow”
from Mashable, May 4 2009

There are thousands of designers on Twitter (Twitter reviews) tweeting about everything from ongoing projects to their personal lives. But only a small percentage of those tweet about design topics of interest to other designers and design addicts. These people cover everything from their design process to their own projects, and design resources from all over the web. Below is a list of more than 85 of those Twitterers. Read more »

Web Design

“Small web design elements tutorials collection”
from Design Notes

Web design is about details. Details that audience do not pay attention to tells how well or how bad your design is. Today we are looking into some tutorials and techniques on the smallest elements in web layout design. Read more »

“10 Great CSS Selectors you must know”
from TutorialFeed, April 30 2009

Selectors define which part(s) of your (X)HTML document will be affected by the declarations you’ve specified. Several types of selectors are available in CSS. Note that some of them are not supported in all browsers. Read more »

Animation

“This one time…”
from Vimeo

A gorgeous animation with a fun story and fluid movements. By nelson boles
Watch the video »

Workspaces

“Advantages and Disadvantages: Working with Multiple Screens”
from Web Designer Depot, May 11 2009

Two characteristics that represent most web designers are a need for productivity and a love for technology.

This desire for increased efficiency and productivity leads many designers to look to technology for methods that will improve their work flow.

One common approach for designers (and others who want to improve productivity) is to use multiple monitors. Using two or more monitors can bring a number of significant advantages to designers. Read more »

Blogging

“How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies”
from Problogger, May 13 2009

For every great blog promotion strategy, there are five that suck. Really suck. They suck so bad that using them can get you blacklisted by real bloggers, ignored by annoyed readers, unfollowed on Twitter, and possibly placed on the terrorist watch list. Read more »

“How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies”
from 1st Web Designer

Since I use social bookmarking/voting sites to promote my articles a lot, I thought I might share these sites with You too – I know if You submit every article in each of these sites regularly, You’ll get many new and regular readers in short time period. I, for example, got 4,000-5,000 unique readers everyday using this method. Read more »

Did I miss anything cool and groovy? Tell me in the comments below!

I’m starting a new feature today called Saturday Round-Up. On Saturdays, I will showcase all the cool stuff I have found throughout the week that relates to Web and graphic design. Enjoy!

Networking

“How Social Networks Are Changing Everything”
from Business Week, May 7 2009

Facebook and its ilk offer platforms to explore all the Web with one’s relevant data in tow, and they’re set to overtake the big portals Read more »

“Twitter Search to Become Real Search”
from Mashable.com, May 7 2009

The fact that Twitter (Twitter reviews)’s search is now often faster and more relevant than any other search engine out there is not a secret anymore. It is, however, a very limited search engine: it merely indexes a bunch of tweets. In its current state, it’s great for tracking conversations, but it will never be a competitor to Google (Google reviews). This is about to change. Read more »

BackTweets

Search links in Twitter Try this tool »

Scoopler

Real-time search. Try this tool »

Web Design

“101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress”
from Noupe.com, May 5 2009

Throughout this article, we’ll be focus on many WordPress Theme hacks, ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready in hand when developing WordPress websites. Let’s take a look at useful, yet rather unknown techniques for a powerful CMS using WordPress. Each section of the article presents a suggestion and provides you with an explanation of the solution for each suggestion. Read more »

Website Grader

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. Try this tool »

“Worldwide Conferences for Web Designers”
from Web Designer Depot, May 8 2009

We’ve arranged a massive list of events of interest to graphic design professionals. Read more »

“73 Best Free Design Resource Website Help You To Use In Your Designs ”
from VisionWidget, May 9 2009

As a designer its always handy to have a collection of Photoshop brushes & vector & Free Quality PSD objects to use in your designs, but finding a best/perfect piece is not an easy task, even though there are quite a few resources around the web, some of the websites are best and others are not worth checking, here I’ve collected best 73 websites of them where you can download free files, all these sites are worth bookmarking. Read more »

“Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?”
from Smashing Magazine, May 9 2009

With the release of Silverlight 1.0 and its subsequent versions, a debate started among designers and developers regarding choosing between Flash and Silverlight. Silverlight faces difficulties in capturing the market because of the maturity of Flash. However, Silverlight has managed to keep up by including certain features that designers and developers have always wanted to see in Flash, such as search engine optimization. In this article, we will discuss some of the technical differences between Flash and Silverlight to help you choose the technology that best suits your needs. Read more »

“The ‘Semantic Video Web’ is Essential, Pluggd’s Alex Castro”
from Beet.TV, May 20 2008

Video search is key to discovery and consumption of video. Also essential is the organization of metadata. Pluggd, a Seattle-based start up, does both. The company provides its enterprise solution to CNET Networks and others. View video »

Blogging

“How to Create a Highly Viral Blog”
from Write to Done, May 6 2009

Despite all the buzz about creating “viral content” and a “viral blog,” not many people really understand how this is done. I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure I’ve got it all figured out. There aren’t really any secrets. But, there are a lot of little tactics that can add up to creating something contagious. Read more »

Did I miss anything cool and groovy? Tell me in the comments below!

This list of ten tips from designer Daniel Thomas Cassaro is funny and true.

10 TIPS : YoungJerks (Dan Cassaro)
1 – STAY HUNGRY LIKE BIGGIE ON HIS FIRST ALBUM – Success can satiate hunger and blur the line between confidence and laziness. It’s best to remain critical and be open to the criticism of others. You’ll not only continue to grow as a designer, but you’ll keep things fresh and exciting for yourself. What kind of man would Bob Dylan be if he just continued to do the same thing album after album? MORE…