Phase 3 Innovation

A Career in Graphic Design – Working your way to the top of the creative industries

Creative Director
Lets start at the top and work down. Art directors, or Creative Directors are responsible for a creative team that may design work for magazines, television, advertising graphics, websites, or on packaging. A creative team can consist of layout artists, graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, and menial staff to do the work. An Art directors job is to make sure that each of these workers do not slack off down the pub and complete their work to a deadline and to the client’s needs. Art directors also make major decisicions along the lines of should the background be slate grey or cobalt blue, issuing dictates and changing their mind several days after a deadline has passed – leaving co-workers resolutely glum about their position in the grand scheme of things. Art directors will inevitably have come from some kind of marketing or sales background and need no prior graphic design knowledge or skill.

Senior Designer
A Senior Designer is mainly concerned with the visual aspects of a company and will probably have been promoted on the basis that she is fun and a ‘great team player’ (despite this being far from the case). A Senior Designer will usually insist on having a larger widescreen monitor than the rest of the team which will be decorated variously with fluffy pink bits marketing people send through on a daily basis. A Senior Designer will be involved in the elements of a company’s look such as business cards, stationery, packaging design, media advertising graphics, promotional design, and sticking up pictures of topless ‘hunks’.

Graphic Designer
The job of a Graphic Designer is to provide a new and exciting way to express the key information of a company or product through a dynamic image or use of typography. Graphic Designers take the scant information given to them by the client and using the internet to scab some free clip art, fashion their own ripped off logo designs in order to fleece the client for all they are worth.

Layout Artists and Artworkers
The engine room of the design world. These scumbags have been buried away with their dusty macs for decades, remorselessly churning out pages and layouts. Inevitably some clueless muppet will send over a 100 page brochure layed out in microsoft word and it will be the Artworkers thankless task to make it publishable. They will need to recognise a font at 50 yards, be able to colour correct the dreariest of images and take a good bollocking every now and again to keep them on their toes. The Artworker must have the ability to design magazines, design brochures, design flyers, design books and design posters. He harbours murder fantasies.

Illustrators
Illustrators generally speaking will have long greying hair and be influenced by prog rock. Working from home among the dungeon and dragonns figurines and manga comics they will attempt to put their own unique spin on whatever brief they are given. What you will be presented with is a semi clad girl with oversized boobs. You will have waited several weeks for this. You will never learn from previous mistakes.

Web Designers
Web designers create the pages, layout, and graphics for web pages, they will be technically minded to the point of absurdity. They will insist on using c++ coding language to impress other geeks and will beaver away doing whatever it is geeks do for hours on end. Web designers also design and develop the navigation tools of a site which will for design websites involve tiny text that makes your eyes bleed. Web designers are far too clever for their own good and should never be encouraged.

Web site design to hook a customer is very like fishing. Try these seven tips to make money.

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Step 1. Research.

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What – you don’t think a fisherman starts with research? How does he know not to fish in the bathtub? How does he know not to fish for dorado in USA? How does he know that his favorite lemon meringue pie on a sardine hook won’t catch sharks?

Imagine you’ve invented a 100% cure for Paraguayan piques. You pay a graphic designer to make your web site design. After a year you still haven’t been able to make money. Your host tells you that the few visitors that you had only stayed for ten seconds.

Research would have told you that
*Your prospects speak Guaraní not English
*Most of them can’t read Guaraní
*Even fewer speak English
*Most of them don’t have computers

A little research at Overture would have told you that only 3791 people looked for pique in a month, but most of them were interested in polo, not in an insect. Does your potion kill Jiggers? 1432 people searched on that word, and they were mostly North Americans. Perhaps you could make money from them?

If your web site design could inspire 10% of these searchers to visit your sales page and 10% of these bought from you that would give you 14 clients per month. Would that make money enough to pay for your web site design? You’ve been fishing in your bathtub!

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Step 2 Preparation

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As a fisherman you’ve discovered what fish are in your area, what will attract them to where you are, and found a spot where you won’t get your line tangled up with other fisherman’s lines.

My research for this article showed that ‘web site’ had half a million searches but people could be totally uninterested in web site design. ‘Web site design’ had only a third of a million searches, but readers were more targeted. There were 239 advertisers on Overture, which shows that it is popular, and there are only 24 million competitors.

‘Build a website’ had less than 50 thousand searchers, but 337 million competitors. Ouch! I think my lines would get tangled!

So the rule is: find what people want then design your web site with pages filled with the information that they want. If nobody is interested in your subject, advertise offline or find another subject for your web site design.

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Step 3 Get crowds

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You sprinkle oatmeal soaked in your secret ingredient on the water, and soon fish are following the scent back to where you are.

Your first task is to make your web site design attractive to visitors.

Tuna fishermen throw un-baited hooks into the mass of fish and pull them out in a sort of rhythm. The hook, which has no barb, snags a fish which falls off into the hold, and the hook is thrown out again, with the whole process taking a few seconds.

Google Adsense is excellent to make money from this kind of web site design.

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Step 4 Research

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But that was in step 1 you object? Your research should never end. Talk to the other fishermen. Visit fishermen’s forums. Search Google for information. Your oatmeal has attracted fish, but when you put it on the hook it washes off.

You must find what bait will stay on the hook long enough for hungry fish to bite. This will vary from season to season. Experiment and record your results.

Research for your web site design should never stop. Try different ideas to make money and record your results.

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Step 5 Pre-sell

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OK. Your fish are crowding round you. Your bait has some colorful feathers disguising the hook. You want to persuade the fish that your bait is more attractive than the scraps of oatmeal.

Your web site design should start to describe your experience with whatever it is that you are selling to make money. You should try to communicate in all your web site design just how interesting you find what you are offering.

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Step 6 Arouse Enthusiasm

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Keep pulling your bait through the water so that fish will think

*I’d better act while the food is there!
*It’s heading towards the other fish. I’d better be quick!
*I may get a better offer, but what if I don’t?

If your web site design is aimed at affiliate income, don’t try to sell yet. You strike only after the bait is in the fish’s mouth. Let the vendor handle the last step.

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Step 7 Hook Them

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Once the fish has the bait in it’s mouth you strike to drive the barbs home, then the fish can’t leave go. Then you pull the fish in, and eat it.

Oops! I’m not advocating cannibalism! Once your web site design has hooked a customer the same rules no longer apply.

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Bonus Tip

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To succeed, your web site design must have ways to keep your customers so happy that they will keep coming back again and again.

Your web site design must obviously have a contact page. You should have a frequently asked questions page. You should offer further sales of related products to make money for you. If you eat your client you won’t have her returning again and again.

This article outlines the five most important conventions for writing and designing your webpages.

Your presentation is every bit as important as your content. The best content in the world won’t ever be read if the presentation is so bad that nobody stays long enough to read it. If you maximize your website usability, your visitors stay longer, read more, and you make more sales.

If the purpose of your web site is to educate your readers and/or lead them to a specific action, (like buying something) then you should seriously consider following these design and writing conventions…

1. Start Each Page With Your Most Important Content.
2. Use Meaningful Link Text to Provide Information.
3. Write Scannable Pages.
4. Use Simple Website Designs.
5. Use Clear, Consistent Website Navigation.

1. Start Each Page With Your Most Important Content.
People are impatient; they will scan your page quickly and leave as soon as they get bored. Put your best, most important content near the top of the page.

Design your layout so that nothing pushes your most important content down past the “page fold”. That is your “Prime Real Estate” — don’t waste it. Large logos, unnecessary graphics, ambiguous headlines…. all these things are a waste of your must valuable space.

Begin each page with a summary or a short list of page contents. Be specific, and place the newest items at the top of the list or in a “What’s New” section.

2. Use Meaningful Link Text to Provide Information.
Web surfers decide in seconds whether or not your page is worth reading. When you use bland, content-neutral words for your link text, you miss an important opportunity to provide information. (Also – visually impaired web users often instruct their computer to read the link text aloud, “Click here” won’t help them.)

The words used in your anchor text should suggest what the reader will find when they click on the link, and help them decide to click or not.

* Bad: To learn about icebergs, click here.
* Better: Icebergs
* Best: Where icebergs come from.

You can make your links even more informative by following them with a blurb:

Blurbs: Short Previews of Web Pages
A “Blurb” is a short paragraph that gives a preview of the page at the other end of a link. You are reading a blurb now. If a blurb helps a reader decide to click the link, then it works.

3. Write Scannable Pages.
Offline, books and magazine articles are designed for sequential reading: You start at the beginning and read to the end.

Online text is not necessarily sequential – it relies upon smaller chunks of text, which the reader often does not read in order. So each page of your website must make sense to a visitor who did not see the preceding page, or just arrived from a search engine.

Meaningful, informative headers & subheadings, bulleted lists, and bold keywords all help readers scan the page quickly and easily.

4. Use Simple Website Designs.
Your visitors didn’t come to see your fancy graphics. They came to find information about prices or availability, they’re looking for contact information or directions, or maybe they just want some technical details…

Unless your website is about cool graphic effects, I can guarantee that your visitors don’t really care about your spinning logo or dancing unicorns, or even whether or not your menu buttons blink or change background images on a mouse-over.

Web-savvy visitors have ‘trained’ themselves to ignore ads. Anything that flashes, shimmers, blinks or dances around will not get the attention that it deserves.

The more such things you put on your page, the harder your reader will have to work in order to find what they want. Too much of that and they are gone, never to return. Use images wisely. Every image on your page slows it down, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot….
* Use smaller images whenever possible.
* For large collections of images, use an index with thumbnails that they can click if they want to see the image full-size.
* Use an image editor to reduce the file size of your images

See our “Using images in your webpages” section for more about all that ~ http://blt-web.com/web_design/using_images.html

5. Use clear, Consistent Website Navigation.
Next to pages that take forever to load (and pop-ups), the biggest complaint that surfers have is difficult to understand and/or inconsistent website navigation…
* Use the same menu on all your pages.
* Use a logical link hierarchy, with related items together.
* Be perfectly clear with your link titles & descriptions.
* Use text links whenever possible.
* If you must use image links, use the alt=”link destination” element.

A website with more than ten or fifteen pages may not need a link from every page to every other page… you can link to each section from each page, but give each section its own “Table Of Contents”.

Every page should have a link to the home page and to the site map. (If you have less than ten pages, you may omit a site map, but your home page should have a text link to every page for search engines.)

See our “Menu Design Tips” page for more information ~ http://blt-web.com/web_design/menu_design.html

Following these 5 simple guidelines will help your website be a success. With faster-loading pages and easier-to-find information, people will read more of your content and are more likely to take the action that you want them to.

The craze of World Wide Web is continuously increasing currently. At present, the benefit of the website is realized by business.

If we would like to develop our company in World Wide Web, then it’s necessary to create the most creative website, so people can visit our website and want to take the information about our services and products. It is said that the first impression is the last impression and your website is the first impression to your target prospective clients. The impression should be developed by your creative website in visitor’s mind so it’s essential to create more creative website for first impression on our client’s mentality so they want to visit our site again. To design the most creative website, follow below tips.

1. About Pages
If you want to get the ideas of your visitors, then feedback is necessary. Contact us page is also advisable to start a relation among you and your clients. You must give your email address so visitor can contact you directly and you can give support completely. About us webpage must be included to provide the information about your company. The information can be year of establishment, your growth, and name of country from where you operate. Home page must be included with links to all the other WebPages. All web pages must be given and the link to Home page.

2. Attractive
Your website should be attractive. The color selection for the pages has to be looked nice. The color of background has to be light and design has to be attracted by visitor first look.

3. Professional
Your website should be professional, in proper title pages. The content must be placed and unnecessary content must be avoided in a proper way. At first site, it should be able to show the visitor’s interest for continuing your website. For example, you can visit our site – flash web design fort lauderdale

4. Small size of WebPages
WebPages should also be good looking and creative as well. WebPages must not be very comprehensive. Surfing of these types of websites will be simply avoided.

5. Text
Content does not issue; issue is look of expressions in WebPages. The background of the webpage should be light and text should be dark, it will be impressive. To read the text easily, the background should not be dark. All the fonts of the WebPages should be chosen properly which are easily available on every computer. In this case, visitors do not need to install new fonts in computer to read your text of your webpage. They can surf and read your site easily.

6. Capitalized Text
If you want to emphasize something, only when you should use capitalized text. Don’t uses capitalize text in every sentences, it is hard to read.

7. Grammar
You should not be careless in text which is written in the webpage. You must not make any mistakes which may prove your ineffectiveness. Before finalize the text of your WebPages, you must check it. Any grammatical mistakes must not be made.

8. Background Images
You should keep minimum background images. Generally, it makes your pages harder to view and read.

9. Image Formats
Generally designers are using two types of formats GIF and JPEG. Let’s know the difference between both formats.
GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. For different types of images, this format is better with only some different colors like drawing, black and white images and little content that will be little pixels high. It is also supporting transparency. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It supports 16 million colors which are the best suited for photographs and complex graphics. It does not work well on line drawings, lettering or simple graphics.

10. Frames
When you are using frames in your website, it makes website ugly, confusing and more complicated.
Thus, the expert web designing companies have the best skills to design and online marketing skill and know that how to develop a website that should be one of the most favorable advertising tools in the biggest market of the world. Are you looking for web design fort lauderdale, you can certainly contact us at Ardis Creative.

Coaches have a big challenge when seeking clients. They are selling the unknown.

By unknown, I mean that most people who can benefit from coaching, whether it be business coaching or personal coaching, either never heard of it or don’t really understand how it works.

When people work with a coach for the first time, there usually comes a point when they say “a ha!” and are better able understand the value they can get.

So trying to get clients can seem like a catch-22. In order to hire you, they need a strong sense of what you do. But to get that sense they need to work with you first!

It’s because of this hurdle that direct selling or direct response methods like cold calling or placing ads don’t work. Those channels don’t get you clients directly.

Dealing with this challenge can be frustrating for many new coaches. They really want to help their clients succeed in their business or in their life, but getting the prospect to sign on the dotted line doesn’t happen as often as they would like.

So how can coaches deal with selling the unknown? Make it known and use your web site to do it!

Here are 3 ways:

1 – Write web site copy in terms of “what they do know.”

Prospective clients can relate to their pains and troubles. Their pains and troubles might include not having enough time in a day, trouble sleeping at night, or not making enough money.

They can also relate to where they want to be in the future. Some examples could be having lots of income, having peace of mind and having a happier life.
So when you are writing about your services, be sure to start with things your prospect already knows about, such as their pains and their desires.

Additionally, case studies and testimonials of others you have helped would further your prospect’s understanding of what you do. These examples are most effective if they are written in terms of initial problems and end results.

By explaining what you do in terms they know directly, you better communicate what you do. When prospects clearly see what they can get from working with you they are more excited and more interested in working with you.

2 – Give away free information.

Compile an article or report that is helpful to your target prospects. Choose a topic that is directly related to their problems or situations. Then make that report available on your web site for download.

This strategy has a lot of value:
•    Everyone likes free helpful stuff, so they will take action to get it.
•    Once created, giving it out takes almost no time to do.
•    It tells the the prospect that you know their about their business, thus making you a good choice for helping them.
•    Sending people to your web site creates another relationship building “touch.”
•    People can refer this report to other people, increasing your visibility.

3 – Give away a free online assessment.

Create a series of questions on your web site. Then invite your visitor to answer them in return for a score and an interpretation of that score. This gives them helpful information about themselves and gives them a sample of what you do.

This technique has a lot of value similar to the report idea. It’s free, doesn’t take a lot of time or money to implement, it is automated, it gives value, and it can be referred to others.

Additionally, you can determine which prospects have stronger needs based on their responses. With that information, you can target your sales efforts towards them and increase your closing rate.

In conclusion, use your web site as a tool for educating your prospects. Doing this will gain more trust and grow the relationship until they eventually become your paying client.