Blu Mountain Expressions

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

10 Worst Mistakes Graphic Designers shouldn’t be Making

The most common way for a graphic designer to learn is through trial and error. Especially for young and aspiring graphic designers, who keep on committing mistakes because of lack of experience. You must have heard of the old adage “To err is human”. So the next time you make a mistake, don’t fret over it…instead learn from your blunders.
Having learnt from my mistakes, which I encountered in my career, I wish to educate my fellow designers about some of the errors, which they should avoid in any case. Following are 10 of the most common mistakes that most graphic designers commit in their graphic design careers:

1. Working without a Design Brief:

In any graphic design project, the details are necessary to guide a designer through the entire process. Some graphic designers have a bad habit of being overly confident and start the project without acquiring a detailed design brief. A design brief helps you collect all the information about your clients’ design project. Without knowing your client’s requirements, you simply cannot work on a logo design project.

2. Ignoring the Target Audience:

The purpose of graphic design is to visually aid companies in expressing their message to their target market. Hence, if the graphic designers ignore the target audience, they will never be able to create the right design. In order to create relevant designs, you must first analyze the intended customers for which it is aimed at. Overlooking the target will lead to a weak and aimless design.

3. Not maintaining a Contract:

In a graphic designer’s career, salary and payments issues are frequent. When you don’t maintain a contract with your clients, you are likely to be swindled of your hard earned money. I don’t wish to imply that every client has ill-intentions. But some clients have a habit of getting the work done and running away with it without paying the designer.

4. Avoiding Contact with the Client:

Some graphic designers feel shy while some are completely ignorant when it comes to staying in touch with the client. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your professional life is not communicating with your clients properly. By not staying in touch with clients during the project, you make them feel ignored and unwanted. You must take feedbacks from them to avoid any client criticisms in the end.

5. Procrastinating:

In any profession, deadlines are extremely crucial to meet. By completing your work on time, you exhibit your determination and sincerity to commitments. Some graphic designers tend to procrastinate on their projects. When they end up falling short of their deadline, they pass off a mediocre design as minimalism design trend. Procrastination will make your clients go away since they expect you to be efficient.

6. Not Staying up-to-date:

In this cut-throat competition, it is essential for graphic designers to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the field of graphic design. As technology upgrades every day, newer and better ways of graphic designing are evolving. Those who fail to catch-up in graphic designing eventually lose the race.

7. Not Starting in Black and White:

Some graphic designers fail to understand the importance of starting in black and white. They directly create the colored version of the design. This is a big mistake as one should know how the design looks in black and white because some promotional mediums don’t allow for colors. Hence, what you create in color might not look good in black and white.

8. Pass off Plagiarism as Inspiration:

One of the prime qualities of a graphic designer is their ability to be original. Another big blunder you could make as designers is to copy others work. Some designers have a bad habit of passing off what they plagiarize as merely inspiration. While you may get away with it sometimes, but in the long run, your credibility as a genuine and original designer will be badly affected.

9. Neglecting the Power of Simplicity:

Some graphic designers believe that if they add more effects in design, it will become attractive. But the reality is otherwise. Adding too many elements to a design makes it complicated and messy to look at. They often neglect the power and significance of simplicity. Instead of making intricate and difficult to comprehend designs, designers must prefer simple concept that the target audience will remember.

10. Lose Confidence:

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually fear you will make one. Be it graphic designing or any other profession, confidence is crucial in the success of your career. One of the gravest mistake you can make as a graphic designer is to lose hope in the middle of a project. There will be times when you will get tired of working on a project or be unsatisfied with the results. But never give up and carry on until you achieve your desired results.

Friday, July 15, 2011

7 Mistake in Project Management, Solve in Less Time

It doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you can’t manage your projects, then you will struggle to achieve success. To help you avoid that undesirable outcome, here are seven project management problems that designers and developers often face, as well as how to deal with them when they arise. Coordinating multiple projects around the world with a variety of outsourcers is just asking for trouble. It’s no wonder there is a break in communications that create costly delays – businesses are still relying on old tech in order to make things flow. What they don’t realize is that project management software can alleviate those problems where data via emails is corrupt, lost, sent to the wrong address, etc.

1. Your Client Gives You Vague, Ever-changing Requirements

Fickle clients can be a huge hassle. If a client doesn’t know what they want until a certain stage is complete, then schedule those decision points into the project as milestones. It is important to have a clear path mapped out from start to finish because it forces the client to be specific with their requirements, as well as keeping the project on track.

Be clear at the outset about what your task is going to be on the project and how much leeway is available. If you will need to be compensated for big revisions or changes in direction, then set a clear outline about the number of adjustments you can make before you need to charge more. If you can, quantify these adjustments with a number; it makes it much easier to keep track of things.

2. Your Client is Slow with Communication

People are busy, but it’s tough for you to move forward on a project if you can never get answers from the person you’re working with.

The good news is that you will drastically increase your response rate if you do a little bit of work ahead of time. Instead of waiting for the back-and-forth discourse to finally take place, simply start moving in the direction that you think is best and then seek verification. This strategy makes it easy for your client to quickly say yes (or no).

Here is an example:

Hi Mark,

Last time we spoke, you mentioned that we needed to make a decision on task X. I went ahead and started doing Y since that sounded best based on our previous discussion. If you’re happy with that, I can move forward and we can review the progress as scheduled on Friday.

Sound good?

- John

The beauty of this framework is that it shifts the client’s mindset from, "What decision am I going to make?" to "Should I say Yes or No?" Saying yes or no is much easier than thinking up a new solution (which, as the hired professional, should be our job).

Additionally, you will get a response much faster because there is now a time constraint on the work. If they like what you’re doing, then they will give you the go-ahead. If they don’t, then they know that they need to get back to you right away because, otherwise, things will be moving in the wrong direction.

However, it’s very important to use sound judgment. Obviously, you won’t be able to work ahead and then ask for approval on all aspects of the project, especially those that will cost a lot of time and resources to update should the client say no. That said, you’ll be surprised how much quicker things get done by making it easy for your clients to say, "Yes."

3. The Project Doesn’t Start On Time

Maybe you had a slow go of it last month, but now, you’re swamped. You know you need to take on the work when you can get it, but now you’re worried that you won’t be able to start all of your projects on time as you promised. Or perhaps your client says you’re a top priority — but tomorrow a different project becomes more important.

If the hold up is on your end, then it’s important that you do something to jump-start the project — even if it’s in a really small way. Give the client a call to discuss their expectations and set a more realistic timeframe for the first milestone. This could take as little as a few minutes, but it makes the client feel like things have started. However, beware of doing this more than once. That’s known as stringing the client along — they don’t take that too well, and for good reason.

If the hold up is on their end, then you need to communicate very clearly how that alters things moving forward. Be sure to let them know exactly how this change affects the completion dates of future milestones and you should check the revised schedule against other commitments with other projects.

4. You Try to Manage Every Project the Same Way

There has never been a project that has the same circumstance, requirements, and needs as another project. Situations, people, and goals change over time.

Instead of squeezing every project into the same template, spend some time crafting milestones specific to the needs of each project. Every job requires specific milestones that meet the schedules of all parties involved. Resist using the standard "2 weeks until X" type of thinking.

To put it simply, your schedule changes all the time, right? That means the way you plan your projects needs to change as well.

5. The Client Doesn’t Like What You Created

If this happens often, then there is a communication issue that needs to be addressed. Make sure you understand not just the technical requirements of a project, but also the underlying rationale of your clients. Why did they decide to do this in the first place? What are they hoping your work will enable them to do when all is said and done? How do they see your project fitting in with their overall strategic vision?

Good project managers create a shared vision between all parties. It’s your responsibility to understand the direction of your particular project as well as the overall strategy of your client — and then to make sure those two items match up.

6. Your Point of Contact Doesn’t Seem to Care About Your Project

Working on a project that isn’t high on a client’s priority list can be frustrating. In some cases, the person responsible for communicating with you has little to no interest in your project. The completed product will have no direct effect on their job, they are hard to ask questions to, even harder to get answers from, and they provide minimal guidance.

This issue is best solved ahead of time.

When screening potential clients, do your best to find out if the contact person has a vested interest in the project. Pay attention to their awareness about potential problems or risks you could run into, their level of urgency when scheduling this project in their calendar, and their desire to communicate with you quickly and consistently from the beginning. If they brush these issues to the side, then it is worth your time to talk with someone else and establish a second point of contact before deciding whether to take on the project or to avoid the project all together.

7. Too Much Time is Spent Solving Problems After Projects Are "Live"

There are bound to be a few bugs here and there, but this is a classic problem caused by focusing too much on production, and not enough on testing. If this continually becomes an issue, then there are two possible solutions.

First, schedule in more time to test your projects from the start. Double your typical testing time if needed. Yes, it will stretch your schedule further, but in the long run, it will save you from the countless little problems that prevent your days from being productive.

Second, if your ongoing issues are a result of clients constantly wanting you to tweak something here and there, then you need to be clearer about what you do and don’t provide with your services. When you set guidelines with a client at the beginning of a project, you need to state very clearly that your work ends after the final product is created and handed off. This can be avoided by outlining boundaries at the beginning of a project that explicitly state that additional service after delivery will cost extra.

Putting It All Together

There are literally countless reasons a project can run into issues, but the vast majority of them can be solved with clear and frequent communication.

While it is easy to point blame in the direction of your client, it is your responsibility to consistently initiate contact and keep the line of communication open. This is about more than just talking to your client. Consistent communication is only created by active effort on your end. It doesn’t just happen naturally.

One excellent practice you can implement right away is to send your client a progress report every Friday. This could be a full report or just a short email. You should detail what you accomplished this week and what you plan to do the next week. Do this every week, whether your client asks for it or not. Not only does this practice solve problems before they become too big, it will also make your clients love you.

Article by: "39 Articles [dot] com"

Monday, July 11, 2011

5 Most Important Things In SEO

From quality content to social media the face of SEO is rapidly changing and expanding. If you want to keep up you will need to learn a few new tricks as well as relearn and reevaluate a few old ones.

1- Quality Content and Users Come First

I am sure that every single one of you have heard that content is king on more then one occasion, but the fact is content is not king, the user is actually king, and content is the homage that we all must pay to our king.

Your visitors want unique, well written and informative content that is easy to read and understand, engaging, entertaining, and relevant to the keyword that they used to find you. They want to know more about you and your company, products or services so that they can trust you and build a relationship with you. But your visitors are not the only reason why you should only use fresh, unique and high quality content.

Although your users are the main reason why high quality unique content is the cornerstone of your site, there is another important reason, the search engines. The search engines use very sophisticated algorithms to weed out duplicates so that only the most relevant pages are presented to the users. In other words well written and above all, unique content will help to push your site up the ranks.

• Unique content: Try to use fresh unique information or at least write it in a unique way.
• Quality over quantity always: If you have a choice between a single well written informative page or a hundred hard to read but keyword rich pages then always choose the single well written one.
• Update, Update, Update: Fresh is the word. The fresher and newer your content is the higher you will rank in the search engines.

2- Optimize Internal Linking Structure & On-Page Factors

As SEO experts and webmasters you should already be aware of how important it is to create an internal link structure that is operational and makes sense to your end users as well as the “search engine spiders.” Unfortunately it is a facet that is often overlooked by webmasters. A website that is well linked internally will have a much better chances at ranking high in the search engines.

• Create relevant categories and sub categories
• Make sure your site is accessible: You should always make sure that all of your most important pages are easy to reach and no more than two clicks away from your home page.
• Use no-follow: If you have a site with several unimportant pages then a no follow tag can ensure that the “spiders” do not use those pages for ranking.
• Create a sitemap: Creating a sitemap can help the search engines discover any changes that you make to your site faster.
• Repair broken links: A broken link is not good for your user or the “spiders” make it a habit to check and repair your links regularly.
• Use breadcrumbs and pagination wisely: If your site is small (only 5 or six pages) then you really do not need to overwhelm your visitor with extra choices in navigation. However, larger sites with a lot of information or products may do well to separate sub-categories via either pagination or breadcrumbs.

One long standing issue is that pagination can potentially bury products pages deeper making it next to impossible for the search engines to “crawl” and rank these pages. The solution? Add anchor text to your home page and other pages that link to these “deeper” pages or use external linking from relevant sites.

On page factors also play an important role in the way your site is perceived by both your visitors and search engines such as Google. Below you will find a list of what each page should include to be perfectly balanced.

• Make sure your content is relevant to your keyword or words.
• Include your keyword in your URL
• Include your keyword in your title tag
• Include your keyword several times within the body of your text
• Include your keyword in your image alt text
• Make sure your content is unique and relevant to your keyword.
• Make sure the backlinks for your important pages go back to your homepage, category page and subcategory page.

3- Convertible Keyword Research

Are your keywords getting plenty of clicks but not much conversion? Your keywords may rank great for natural search but if they are not exactly what your visitors are looking for then your risk having a problem with bounce rates. Therefore you do not just need to find and utilize the top keywords for your niche but you also need to find a way to discover which keywords are resulting in actual time spent on the page.

• When using Google Analytics use the advanced filters located at the bottom of the page. Try to filter your keyword report by bounce to identify which keywords are driving traffic but do not result in getting visitors to stick around.
• Test your keywords: Once you have identified the pages that have a high bounce rate use a tool like Google Website Optimizer to see if it possible to improve performance.
• Use “long-tails:” Need help finding good long-tailed keywords to work with? Try the Google Suggestion tool. Just type your keyword into a Google search bar and look over what pops up.
• Use tools such as Google Adwords and Wordtracker to make your research easier but think outside the box a bit with the various search site suggestion tools as well.

4- Include Social Media in the Process

To me the World Wide Web is a vast desert that stretches forever as far as the eye can see and within that desert are trillions upon trillions of tiny grains of sand which are websites. So how is a single person able to find one particular tiny grain of sand; one website in this vast sea of websites? Search engines? Yes but search engines are not the only signpost in this desert.

Today, social networks are becoming more and more important to internet users from all walks of life, let’s face it, even Grandma has a Facebook page and knows what a “tweet” is, so is it any wonder that the line between SEO and social media is becoming blurred? The name of the game is driving visitors to your site and joining several social media sites and adding links to your home page can greatly increase your site’s popularity.

• Facebook has over 600 million members, use it.
• Tweet, retweet, engage, provide something useful to your followers
• Join social media sites that are relevant to your keyword/site and that you are going to become involved with. A Twitter account that never “tweets” is useless.

Does all of this sound too simplistic? The truth is social media and SEO are often perceived as much more complex then they need to be. There are literally 4 steps to creating a social media marketing scheme that compliments and enhances your SEO strategy.

• Listen: Use tools such as Pulse of the Tweeters to find out what everyone is talking about. Find out where your target audience is gathering, identify the social media keyword relevant to your business, identify those who are influential in your topic, and use SERPs.
• Content: Content such as images, audio and video can be promoted via social networking.
• Socialize: Learn how to interact with your customers. Ask yourself a few questions and get the answers.

What do your customers do on the social web? How do they find information and share? Take the time to actually grow your network. Thirty minutes or so a day following, friending, liking and updating on a daily basis can snowball into real conversions for your site. There is no substitute for actual interaction with your potential visitors. Don’t forget to link-back!

• Measure: Use tools such as Wildfire Social Media Monitor, BlogPulse, and others to measure how you are doing.

5- Go For Quality Backlinks

As stated earlier, one of the criteria your site will be judged on is popularity, backlinks are another way of rapidly increasing that but only if you seek out and work for quality backlinks.
The hardest part of link building is finding relevant and high quality places to link to and I am not going to lie to you and say that it is easy or fast but it can be fun.

Here are a few ways to get those links:

• Become a guest blogger: Contact several relevant sites and ask. Send out an email and basically ask if you can guest post on their site in exchange for a link or three.
• Think outside the box: For instance you can create a high quality Word Press theme, add your link to the anchor text in the footer and distribute it for free.

Remember the rules of backlinks though:

• Choose quality places to create backlinks: The secret to backlinks is not in quantity it is in quality. You will get a better ranking with 10 quality backlinks from sites that are relevant then you will with thousands of backlinks from any site you happen to come across. Quality backlinks bring more visitors: If your site sells burglar alarms and there is a link to it from a true crime website then it is likely that the person who clicked the link is interested in your burglar alarms.

The secret to a successful online business is correctly done and diligent SEO practices, after all if you consider that the internet is like a desert with each website a grain of sand then you may just begin to understand how important it is to create a signpost that will lead people to the right grain of sand, yours.

Author: Alex Petrovic