Some Excellent Resources for Graphic Design Freebies

You can find a variety of useful and creative graphic design resources on the web the offer downloadables such as stock photos, textures/patterns, brushes, icons, and fonts that designers have decided to share with others in the community.

In this article, you’ll find some of the best websites to visit for graphic design resources.

Stock Photos

Flickr: Creative Commons

Flickr, the premier site for online photo-sharing and the hangout of many designers and photographers, has a section called "Flickr"

morguefile

morguefile contains user-submitted stock photographs contributed by many artists. morguefile has a terrific organization scheme and thumbnail preview for quicker searches.

stock.xchng

stock.xhchng (also known as SXC) is a very popular photo-sharing and stock photography site with over 380,000 stock photos.

Stockvault.net

Stockvault.net is another excellent photo-sharing site for designers and photographers.

Textures and Patterns

CG Textures

CG Textures is an excellent texture site created by 3D artist Marcel Vijfwinkel. CG Textures is structured to help you quickly find types of textures such as Grunge and Nature textures.

Squidfingers / Patterns

Squidfingers / Patterns is a collection of useful and intricate patterns that you can use as repeating CSS backgrounds or on print work.

TextureKing

TextureKing is a fast-growing, high-resolution texture repository maintained by creative agency, REH3design.

Brushes and Vectors

BrushKing

BrushKing offers a wide array of Adobe Photoshop brushes, all free for download. The site currently archives over 4,000 brushes and over 200 brush sets.

Icons

Iconfinder

Iconfinder is a search engine specifically for icons, developed and maintained by Glassbox. Iconfinder also has a tag cloud page so that you can visually see the most popular keyword tags.

Fonts

dafont.com

dafont.com is a repository of public domain, freeware, shareware, and demo fonts from some of the top font designers and foundries.

Quick Tips For Hiring Software Development Companies Offshore

The sped up business processes and screwing economies have made it crucial for small and medium business to outsource their software development projects to get competitive advantage. If you’re also one of those small or medium business owner, and have decided to opt for offshore outsourcing for your software development requirements, but it won’t take the burden off your shoulder until you select the best software development company offshore

Hiring a good software development company becomes easy if you just relax and give proper time to selection process. A comprehensive Request for Proposal in this case will be a great help. This will increase the number of potential vendors and, thus chances of getting the best one increase. Answer clearly if the vendor is asking details about your requirements, because the more clear you’re in your communication, the best proposal you’ll get.

Besides, being clear you need to set criteria and compare all the applications the established criteria. Take into consideration a combination of factors, not only the one that provides the cheapest price. Evaluate the options in details and see which of the software development companies have an ability to adapt to your internal business workflows. Effective communication will play a major role in all this procedure, and make sure that it’s best from your end, and the software development services provider you chose is also best at it.

There may be more points to ponder on while hiring a software development company, depending on your project life cycle and your requirements, but in general, all is good communication. But, the above mentioned quick tips will help you whether your software development project is a smaller one or a long term commitment.

Once you find a good technology partner offshore, all your future needs will be met smoothly!

About Author:

Bryan Williams is an expert outsourcing consultant, and specializes in web based business. If you’re trying to find best graphic design company, a general software development company or specifically a web development company, Bryan can guide you well.

Six Fresh and Promising Design Blogs to Follow

There’s a plethora of weblogs that cover the topic of design.All of these design blogs are very attractive and awosome.
This article presents different fresh design blogs that are worth checking out. Weblogs featured here discuss web, graphic, and print design. Hopefully you’ll find a link or two (or more) that piques your interests enough to prompt you to subscribe to them.

1. Line25 Web Design Blog

Line25 is a newly-founded blog by Chris Spooner of Blog.SpoonGraphics on the topic of web design. 
2. UX Booth
UX Booth is a group of writers that delve into the subject of User Experience.
3. Build Internet!

Build Internet! is a weblog on web design, development, and the business side of both.

4. Tripwire Magazine

Tripwire Magazine is an excellent web design blog that even has a forum. Popular topics discussed over at Tripwire are CSS and web design.

5. Designer Daily

Designer Daily is an excellent blog by graphic designer, Mirko Humbert. Mirko shares a ton of useful information that includes things like Mac apps for freelancers to CSS tips for hyperlinks.

6. 1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner is a blog dedicated to designers, developers, freelancers and bloggers. There is a ton of articles to read, and here’s a few of them:
40 Web Design Artists
101 High Quality CSS And XHTML Free Templates
30 Deviant Digital Artists, Painters, Illustrators Worth Watching

The Future of Web 3.0 According to Yahoo!

After the great success of Web 2.0.Now Yahoo is going to launch another platform i.e Web 3.0  for all web developers, designers etc.. The future of Web 3.0 is seems to be degentic and bright for todays  IT professionals.

"It is open source, hacker attitude has been part of our culture for so long; now we're opening up the different pieces,".The mission of Service Web 3.0 is to provide roadmaps for various target groups, organise and coordinate standardisation activities for users.

Y!OS 1.0 launched this week with the introduction of the social suite. Its strategy focuses on opening up almost everything to developers, including content, traffic, and Yahoo's user base.

Y!OS: Which makes simple things for Developer's

When asked what type of data will be available to developers, Hughes-Croucher said that Yahoo's strength is in historical data which can be accessed, assessed, and used to make the user experience better.

To make things simple for everyday developers, the Yahoo! duo told the audience they are concentrating on APIs for sites like Flickr and Delicious. "Of course, there are other technologies, like Yahoo! Query Language (YQL), the next generation of Yahoo Pipes, that brings ease of use to query language," says Hughes-Croucher.

Y!OS: Is Open and Social For Developer's

Not only is Yahoo! becoming more open, it's also becoming more social. If you're not familiar with it, Yahoo! Profiles offers a centralized control panel that lets users manage their social connections across Yahoo, and eventually across the Web.

"The key part of the Profiles launch is that unlike FaceBook, it will make very specific connections to the people that are important in your life," says Hughes-Croucher."

Profiles is only the first stage of Yahoo's Open Strategy. "It will let you start making social connections, and in the coming months you'll see other things," said Beckett.

So we can say that Yahoo is a poineer search engine who always introduce new and powerful tools in different useful products in the market.This "Web 3.0" is another platform specially for the IT professionals.

Website Development Company That Offers Web Design & Web Development Services

Website design services are different from website development services.A website development company offers both web design services as well as web development services. A smart web development company is one that offers affordable and ready-to-implement web services for any kind of business model. This is only possible, if a company has well organized team of web developers who are efficient enough to take on the website development projects on individual basis, besides, conversing one-to-one with the clients.

With the need for a comprehensive business website increasing more than ever, the companies look for affordable web solutions that give meaning to their business prospects. However, there are many of the website development companies that actually don’t offer you what you need. And even still further, those who offer the services you are looking for, don’t actually fit into your budget framework.

A good website development company will offer what you need to carry forward your ebusiness prospects.

Therefore, in the process, they should make the website as proactive and practical as possible. Not only this, a professionally managed web development company should keep enhancing the tools of a website from time to time, so that the client’s requirements remain updated with the changing trends.

Six Useful Web Tools For Web Designers

This is one of the very best list of its kind where you can find the simplest online web designer’s tools that are developed for designers and may be very helpful for you as well when you want to get your work done or just for fun. I hope web designers will like this list.This is the list of 6 Free And Useful Web Tools For Web Designers. Just take a look at them and share your thought’s here.

1.Pixlr

Pixlr is a free online image editor, jump in and start edit, adjust, filter.

2. Stripemania

Stripemania is a simple and free web 2.0 tool to create seamless diagonal stripes for your designs. You are able to choose the size of the stripes and the spacing between those. You can even add color gradient effect for all of your stripes.
3. ColorSchemer ColorPix

ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats. You can use the built-in magnifier to zoom in on your screen, click on a color value to copy it directly to the clipboard, and even keep ColorPix on top of all other apps and out of the way.

4. Photoshop.comThis is your online photo sharing, editing and hosting resource. You can upload, organize, edit, store (up to 2GB free) and share your photos.

5. PatternCooler

Add your own colors to contemporary and retro pattern designs, or browse from thousands of pre-colored patterns in the seamless pattern background library. All artworks on this site can be used freely on personal blogs, mobile phone wallpapers, MySpace profiles and non-commercial web projects.

6. Kuler

Adobe Kuler is the web-hosted application for generating color themes that can inspire any project. No matter what you’re creating, with Kuler you can experiment quickly with color variations and browse thousands of themes from the Kuler community.

How to Choose the Right Web Design Company for the Essence of our Business?

For the millions of Internet users out there, your web design is the first impression of your business and your credibility.

The key issue in creating web design are:

• How to add value to the user experience, how to make them feel that something really has to visit your website. User-centered web design is to give the user control, which leads to the expression of accessible web design - the art of creating webpages that are accessible to all, regardless of any device in use. Without a doubt, web design is important, but the ease of use on the other hand, is king. 
  
• Design ideas need not be difficult to find. For you out there who have ideas that are ready to be implemented, it only takes someone with the skills needed to turn them into web reality according to latest web trends and technology.
• When creating your own website on the importance of keeping in mind. You do not want certain things to be in the department when other extra large items such as the text are relatively small to maintain the relationship with the size of the presentation. Another important issue to consider in their websites is the level of attraction.  
• Web design is a complex discipline that involves a wide range of abilities. In fact, go so far as to say, web design is the design of information.
• In my experience, web design is primarily about the business. Each new web design is the solution to a design problem that can be summarized in a series of questions - Who is my audience?
• Web design is an exciting, changing every day. These changes reflect your company’s complete product and service presentation.

It has been several years since we had someone in your Web design company and is now obsolete. You are going to lose your business because of the competitors who have a good quality designed web sites with great design and navigation. This may be your first website of the company and you want to make the most of their time and money.

Latest Web Technology and Web Trends

Custom software development is a very vast and complicated field for the web developers for web design development solutions and web-enabled IT services. Developed countries on the other hand, like UK, are following a lucrative outsourcing policy which places them at the behest of enormously skilled technicians and developers along with a competitive IT infrastructure.

Most established businesses in western countries need solutions and there is no actual shortage of software outsourcing firms today. There are lots and lots of programming experts who are involved in testing, development and different validation tests. Thousands of western countries and companies are harnessing outsourcing services for the execution of their projects. Even though IT development and outsourcing has increased manifold in different western countries, people are still skeptical about the working and viability of custom software development in offshore centers.

With the choice of a software outsourcing company, a dedicated team of specialized consultants will assist you with outsourcing strategies which will suit the company's needs and budget.

Outsourcing has become very popular these days as it is cost effective to any company. Prior selecting any software development outsourcing provider it is wise to check its credibility through past experience and the projects handled. This will give you the clear idea of the company’s past and present work record.

Cyber Designz is one of the fastest growing Graphic Design Company in US.

Cyber Designz working dynamically in Web design and development industry emerged as one of the fastest growing graphic design firm in USA. The major reasons for speed up growth in Cyber Designz include, the variety of industries it worked with, usefulness of ideas it developed and simplicity as its vision", says Muhammad Danish, the CEO. We're trying to provide multiple solutions at one place, so that clients can save maximum costs, he adds further.

With the constant increase in the requirement of graphic design in small and medium businesses, the US graphic design market is growing speedily. Due to the accelerated growth in industry, it's becoming difficult for graphic design buyers to find a good quality graphic design company. One other factor affecting the industry is the requirement of web development and or software development services along with graphic design projects. Almost all of the graphic design projects require development to some extent.

Cyber Designz first choice for small, medium and corporate businesses as well as startups. One can rely on Cyber Designz as best graphic design company as well as an expert software development services providers.

About Cyber Designz:
Cyber Designz is a graphic design, custom website designing and software development company based in USA. Firm specializes in providing advanced Ecommerce and web solutions at affordable rates and offers world class high tech solutions to clients globally. The most active areas of software development at Cyber Designz are Web 2.0 and enterprise application development.

Website Development Partnership

When deciding on a company to develop your website, following are the factors we notice i.e:

• Design
• Budget
• Functionality
  

With the technological advances in website and software development, why should you limit your business to the ‘canned’ software solutions out there, when having something built custom for you wouldn’t be much different in cost and would be manipulated to match your business processes? Another aspect is your business’ need to adapt as the economy and market changes. Does your website have the capability of working with you to meet those challenges?
One of the frustrations I sense from businesses in search for a developer to work for them is they are overwhelmed with the options and aren’t sure which available solution will work best for them.

Here are few simple ways of knowing whether or not a website developer is capable of or is interested in providing your business with the freedom and ability to expand:

1. Does the company provide a template and ‘canned’ software approach only?

2. What kind of experience do the developers have in programming software that will meet your needs?

3. Will you have ownership of the source code for the domain and access to the FTP files, or does the company consider this their proprietary property?

4. Is what you’re having developed a hosted solution through them, or can it exist through any other hosting company of your choice?

Knowing a little bit about the approach your developer will have to implementing the initial website and software and how they will be able to expand it and help you maintain it before committing to them will save you from running into costly and stressful situations in the future. Find a web development company that can understand your goals and objectives and can commit that they are capable of making them a priority as well, and you will have a website company that will benefit your business for many years to come.

Graphic Design Company That Best Suits Your Business

Graphic design is becoming an important aspect of almost all businesses now a days, as it’s all about how you present your business to the rest of the world. Being so much important, the choice of a right graphic design company becomes crucial if you don’t have an in house graphic design department.

While selecting a graphic design company, do consider that their artists have creative vision, but don’t ignore their business communication skills. Communication is so much important because, the designers have to give life to your idea, and it’s possible only if the idea is communicated well.

Now you may find it difficult to find a graphic design company that suits your business, but it’s not impossible to find one. Considering the given characteristics will give you a fair idea to make your choice perfect. Here it goes:

• A good graphic design company should have good listeners. Designers those are good listeners will produce best products.
• Graphic design company should manage time effectively. Although creative designs take time, but giving excessive amount of time to designers won’t be beneficial for your business.
• Designers who are working on your project should be detail oriented. In this regard if they ask questions, don’t think that they don’t know anything. Too many questions from you also means that they want to give you perfect results.

There may be many other aspects depending on the nature of business, but the above three are very generic and equally important for all type of businesses.

Top 5 Graphic Design Solutions for the Fire Service

Some firehouses and departments have been able to create a website from time to time that serves the needs of telling the public who they are via the internet without too much help. However, if you really want to show off your department and none of your firefighters went to college for web design then you need to check out the companies below. These graphic design companies were specifically created for the fire service. Most of them offer functionality that firefighters want to share on their websites and that visitors want to see. Some of them are free, but most cost money.

The top ten firefighting design website solutions for the fire service:

1. Firehouse.com Firehouse Network - The Firehouse Network offers a free website for departments. The best attribute is that it is free, the worst is that it is on their site and there isn’t much functionality.

2. Union Fire Web Design - Union Fire Web Design is offered exclusively for IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters) locals. The pro is that not everyone can have a site. The con is that not everyone can have a site. 

3. Firefighter Nation - FirefighterNation.com is like the facebook or myspace of the fire service. They have a partner site for EMS (Jems Connect). The site can be used for individual firefighters or you can start your own page for your department. This site is FREE and the functionality is added to frequently. 

4. Fire Websites - FireWebsites.com offeres websites for the fire service and you have your choice of a standard template or a custom website for your department. 

5. ProFirefighter.com - Profirefighter.com is another “Union” only web design company. The company is run by the Oregon State Professional Firefighters. The biggest benefit is the A+ support.

Simple Effective Brochure Design Tips

If you are just starting out in business you may be tempted to do your booklet yourself. When I first started in business I did everything myself - not a smart choice. That is why it took me 12 years before I was even relatively prosperous. Heed my warning - go professional from day one on your marketing materials. They are an investment and not an expense. Professionally designed materials will deliver you customers and the cash flow to follow - the reason why you are in business.

Here are three key design rules to follow when creating a brochure. Use them and you will see your results flow.

1. The cover: 

2. The Content:

3. The call for action:

4. The part that got missed:

Read full story here

Tips for Web and Graphic Design Company

There are many web design and graphic design companies worldwide who offer quality website design services at competitive rates. Los Angeles and New York too are thronging with web design and graphic design companies. In this scenario, it becomes important to be able to find the ‘right one.

If you are still thinking whether or not you need to outsource website development, you need to sort out a few things.

The first question to ask yourself is that:

1. do you have the required level of expertise in website development?
2. Are you familiar with HTML and pro with software development software?
3. Do you have an artistic knack and are generally good with colors, shades, designs, images etc?

If the answer to any of these basic questions is in negative, then read ahead for some tips you would find useful in choosing a web and graphic design company. And even if you can do all of it, ask yourself, can you afford spending hours on building your website while you could spend all that precious time in growing your business while the experts do what they are best at. Moreover, do you really WANT to build websites?

Whenever you choose a web design company, look at the company’s own website. It’s website will clearly show you the company’s level of expertise, vision and talent.

Another factor to consider is the company’s experience in the field of web designing and graphic designing. Do they have qualified website designers? You may also ask for company’s portfolio and check out sample websites they have made. If that doesn’t look good, it’s not worth it. And if the portfolio clicks, you too can go ahead.

Both Los Angeles and New York have several outstanding web and graphic design companies which have been in business since several years. Their increasing list of customers is proof that they provide high quality web design service.

Once you have found the right web design company, you must communicate openly what you want, how you want the website to look like, what should the flow of website be like, how you want the graphics to be etc.

It’s a good idea to show some of the graphics that you like which you want placed in the website. The more effectively you communicate with the web design company, the better the results are expected to be.

10 Great New Graphic Design Posts

A collection of the latest graphic design resources, adobe tutorials, inspirational posts and more from all around the graphic design community. Enjoy!
1. Ornate, Floral, Swirly and Curly Vector Roundup

Flourishes are one of the most popular current trends in graphic design, ranging from simple flourishes to extremely intricate combinations of swirls and flourishes combined with photographs and typography.
2. Classy Personal Portfolio in Fireworks
In this tutorial Fabio Sasso teaches you how to design a modern looking one page graphic design portfolio in Fireworks.

3. 40+ Killer Typographic Posters, Photoshop Effects and Tutorials

The title explains this one pretty well, this is a great inspirational post mixed in with a few solid tutorials.
4. 12 Realities of Pricing Design Services
Pricing your services are a freelance designer or studio can come with many stressful situations and pitfalls. This article will help prepare you for the world of pricing!
5. Photoshop: How To Make An Awesome Grungy Paper Texture From Scratch
Bittbox has developed a useful tutorial for taxing a stock paper texture and giving it a great grunge appearance.
6. How a Change on Design Improves Usability and Visits
This article gives an example of how even the most minor changes in a website’s design can improve the user experience and number of returning visitors.
7. 400+ Swirls, Curls, and Fleurons
Another spectacular collection of useful design elements including swirls, curls and fleurons.
8. Photoshop: Hand Drawn Design

In this tutorial you will learn how to add and color sweet hand-drawn sketches into your graphic design work using channels.
9. Accountants, Lawyers, and Doctors, oh My! A Designer’s Guide to Business.

A great starter guide to the business side of running a new graphic design studio.
10. 101 Design Resource Sites

A large list of useful graphic design resources for any designer interested in the online design community.

10 Delightful Graphic Design Books

I have probed the web for the most highly recommended and best-selling graphic design related books that can inspire and help you as a graphic designer. These books cover many areas of design, including typography, color theory, layout, design theory, web design, business and even search engine optimization and marketing for designers.These delightful graphic design books will make a great addition to any graphic designer’s library!
1. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical GuidelinesThis is a book you should not do without. It touches on every topic you need to know about how to be successful as a graphic artist. If you want experienced and practical advice on anything from setting prices for your work on the Internet to how to best manage your client relations – this is the book for you.
2. Sagmeister: Made You LookDaring designer, Stefan Sagmeister, chronicles almost 40 years of working in this business in this book. Sagmeister conveys his wit and humor into these pages, as he tells you his personal adventures.
3. Make It BiggerThis book caters to designers who work with businesses. Read this to be inspired and benefit from the wisdom of years of experience working in the field of graphic design.
4. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of TypographyTalking about the large topic of typography, About Face, helps you navigate through the world with ease. Many wonderful and successful examples of typography are provided in this book.
5. Typographic Design: Form and CommunicationThis is the fourth edition of a best-selling book. If you want just one book to help you learn about how to properly typography, it’s this one. Whether you’re interested in the history of this art, or how it can be effectively used in this modern-era, this book is chock full of valuable information for graphic designers.
6. The Elements of Typographic StyleAuthor, Robert Bringhurst, has written this book, which uses beautiful language to tell the story of how to apply your own artistic sensibility to typography. One treat in this book is the examples of fonts in different languages such as Russian and Greek.
7. The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type This book’s author, Alexander W. White, is a strong advocate of white space – what you can also call negative space. Many designers feel the need to clutter things up, but less can be more. Learn how to master that idea with this great book.
8. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout WorkshopThis book focuses on layout. With it, you can comprehensively learn the elements of layout so that you can better use them in your work.
9. Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography (Designing With Type) A book that’s been around since 1971, this is something that will introduce you to typography. It offers pointers on how to take into account such things as the feeling of a text, as well as how effectively it is conveyed in different formats.
10. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design This offers a wonderful writing up of the history of graphic design. It may be of interest to both current graphic designers, and general artistic-minded people.

The Importance of Effective Website Design

In a highly competitive market, it is crucial for every business to have a presence on the web and the design of the website is vital to its success. The internet is often the first place that potential customers look when searching for a business to meet their requirements. A nicely designed, clearly presented and informative website will give you the right first impression.
Sometimes businesses think that the cost of high quality website design will be out of their budget. While increasing numbers of business people are gaining a clearer understanding of a good website and its benefits, to a lot of people it just seems too expensive and complicated an option. However, it is possible to design and develop a quality bespoke website from as little as a few hundred pounds. This can pay for itself many times over in the increased revenue that it can produce for the business.
In addition to website design, a professional company will also be able to offer SEO or search engine optimisation services. It is well known that potential clients will rarely search beyond the first page of results produced by a search engine, so it is important to ensure that the website promoting your business will be included on the first page of the search results for your target search terms.
You should have well designed and structured web pages and use keywords in the text that you think your customers would search for. In general, sites with plenty of content have been shown to perform better in search engine results, and it is important to hit the correct balance between search engine results and designing websites that are easy to read and navigate. However, the single biggest factor in determining your rankings in the search engines will be the number and quality of inbound links pointing to your website.
For a website to be a successful marketing and selling tool, both the website design and how it is marketed are important considerations. Ensuring the site is optimised for SEO and building quality one way links from relevant sites are all factors that will help to ensure the success of your website and business. A professional website development company has the design skills and online marketing knowledge to create a site that will be a successful marketing tool for years into the future.

What are the Graphic Design Services and Goals?

A beautifully crafted and functional graphic design company is the perfect complement to your advertisement campaign. Our powerful and creative graphic design solutions will help your company stand out from the competition and attract customers. We offer a great variety of services ranging from logo design to brochure and catalogue design. We work with many small and large businesses in Chicago and provide superb graphic design that appeals to our customers’ needs.

Our Graphic Design Services Include:

• Innovative Logo Design

• Business Card, Flyer Design

• Capability Brochures Design

• Sales and Marketing Materials

• Product Sheets / Sell Sheets

• Trade Show Booths

• Direct Mail and Advertising Campaigns

• Newsletters Design

What is the goal in Our Graphic Design Services?

• Visually illustrate your company values

• Portray a consistent image for marketing

• Grab the attention of the target audience

• Defining the Graphic Design Process