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.

Building Trust with Graphic Design

For starters, what is design? Design is many things to many people, it’s a result of development for ultimate functionality, it’s aesthetically pleasing, it’s persuasive and exciting, it’s a solution to complex problems, it’s interactive, and it’s art. In this post I am referring to graphic design company and how small businesses should be using graphic design to gain the trust of their customers.

At MWH we focus on helping small businesses, although companies large and small can benefit from design, our goal is to help small companies make a big impact. So how is it done? First analyze who you are and what you do, look at all your current marketing materials, your businesses cards, brochures, your web site, etc.

So building trust with design starts by NOT doing the things mentioned above, but rather create a consistent look and feel to build an overall brand. Work with a graphic designer to help select colors that will enhance your message, your color selection is more than visual appeal, I’ll talk more about color in a another post. Use your logo on all your marketing material, if you don’t have a recognizable logo hire a graphic designer to create a professional logo that can be used in print, online, apparel and more. Use consistent fonts on your brochures, web site, and stationery. Select appropriate paper stock for your print collateral. Make sure your web site is current, keep up-to-date information about your businesses and your work online and don’t let it get stale. Building trust online is very important today–statistics show that potential customer will research a company online before making a decision. Make sure your web site is easy to navigate, and easy to read, and consistent with your company image. Frustration of an online user will almost guarantee in the loss of opportunity. Show your clients you care, you’re honest, and you’re official.

There are obviously many more factors in building and keeping a trusting client relationship, but the design or your company image is often the first impression, so let us help you put your best foot forward.