WORD - Text Effects Tutorials

All too often I see students create masterpieces with Photoshop and Illustrator, but then they tend to completely ruin their designs by not giving any focus to the text/font in their body of work.  Remember that when including text in your designs, you need to treat the text as part of your design!  Adding text to your design that just doesn’t fit well with your image can completely ruin the effectiveness of your work of art.  Check out this cool link to 37+ Fresh Photoshop & Illustrator Text Effects Tutorials.

WORD - 5 Things Agencies Are Looking For

Do you know that design agencies are looking for people with creativity, experience, time, rates, and communication when trying to hire freelance artists?  Check out this article on the 5 things a Design Agency looks for when hiring freelancers.

WORD - Freelancing Infographic

In our field, people tend to do a lot of freelance work.  Check out this cool infographic that shows the appeal of freelancing.

WORD - Fount

Not sure about a particular font on a webpage?  Try using FOUNT!  Fount will tell you which font in your font-stack you are actually seeing.  It’s a cool plug-in for internet browsers that will allow you to highlight some text and it will display everything from the font type, size, weight, and style.  It’s a useful tool for designers when trying to quickly find out what type of font they are looking at while browsing through a web page.  Try it out!

WORD - State of the Internet in 2011

Take a minute to check out this informative interactive HTML5 infographic that that shows the state of the internet in 2011.  Did you know that our internet browsing habits are generating quite a noticeable economy?  There’s plenty of money to be made on the internet!

WORD - Psychological Manipulation in eCommerce

Sometimes we don’t realize the importance of general education classes when we attend a design school.  Did you know that there is much more thought other than just design that goes into creating efficient eCommerce websites (sites you shop on)?  Check out this interesting article about “Psychological Manipulation in eCommerce Design.”  Psychological manipulation is about as old as commerce itself!  Don’t think that your Gen Ed classes are a waste of time!  Every class you take while pursuing a degree is always connected to your field in some way.  Learn as much as you can from every class you take!

WORD - 25 Great Restaurant Website Designs

As freelance designers, we’re often asked to help create a website for a restaurant, café, venue, or any local company.  Just because a company sometimes doesn’t seem very creative doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t produce something spectacular to help them sell their product/service.  A well thought out design always goes a long way when helping a company market themselves.  Always create mockups of websites in Photoshop first before trying to design a website from scratch.  This will save you a lot of time when it comes down to actually creating one.  Check outthese 25 well designed restaurant websites for some inspiration!