4 Questions to Ask Your Graphic Designer

Posted on September 27, 2009 | Filed Under Business Image, Logo Design, Print Media, Smart Business, Website Design

…and why it’s important to do so

When you’re getting ready to hire a graphic designer, there are some basic things that every good designer will know and provide. You should be ready to ask the following questions and you should get the right answers…or you should move on to someone else. Price is not always the deciding factor when it comes to design.

1. What software do you use to create graphics?

This is important because you want clean crisp graphics, not only for print but also for the web. Did you know that you can go into programs like MS Powerpoint and MS Publisher, and create a document, then save it as a .jpg? This may seem like a really awesome and easy way to create a graphic, however there are issues with doing that…such as resolution. A true designer will have graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator (if hand drawn), Adobe Photoshop, Ulead PhotoImpact (great for photo editing), or CorelDraw. Keep in mind that while Quark, Publisher, and Powerpoint are all great Desktop Publishing programs, they are not intended to be used for logo design or website graphic design.

A good designer will provide you with final graphics that have smooth edges on the text as well as any other elements. Good graphics are very important to your business image. If your graphics appear to be designed by your brother-in-law’s friend with Powerpoint, your business will not be taken seriously. View an Example

2. Is there a difference between website graphics and print graphics?

The answer is always yes. If the person you are dealing with says “No”, you need to find someone else.
Read more

About this Post
Permalink | Trackback | | Print This Article | Leave a Comment

My Favorite Wordpress Plugins 2

Posted on September 21, 2009 | Filed Under WordPress

Part II – Magazine Style Themes

To continue our discussion of my favorite Wordpress plugins, today I’m going to tell you about some plugins that work well with a magazine style theme. What’s a magazine style theme? A theme where the home page is arranged differently from the interior pages of the site, in that it shows excerpts from many different “sections” of the site. Some examples that I’ve designed would be:

• The Business Image Journal
• Linwood Farms HOA
• Long Island Community Fellowship

These themes pull posts and other information from within the site to the home page as “teasers”, just as a magazine or news site will do. The following plugins help your Wordpress magazine theme to function more smoothly, and help you control the content more efficiently.

About this Post
Permalink | Trackback | | Print This Article | 1 Comment

My Favorite Wordpress Plugins

Posted on September 20, 2009 | Filed Under WordPress

Part I – Engaging Your Visitors

I’ve blogged before about the “10 best” plugins for Wordpress. And I still stand behind the ones I chose in that post. Of course, we no longer need the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade (since that’s now built in to the newest versions of WP), and I have to admit, that I’d probably remove Event Calendar, and replace it with WP ListCal, but that’s only because I use this one much more often than a calendar these days-it puts events in a list rather than in a tabled calendar.

While my list in the other post was basically a “you really should have these plugins” type thing…this post is more of a “you may not need these right now, but I LOVE what they do” list.

As I create more and more custom Wordpress themes, I am challenged to find plugins that perform exceptional feats!

About this Post
Permalink | Trackback | | Print This Article | 1 Comment