Cre8ive Commando

Tips on Marketing your Portfolio

Kate Manning — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 06:02:37 +0000

Portfolios demonstrate your artistic capabilities and help target and influence important buyers to choose your design services over competitive artists. By providing a limited number of targeted examples to showcase your finest work, you will not waste a busy client’s time with unrelated material, which will convince the prospect that you understand the importance of prioritizing in the modern marketplace. Dynamic websites strive to answer clients’ most important questions and provide clear methods of contact and never fail to challenge the prospect boldly to initiate that contact immediately.

It is not enough to have a great website and portfolio to attract potential clients. You don’t need to be an online MBA program graduate to be able to market your site and services effectively to realize the benefits a good site can provide. Clients demand a clear website that pinpoints the market you wish to influence. List all the reasons a client should hire you, and clearly state the benefits such a decision will provide. By exhibiting confidence and demonstrating clear examples of competent performance, you make it easy for a buyer to decide you are the perfect candidate for the job.

In some cases you may want to encourage companies to hire you directly. Perhaps you wish to generate sales leads for future work. You may want to enhance your reputation in the designing community or target a specific type of company. Multiple websites may be your best answer if you have many different goals. Below are presented five important ways to increase traffic to your site.

1. Design your website appropriately for the market.

Keep the most important and relevant work prominent. Always use the best examples from your portfolio. If you do not have many that fit the theme, then go with what you have or create new examples. Never show inferior work to fill space. Tailor the site to target potential clients with clear, concise writing. If you want companies to hire you, make it easy for them to do so with a “hire me” page. Include an updated resume employers can download.

2. Promote your work in all relevant media

Join professional online communities to expand your base. These can relate specifically to artistic design or the companies that use your services. Submit your designs to gallery websites or CSS galleries. Write and post informative blogs that can reach potential customers. Consider starting a blog on your site to increase viewer traffic.

Add featured content to attract viewers. The content can link with search engines and social media to draw a larger potential audience. Testimonials can also add valuable information that will influence clients. Here are some more creative ways to promote your online portfolio.

3. Target the specific market you wish to reach.

If you want to reach corporate clients, then it is important to provide clean work that addresses theme in particular. Limit your portfolio to the best work you have produced. A few clean relevant examples will enhance your reputation better than a large collection of unrelated work. Avoid general artwork that does not address the types of client your wish to hire you, no matter how creative it may be. Never show partial or poorly-developed themes when you wish to impress corporate buyers.

In some cases you may wish to enhance your reputation with articles and posts aimed at the market you want to reach.

4. Employ the proper technology in website design.

It’s important to be sure that potential viewers can easily access your website from a number of browsers. Google is the most important since it conducts two-thirds of all online searches. Niche market searches may also be important since they return viewers more likely to hire you. Build your site to function properly. Then you can add upgrades for enhancement. Consider employing CSS to craft you site to enhance access.

5. Provide clear contact information.

Include the information on every page of your site. Respond to requests for information as quickly as possible. Include references to your website in all media postings.

Employing these techniques will not only increase website traffic but also increase your conversion rate. Display your best work tailored to the specific function you are promoting and you will realize substantial results.

The Official Facebook iPad App is Here!

Adham Dannaway — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:18:42 +0000

Facebook has finally released their long awaited Official Facebook iPad App! I just installed it on my iPad 2 and it seems to work a treat. It’s quite slick and simple to use and includes some great touch screen features and functions.

The interface consists of 3 columns. The left hand column contains the main menu and is hidden initially but can be seen via a swipe of your finger. The central column contains your news feed and the right hand column allows you to quickly chat with your contacts. To load more news feed items you simply swipe your finger downwards and they will magically appear.

I found the interface quite intuitive and easy to use. It isn’t flashy in any way and I’m sure there will be more features coming soon. It’s definitely a step in the right direction and I’m looking forward to seeing the iPad App develop in the future.

Download the Official Facebook IPad App and have a play with it yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

A Career as a Social Media Strategist

Adham Dannaway — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 06:03:59 +0000

If you were ever thinking about seriously getting into social media strategy and marketing, now’s the time to do it. Over 80% of businesses use some form of social media but social media strategy is still relatively new with many interesting opportunities out there to use social media to improve businesses and drive profits. The infographic below from Mashable outlines everything you need to know about being a Social Media Strategist.

So what exactly does a Social Media Strategist do? A Social Media Strategist’s role is basically to look after the relationship between a business and its customers online in an effort to improve various business goals. There is a lot more to this role than simply chatting with customers on Twitter and Facebook, let’s look at some of the characteristics of Social Media Strategists.

Social Media Strategists are mainly men (64%) most of which are quite well-educated with a degree in marketing/communication. They are generally quite senior and all of them have a Twitter account with an average of 3000 followers. To succeed in the social media industry you need to be a jack of all trades and a risk taker as it’s all about innovation.

The infographic below has more information and statistics about these points. It will be interesting to see how Social Media Strategists evolve in the future and even more interesting to see how social media is integrated into more traditional businesses.

Validate HTML Emails Across Different Email Clients

Adham Dannaway — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:16:53 +0000

Creating HTML emails can be quite a daunting task if you’re not well versed in writing cross client email code. There are so many quirks to look out for and so many email clients to test them in. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool that you could use to validate your email code? There is and it’s called Fractal!

Fractal is a clever online tool that allows you to validate your email CSS across 24 of the most popular email clients simply by uploading your email code (HTML/CSS). You’ll receive a report that outlines the problems in your code and it will show you which email clients support your code. This is great as it allows email developers to design, build and test their emails more efficiently. Fractal will even suggest fixes to your code to ensure that it is cross client compatible, you can even contribute your own fixes if you’re feeling particularly inspired.

Fractal validates your HTML email across all the major email clients and automagically fixes known email quirks. It’s FREE to use so give it a try next time you’re working on an email.

The Evolution of the Web

Adham Dannaway — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:39:05 +0000

The World Wide Web is constantly evolving, we see new website experiences every day and many of these are made possible by constant advancements in the underlying web technologies including: HTML5, CSS3, WebGL and of course the web browsers that run them.

As web developers it’s great to see that the web is advancing, this gives us the chance to use these new technologies to create new web experiences. This interactive infographic is quite interesting as it shows us the evolution of the web over the past 20 years. You can see the interaction between web technologies and browsers and you can even click on different browsers to see how their interface has evolved over the years. I wonder what this diagram will look like over the next 5 years? Any ideas?

Win a Free Poster Print From imageMEDIA.com!

Adham Dannaway — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:22:47 +0000

imageMEDIA is a leading online printing company that specializes in a variety of printing services such as business cards, posters, postcard printing and more. Today they are offering Cre8ive Commando readers a chance to win an awesome high quality rolled poster print that you can use for your portfolio, a client or whatever design you want!

A great prize:

A 24 x 36 inch rolled poster ($70 value) – Printed on a premium Epson printer with full bleed and full color!

Here are the rules:

You may only enter this contest once. Anyone submitting more than once will be disqualified
Please enter a valid email address
You must be of legal age in the jurisdiction that you reside to enter
Free shipping to the US only, shipping costs will apply to winner in another location
You may optionally follow us on Twitter and Facebook

How to enter:

Entering is simple, just leave a comment telling us how you would use the poster print and follow imageMEDIA on Facebook. A winner will be randomly picked two weeks from this date. Good luck!

And the winner is:

Sleeman! Congratulations, you’ll receive an email soon regarding how to claim your prize.

A Simple Way to Draw Vector Graphics on the Web – Raphael JS!

Adham Dannaway — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 07:53:56 +0000

If you’re looking to draw vector graphics on your website then you’re in luck, Raphael is a JavaScript library that will simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. If you’re looking to create a chart, rotate or crop an image then this clever JavaScript library will help you do just that quickly and easily.

Raphael uses SVG W3C Recommendation and a VML base for creating vector images on websites. So you can basically create shapes on your web page and these shapes are all DOM objects that can be controlled by JavaScript. You can even animate your images once you have drawn them. It’s quite a powerful and relatively simple tool and it’s cross browser compliant too which means that you can use it in your website projects without having to worry about browser compatibility.

How to use it:

Download and include raphael.js into your HTML page, then use it as follows:

// Creates canvas 320 × 200 at 10, 50
var paper = Raphael(10, 50, 320, 200);

// Creates circle at x = 50, y = 40, with radius 10
var circle = paper.circle(50, 40, 10);
// Sets the fill attribute of the circle to red (#f00)
circle.attr("fill", "#f00");

// Sets the stroke attribute of the circle to white
circle.attr("stroke", "#fff");

Convert an Image to CSS Automatically

Adham Dannaway — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:49:42 +0000

Have you ever wondered if you could automatically convert an image into HTML and CSS code? It could come in handy when trying to bypass the image filters in email clients. Well, Img to CSS is an interesting little online tool that does just this. It converts an image into HTML/CSS automatically.

It’s actually quite a clever little tool. It basically takes the image file and creates a HTML table of pixels with background colours that match the image file. Row by row it reads the pixels on the image and builds the HTML table, inserting the CSS styles inline.

The basic idea behind Img to CSS is to bypass image filters in email clients to ensure that images don’t get blocked. The HTML/CSS conversion does create quite a lot of code though so I’m not sure how useful it would be when dealing with commercial email templates. It’s definitely clever though and lots of fun to have a play with. Convert your image to CSS today!

WIN 250 FREE Business Cards from Uprinting!

Adham Dannaway — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:41:13 +0000

Uprinting has a great offer for Cre8ive Commando readers! One week from today we’ll be giving away 250 business cards to one of our lucky readers, all you have to do to be in the running is leave a comment below.

Every professional in the website world needs a business card for networking and also to help add a bit of credibility to their business. Standard business cards are rectangular with sharp corners but they don’t need to be. Die cut business cards allow you to have custom shapes including: leaf, circle, half-circle side, rounded single-corner and rounded corner. Having a business card in a unique shape will help make your card that little bit more memorable making you and your business stand out from the crowd.

Prize details:

250 pcs Die Cut Business Cards for one winner
2 x 3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×2″ Rounded Corners, 1.75×3.5″ Rounded Corners, 2×3.5″ Leaf, 2×3.5 Rounded one corner, 2×3.5″ Half Circle Side, 2×3.5″ Oval, 2.5″ Circle
14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated,
6 Business Days Turnaround *Free shipping
Shipping outside Us will be shouldered by the winner
die-cut business card templates available for download

Restriction: Limited to *US residents 18 years old and above only.

How to enter:

Simply leave a comment below to be in the draw. We’ll randomly select the lucky winner next week on August 11th and notify you by email. Thanks to Uprinting for this great offer and good luck to everyone!

Disclaimer: This business card printing giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting, no monetary compensation was given for hosting. For more information about online printing services, please visit UPrinting,com.

And the winner is:

Queen of the Click! Congratulations, you will soon be emailed with more details on how to claim your prize!

Make your CSS more Powerful with Sass

Adham Dannaway — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:40:39 +0000

Writing CSS can be a timely task and there is often quite a lot of repetition and redundancy in style sheets, especially those in larger websites. If only there was a way to write CSS in a more powerful and structured way, there is and it’s called Sass.

Sass is basically a language that’s placed on top of CSS that’s used to define styles in a more structured and powerful way than normal CSS allows. It’s a simpler, more elegant language than CSS and it has quite a few interesting features that allow you to manage your style sheet more easily. The way it works is pretty simple, you write your Sass code then translate it automatically into flat CSS using a command line tool.

The main features Sass offers include nested rules (you can avoid repetition by nesting selectors within one another), variables (you can define variables to re-use), mixins (re-use whole chunks of CSS) and selector inheritance (one selector can inherit all the styles of another without any duplication).

It’s quite an interesting concept which could come in handy for larger website projects. Have a play and let me know what you think.