Hi, I'm Grace Smith

My Article Contributions Around The Web

Grace — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:09:11 +0000

I’ve recently had the privilege to contribute to two amazing resources this week – Derwent Pencils and Graphic Design Blender.

Derwent Pencils

Derwent Pencils asked me to write an article on how I use sketching to develop ideas for my design work. Sketching isn’t optional for me as a designer, it’s essential. I canâ€™t go straight to digital at the start of a project, I always start off with some browser templates or Moleskine (and a few Derwent pencils!)

Sketching kick-starts my creativity and allows me to get ideas out on paper and is the fastest way to brainstorm and convey as many ideas as possible with the least amount of effort.

Head on over and read the entire post

Graphic Design Blender

On the Graphic Design Blender, I was asked to contribute to an article on giving advice to new Freelancers.

I concentrated on an often overlooked area of freelancing – finances. To any freelance newcomer I would say first and foremost you need to think realistically about costs, such as equipment, software, insurance, premises, tax, the list goes on. You also need to think about your potential earnings and ask yourself â€˜what do I need to survive on?â€™ Being honest and realistic about your financial requirements is important.

Head on over and read the entire post.

My Portfolio Site Redesigned & Relaunched

Grace — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:50:25 +0000

After over three years with the same design, I’ve relaunched my portfolio over at postscript5.co.uk. As many Freelance Designers will tell you, your personal site tends to take a backseat to client projects. Between client work, writing, blogging, side projects and personal time, it’s been a challenge.

I’d love it if you could go over and check out the new site. Don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date with all the news from the new blog and follow on Twitter.

Read a behind the scenes into how it was redesigned.

Announcing My New Project – Sc.ripted.com

Grace — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:31:56 +0000

Sc.ripted.com is is an archive of curated links of creative interest updated on a daily basis.

I tweet interesting articles and resources on a daily basis on Twitter, and not just the usual links that are retweeted to death or that most people will have already found (from the larger sites). I know this is a large reason as to why so many people follow me.

However I’ve never taken the time to archive or keep note of these finds (I stopped using Delicious some time ago). I felt it could be very beneficial to create a way to share these links with people without relying on them following me in real-time. This is why (the new) sc.ripted.com was born.

I’ve had the domain for over a year, originally it was bought to be the hub of my website network, but in reality it just lay dormant once I had installed WordPress, installed a simple theme and added some initial content. I love the domain and decided to revitalise the site for something much more useful.

On Tumblr

Quite a few people on Twitter questioned my move from WordPress to Tumblr, but it’s rather unfair to dismiss the platform without acknowledging it’s strengths. For Sc.ripted.com I wanted a site that required no back end maintenance and could be updated in just a few seconds. I’ve used Tumblr before and always loved it’s simplicity and features, so it was my first choice when it came to choosing a platform. I also love the community that surrounds Tumblr.

There are now over 100 posts linking to a variety of awesome creative links and resources, so now is the time to make Sc.ripted one of your go to destinations for inspiration.

How To Follow

Website: http://sc.ripted.com
Twitter: @5cripted

I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for the site, so please get in touch via the comments below!

Rundown Of The Best Articles of 2010

Grace — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:16:48 +0000

As 2010 is now behind us, it’s time to look back on a memorable year in this blog’s short life. This is a hand-picked collection of the best (and most popular) articles over the past year.

X. Nine Dribbble Invites To Win – Get Drafted!

Dribbble invites are like gold dust. I had been a member for several months and only just got my first two invites this particular week. Several friends also offered up invites and this proved to be my most commented post of 2010 with over 169 comments!

VIIII. How To Attract Quality Freelance Clients

One of a series of special posts where I answered readers questions. This post dealt with a question about how to attract a better quality of clients, which is important for any freelancer, as by addressing how to attract a higher quality of clientele you can significantly reduce the number of ‘problematic’ clients in the future.

VIII. Mac OSX Productivity Series: Part One & Part Two

A two part in-depth series which showed how you can get the best out of both the in-built features and the applications available in OS X, to take your productivity to the next level. Part One gets inside QuickSilver and Spotlight before part two discusses Applications and Spaces.

VII. 50 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

I compiled 50 funny, shocking and downright mad facts about myself that I hoped would inspire others to share something about themselves in the comments to break down the barrier between blog author and reader.

VI. 10 Blogs Every Freelancer Wish Existed

We all have our favorite Freelance blogs which consistently produce quality, insightful content. However in an alternate reality what if an entirely different set of freelancing blogs existed. With tongue firmly in cheek, I presented a humorous look at the top 10 blogs every freelancer would like to exist.

V. The Benefits Of Sketching As A Designer

In order to gain a thorough understanding of how beneficial the process of sketching can be, I asked a small selection of talented designers and illustrators to share their process, advice and tips.

IV. An In-Depth Look At My Wireframing Process

I decided to expand on my points in a Mashable article I had contributed to and write an in depth walkthrough of my wireframing process. I personally believe itâ€™s one of the most important stages in the design process as it allows for rapid prototyping and helps me pinpoint any potential problems.

III. What Cheap Web Design Really Looks Like

Following on from my in-depth look at Why Web Design Doesnâ€™t Cost Â£40 (the previous week), I wanted to get more of an insight into what â€˜cheap web designâ€™ actually looks like. So what could you potentially get for that Â£40? Itâ€™s time to find outâ€¦.

II. Why Web Design Doesn’t Cost Â£40

Detailing my experience after receiving an email from a local business asking to discuss creating a website for them. The email was very polite and professional until half way through the email I read this: “I was chatting to a lad who can do it for Â£40…”

I. How To Say No To Spec Work Requests

My most popular post of 2010 details the encounter I had with a very respectable firm who asked me to ‘do a couple of mock pages for their site so that he could see my ideas and vision’, they would then choose the best one from the 3 designers they asked to do this. The Spec Work Email Template is my most successful download on the site ever.

If you have a particular favorite, let me know in the comments below.
Image Credit.

Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 34

Grace — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:05:39 +0000

Michael Beckwith is an Interactive Developer from South Dakota, USA. He has a passion for the ideas behind open source and collaborative work. Open standards and pushing the way people interact with it has long been an interest to him.

When it comes to web development he is enamored with the upcoming HTML5/CSS3 changes coming in the near future. He is always looking for ways to incorporate those technologies now, whether through an isolated test instance or through a new wordpress website, his favorite CMS, that he is theming from scratch. He is a constant thinker who is always striving to put new ideas into his box of tricks.

The Intro…

This is actually the first Mac that I have worked on with any consistency. It came with the job, and all my previous mac experience came in college/university in the form of a single computer lab. Needless to say, coming from years of Linux and occasional Windows use, it has been a bit of a change for me. I still get keys mixed up when I switch between setups.

The Dock…

Terminal – Usually used to kill programs which have stalled, however it also proves useful for an occasional git pull.
Tweetdeck – My preferred twitter client on the mac when not using my Motorola Droid.
XChat – Good ole IRC where I hang out in the official chat rooms for WordPress, CSS, and HTML5.
Newsfire – RSS feed reader that I use to read work-relevant blogs and website feeds.
Textmate – What can I say about Textmate that hasn’t been said before. One of the best.
CSSEdit – I like to keep my website markup and template files so separated from CSS that I use a totally different program!
Cyberduck – This is a case of I wanted easy to use FTP access, but one that also allowed me to edit files right from the server in my external editors. I didn’t want to have to go through the process of hitting upload and download all the itme. Cyberduck automates that half and I just need to hit save.
Color Picker – I forget exactly what I did, but this is a built in mac color picker that I wanted easier access to, when I need to change between RGB and html hex.
Evernote – My ultimate note taker whether I have a piece of paper or not. I also have the Clip To Evernote chrome extension both at work and at home for easy bookmarking for if I need to save something for either location.
Skype – While it is not limited to work contacts, when at work, I use skype for a lot of communication with people within the project I’m working on.
Dropbox – Another app that needs no real introduction. It is also used for sharing things with myself between home and work, as well as a central place for some code/wordpress plugins that are being done outside of work need.
Mail – To check my company email of course.
Songbird – I am not a fan of iTunes at all other than for its podcast management and use Songbird for any music listening when not using a small 8gb music clip.
Photoshop – Since I’m a lot more on the developer side still, I use photoshop primarily to slice mockups provided to me and turn them into the working template files for use on project sites. I’d like to get into a position of doing some designing as well.
Chrome/Firefox4/Opera/Safari – Two are shown, but I have all four in a custom Mac OS Stack for easy access and less dock clutter. For any IE testing, I use an old personal laptop with XP still on it and a program called IETester.

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A huge thanks to Michael for taking time out to take part in the Dock Series.

If you would like to be featured in the Dock Series simply:

Download the Dock Series Template.
Email it along with the necessary images to: hi [at] gracesmith.co.uk.

Check out the other creatives in the series.

WIN: A Beautiful Heritage iPhone Case (Closed)

Grace — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:31:05 +0000

Apologies for the delay in announcing the winner. However I can now announce that Adam Cartlidge has won this gorgeous iPhone case. The winner was chosen using Random.org. Laura from Late Late Gifts will be in touch with you to confirm all the details.

A huge thanks to everyone that entered, I know I’ll be getting one of these for myself as it’s both beautiful and functional. Make sure to subscribe to have a chance to win more swag like this!

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Thanks to Late Late Gifts, I have one of these georgous iPhone cases, worth $45, up for grabs.

This Limited Edition, ultra chic luxury iPhone case is handmade in Austria using premium materials. Your phone will remain secure between two layers of Asphalt grey 100% wool felt with the case also featuring a brown leather lower trim section which has been tanned using natural vegetable dyes, making each case slightly different and unique from the next.

Late Late Gifts is the ultimate next day delivery gifts guide, helping you find those perfect last minute presents – and gets them delivered pronto!

With 270+ shops, you’ll find everything from flowers to lingerie available. The site tells you what each sells, what express delivery costs – and what time to order by for guaranteed delivery to avoid disappointment.

Entry & Deadline

Leave a comment below giving one reason you should win.
The deadline for entries is Wednesday 13th October.
The winner will be announced on this blog post on Thursday 14th October.

Best of luck everyone!

Show Me Your Dock Series! Part 33

Grace — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:54:44 +0000

Martin Lucas is a freelance website designer based in Colchester, specialising in building websites for small local businesses and individuals – usually building their first website and launching them on to the great big world wide web. He is passionate about the social web and WordPress.

The Intro…

Currently on my second Mac, a 13in MBP which I brought 3 months ago; this was after owning a 12in G4 Powerbook – which was becoming a struggle to work on.

The Dock…

Dashboard – I do actually have a couple of apps I use in here, apart from the Calculater and Conversion tool – I use a Loren Ipsom generator by Tobias Ahlin which is rather nice.
Photoshop – I’ve been using PhotoShop for over 10 years now, I do all my designing in it – when possibly Illustrator and Fireworks could be better suited – but I’m so comfortable with PS it takes half the time.
Dreamweaver – Using this less and less now-a-days as I’m working with WordPress more and more, I even looked into switching to Coda – but I couldn’t as there are too many features I’d miss; especially the server behaviours which I rely on for my PHP / MySQL work.
Adobe Illustrator – As I said, I don’t use this as much as I should – so last year I started designing T-Shirts to sell online and forced myself to do all the designing in Illustrator and it’s definitely helped me learn the application and work out how I can use it more in the future.
CyberDuck – My FTP client of choice.
MAMP – I’ll either develope a site on the live hosting / domain or I’ll work offline on my laptop with this Apache / MySQL and PHP setup.
Text Editor – Editing and viewing simple documents, I also use Google Docs.
Stickies – I used to organise all my work and life on these things, now I use them for simple lists of current projects so I can quickly see what I have on and what I can coming up in the future.
CurdBee – This is my invoicing app of choice, I’ve used the Fluid App to create an application from this superb web based invoicing application.
Dictionary – My spelling can by quite bad at times, so this gets me out of trouble on a regular basis.
Contacts – Keeps all my addresses.
iCal – I try to organise as much of my work / personal life in iCal as I can.
Tweetie – Just switched from TweetDeck to this and enjoying the cleaner interface and the less is more approach when compared to all those columns I had going on previously.
Skype – Only just signed up, hoping it will come in hand with future clients that like to use it.
GMail – Another Fluid App, this time my Google Mail account as a separate application.
FireFox – Browser of choice, and had been since my recent MBP upgrade.
Safari – Now only used for testing.
Opera – Surprised me how quick this browser is – but still only use it for testing.
Chrome – Another speedy alternative browser, and again only really used for testing.
Camino – The least used of my browsers, and one for just us Mac users. I occasionally use it when I feed the need for a stripped down simple browser.
Paparazzi – Screen grabs of individual web pages, handy for taking screen shots for portfolio pieces.
iTunes – Music all day long with this.
LastFM – I also use LastFM’s radio stations based on artists and keywords (my username is djmartinlucas if you’d like to find me).
Spotify – I’ve only just started using Spotify but I’m already building a nice collection of albums and playlists and really like saving a few pennies as I actually don’t mind the adverts.
Preview – I use it as my PDF reader, I find it quicker to use than Adobe Acrobat.
iPhoto Buddy – This is cool, it allows me to have 2 separate iPhoto albums (or more if you wanted), I have one for all my stock photos and a second for my personal photography.
iPhoto – See above.
Linotype Font Explorer – I use this to browse and organise my fonts.
App Cleaner – If I didn’t have this then I would end up with a whole load of applications (and all their files) installed on my Mac that I had tried and then forgot about. This makes it really easy to uninstall any unneeded application that you want to get rid of.

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A huge thanks to Martin for taking time out to take part in the Dock Series.

If you would like to be featured in the Dock Series simply:

Download the Dock Series Template.
Email it along with the necessary images to: hi [at] gracesmith.co.uk.

Check out the other creatives in the series.

5 Invites To New Digg Up For Grabs

Grace — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:42:48 +0000

This is just a quick post to offer 5 of you access to the new Digg, which is currently invite only.

The new Digg is much more streamlined with a clean, refined design and with a renewed focus on building personal recommendation networks.

The first 5 people to click on the image below will grab an invite, so be quick:

Be sure to connect with me – Postscript5 once you’re in! I’d also be interested in hearing what you think of the new Digg, let me know in the comments below.

Bumper Print Giveaway From Next Day Flyers

Grace — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:15:13 +0000

The deadline has now passed and the winner is Nicole Foster.

I was contacted by the lovely team at Next Day Flyers last week to offer my readers a chance to win $40 of credit for any of their services. That may not sound a lot, but when you can get 1000 full color business cards with a 2-4 day turnaround for just $19 from their site, you realise it’s actually a pretty rad prize!

Next Day Flyers is an offset printer you can use to print custom designed materials from menus, to business cards, to brochures. They offer two types of paper stock; a thick 14 point card stock, and a 100 lb glossy paper.

You can upload directly to the website, which also has an Online Design Center where many templates can be found and layouts can be created online. Another impressive piece of the service is the fact they offer same day printing for orders that are in before 10AM PST.

Giveaway Details

For a chance to win, just leave a comment below with a brief description of what you would like to spend the credit on. The winner will chosen at random.
The giveaway ends on Thursday 19th August with the winner announced on this blog post on Friday 20th.

Good luck! | Photo Credit

Nine Dribbble Invite Winners Announced!

Grace — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:33:20 +0000

The response to the Dribbble invite giveaway was overwhelmingly positive with 169 entries! It was far and above my expectations and I have to thank all of those who contributed invites, including; John O’Nolan, Ryan Downie, Chris Gibbons, Paul Stanton and Emma Taylor.

Each entry was checked thoroughly and after several hours, a decision was made. Without further ado, the following are the lucky recipients of one Dribble invite each:

1. Craig Richardson
2. Jeremie (Evasion)
3. Sorel Mihai
4. Jan Cavan
5. Gary Aston
6. Andrea Austoni
7. Martin Boath
8. Zsolt Jakab
9. Marc Thomas

I will be in touch with all the winners within the next 24 hours with details on the signup process.

A huge thanks to everyone who took the time to enter….I’m only sorry I don’t have 169 invites to give each and every one of you!

I hope to organise another giveaway once I have more invites so please subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on the next chance to get drafted.