Keeping an eye out for your career’s future is important for everyone.
However, for web designers, looking forward may be even more important than for many other professions. Many web designers are freelancers, or work for more than one company at a given time. Jobs can be short or long term contracts, so looking for the next job is often not too far out into your future.

What A Career Blog Can Do For You

In today’s business world, networking, whether online or in person, is an important part of keeping your career fresh and keeping an eye out for the next job. Career blogs are just one of the ways web designers and other freelance professionals can keep abreast of who’s hiring,
what’s hot in the industry and which skills they should be adding to their portfolio.

Following you’ll find five career blogs that are essential reading for web designers. They’ll provide insight on how to keep your career fresh, as well as give you important tips on finding your next job and marketing your skills appropriately.

1. Krop

This is an all around good site for web designers. Their blog is very informative, providing information about some of the most important sites on the web, including how they’re created. They also offer articles on job hunting and staying marketable. In addition, Krop offers a large database of available jobs, so it’s a great place to search for your next gig.

2. Smashing Magazine

Smashing has one of the largest design related blogs on the web, so you’ll find lots of useful information on their site. They also offer tutorials on lots of design programs. Their job database is quite large and is segmented into full time and freelance positions, making it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.

3. AIGA

AIGA is the professional association for designers, and is one organization all designers should join. Their website has a great job bank, along with plenty of other resources for designers. Their “Voice” section is a great interactive blog that explores all aspects of design and encourages reader feedback. When job hunting, keep in mind that many large companies advertise first and foremost through AIGA.

4. AG Design

This site, known as All Graphic Design, offers lots of articles and advice for graphic designers, including a great design gallery. Their blog is a great resource for finding graphic design jobs and for keeping your skills sharp. In addition, there’s a design forum for addressing all sorts of questions and issues facing graphic designers.

5. A Digital Dreamer

One of the best sites for graphic designers, Digital Dreamer offers general information for all sorts of graphic designers, as well as some specialized categories, suited to specific types of designers, such as video game designers or animators. The career articles are particularly good for beginning designers who are still in the early stages of their career.

These sites are certain to be helpful to graphic designers in any stage of their career. Keeping up with these sites and reading their blogs regularly is sure to help any graphic designer keep abreast of all the changes and job opportunities in the graphic design field.

About the author

Mary Ward is a freelance author and writes about design job topics, such as how to choose a web design school, artist career tips, and more.

But at the same time I do get sick of IE6 rants and campaigns. This isn’t a rant, it’s more of a ‘be aware that it still exists and some reasons why it still exists‘ post. A recent blog post of mine researching popular design blog analytics showed that there are still 3% of users using IE6. And that’s in the field of design. There is more than likely a lot more than that in terms of the World Wide Web.

Why people are still using IE6

• They use a company computer and have no control over upgrades
• They’ve popped into an Internet cafe and have to use what’s available
• It works for them so why change
• They don’t realise there are other browsers available
• They like it

So rather than campaigning to get people to upgrade their browser, shouldn’t we just deal with it and support it?

But what does ’support’ mean?

I think Andy Clarke hits the nail on the head in his killer contract:

We will also test to ensure that pages will display visually in a ‘similar’, albeit not necessarily an identical way, in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Windows as this browser is now past it’s sell-by date.

I think this is the best way to support IE6: it doesn’t have to be pixel perfect but the content should be accessible and it should look similar.

What I’ll usually do before launching a site is check to make sure all the links are visible and clickable and all the content is accessible in IE6. I’ll even spend 30 minutes to make sure it looks ‘half decent’ with regards to IE6 not supporting PNG transparency, which involves replacing the PNG backgrounds with GIFs via an IE6 specific stylesheet.

Supporting IE6

To specifically target IE6 users with special instructions or styles, use the following code.

<!--[if IE 6]>
Special instructions for IE 6 here, usually including a specific IE6 stylesheet
<![endif]-->

Anything placed between the special tags will only be recognised by IE6.

Interesting IE6 campaigns

Bring down IE6

Dear IE6

IE6 Update

Save IE6

Universal IE6 css

Help with common IE6 problems

• IE6 bugs that will get you every time
• Free tools to make IE6 bug testing easy
• 10 fixes for IE6 problems

Do you support IE6?

Hopefully over the next year or two we will be seeing less and less of IE6, especially if Microsoft encourage users to upgrade to IE8.

Do you ’support’ IE6? Do you check to make sure your sites work? Do you spend much time fixing it or making it pixel perfect?

These are all words that I would also associate with the following websites. With the right colour scheme, using elements of nature e.g. grass and trees, adding some subtle paper backgrounds and using hand drawn graphics/text you can design a fresh ‘green’ website too.

1. Jiri Tvrdek

2. Organic Supermarket

3. Sprout Box

4. Recycle Now

5. Ecoki

6. Green Globe Ideas

7. Green Web Awards

8. Edenbee

9. Silverback

10. Carbonica

11. Red Brick Health

12. Mint

13. Osvaldas Valutis

14. Opera Mage

15. Glocal Ventures

16. enviRenew

17. Plant With Purpose

18. Bikevasion

19. 53 Mondays

20. Envira Media

Further reading

• Create a spectacular grass text effect in Photoshop
• Create a sketch using the scribble effect in Illustrator

To follow this up I asked a few design blogs that I regularly visit to share their stats. No specific numbers, just percentages and interesting tidbits.

The questions I asked

Looking at your stats for 1st April 2009 - 30th April 2009:

1. What days of the week were the most and least popular?
2. What was the percentage browser share for the top 3 browsers?
3. What percentage of IE users used IE6?
4. What resolution was most popular?
5. What were the top 3 keywords for your site?
6. Who were the top 3 referrers to your site?
7. What was the most obscure keyword someone arrived at your site for?
8. What was your most popular blog post?

The results

In alphabetical order…

Abduzeedo

@abduzeedo

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; Least - Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 62.51%
2. Internet Explorer - 14.53%
3. Safari - 13.53%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. abduzeedo
2. abduzeedo.com
3. photoshop disasters

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Google.com
3. Digg.com

7. Strangest search term?

None given

8. Most popular post?

45 Amazing Type Faces - Typographic Portraits

Andy Sowards

@andysowards

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Monday; Least - Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 65.89%
2. Internet Explorer - 15.37%
3. Safari - 10.30%

3. IE6 users?

3.15%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. twitter profile design
2. project management cartoon
3. best twitter profiles

6. Top referrers?

1. Twitter.com
2. Designfloat.com
3. Blog.SpoonGraphics.co.uk

7. Strangest search term?

andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe

8. Most popular post?

20+ Best songs to Listen to for Inspiration while Developing/Designing Projects

CSS Tricks

@chriscoyier

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Tuesday; Least - Saturday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 63.87%
2. Internet Explorer - 14.07%
3. Safari - 13.25%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×1024

5. Top search terms?

1. css tricks
2. css transparency
3. css sprites

6. Top referrers?

1. Smashingmagazine.com
2. Stumbleupon.com
3. Google.com

7. Strangest search term?

what computer code looks like

8. Most popular post?

Creating a Slick Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider

David Airey

@davidairey

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday; Least - Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 52.49%
2. Internet Explorer - 24.20%
3. Safari - 17.29%

3. IE6 users?

5.81%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. design blogs
2. david airey
3. graphic designer

6. Top referrers?

1. PSD.TutsPlus.com
2. StumbleUpon.com
3. LogoDesignLove.com

7. Strangest search term?

gear shift sex

8. Most popular post?

Top 50+ graphic design blogs

Paddy Donnelly

@paddydonnelly

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Tuesday; Least - Saturday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 61.71%
2. Internet Explorer - 16.54%
3. Safari - 11.72%

3. IE6 users?

3.26%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800 - 21.92%

5. Top search terms?

1. how do you twitter
2. how do you twitter?
3. @PaddyDonnelly

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. WebDesignLedger.com
3. Twitter.com

7. Strangest search term?

’80s remix blog’ and ‘Peter Jones’ Socks’

8. Most popular post?

Web 2.0rigami

Pro Blog Design

@problogdesign

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Wednesday/Thursday; Least - Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 66%
2. Internet Explorer - 16%
3. Safari - 9%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. Blog design
2. RSS icons
3. Poverty pictures

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. SmashingMagazine.com
3. Delicious.com

7. Strangest search term?

Just that “poverty pictures” has been one of my top keywords for months now!

8. Most popular post?

35 Awesome user interface design tutorials

Smashing Magazine

@smashingmag

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Thursday; Least - Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 60.5%
2. Safari - 17.1%
3. Internet Explorer - 13.2%

3. IE6 users?

3.9%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. photoshop
2. wordpress
3. css

6. Top referrers?

1. Digg.com
2. StumbleUpon.com
3. Delicious.com

7. Strangest search term?

Can’t tell

8. Most popular post?

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2009

Spoon Graphics

@chrisspooner

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Monday; Least - Saturday, Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 59.03%
2. Safari - 19.17%
3. Internet Explorer - 12.88%

3. IE6 users?

2.74%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. Spoon Graphics
2. SpoonGraphics
3. Poster Design

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. SmashingMagazine.com
3. PSD.tutsplus.com

7. Strangest search term?

corset designers

8. Most popular post?

How to Create Your Own Single Page Portfolio Site

The Design Cubicle

@behoff

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Monday/Tuesday/Thursday; Least - Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 65.82%
2. Internet Explorer - 14.28%
3. Safari - 12.68%

3. IE6 users?

3.42%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. interactive pdf
2. social media icons
3. creative business cards

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Twitter.com
3. Daily.Creattica.com

7. Strangest search term?

nerd shirts

8. Most popular post?

50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers

Vandelay Design

@stevensnell

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Tuesday; Least - Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 57%
2. Internet Explorer - 24%
3. Safari - 10%

3. IE6 users?

5.52%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. photography websites
2. photoshop textures
3. church websites

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Delicious.com
3. Twitter.com

7. Strangest search term?

comentariu nenorocirea secolului

8. Most popular post?

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Working with Textures

Web Designer Depot

@DesignerDepot

1. Most & least popular days?

Most - Weekdays; Least - Weekends

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox - 64%
2. Safari - 13%
3. Internet Explorer - 11%

3. IE6 users?

2.2%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. web designer depot
2. webdesigner depot
3. web design depot

6. Top referrers?

1. Digg.com
2. Twitter.com
3. StumbleUpon.com

7. Strangest search term?

girl talk 2009, free sexy, ilastfm css

8. Most popular post?

Operating system interface design between 1981-2009

Conclusions

• Popularity of the day obviously depends on what day you post but it’s obvious that not as many people are active on the internet over the weekend
• Firefox average share: 61.71%
• IE average share: 16%
• Safari average share: 13.36%
• 3.55% of visitors still use IE6 (average)
• The most popular resolution (for every blog but 1) is 1280×800
• A lot of users do enter your domain name or site name into Google (and don’t just go directly to your site using the address bar) - I used to think it was just my girlfriend did this
• The top referrers are:
  1. StumbleUpon
  2. Twitter
  3. Digg
  4. Delicious
  5. Google

  So it’s worth including submit links to social sites at the end of your posts (and tweeting about them)

• The strangest search terms are:
  1. andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe
  2. what computer code looks like
  3. gear shift sex
  4. Peter Jones’ Socks
  5. poverty pictures
  6. corset designers
  7. nerd shirts
  8. comentariu nenorocirea secolului
  9. free sexy
• Giving away free stuff is a good way to get traffic to your site
• Offering ‘How-to’ tutorials is another good way to get traffic
• Lists of useful resources are also very popular

Share your stats

Please feel free to share your stats below and how they compare with the above conclusions. In particular I’m a fan of the obscure & strange search terms

Here’s a brief roundup.

What is Refresh Belfast?

Refresh Belfast is a monthly event for designers and creatives to meet over an informative talk and a ‘refreshing’ pint.

It takes place every third Monday of the month in The Black Box, and like a lot of web related events happening in Belfast is organised by Andy Good.

More about Refresh Belfast.

Who are Front?

Front are one of Ireland’s leading web development agencies with clients including BBC, O2, Independent News & Media, Carte Blanche Greetings – and lots of exciting new work they’re not yet able to speak about!

Photo source

Paul McKeever, Front’s MD, and Jamie Neely, Front’s creative director, both spoke at the event.

Topics

Paul talked about the user experience, how people will use your site and being human online (and not talking like a robot).

Jamie discussed Front’s approach to design and how it’s not about jumping into Photoshop and starting to design a site. It’s about understanding the user and client needs, scoping out the project with wireframes and sketches and building the client’s online brand.

You can view the round-up, video clips and slides on Front’s website. It’s worth a read

After checking my Google Analytics account recently, I thought it might be of interest to publicise some of my findings. So I selected 1 month, April 1st - April 30th 2009, and here are the findings.

Dashboard

Areas of interest

• The most daily visits was on Monday April 20th (3,840)
• The least daily visits was on Sunday April 5th (548)
• Monday is the most popular day (usually the day I publish blog posts)
• Sunday is the least popular day

Visitors

Areas of interest

• The most popular browser was Firefox (65.64%) followed by Safari (12.42%) and Internet Explorer (12.17%)
• Out of the 12.17% IE users, 17.82% used IE6 (1,037)
• 3 users were using IE5.5
• The most popular OS was Windows (64.38%) followed by Mac (31.10%)
• 595 people visited my site on the iPhone, 124 on the iPod and 3 on the PS3
• The most popular resolution was 1280×800 (19.09%)
• 9.77% had a resolution of 1024×768 and 0.3% had a resolution of 800×600

Traffic sources

Areas of interest

• The top 10 keywords were:
  1. twitter themes
  2. lee munroe
  3. twitter theme
  4. twitter backgrounds
  5. twitter page design
  6. freelance web designer
  7. web design trends
  8. get more twitter followers
  9. twitter profile background
  10. call to action buttons
• 2 people arrived by searching for ‘the spank machine‘
• 1 person arrived by searching for ‘excited hot female‘
• Stumbleupon referred 3,676 people, closely followed with 3,564 from Twitter
• The top 10 referrers were:
  1. stumbleupon.com
  2. twitter.com
  3. smashingmagazine.com
  4. ajaxrain.com
  5. wordpress.org
  6. smashingapps.com
  7. google.com
  8. delicious.com
  9. sixrevisions.com
  10. daily.creattica.com
• 6,979 visits came from Google, while only 58 from yahoo and 38 from msn

Content

Areas of interest

• The top 10 pages were:
  1. Homepage
  2. Designing out of the box
  3. 15 beautiful typography inspired websites
  4. 25 hot female web designers part 2
  5. Portfolio
  6. Call to action buttons
  7. 30 creative twitter theme backgrounds
  8. 5 quick and easy ways to optimise your website
  9. 25 hot female web designers
  10. Blog
• Generally, the top 10 landing pages were the same as the top 10 exit pages, which were the same as the top 10 visited pages (therefore my bounce rate isn’t very good)

Conclusion

So what does all this mean?

• Constantly writing useful blog posts on your site is a good idea
• Writing guest posts for other sites can be useful
• Being active on Twitter matters
• Posting blog posts on the weekend isn’t as effective as during the week
• There are people who still use IE6
• You can pretty much forget about having to design for 800×600 anymore. Most users have at least 1024×768 and higher resolutions
• Remember people will access your site on different platforms, including mobile/iPhone
• Submit your site & posts to social sites like Delicious and Stumbleupon
• Twitter is a hot search topic at the minute

Of course these conclusions are only drawn from my readers. Things may be different for your site depending on your target market.

What are your stats like? What’s the oddest thing someone has searched for to find your site? How many people use IE6? Please share below.

I’ve put together a showcase of my favourite illustrated characters along with some further links for inspiration.

Silverback App

Mail Chimp

Fatburgr

Cyclops

Old Loft

Branded 07

The Alamo Basement

Freelance Switch

Veerle

Ellis Lab

Project Vino

Ryan O’Rourke

Schneeballschl8

Candy Cult

Spinen

What’s your favourite?

Further reading

• 45 Excellent examples of using character illustrations in web design
• 20 Sites with beautiful character illustrations
• 30 Creative examples of illustrations in web design