How to Freelance

Great Places to Find Freelance Graphic Design Jobs

Addy — Thu, 31 May 2012 09:00:46 +0000

Freelance web and graphic Designers put many years into learning and mastering the skills they need to succeed. However finding a perfect freelance graphic design job is yet a difficult task for many. Of course waiting for that situation to start searching is a very bad and insecure to do your freelance, and you better have a plan on how to promote yourself and hunt for work if you are freelancing.

If you are a graphic designer looking for freelance graphic design jobs then you have come to the right place. Below is a list of few great places to find graphic design jobs.

Coroflot

Coroflot helps creative professionals gain exposure and make connections to jobs and opportunities with design-driven companies.

Behance

Behance network is a leading online platform to showcase & discover creative work. They provide opportunities for designer to find out varieties of graphic design jobs.

37 Signals

37Signals has a really nice job board which features many top web design jobs from companies such as The New York Times, CNET, Facebook, Adobe and Trek.

AIGA Design Jobs

The AIGA job board includes various types of design jobs, including a number in web design. You will find amazing jobs here that you will surely like.

Job boards

One of the Best places to find graphic design work is off course job boards. Following are some other best design job boards that I know.

Authentic Jobs

FreelanceSwitch Job Board

ProgrammerMeetDesigner

design:related

Krop

Simply Hired

A Graceful Home Office Design Idea

Nora — Thu, 31 May 2012 05:25:26 +0000

Decorating your home office so that it becomes an efficient as well as aesthetic place to go to every day is not that difficult. The home office decorating ideas you choose to utilize will depend upon your own tastes and subjective level of what is considered artistic, of course, but several methods are available that can be applied whether your home office is for writing, selling or creating arts and crafts. Home office is a very important place in the home or if they could make money working from home. Natural wood and varnish are many subjects for this kind of scenery. Home office can give all the working room you require, but you have to make sure that when you design your own home office, you have fulfilled the equipment and all the utility and storage space that you need to keep your documents and papers. Woods are the well-known furnishings that mostly used in a home office because wood can give stylish appeal and blending well with the style of your home. Choose small but multi-function desk to be placed in your home office to make you simplify. This home office furnishing is the collection from Office Furniture.

Best Ideas for Home Office Furnishing

Nora — Thu, 31 May 2012 05:03:30 +0000

If you’re used to complete the work at home job, you should also have a home office in your house. In a home office make suitable conditions, if you wish for to keep the room comfortable and neat, don’t put a lot of documents or books are not in use at your home office. Good home office should have the alignment function among tables to work with file storage place. Need a space or an easy place for populace to do a job, and this time we will discuss how which is the right method to design a home office. Home office you can give innovations such as color and furnishings, if you desire an inimitable color, the home office you select the colors you like. Because even working, people want the easy ambient and surroundings to keep their mind relax and fresh even doing the hard work. A good home office should be a good place to work but it has to keep the homey comfortable feels. Furniture for the home office as well to the degree necessary, don’t be too huge and too small. An easy chair to sit a long time, pass a table to do a job. So when using the home office will then be opened as well as open the cabinet. All equipment is there, the Computer and other papers. Even working at home, people want something fresh, either from the design and the beautification, you better put a few green inside your home office to make the space air more fresh and better put big glass in your home office so you can watch your backyard or your kids trough your office. Take a look below!

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12 Free Online Mind Mapping Tools for Freelancers

Nad — Thu, 31 May 2012 04:22:28 +0000

Concept mapping and mind mapping software are used to create diagrams of relationships between concepts, ideas or other pieces of information. It is also a useful planning technique with applications across all freelance business sectors and industries.

It makes team projects easier to manage. In this article, check out the best mind mapping web apps that will help you to do freelance work as a group.

WiseMapping

WiseMapping is a free online mind mapping tool which helps in creating mind maps, invite friends as contributors and save maps as PDF.

iMindMap

iMindMap takes a different approach to mapping than the other applications in the list. Mind maps created in iMindMap can be exported as PDF, JPG, PNG and text outline.

Solvr

Solvr provides a platform where a person can share thoughts or problems and then invite others to add ideas on how to solve them.

Glinkr

Glinkr is free useful tool map where you can share your views of contents on the Web.

XMind

XMind interface is simple and intuitive to use. You can quickly move through your entire mind map with only a handful of keystrokes or jump over to the outline view for even quicker navigation.

Mindjet MindManager

After the initial installation, MindManager walks you through the creation of a sample mind map helpful both to familiarize you with the interface but also to show you features you may have overlooked.

Mindomo

Mindomo is online mind map software where users can create, view and share mind maps in their browser.

Mind42

Mind42 is a cool mind mapping tool for creating highly customizable organization charts.

Think

Think is an online tool that provides users to create interlinked mind maps.

Zoho

Zoho is web based software that helps you to create online database apps to organize your business information.

Mindmeister

MindMeister is the most simplistic mind mapping tool in the top five, but its simplicity is definitely an asset. Additional customizations like font size and node colors are available for when you want to go beyond the basics. You can share your maps for public collaboration or hand-select collaborators.

Gliffy

Extremely powerful tool that create anything from basic flow-chart diagrams to well-documented troubleshooting guides.

20 Online Tools for Website Testing and Validation

Nad — Thu, 31 May 2012 02:47:35 +0000

Validation is a procedure where the web designer can check out the data against a standard or requirement. And if we come across the website validation phenomena then it becomes very necessary to verify the quality and correctness of web page code.

Before launching any new website the freelance web designers should overlook the check and test process for a website that actually helps us to ensure that whether web pages working or not with great looks.

Testing is one thing also that you cannot afford to take lightly. The reason is that even a small error left unnoticed can prove to be fatal for your website and the user experience. Here are some excellent online tools for website validation that help the freelance web developers to check out the errors in website.

ColorDoctor

You can use W3C Colour Contrast algorithm tool to check the contrast between colors of website.

Web page reports

There are various online services offering automated web page checks. It is a useful tool to generating links for the report pages of some services like emulators, validates, and accessibility checkers.

WebXM

It is a useful tool to check the accessibility, quality, privacy, brand and compliance issues across corporate web properties.

WebSitePulse Test Tools

WebSitePulse is a leading provider of advanced, independent and remote monitoring services that enable clients to increase the efficiency of their mission-critical e-business operations, and to reduce their risk of failed Internet transactions.

Adobe PDF conversion

This conversion tool provides a service to convert to text Adobe PDF files that are in English.

Spoon Browser Sandbox

You need to install spoon browser plugin and get access of your web page information instantly.

WebAIM Wave

You need to install spoon browser plugin and get access of your web page information instantly.

Pingdom tools

If you like pingdom tools you can include a banner on your website that lets all your visitors use it.

FAE – Functional Accessibility Evaluator

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You can use this tool to evaluate the functional accessibility of a single web page. It evaluates multiple pages via web crawling.

Browser shots

It is a free open-source online web application that provides developers a convenient way to test their website’s browser compatibility in one place.

Web Page Analyzer

This tool is use to analyze the page size, download time , page speed and many other things of your website.

Viewlike

Viewlike is a brand new site that allows you to check out how your website looks in the most popular resolution formats.

Load Impact

Load Impact is use to check the load of your website on the internet. You can have several different test configurations and run the tests whenever you want.

Firebug Firefox Extension

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse.

Dr. Watson’s site validation check

Dr. Watson for Windows is a program error debugger that gathers information about your computer when an error occurs with a program.

WDG HTML Validator

WDG HTML validator checks through your web pages for errors so as to make them more accessible.

Accessibility with style

HERA is a tool to check the accessibility of web pages according to the specification web content accessibility. It performs a preliminary set of tests on the web page and expresses any automatically detectable errors that occurs in the website.

RSS Feed Validator

RSS Feed Validator is a tool to check the syntax of the Atoms or RSS feeds.

How to Choose the Right Bank for Your Small Business

Addy — Wed, 30 May 2012 07:53:49 +0000

One of the most important decisions you need to make when you start a small business is choosing the right bank. The choice of a bank will determine how your business will be able to conduct its financial business. You should consider the various services, fees and facilities that are on offer to enable you to find the best bank for your type of business.

Before you start making any decisions, remember that all banks are different. So it is critical for you to find the right bank for your business. Here are the steps for narrowing down your selection.

Online Services

Online banking services can help you save time and money through easy transfer of funds and online bill-payment. Look for online cash-management (which eases the sending of invoices, collecting of payments and cutting of payroll checks) and loan-application services–often free for small-business depositors. While choosing the right bank for your small business you need to make sure that it is offering free or affordable online services.

Charges and Interest

Your hard-earned money can be eaten up by high bank service charges. Find a bank that is happy to have your business and does not charge high service fees for it. If you think you will mainly be making payments electronically, go for an account that offers free or low-cost electronic transactions. So do consider the overall benefits each account would provide to your business.

Does The Bank Have a Small Business Adviser On Staff?

Go for a bank which has a specialized small business unit. Branch-based chains of advisers can be useful if there are specific regional issues that affect your business. If you are going toward a smaller, community bank, there are probably several people in the bank that are quite aware of the business community that can help you.

Business Debit Cards.

With a Business debit card, you can save time, manage your cash flow and monitor and control your expenditure. These work like a personal debit card but with payments coming from your Business Current account. They are a quick and easy way to pay for everyday expenses.

Elegant Home Office Design Idea with Attractive Wooden Accent

Nora — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:28:06 +0000

If you like to work at home without any intrusion, maybe designing your home office with this design can help you to work without any inferences because this home office design looks very personal with its hallways. Create a workspace that’s both useful and elegant with our cool home office furniture. It can help you to work without any inferences; this home office design also can provide you an attractive feel when you’re working in this space because all over partition of this home office is accented with wood accent that very complicated. Our home office furnishings sets include coordinating small office furnishings pieces, so you can create the ideal home work environment for any space. The wood accent also make this home office looks more gorgeous and classy. With this design, working at home can feel more comfortable and attractive because of the privacy looks.

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20 Useful Time-Savers for Web Designers

Nad — Tue, 29 May 2012 11:12:19 +0000

If you are a freelance web designer who considers time as an important part of your productivity, then you will tend to find free, or paid online apps that will improve your workflow and increase your web productivity without wasting so much time on it. Be it a handy checklist, batch installer, dummy image generator or converter from excel spreadsheet to HTML all these things can save us a couple of minutes every day, making our work easier and more efficient.

In this article, I have presented a useful collection of creative websites and time saver tools that will help you boost your freelance web designing work with efficiency.

Load Impact

Visual Website Optimizer

Divine Conversion tool from PSD to HTML

Showcase of Beautiful Yellow Color Web Designs

Nad — Tue, 29 May 2012 09:36:41 +0000

Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the long and medium wavelength cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the short-wave cone cells. You sometimes walk a fine line when selecting yellow color for your web design but, it can be a very effective and refreshing alternative to more common shades.

Yellow is one of the warm colors. Because of the high visibility of bright yellow, it is often used for hazard signs and some emergency vehicles. Usually this color is used in web designing for getting attraction of visitors. In this article, I have collected some cool yellow color website designs for inspiration of freelance web designers.

The Human Powered Home

Tips for Running a Successful Part Time Business from Home

Addy — Tue, 29 May 2012 07:22:25 +0000

Setting up a business from home is often seen as a safe or convenient way to venture into the business world. It can also reduce many of the financial risks associated with entrepreneurship while you continue to generate income and maintain the benefits from your full-time job. It’s a bit frightening and overwhelming but you really just have to trust your gut that somehow and someway everything will work out the way you want it.

Here are few tips to help make your part-time business a success:

Adopt The Professional Image Of A Full-Timer

Your part-time business may have to compete with full-time businesses for customers or clients, so avoid looking like a dilettante. Present the image of a full-time business and clients will regard you as a player, even after they find out you’re moonlighting.

Get Support From Family and Friends

No matter what type of business you are in, it is vital to have the support of your family and friends if you plan to work from home. After all, your family will want to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how it will affect your life. You need to make them feel like they’re part of your business. Successful entrepreneurs have been known to mention supportive spouses as part of their recipe for success.

Manage Your Time Effectively

Discipline is the key to running a successful part-time business. You will need to tightly schedule your time every day, especially if you also work full-time. Clients will want to work with you on their schedule, not yours. You can take advantage of time management apps e.g. Timepanther, which lets you sort your tasks by urgency and due date.

Don’t Neglect Your Day Job

While enthusiasm for your new venture is understandable, you need to take care not to neglect your full-time job. Work hard at your home business, but set reasonable boundaries and stick to them. Neglecting your full-time job could cause your employer concern as you’d not be 100% focused on your work. Organize your business hours so that you don’t need to take business calls or answer business emails while at your day job.