1. Do not use more than three colors.
2. Get rid of everything that is not absolutely necessary.
3. Type must be easy enough for your grandma to read.
4. The logo must be recognizable.
5. Create a unique shape or layout for the logo.
6. Completely ignore what your parents and/or spouse think about the design.
7. Confirm that the logo looks appealing to more than just three (3) individuals.
8. Do not combine elements from popular logos and claim it as original work.
9. Do not use clipart under any circumstances.
10. The logo should look good in black and white.
11. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when inverted.
12. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when resized.
13. If the logo contains an icon or symbol, as well as text, place each so that they complement one another.
14. Avoid recent logo design trends. Instead, make the logo look timeless.
15. Do not use special effects (including, but not limited to: gradients, drop shadows, reflections, and light bursts).
16. Fit the logo into a square layout if possible, avoid obscure layouts.
17. Avoid intricate details.
18. Consider the different places and ways that the logo will be presented.
19. Invoke feelings of being bold and confident, never dull and weak.
20. Realize that you will not create a perfect logo.
21. Use sharp lines for sharp businesses, smooth lines for smooth businesses.
22. The logo must have some connection to what it is representing.
23. A photo does not make a logo.
24. You must surprise customers with presentation.
25. Do not use more than two fonts.
26. Each element of the logo needs to be aligned. Left, center, right, top, or bottom.
27. The logo should look solid, with no trailing elements.
28. Know who is going to be looking at the logo before you think of ideas for it.
29. Always choose function over innovation.
30. If the brand name is memorable, the brand name should be the logo.
31. The logo should be recognizable when mirrored.
32. Even large companies need small logos.
33. Everyone should like the logo design, not just the business that will use it.
34. Create variations. The more variations, the more likely you are to get it right.
35. The logo must look consistent across multiple platforms.
36. The logo must be easy to describe.
37. Do not use taglines in the logo.
38. Sketch out ideas using paper and pencil before working on a computer.
39. Keep the design simple.
40. Do not use any “swoosh” or “globe”symbols.
41. The logo should not be distracting.
42. It should be honest in its representation.
43. The logo should be balanced visually.
44. Avoid bright, neon colors and dark, dull colors.
45. The logo must not break any of the above rules.

First of all, inventory your current supply of business cards. Are they packed away in a box or gathering dust in a corner? How many do you have? Are you happy with the design? Is all of your contact information on the card – is it correct and up to date? Does the card bear your company logo?

Do whatever you need to do to stock up on a healthy supply of business cards. Be sure that the design is uniform in comparison to your other branding materials to boost brand recognition. Beyond that – here are some other ideas to help you get the most from this often overlooked advertising/branding/sales tool within the business world and your community.

• Add value to your business cards on the next reprint, or print a special batch with a value added offer on the back. Include a discount offer, special coupon, admission to an event, punch card device or another premium benefit. Give it some thought and customize a promotion that fits your business, and be sure to set a deadline for use.
• Use your cards to drive traffic to your website – not merely by listing your URL. Add a line or two of text that gives users a reason to visit your site—the promise of coupons or a special offer or the impending arrival of a new product.
• Differentiate your business by including a creative tagline or single sentence that performs like a tiny ad publicizing a truly unique product, service or attribute of your business designed to generate or attract interest.
• Take the design of your current business card and expand its use to include promotional items such as pens, mugs, coasters, etc. Again, be creative in terms of matching the promotional gifts to your unique business purpose and in your methods of distribution.
• Include them in your mailings. Though many businesses have cut down the amount of paper sent through the postal services, there are still letters to send, bills to pay, promotional kits to deliver and packages to ship. And that’s not even counting your personal mailings. Include a business card in every one of them.
• Give a business card with every customer receipt, place them in bags with merchandise, and put them in library books and books on the shelves in local bookstores – especially those that people interested in your business might pick up and read.
• Distribute business cards to the people you meet daily. Keep a supply on hand and visit other local businesses to find out if they will allow you to display your card in their shop or office.
• Place your cards in designated areas of shopping malls, supermarkets, waiting rooms, toll booths—any place where potential customers gather and spend time.
• Whenever you give a business card to a new acquaintance or colleague – give them an extra to pass on and widen your network even further.

Finally, carry your business cards everywhere you go. Have them printed up for your employees. Be sure everyone distributes them at meetings, conferences, conventions and trade shows. Remember that having a ready supply ensures that you can utilize any creative distribution opportunity that comes up at a moment’s notice – and benefit from the results!

And you can do that – with the proper selection of clothing, lenses filters and lighting!

Here are some female photography tips you should try:

1. Ask your model to get plenty of rest the night before her portrait. It will produce natural fresh look that really important during the photograph process.
2. Photographic lights tend to wash out our faces and a touch extra make-up will help. Let her handle her own make-up but ask her to apply it a little heavy.
3. Stay away from turtle necks. V-necks tend to visually lengthen the neckline and upper torso and are slimming.
4. On clothing, stay away from prints and bold patterns. They will draw attention jut to the clothing but away from the face. Besides, we want her to be the star, not her clothing!
5. Shadows define shape – so darker colors that minimize the appearance of shadows are more slimming.
6. Have her turn about 45 degrees to the side so that she is not straight on to the camera. This can be the good position.
7. Shadows tend to recede in a photograph and brightly lit areas come forward – so whether you light the side of the face toward the camera (and have shadow on the other side), or whether you light the further side can make the face look thinner or wider as desired.

No matter who you are, amateur or professional, there are always new things to meet and learn and add to your knowledges. I hope my simple female photography tips can help you generate a fantastic reputation for many females around you.

Some Female Photography Tips you should try. Don’t forget to get your Free Business Cards with more than 400 designs to choose from.

That’s why when you look for all those different reviews from users, keep in mind that your ultimate goal isn’t to buy the best digital camera available, but the one model that will fit your needs, the digital camera that is best for you and for what you need it to do.

Great article from Best Digicam Review.

In order for you to come up with a website that you can be proud of, it is best for you to follow the tips listed below.

1. Decide on the website that you want to create
2. Familiarize yourself with Web Design Terms
3. Look for the Free Web Design Software that suits your taste the best
4. Start working on your website

• Come up with an Introduction
• Layout
• Be professional
• Make your site interactive

By following all the tips mentioned above, the process of creating your very own website will surely be enjoyable and memorable. Just remember to be positive and before you know it, you will be able to create a website that’s not only interesting but unique as well.

Read more from → WIX

I know that there’s a lot of tips and articles on the net and I just found this one to keep and I hope that you might find it also useful in one of your future projects.

Whether you are searching for a career in fashion modeling or glamour modeling, it is very important for you to realize that there is more to becoming a model than just standing there looking beautiful.

One very important factor in becoming a good model is posing, and in order for you to learn the different poses needed for the type of modeling career you are seeking it will take practice, practice, practice.

Make Your Posing Look Natural
When preparing for your photo shoot, there are numerous steps you can take to ensure you are comfortable while posing and your photos will look more natural.

Get Posing Ideas
Before you head to your photo shoot, pick at least ten poses you really like from fashion or glamour magazines, or poses you’ve learned from previous photo shoots. Take time to practice each pose in front of a mirror until you feel comfortable and have the confidence of knowing you look great doing these poses.

Hands and Facial Expression
Also, focus on what to do with your hands and pay attention to facial expressions. A pose is virtually dead and unimaginative without a “look”. You should be able to close your eyes, imagine a thought, open your eyes and sell that thought. Practice this technique and your photos will come alive.

Become an Idea Factory
Unless you are shooting for an advertising agency or some other type of special interest session many photographers recommend that you bring some of your own posing ideas to the shoot. In addition to your ideas, the photographer may have his or her own idea of how the session should go.

Rapport with Your Photographer
Always work with a photographer you feel you can trust. This will make communication between the two of you easier and give you the confidence to express your own ideas.

Always listen to what the photographer tells you. If you are really uncomfortable with the pose, let your photographer know how you feel, in a nice way. Remember, he is looking through the camera lens and might see something you don’t.

If the photographer says she wants something different in the pose, try looking away from the camera or giving a unique facial expression. This is where your practice in front of the mirror really pays.

Posture
When posing you should always keep good posture unless the photographer instructs you to do otherwise. Hold your stomach in to give your abdomen a more toned appearance. If you have gained a few pounds stick out your chin a little to avoid the appearance of a double chin in your photos.

Keep your fingers slightly apart and pointed away from the lens. Let your hands fall naturally into position whenever possible. Remember, you want to be yourself – on purpose.

Now that you have learned what to do, consider these things you should try to avoid while posing.

Things to Avoid when Posing for a Photographer

Misplaced Body Language
Body language and expressions come naturally but the language you are projecting might not be what your photographer wants in a particular pose. You need to conciously focus on ways to prevent these habits while posing.

Don’t hold your breath during a pose. Stay relaxed and your photos will look as if you just happened to be sitting this way when the photographer walked up.

In most pose situations you want your arms, legs, wrists, etc. slightly bent unless you are directed to do otherwise Most people don’t stand or sit with their arms and legs completely stiff. A good point to remember is, if it will bend, bend it.

Mona Lisa Smile?
Another posing tip to remember is that you don’t always have to smile. You should have a good variety of smiling and serious looks. But, sometimes you will want to give a large, open-mouthed laugh. If you are susposed to be happy, look the part!

Your Eyes are the Windows to Your Soul
Don’t always look straight into the camera. When you cut your eyes to the left or right, you create an air of mystery. When you look up and away, you are annoyed. Tilt your chin slightly down and look straight ahead for a sexy look.

About Blinking
Beware of the Blink! If you have to blink, try to blink between exposures. This is not always easy, especially if you are working in a photography studio.Some models get into a habit of anticipating the strobes and start to close their eyes when the picture is about to be snapped.

Get into the habit of not paying attention to the flash and concentrate wholy on the pose, your body language, hand position, etc. and your images will come out as you expect.

Be Bold!!
Never be afraid to try out some of your own poses in front of your photographer. Most photographers are glad to hear suggestions from you.

How do You See Yourself?
When you look at your final images don’t be critical of yourself. Find positive ways to improve your posing. Discover your strengths and weaknesses and shoot for the stars.

Thanks for visiting!

Yes, my first work as a Layout Artist is very rewarding for a simple “promdi” who became an Artist from Business Management course. Rewarding because of so many great things happen to my life just in 5 years.

As an Artist and probinsyano, this post is all about Bleeding Edges / Bleeds. This post is somewhat related in publication that is why I wanted to share it and it goes something like this.

When graphic designers or printers mention the word “bleed,” it doesn’t mean that they just sliced their thumb off with an X-acto knife. Bleed is a term used to refer to ink that runs all the way to the edge of a trimmed page. If your design calls for ink to extend to the edge of the paper (the “trim”), your ink is “bleeding” off the page, and you need to build a bleed into your document before you release it to be printer.

Can’t the printer just print to the edge of the paper?
No, an offset printing press cannot run ink to the very edge of the paper. If your design calls for ink to run to the edge of the paper, your printer will have to print the piece on a sheet of paper that’s larger than the actual size of your document. He will then trim the larger sheet of paper down to actual trim size. You will build a bleed into your document that extends beyond your trim size. Therefore, the trim is taken inside an area of color, which ensures that no slivers of white show at paper’s edge.

How do I build a bleed into my document?
If you have created your document in a page layout program (like QuarkXpress) or illustration program (like Adobe Illustrator), and you set your document size as your actual trim size, you simply need to extend any areas of color beyond the boundaries of your document. Now isn’t the time to get sloppy. Determine the exact bleed measurment that you need, and extend any area of color to that measurement.

There is no “standard” bleed size. A common bleed for an offset press job is 1/8″ in the United States. However, I recommend that you call your printer and ask him how much bleed he requires. Different printing methods will differ in the amount of bleed needed.

For demonstration purposes, let’s say you’re designing a postcard that is 5″ x 8″ at final size. Your printer required requires a 1/8″ bleed. You’ll set up your document in a page layout program like QuarkXpress, and your new document size will be 5″ x 8″. If you have any picture boxes containing images or color that go to the edge of your page, you will make the picture boxes bigger, extending the width or height of those picture boxes to 1/8″ (.125″) beyond the boundaries of your document. It may be helpful to bring guides into your file, each placed .125″ outside your document boundaries, so that you can simply snap the appropriate side of your picture box to the designated bleed line. Your ultimate “bleed size” will be 5.25″ x 8.25″ if color bleeds on all four sides. Your “trim size” is 5″ x 8″.

If you’re building a file for which your document size and trim size are not the same, i.e. an ad with slug requirements or a die-cut pocket folder, your actual document size will be larger than your trim size. In this case, create crop marks within your document to indicate the trim size of your design. Create a second set of crop marks to indicate the bleed area. You will then extend any images out to your bleed marks to create your bleed.

If you using a program like Photoshop to create your document, or using a full background image that you import into your page layout program, you do not have the luxury of a pasteboard area that extends beyond your document size. You will need to set your document size to your bleed size or larger, not your trim size. You may find it helpful to pull guides into your file, and set them at your trim lines. This allows you to easily see what will be cut off when the printer takes the trim.

When do I build the bleed into my document?
You can either build your bleed into your files as you build your document, or wait until you’re going through your pre-press preparations to release the file to the printer. (The exception to this is if you’re building your layout in Photoshop. When using Photoshop, you must build your bleed into your document file dimensions.)

I tend to wait until my final pre-press file preparation to build my bleed. As I design a page, I don’t want to see what won’t be there on the final piece. That’s just my preference; either way is acceptable. The important thing is that you remember to do it before releasing your file to the printer.

Is there anything else I should keep in mind?
Of course! You don’t think I’d let you get off that easy, do you?

First, if you wait until the pre-press preparation to build your bleed, there’s a hidden danger—literally. When you’re using images in your layout that bleed off your page, and you didn’t initially build your bleed, you need to keep one thing in mind: When you import these images into your page layout program, remember that you’ll be pulling a bleed later. When you pull the handles on your picture box to extend it to your bleed marks, there had better be image there! If you have final approval on a layout, then find that you forgot about your bleed, you’ve got to either enlarge the image to fill the bleed area, or move the picture. Either way, you’re forced to modify an approved layout. Avoid this at all costs.

Second, if you’re doing spreads, you need to know which sides of your pages will bleed and which don’t. Remember, bleeds extend beyond the trim. If you’re doing a saddle-stitched catalog with facing pages, the area where the two pages meet is called a “gutter.” You don’t build a bleed on this edge of your page, because it’s not a trimmed edge of the page. It’s a side that butts up to another page. You only bleed the outside edges of your spreads.

Third, if your using a page layout program that gives you bleed options in your print dialog box, like QuarkXpress, these options only affect the printing of your document, not the building of it. If you set your print options to include a designated bleed amount, it will only print that amount—it doesn’t build the bleed for you. The bleed needs to be built into your document by you.

Remember, it is the responsibility of the graphic designer—not the printer—to build a bleed into a document. If you do not supply documents with proper bleeds, it is well within your printer’s rights to either charge you to fix the file, or reject the file and return it to you to fix.

And finally, thanks to Production Perspective editor Valarie Martin Stuart from creativelatitude.com for this great information that they shared to their website visitors around the world. Hope you enjoy the post!

Your visitors expect nothing less when they land on your site. You’ve only got a couple of seconds before they hit that back button…. and they are gone… to a faster site that will give them the information they want instantly!

Here are 10 quick tips for decreasing the load time on your graphics.

1. Use Height and Width (Size) Attributes.
Example: width=”144″ height=”259″
Every time a browser loads a webpage it looks for the the height and width attributes (size) of each image in your html code so it knows how to lay out the text and the graphics on that page.

This all takes place instantly behind the scenes. When the proper attributes are used, the browser loads the text before the graphics. This is good. It’s faster this way.

If you don’t use the attributes, it causes a delay waiting for the browser to download the images first and then lay out the text. The browser has to play catchup. It can’t load text onto the screen until it has figured out the exact size of the graphics.

Make sure to use attributes on all your graphics, even those little tiny ones, like buttons and bullets.

2. Size Your Image Correctly
Lets say you’re trying to place an image with a file size of 30k and height & width attributes of 300 pixels wide by 400 pixels high in a spot on your webpage that is designed to hold an image sized at 200 pixels wide by 300 pixels high.

To accomplish this you’ve changed the height & width attributes in your html code to 200 x 300.

You may think that since the image will be displayed at the lower size (200×300), the file size will be smaller and the image will load faster.

Not true. Regardless of what size attributes you use, that file size is still 30k and it will load at the same speed any other 30k image does.

Use an image editor to change the size of the image to the correct dimensions first. Then use the correct size attributes in your html. By resizing the image before you plug it into your html code, the file size will be smaller and the browser will load it quicker.

3. Animations
Animations are attention getters, but they quickly become annoying. They also slow down the loading of your page.

Limit the number of animated graphics on your page and set your annimation at a specific number of repetitions rather than allowing them to loop endlessly.

4. Use the Correct Image Format
If your image is simple with a small number of colors try converting it to a gif format. Good choices for this are clipart, bullets, buttons, charts and such.

A word to the wise. Not all images are suited for the gif format. Complex images, photos or those with enhancements such as reflections and drop shadows don’t display well in this format.

The jpg format is suitable for complex images with lots of color variations. A good example of this is a photograph.

The png format can be used for either. The high end png format (png-24) produces a beautiful transparent image and maintains any enhancements you’ve included. The file sizes are generally higher so if you’re at all concerned about load time, you may not want to consider the png format unless you have the software and skills to slice your images. (See Tip #5)

5. Slice Those Images
Image slicing is a technique used to breakdown a large image into smaller pieces to make it load faster.

I use the image slicer feature in Photoshop but there are also many options available to do this if you don’t use Photoshop.

Search for “Image Splitter” – without quotes in your favorite search engine for líst of resources for slicing images.

6. Limit the Number of Graphics you Place on Each Page.
If your pages are loading too slow, consider removing some of the images. Keep only those that absolutely necessary.

7. Use Thumbnails
Use a java script to display a thumbnail and load the larger image only when the reader rolls their mouse over the thumbnail.

I use this technique when I have a lot of images I want to put on one page, but the page would be too big if I included them all at normal size.

I got this script from Dynamic Drive. As long as you keep their copyright notice in the html code you can use their scripts for free.

8. Browser Cache
Graphics and text are stored in what’s called cache on your hard drive. This makes it easier and quicker to load files that are displayed in your browser. It loads them from the cache rather than over the net each and every time, if it’s available.

To improve your visitors experience, take advantage of their browser cache. The best way to do this is by not putting identical images in more than one folder, subfolder or directory on your server. If the browser always calls the image from the same folder, it loads much quicker.

9. Optimize Your Images
Optimizing your images is a great way to reduce the load time. I generally optimize images I make for my clients to about 60%. I’ve found this to be the magic number that reduces the file to a reasonable size yet doesn’t compromise the quality of the image.

I caution you on optimizing further. Greater percentages of optimization may leave your images blotchy with speckled blocks of color. It will often make your colors look washed-out and you may lose some of the fine details.

10. Progressive Optimization
A sneaky little trick I’ve learned is to select progressive settings when you’re optimizing your images.

This doesn’t really make your images load faster, however, they do load first at a very low resolution and continue to load progressively, with more detail, until they are fully loaded.

Your visitor at least has something to view and content to read while the loading process finishes up. This technique works with JPG, JPEG, PNG and GIF 89 file types.

In Conclusion
As we progress into the Internet future there will come a time when our connection speeds are so fast the speed at which webpages load won’t be an issue. News information and graphics will flash across your screen at record breaking speeds. We’ll get there. Maybe not in the next few years but eventually we will. History has already taught us that the technology is here. It’s only a matter of time before we see it. But until that happens how quickly our webpages load is something we need to take responsibility for.

Graphic Designer Heather Colman helps virtual assistants, coaches, and other professionals online bring visual impact and depth to their products with custom 3d images and website graphics. Visit her site at customdesigngraphics.com