Just Creative Design

9 SEO Tips You’ve Probably Forgot About

This is a guest article by David Walsh*.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has, as most of you probably know by now, become one of the most important elements when setting up a website. Still we notice that many website owners, for some reason, tend to neglect implementing it in their creative process. Jacob published an all important SEO rules for designers but there is always lots to learn. I thought that it was about time to write another nine tips on the topic.

1. Proper use of <h1> and <h2> tags

Headers and sub-headers are not only useful for making up a good layout. Search engines do also love it when we use headers. But that is when we use them wisely. This means that you should use them in a way that makes sense - do not spam your site with various headers as it is a sure way of keeping both the search engines and the visitors away. Most important sections of a page should be H1 and H2 and then smaller sections should be H3. H4-H6 are rarely used tags.

2. Remove useless code

The purpose of optimizing your site is to make it as available as possible for all involved - you, the visitors and the search engines. This is just as important when we are talking about the code of the website. Take advantage of an XHTML validator to make sure that all of your code is readable.

If you own a blog and tend to write drafts in MS Office, copying and pasting back into WordPress is a code nightmare. Check the “HTML” tab when in the writing new post page of WordPress; Office adds a lot of garbage code. Remove it. A good alternative is to copy & paste your article into a text editor and then copy and paste the article into your next blog post.

3. Internal linking

Internal linking is a great way of keeping your site user-friendly. Search engines also like to see well placed internal links if they are relevant and serve a purpose. Use good anchor text to your pages and link within strong pages. Also, more than a couple links to the same page have no meaning. Some sites put “hawaiian vacations” three times in a text and link back to the home page. It is not only annoying to the visitor but also worthless.

And most importantly, don’t create orphan pages; pages that are not internally linked anywhere.

4. Footer links are to be kept at a minimum

One type of link that gets close to no attention by the search engines are the footer links. Sure, they are good from an internal navigation purpose but that is about it. You should thus try to keep the bottom based links at a minimum.

5. Do not use images as links

As the search engines try to crawl everything on your website, your task is to make it as easy as possible for them. This is the reason why you should not use images (excluding banners) as links. Proper text is much easier for the spiders to read. Another quite common mistake that designers tend to make is embedding much of the important content in Flash, which search spiders obviously will not be able to read. While Google has begun to read websites based in Flash, it is not a good idea to have a site that cannot be searched.

6. Keep the URLs friendly

Not only your domain name and onsite content should be optimised for keywords. Make sure that you implement the same strategy for ALL of your URL strings as it is a great way of increasing your ranking on search engines.

7. Use the noarchive and noindex tags

Some people seem to think that all of their content has to crawled and indexed by the search engines. Pages such as the “About” page and the “Privacy Policy” page are all good to have but there is really no reason for them to be indexed. Make sure that you use the noarchive and noindex tags. And do not go overboard, putting a noindex in the index file of your website means that NOTHING will be found by the search engines. Sounds to dumb to say that? There are a few designer sites encountered that are not indexed by Google because they left an universal no follow tag.

8. Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is beneficial for search engines as well as for the visitors. Since the bookmarks are saved to the web, instead of to your browser, they are easily shared with friends - good for all parties involved. Be careful though, many plugins for social bookmarking have 100 links that pop up and they can break the external link count of a page. Too many external links devalues all the links on a page, so make those social bookmarking icons “nofollows.”

9. Do not overuse Ajax

For some reason many developers and designers seem to feel as if they have to impress their visitors and implement Ajax features all over the place. Big mistake. Ajax will not get indexed by search engines and your visitors will not be able to send the page to their friends, as the URL does not reload.

Recommended SEO Resources

• 10 SEO Rules For Designers
• SEO For Blogs
• SEO Best Practices - 13 Top Tips
• My 26 Best Link Building Tricks
• Website Grader
• 7 SEO Blogs & Useful Articles

*About the author: David Walsh is a writer over at Web Hosting Search. WHS is a guide to web hosting and tutorials. If you need to get a hosting plan, anything from cheap web hosting to server hosting (the big guns), WHS is the place for you.

What blog posts bring in the most readers?

It is always interesting to see what brings readers to a blog so I thought I might share with you guys what blog posts have brought the most visitors into Just Creative Design. Maybe you could employ the same strategies to get more readers to your blog?

According to our stats from the past 7 months (see below) these are my top 10 most popular pages on JCD.

1. 92 More Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs
2. 56 Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs
3. 30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Own
4. 99 Sites ALL Designers Must Know About
5. Home Page
6. Graphic Design Portfolio
7. Why logo design does not cost $5.00
8. The Best Graphic Design Articles from 37 Top Design Blogs as Chosen By The Authors Themselves
9. 15 Signs Your A Bad Graphic Designer
10. 192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements

So What Blog Posts Bring In The Most Readers?

1. Long Large Numbered Resourceful Cool Lists

Upon further study you will notice that half of my top 10 posts are all geared towards the social media and they really lapped it up.

Any post that is a huge resourceful list will bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to your blog… so once in a while rather than writing 5 small posts, why don’t you spend 3 times as long writing a large list… Smashing Magazine is proof that it works and my top 4 articles prove this also.

2. Original Articles with Catchy Titles

These were my three other posts that brought in tons of visitors. Each of these posts are unique and have a catchy title and are further proof that a good article with a catchy title will work for itself.

1. Why logo design does not cost $5.00
2. The Best Graphic Design Articles from 37 Top Design Blogs as Chosen By The Authors Themselves
3. 15 Signs Your A Bad Graphic Designer

For some ideas why don’t you try find something that hasn’t been written about before in your niche? Try going around to all the blogs in your niche and ask for an interview, ask for their favourite post and compile them together in one large post? There are heaps of other unique ideas out there. I highly recommend you visit our Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles post for some inspiration.

Where Do All The Readers Come From?

Social Media and Google without a doubt… For some more information on social media I wrote about it in length in this post: What is the best social media website? Digg, SU, Delicious, Reddit or? and for some tips on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) read 10 SEO Rules for Designers.

The main traffic from JCD comes from StumbleUpon, Digg, DesignFloat and Google with the rest coming mainly from other design blogs… It really helps to be on other people’s blog rolls especially if they are in the same niche as you…I can assure you of that. Try to get on them, even if you have to ask.

Anyway, I would be interested to hear what everyone else’s most popular posts are… leave them in the comments!

How To Customise Your Wordpress 2.5+ Log In Screen

Here is how to customise and brand your Wordpress Log In Screen for Wordpress 2.5+ (and probably many more versions to come). If you are running an older version of Wordpress you may want to check out this post. You may also want to check out the live demo of my log in screen here.

This post comes after updating my Wordpress to version 2.5 and losing my old custom log in screen. Just a word of warning, I am not the best tutorial writer and this tutorial is for an intermediate to advanced user of Wordpress.

Update:

There are also 2 WordPress plug ins available which can customise your Wordpress 2.5 log in screen.

• Wordpress Custom Admin Branding - This changes the log in screen, as well as the logo in the header and footer of your admin panel.
• Branded Wordpress Log In Screen - This is a plugin that brands only the log in screen.

To change the logo from the Wordpress logo to your logo

1. Login to your site via FTP or your preferred method and locate the file ‘login.css‘ which is found in your wp-admin/css/ folder. Open this css file in your favourite editor.
2. In the login.css file look for the line:
   background: url(../images/logo-login.gif) no-repeat;
   and change it to your own image for example… background: url(../images/YOURLOGO.gif) no-repeat;
   NB: You will probably want to make the logo around 290 pixels wide.
3. For the more advanced users this is where you can customise the look of the login anyway you like using CSS which I know you will. I just changed the fonts to Helvetica to match my site.

To change the colour of the background (ie. the baby blue colour)

1. Open the colors-fresh.css file which is also found in your wp-admin/css/ folder.
2. Locate the TWO #eaf3fa colour’s in this file and replace them with any colour you like. I would recommend a light washed out or neutral colour. I chose my site colour which is grey. (#EAEAEA)
3. Don’t stop here, you can customise your log in screen as much as you like! Mine was just a quick example.

Just a note to remember to backup these two CSS files (colors-fresh and login.css) before you do any Wordpress updates as these updates will overwrite these files and you will have to do it all over again!

Once you have finished, upload your login screen to the Wordpress 2.5 Log In Screen Flickr pool.

Why?

This is a a very simple and effective way to customise and brand your wordpress login screen… It would be very beneficial for web designers designing for clients as it’s the attention to detail in your work that makes all the difference when you deal with your clients.

If you have designed a wordpress blog for a client I would highly recommend making this small, yet important, inclusion. For myself, it’s not as important as I am the only one who writes on this blog, however for those with multiple authors it surely is a must.

You also may be wondering about what that OpenID log in is? You should definitely read about it… you will regret it if you don’t.

You may also want to check out WordPress Plugins You Must Have or the Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles for Blogging. Also don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already.

If you have any questions (and I am sure you will) please let me know.

Tutorial: How to print blog articles the smart way.

Do you ever want to read an article while going to work or while on public transport?
Do you ever want to save an article for future use? Pin it up on your wall?

Then this is when you need to print blog articles - but how many of you have been doing it the smart way?

Yes, I know all of you will be saying “You just press File, then Print.” or maybe the smart arses out there, Ctrl+P or Apple Key+P but no, this is not the best way to print blog articles.

This article will show you 2 smarter ways to print, which will save you on paper waste and ink - aka, save you money. In this example we can get a 10 page print job down to just 2 pages (or even just 1 if you have a duplex printer).

The Old Not-So-Smart Way

First off, let’s compare the way the majority of people print their blog articles. Most people would go to the article they want printed and then press Print either from the menu bar (as above) or by the keyboard shortcut CTRL + P or APPLE + P.

If you printed the old way, it would print the header of the website, the side bars and even the advertisements (see image above). Using the 11 Essential Tips to Writing a Tutorial page as an example, using the old way, it would take 10 pieces of paper (without the comments) to print the whole article which is in turn wasting paper and ink.

The Smart Way

There is an alternative to just pressing print and this is by using the ‘Print Range’ or ‘Print Selection’ function available in all printers. This smart way will get the pages down to just 4 pages or if you have a duplex printer (prints on both sides of the paper) just 2 pages.

How To Do It?

1. Highlight the parts of the page you want selected.

To do this left click at the start of the article heading and hold down your mouse button & drag down to highlight all of the text and/or images that you want to be printed. Notice the grey highlight in the image above. This is what is going to be printed.

2. Go to the usual way you print and click File, Print or press CTRL + P or Apple + P but stop there.

3. Find the ‘Print Range’ area in your print dialogue box - see picture below. The example I am using is for a Canon Printer but your printer may be different.

4. If you have a duplex printer go to step 5 if not, Click OK or Print and hey presto, you save 6 pages of paper.

5. Duplex: If you have duplex printing, try to find in your print options, a tick box that has ‘Duplex Printing’ or ‘Double Sided Printing’ and make sure this is ticked. The location of this tick box is different on every printer so this goes beyond this tutorial, but check your printer manual.

The Smartest Way to Print

There is an even smarter way to print but it is a bit more time consuming and you also must have a Word editor such as Microsoft Word. Using this way I managed to get everything into just 2 pages, or just 1 page if you have duplex printing. This way is saving you 8 or 9 pages of paper.

How To Do It?

1. Highlight the parts of the page you want selected.
To do this left click left Click at the start of the article heading and hold down your mouse button & drag down to highlight all of the text and/or images that you want to be printed. This is what is going to be printed.
2. Open your Word editor and press Paste (Ctrl + V). This will paste the article or your selection into your word editor.
3. If using Microsoft Word Go to File, Page Setup, change the Margins to 1cm on all sides. See image.

4. Go through your article and delete any images that you do not wish to have.Change the font size to what ever you find readable.

5. If you have a duplex printer go to step 5 if not, Click OK or Print and hey presto, you save 8 pages of paper.
6. Duplex: If you have duplex printing, try to find in your print options, a tick box that has ‘Duplex Printing’ or ‘Double Sided Printing’ and make sure this is ticked. The location of this tick box is different on every printer so this goes beyond this tutorial, but check your printer manual.

Inspiration

This article was inspired by Vivien’s article Blog Feng Shui which told me how bloggers can create print friendly blog articles by CSS. Vivien told me how not everyone knew about the method of selection printing and that is why I have written this tutorial for DailyBlogTip’s Blog Writing Project on Tutorials.

3 More Great Tutorials:

• Optimize your Blog Post for Google - Tips that you might not have heard by Shankar.
• Effective Linking With Your Old Post in 10 Steps by Dexter.
• Protect Your Blog And Counter Copyright Thefts by Tibi

Support and Questions

If you have any questions or support feel free to ask. Is there anything I missed or some other way for smarter, quicker, more resourceful printing? Thanks.

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Be Aware Of: Your Host, WordPress Plugins, CPU Load and being banned from your own website!

This is something all bloggers and webmasters should really know about so you do not have to live through what I did - 7 days of your website(s) being offline.

This is the story behind how I was banned from my own website, Just Creative Design, and how it was brought down or ’suspended’ by overloading my host provider’s CPU through the over use of my website and Wordpress Plugins and I want to raise awareness of this, so this does not happen to you.

I will recount the story as it happened of JCD being suspended and then restored along with commentary and advice along the way.

Jan 14th - All my websites are down!

When I realised my sites were down (they went to an advertising page instead of my page) I really did not know what was wrong and in the back of my mind I thought that I had been hacked just like how David Airey was, last month, but it wasn’t because I had taken his advice and checked my Google Filters and all was clean.

After this I went pretty frantic and emailed all the people I could (my hosts, their support them, my domain name host provider and also their support team - in total 4 emails).
I received pretty instant replies (between 2mins and 4 hours) from 3 of the 4 contacts however none of these could help me and told me to contact my hosts (of which I had already done). I had to wait 1.5 days for their first reply.

Jan 15th - First Contact, 1.5 Days Later

They sent me this email (see below) on the 15th of January with a very brief and vague reason telling me why the site was down and what I had to do to rectify it - they did not tell me HOW to do it and this is where the problem was and what took up so much time.

It has come to our attention (by the server not responding due to a high load) that your domain is in violation of our AUP/TOS by way of the following domain: justcreativedesign.com

justcreativedesign.com was disabled for overloading server with index.php processes.

justcreativedesign.com had to be disabled in order for the server to work. If justcreativedesign.com was not disabled, all domains on the entire server including your own domain would have remained inaccessible.

To get your site enabled, contact Emailed Removed and state your plan of action to resolve this issue and prevent it from reoccurring.

If this should happen again after the site has been enabled, the domain will need to be permanently removed in order to maintain the integrity of the server that hosts many other sites.

If you don’t know how to fix your script from using so much of the CPU, you should begin looking for a dedicated server or virtual private server.

As you can see, I really had no idea what the problem was so I went out and did a bit of research.

Jan 15th & 16th - 303 Redirection & Lots of Research

At this time I really had no idea what the problem was so I put a 303 temporary redirection on my website to point to an error message, hosted on a friends account, telling my readers that I was having some technical difficulties - doing this took 2 days for the nameservers to propagate, meaning, for 2 days I still had that annoying advertising message on my site.

Naturally after I received the email above, I wondered what it was all about, so before I replied, I set off and did a bit of research. I came to realise a small handful of people have had the same problem. The best resource and where I learned the most on CPU Load and Wordpress, was on the forum of HostGator (A leading hosting company) on Blogging, Wordpress and CPU Load. I would highly recommend to everyone, to read this whole article as you won’t regret it - I sure wish I knew about it before my site went down.

Research Conclusions & What You Should Know!

Nearly All Hosting Providers have rules about database usage (CPU Load).

This is something that nearly all hosting providers do not display anywhere on their site, and generally keep it quite disclosed unless specifically asked. You should ask your provider about your CPU Load limitations.

What is CPU Load you ask?

Generally it is the amount of open maximum connections that your site can have and how much of a servers resources you may use by having all these connections used at one time. These open connections can come in a number of ways… For example, having a large spike from a social media site like Digg or by having a script or plug-in ‘go crazy’ or by having an error in your programming.

When one of these things happen you use up a lot of your host providers resources and as an example; if you use 90% of your server’s resource for over 30 seconds (a long time) your account would be suspended because this leaves no resources for the hundreds of other sites that are hosted on the same server.

Wordpress Plugins are bad for CPU Load

Using too many plugins on Wordpress is a very bad thing… even if you try them out then deactivate them, it still leaves bits of code in your programming which chews up bandwidth and loading speed, so the solution to this is to have a spare Wordpress blog that you can test scripts and plugins out on.

Another thing I learned is that some plugins can conflict with one another and cause the script(s) to go crazy and repeat on itself and cause an enormous CPU Load on your server. This is why testing on another blog is perfect!

During my research I also found out that some plugins use more CPU Load than others and make your website slower to load. In particular; Recent Comment Plugins, Top Commentator Plugins, some spam protection plugins and even WP-Cache use a lot of CPU Load.
Serra from HostGator comments on CPU Load and account suspension…

“Most of the suspensions I’ve seen have been the result of scripts that have gone nuts or sites that are simply too big to be on a shared account. Shared accounts are geared toward sites that see a moderate amount of traffic, with few peaks in traffic. Those with heavy database operations or traffic spikes don’t really belong in the shared environment. Basically, for $6.00 a month, you need to have a normal website. For $78.00 a month, you can go crazy, but you need to pay for the craziness with the higher fee.”

So just be careful with wordpress plugins and test them out on a spare blog first.

Jan 18th - I Reply to Host Provider & More Waiting.

After 303 redirecting and all of my research (about a days worth) I replied to my host providers stating what I would do to resolve the issue and then 1.5 days later they came back with an email saying “Your website has been enabled”. I had to change my nameservers back to their original position and then I had to ‘wait up to 3 days‘ for my website to propagate back again.

Jan 20th, 21st - “Website Enabled” but not for me.

As I said above, they emailed me saying my website had now been enabled and it was, my website was now back up and running! (yay) - But unfortunately not for me - It was not working on my own computer at all so I emailed them again asking why everyone else was getting the site and I wasn’t. They replied:

“Propagation is the process in which the nameserver information in your Registrar’s database is passed to the 13 international root nameservers and then on to millions of ISP’s, routers, and DNS cache engines all of which will update their own dns tables with the new information whenever they choose to update. As you can see propagation is not controlled by any one company. Please wait about 3 days.”

But I knew this was not the problem so I contacted them yet again and this time they said they needed my IP, and for me to do a trace route. I did what they asked and then they replied saying.

“121.210.114.XXX was blocked by firewall. It has been unblocked.”

Hey presto, I am now allowed back onto my own website! But this meant only one thing… I had just been banned from my own website.

Jan 21st - Banned From My Own Website and Why?

So after receiving the last email, I realised that I was just banned from my own website! The reason behind me being banned is a mystery however after my research I could only bring it down to 3 things.

• I was visiting my own website too often and was considered a spammer. (I was doing a lot of plug in testing and unfortunately I was not on a spare blog so this could be a valid reason.)
• A plugin went crazy in conflict with another plugin and caused an over load of CPU power.
• A social media spike (my stats don’t show this though).

As an educated guess, I believe it was a combination of the first two points but only god knows the real answer.

Anyway, now Just Creative Design are online again and I have full access to them and my emails and hopefully this ordeal is completely over.

What you should do now.

After this week long ordeal I want you to learn from my misfortunes so that this does not happen to you, so I believe you should be doing these things;

• Contact your own host provider and ask about your CPU Load limitations.
• Consider upgrading your hosting plan. You may need a semi dedicated server, clustered hosting or even a VPS.
• Uninstall the plugins you don’t need and declutter your blog for faster loading times. Remember the plugins that I said cause the most CPU Load. Install caching plugins such as WP-SuperCache and WP-Widget Cache.
• Create a secondary identical blog for you to test your scripts and plugins in.
• If you have not already, as stated above, I highly recommend you to read this article on blogging, wordpress and CPU load.
• Make sure you know ALL the contact details of your host provider, domain name provider, and their support teams and have them easily on hand. Ensure that all your contact details are correct in each of these places (I had a wrong email in one which delayed the process by half a day).
• Ensure you back up your blog & database - Luckily I had been doing this automatically every day using the plugin WP-Database Backup.

Thanks

Thanks everyone so much for those who have emailed / contacted me at the start and throughout this ordeal: Lauren, David, Vivien, Niyaz PK and for those , who followed my progress in the comments of these two posts.

• Full Steam Ahead
• Creative News 14th January

I know some other people have tried contacting me but seeing though I had no access to my domain or emails I haven’t received everyone’s emails so sorry about that.

Anyway, hope this helps you avoid this problem in the future and if anyone has had this happen or know someone who has, I would love to hear about it.

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Top 5 Time Saving Plugins to Make Blogging A Breeze

These 5 6 very handy, time saving plugins are a must have for any blogger out there who wants to save time - and I mean a lot of time! I really wish I knew about these when I first started blogging… as you can see in my very first blog post: 20 WordPress Plugins You Must Have I seem to have left out 4 of the time saving plugins listed below but needless to say, they are there now!

1. Better Comments Manager

This is my favourite plugin that not many people know about and strangely enough is hardly mentioned anywhere! This plugin allows you to reply to your comments from within the Wordpress Admin Panel - you no longer have to go to the post to reply! You can also view all comments in your admin panel based by posts!

2. Admin Drop Down Menu

The Admin Drop Down Menu should be bundled with Wordpress on installation, I would like to know why it isn’t! It eliminates the need for double clicking on the Admin screens. It allows you to see the second level menu just by placing your mouse over a main menu. You can view the demo here.

3. TinyMCE Advance

TinyMCE Advance is for those of you who use the visual text editor in WordPress… This handy little plugin adds 40 extra buttons & options to the toolbar, which is now two rows plus one hidden row. It does take a bit of effort to get used to it but it is well worth it!

4. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a simple and easy administration back end to handle multiple images for your blog and it has gallery and album functionality. Check out my portfolio to see it in action. The best feature of this plugin is that you can upload multiple files at the same time - even if they are in a zip file.

5. SRG Clean Archives

SRG Clean Archives is one of many archiving systems out there, but this one is clean, uniform and search engine friendly and it can display on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. This archiving system is automatic and a great way for you (and your visitors) to overlook your whole blog at one time - saving you and them time by not digging around in your website. You can see it in action on my archives page.

6. Easy Admin Access

A day after posting, I found this great plugin that adds an admin access bar that runs along the top of your blog when you’re logged in, which provides links to the dashboard, new post and profile pages, as well as the option to log out. Very time saving!
Are there any other time saving plugins that deserve to be in this list?

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Popular Articles

Below you will find Just Creative Design’s most popular articles sorted by category.

You may also wish to view the full archives.

Topics:

Please pick a topic to jump to that section.

• Logo Design
• My Design Process
• Graphic Design Resources
• Graphic Design Articles
• Freelancing
• Typography
• Creativity
• Design For Students
• Photography
• Blogging
• Social Media
• Web Design
• Articles I’ve Written Elsewhere
• Other

Logo Design

• How To Choose A Logo Designer
• Why Logo Design Does Not Cost $5.00
• The Secret Logo Design Process Of Top Logo Designers
• How To Design A Logo - 5 Vital Tips
• Do You Need To Rebrand?
• What Makes A Good Logo?
• Logo Design Tutorial: How To Create An Iconic Logo Design
• Logo Design Process for Just Creative Design’s Award Winning Logo
• Identity Design Process for Butterfield Photography
• A Comparative Study of Logo Design between the 70s and 90s
• How Giving Away A Free Logo Design Benefited The Whole Community
• Logo Design Tips & Interview with Logo Designer, Jeff Fisher
• Logo Design Trends 2009
• Copyright Issues In Logo Design
• Fake Logo Designs - Opinions | Fake logo designs revisited
  
• The Ultimate List of The Best Logo Design Resources
• Logo Design Book Recommendations (+Video)
• Logo Lounge Volume 5 Book Review

You will find many more of my logo design related articles on my other blog: Logo Designer Blog and lots of logo design inspiration on my third site, Logo Of The Day.

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My Design Process

• Logo Design Process For FITUCCI
• Logo Design Process for Just Creative Design’s Award Winning Logo
• Logo Design Process From Start To Finish for Ultimate Potential
• Identity Design Process for Butterfield Photography
• Design Process Of Creating A $40,000 Creative Newspaper Advertisement
• Design Process Of Creating A Creative Billboard Campaign
• How I Designed 3 CD Jackets Just by Listening To Music
• How To Design A Movie Poster
• Car Vehicle Wrap Design Process & Tutorial
• Design Process for my Vodka Premix Bottle
• My Process of Designing A Drink Coaster
• The Design Process Of Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 1 - Beer Label Design
  
• The Design Process Of Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 2 - Billboard Design
• The Design Process Of Creating A Corporate Identity For A Beer Label: Part 2 - Annual Report Design

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Graphic Design Resources

• 99 Sites ALL Designers Must Know About
• 101+ Places To Get Design Inspiration
• 15 Signs You’re A Bad Graphic Designer
• Want To Know How To Design? - Learn The Basics
• Poster Design Tips (& Experiences)
• 70+ Graphic Design Tips
• The BEST Free Colour Tools & Sites Online
• Free Vector Swirls and Twirls Pack
• 12 Design and Business Books I’ve Read & Recommend (Part 1)
• 12 Design and Business Books I’ve Read & Recommend (Part 2)
• Australian Design Conferences, Competitions, Expos & Events
• Explained In English: Copyright, Patents, Trademarks & Registered Designs

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Graphic Design Articles

• What every designer ought to know about: FSC
• Are you guilty of design consumerism?
• What is Graphic Design?
• How To Spot & Work With Creative Designers
• 2008 Design Trends
  
• How To Design For Men & Women
• 37 Top Design Articles as Chosen By The Authors Themselves
• The Most Linked to Pages of Top Design Blogs
• FUNNY Graphic Design Jokes & Humour
• Blatant Design Rip Offs or Just Inspiration?

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Freelancing

• How To Write An Effective Design Brief & Get The Design You Want
• How to get clients to say yes to your designs
• How much to charge for design work?
• Great Business Tips for New Designers
• A First Hand Guide On How To Start Freelancing
• How to Talk to Non-Tech-Savvy Clients
• A Guide On How Freelancers Can Compete Against Large Design Studios
• Freelancers: Inspire yourself, Vary your Working Environment
• The 20 Worst Habits of Clients
• The Best Time Of The Day To Do Things As A Designer
• PayPal Fees | Should You Charge Your Clients?

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Typography

• 30 Fonts That All Designers Must Know & Should Own
• The Top 100 Best Fonts Of All Time
• 27 Classic & Elegant Fonts
• 10 Commerical Fonts Every Print Designer Should Own
• Top 7 Fonts Used By Professionals In Design
• 20 Typefaces To Start A Designer’s Career
• FREE 27 Page Type Classification eBook
• Designer’s Favourite Fonts & Why
• Top 5 Typography Resources
• How To Choose A Font
• What is a Font Flag? What is a Font Specimen Sheet?

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Creativity

• The Secret To Creativity…
• 192 Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements
• Do you use your left or right brain more?
• How To Be Creative
• How To Boost Your Creativity
• 56 Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs
• 92 More Must See Creative Photographs
• 80 NEW Creative, Smart & Clever Advertisements

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Design For Students

• The “Pros” and Cons of Spec Work
• Great Business Tips for New Designers
• 16 Designer Job Descriptions
• Advice For Design Students
• How much to charge for design work?
• How To Get Your First Job
  
• How Much Does A Graphic Designer earn?
• 15 Signs You’re A Bad Graphic Designer
• Want To Know How To Design? - Learn The Basics
• Top 10 Design Questions from Students
• How and where to get paid freelance work while you are still a design student

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Photography

• 92 More Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs
• Photography Tips For Designers
• 56 Awe Inspiring Creative Photographs

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Blogging

• 7 Secrets You MUST Know To Give Your Blog The Edge
• 28 Great Wordpress Plugins That I Personally Recommend
• Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles for Blogging
• How To Get Sponsors For Giveaways & Competitions
• How To Customise Your Wordpress 2.6+ Log In Screen

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Social Media

• Twitter Tips & Interview
  
• How to get onto Diggs FRONT page in 8 steps
• What is the best social media website? Digg, SU, Delicious, Reddit … or?
• What blog posts bring in the most readers?
• Your Favourite Favourited Tweets

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Web Design

• 9 SEO Tips You’ve Probably Forgot About
• How To Make Your Next Website Design POP
• Top 7 Most Cliche Stock Images Used In Web Design
• 9 Of The Best Ways To Present A Website To A Client
• 10 SEO Rules for Designers
• What is your Error 404 Page?
• Designing an Accessible Site Without Losing Your Mind

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Articles I’ve Written Elsewhere

I have written for a number of other blogs & magazines, below are some of them. You will also find many more of my logo design related articles over on my other blog, Logo Designer Blog.

• How NOT to Design A Logo on Web Designer Depot
• Vital Tips For Effective Logo Design on Smashing Magazine
• Designing with Negative Space in Layers Magazine
• Vero Logo Design Process from Start To Finish in Layers Magazine
• How to create a vector font monster using the glyph panel in Layers Magazine
• Get more subscribers with an email subscription box on Freelance Folder
• Logo Design Process for Ultimate Potential on VectorTuts
• Exposed: Facebook Sends More Traffic Than Twitter on Freelance Folder
• Fast, Good, Cheap - Pricing Freelance Work on Freelance Switch
• C.R.A.P - The Four Principles Of Sound Design on Daily Blog Tips
  
• 5 Vital Logo Design Tips on David Airey’s Blog
• How To Talk To Non-Tech Savvy Clients on Freelance Switch
• Logo Design Process From Start To Finish on Creative Pool.co.uk
• How To Design Unique Photoshop Brushes on Creative Curio
• Open Thread: What Is Your Email Signature on Freelance Folder
• 5 Must Know Web Design Polishing Techniques on Line25

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Other

• How To Get 100% Free Advertising On Google
• Who needs skills? We have software!
• Mac or PC? - The Poll
• What to get a designer for Christmas / Birthday?
• 6 Great Tips On How To Prepare Artwork for T-Shirt Printing
• 18 Truly Awesome Designer TShirts | 23 More Designer Tshirts
  
• Don’t Read This If You Do Not Want More Email
• How To Print Blog Articles The Smart Way
• 10 Reasons To Switch To Gmail
• Your Favourite Inspirational Quotes
• Inspiring Intimidation: Tips to keep you on track
• The Best Mouse for Designers and Web Addicts

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Also try using the search box on the top right of this website if there is something in particular you are looking for.

Also don’t be afraid to contact me asking for what it is you are looking for and I’ll give it my best shot to help you out. Cheers