Hey everyone. Due to a lack of submissions (I’ve gotten two submissions in the past week), I’m going to wait another week before I select a site to review. If you’re interested in a free web design review, and a free ad banner, be sure to check this out:

Feature: DesignersMind Weekly Website Review

Regards,
Tyler

I’ve been through my fair share of clients, well over a hundred successful transactions in the past two years for that matter, and I’ve come to know when a project is worth taking on or not. As a freelance designer, I know that time was of utmost importance. Knowing when to drop a potential project can mean hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of dollars, not to mention precious time. Now, I share my knowledge with you! Here’s some situations I suggest I’ve been faced with that I suggest you try to avoid:

• I don’t have any money, but this will get you some great exposure! Heard this before, and 9 times out of 10, that’s complete and utter bullshit. Unless you have some hard evidence that your client’s project will, without a doubt, succeed, then don’t give in to this kind of ploy. Client’s that tell you this are generally just looking for some free design work and aren’t worth your time. However, there are certain times when some back-links are worth your time. For example, let’s say that your client owns a site that sells non-unique Wordpress themes. Your client comes to you looking for a Wordpress design to add to their inventory, but doesn’t have any cash on hand and offers a link to your site in the footer of the theme. This could potentially be very profitable for you, providing that people buy the theme and that the people who buy it actually have some decent traffic. On the other hand, this could prove to be pretty pointless; if the only people that use your theme own blogs about gardening, chances are no one’s going to be clicking the “designed by” link you so graciously accepted as payment for the design. Use your brain in this situation and evaluate how much exposure you’ll actually be getting.
• I’m not sure what I want, and I won’t pay if I don’t like it. I’m sorry, but do I look like a Jedi to you?

I can’t read your mind, and neither can most normal people. Clients that have no idea what they want are either really indecisive or haven’t put all that much thought into their site. Chances are, they probably have no idea if they’ll want to pay you either. Never work without some kind of design brief, it should save you some misery.

• I have a few other designers in mind, can you create a few mock-ups and maybe I’ll pick you? This can be one of a few things. The client could possibly already have a designer picked out and needs some ideas to hand over to him. What better way to get free ideas than to ask for free mock-ups from a bunch of other designers? The client might be an honest person and is just looking to find the best designer he can get with his money. Either way, free mock-ups are generally a waste of time. Put your foot down and tell the client that you’ll do free mock-ups — if you’ve received a 50% down-payment.
• I’m not comfortable with a contract/up-front deposit, can we go without it? Don’t bend for anyone. If you’re old enough to be legally binded by a contract, do it. Protect your own ass as much as you can. Take a 50% up front deposit so clients can’t simply run away with your hard work. If a client ever suggests that you change your business practices for them, deny them (in a professional way, of course) and move on.
• I thought this was supposed to be coded? I’d like my money back. If you’re like me, you love the Photoshop aspect of design and can’t stand coding. I generally just create .PSDs and refer my clients to a good coder to get their project finished up, or handle the outsourcing myself and hand over the complete package. I’ve run into quite a few clients though, that never mention a word about front-end coding until it comes time for payment. As soon as the phrase “my PayPal address is ..” comes up in conversation, the words “I thought this was going to be coded” flies right back and slaps me in the face. So, after my first encounter with this situation, I’ve kept logs of all my conversations so that when someone tries to get free coding out of me, I can send them a large text file and tell them so try to find the words “coding”, “HTML” or “CSS” in it. Sidenote: After many comments regarding this point, I thought I should add this. My clients know that I outsource my coding work, and I make this very clear. This point refers to clients that try to get free work out of you, which is quite common these days.

Once again, I hope this article can help some designers out! Thanks for reading, and have a great Easter Monday!

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Here’s three things I ran across today that just bug the hell out of me. Please refrain from these things when you design.

• No padding whatsoever: When I refer to padding, I’m talking about the space between an object and the object’s container. For example, the text inside of a DIV. When the DIV has really low padding, everything seems really cramped together, and when it has really high padding, things start to look all over the place. Here’s an example:

  

  This could be fixed very easily with 10 or 15 pixels of padding. Content would have more room to breathe, and I’d probably stick around to check out the site.

• Sticky notes: While they do have their place (say, on a web site about sticky notes, or something of the like), I don’t quite understand how this:

  

  ..made it’s way in there. What exactly is the point of the sticky note? Is there some kind of life-changing message that you had to make stick out like a sore thumb just so people would read it? This gets most websites a thumbs-down from me.

• HUGE rounded corners with a large stroke: Sorry guys, but not many people liked this 5 years ago, and that’s not changing:

  

  To me this just feels bloated and chunky, and the inner glow screams “I’ve been using Photoshop for 5 hours, look what I made!”.

Please guys, this stuff just looks bad (no offense to the designers of these sites, if you really want the images removed I will).

Hey everyone! There’s a new feature coming to DesignersMind. Starting next Saturday evening, the DesignersMind Weekly Design Review will begin! Every week, anyone can send in a link to their website, or a website they designed. Friday night, submissions will be closed and one design will be picked at random. The next evening, I will post a detailed critique of the site’s design, including mini-reviews from a few selected designers from different fields of design, to get a more in-depth look at things! In addition, the submitter of the design that is chosen for review will receive a free ad-banner design from yours truly!

So if you have a website you’d like to have critiqued, send a link my way. Please send an e-mail including your name, a link to the site you’d like reviewed, a link to your own site (if different from the site reviewed), and an extra contact method, in case your design is chosen, to submit(at)designersmind.com with the subject WDR Submission!

If you’d like to be one of the reviewers for the Weekly Design Review, please send an e-mail to submit(at)designersmind.com including your name and contact information with the subject WDR Writer Application. I need people who are skilled writers and have strong knowledge in typography, XHTML/CSS, and any other aspect of web design. Think you have something great to bring to the reviews? E-mail me!

Hope to see some submissions soon. Happy designing everyone!

Regards,
Tyler Lemieux

I can’t help but notice a lack of creativity lately in the design communities I’m part of. I feel that the ‘web 2.0′ design trends and conventions are being followed too strictly, and although they work, they seem to be sucking the creative side right out of web design.

I can still remember how I got started into the world of web design. Back in the days that I used to watch Dragonball, I decided that I would really love to create a Dragonball fan site! Now, although I never actually finished the fan site (it’s quite a daunting task for a twelve year old), I had found myself to be fiddling with Paintshop at school, at my friends house, at four in the morning when I knew my parents would be sleeping; whenever I could. Creating mock ups of websites quickly became my favorite pass-time, and it wasn’t long before I wanted to find a place to talk with other designers! Back then it was never about the money; I simply loved to design.

You’ve probably gotten caught up in the money in some way or another before. You start to produce work that is below your own expectations and develop habits that, although they don’t affect each design that much individually, start to lose their effect on people after seeing the same old thing so many times. Truth is, it happens, and sometimes you can’t help it. Money sometimes takes prevalence over letting your creativity flow! But do yourself a favor, and never willingly produce unoriginal work.

Progression starts with you

You’ve heard this a million times before: push the envelope. Just like every other art form in the world, we need people who aren’t afraid to try new things. Imagine how much more we could know about our craft if we just set aside our check book once in a while and just spilled our mind onto the canvas! Start with something you love. Design a site around it, and break some design conventions. Maybe you’ll discover something you never thought of before, and then you can apply it and tell others! There’s no law stating “This is how a website must be designed. Violators will be prosecuted.”

Exercise your creative right!

Don’t argue with your clients, but suggest that there might be a surprise in store if you had more creative freedom. The more exposure you give your ideas, the better. The web design community is fueled by inspiration! On inspiration…

Don’t pick and choose your inspiration

Inspiration can come from anywhere, so why limit yourself to a bunch of CSS galleries? Personally, I have a few favored sources of inspiration:

• Any magazine I can lay my hands on. I love IKEA!
• Walking around and checking out billboards.
• Item packaging for games, software and other things I’ll never buy!
• Buildings, buildings, buildings! Architecture simply gets me thinking.
• Playing guitar and drums. You’d be surprised what you can come up with while playing an instrument.
• Nothing at all! Some of my favorite ideas have come to me while staring at absolutely nothing.
• Other designers, new and old. Just because someone is new to web design doesn’t mean they don’t have anything new to bring to the table!

Find things that inspire you, catch your eye, and get you to think. Find a way to bring them to life through web design! Inspiration is everywhere. Go find it.

Give and take constructive criticism

I can’t really stress this enough. Keeping contacts that you can talk design with is one of the best ways to improve yourself and the web design community. Never be afraid to give tips and suggestions, and never turn down some friendly advice! If someone has something to say about your work, then let them say it. Consider every tip and suggestion you get, there’s a reason behind every one of them!

In conclusion

I’m in no way saying that there aren’t creative web designers out there; that’s far from the truth. I do find, however, that the majority of web designers and site designs I see in the past months have been increasingly boring and uninspired.

I hope at least one person takes something from this. If you’re in a situation where you find yourself creating the same boring work time and time again, step back, take a walk, and read this again.

Thanks for reading, more articles are on their way!

Designers spend a large portion of their work time contemplating the aspects of text and/or font.

In order to help understand the importance of font, ask yourself, “What differences are there between the font and text of professional designs as opposed to low quality work”?

Answer number one? Size.

Size of font is a direct variation to attention. As a rule of thumb, body text should never be over 16 pixels. Now, this may not be the case 100% of the time, but who wants to have to scroll 3 or 4 times to read a small paragraph? As stated above, size relates to importance in the web design world. The title or header may range anywhere from 20 pixels to generally 28 pixels. This is an appropriate size for the title because it is noticeable, yet not overly distracting or taking away from the overall view. Keep font categories the same. What I mean by this is, don’t have one paragraph with a size of 14 pixels, while another is 12 pixels. Decide on a font size that will stay constant throughout the design. Take a look at this site. Notice the title has the largest font on the page. The sub-titles both share the same features: all-capitalized, large size (but smaller than the main title), orange, and a light gray underline that spans to the end of it’s container. Body text is dark grey and smaller in size than both the title and sub-titles. Links are the same size as the body text, but are blue in color to stand out. All of this helps to create consistency throughout the content.

Answer number two? Color.

Colors have always been linked to emotions. The color of text on a website can register many feelings within our bodies. For example, certain colors release calming chemicals. Large amounts of black indicate authority and power, and even evil. On the opposite spectrum, white is synonymous with purity, safety and neutrality. Often associated with death, taxes or depression, gray may sway your visitors to feel nothing. The color of movement and excitement, is obviously red. Red is attention grabbing and makes a loud impression; therefore use in moderation is necessary. Blue is the most popular favorite color. Loyalty and respect are found to have blue associated with them (like uniforms). All physical activities are said to be superior in blue conditions. Wealth, superiority and nature have links to green. Shades of light greens are used in hospitals as ways of calming their patents. Happiness, sanguinity and good times are symbolized by yellow. Yet, be very careful with over using this color. It may become annoying or cause tempers to flare. Orange is unlike any other color, the most ostentatious or showy. It has traits linked to ambition and a new attitude. Majestic, royal, rich are examples of purple’s power. Used often to create a feeling of mystery. Overused though, and purple causes an artificial affect. Brown is associated with the earth, stability and harvest. Also, brown should be used moderately. As you can see, mere colors can affect a user’s experience before they even read your site.

Number three? Typeface.

All websites should use typefaces that are practical, easy to read and simple. No one wants to read some impact or space typeface on a professional page. One of the most popular typefaces in web design right now is Arial. Why? Arial is a sans-serif typeface that’s easy to read, has great proportions, and looks great when used with proper vertical spacing. Bold, italic and oblique typefaces draw attention to important information. Normally links or hyperlinks are easy to find because they are underlined and/or colored differently than the rest of the content. Personally, I really love dotted underlines under links. Use these whenever you feel the need to make something stand out, but don’t get caught up using these too much — overuse can ruin a good thing.

Thanks for reading! I hope that this little post will help you in working for your next client, or just for yourself!

Check out our latest review of our favorite font site

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Hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates last month, after the digg on my simplicity article, my site went down for a few days and I’ve been working towards both getting setup on a new host and adding a few new features to DesignersMind!

Within the next week or two, you can expect to see:

• An online store, including WP skins, VB skins and icon sets!
• A web design forum!
• More articles, more tutorials, and of course..
• A guest article!

I also have many more ideas planned for DesignersMind, so sit tight, they’re on their way.

Cheers!
Tyler