What should I charge for my design services? There’s no easy answer to this often asked question. Check out this rate calculator.
Category: General
Use PayPal safely to receive client payments
Graham Smith has offered his excellent advise for designers who do work with the expectation of using PayPal for payment from the client. PayPal is extremely convenient, but loaded with issues we would rather not deal with. If you’re even considering the use of PayPal, this is a must-read.
Happy Birthday, Apple!
40 years of great products and services. Happy Birthday, Apple!
8 Steps to a better design workflow
While most of this article focuses on logo design, much of it can apply to any design work. If nothing else, take a look at #2, 4, 6 and 8.
Free iOS 9.3 iPhone UI Kit for Illustrator in vector format
The folks at Mercury Intermedia have released their iOS 9.3 UI kit in Adobe Illustrator vector format. It is the most complete and up to date iOS UI Kit released to date. Unlike many UI kits created in raster image format (typically PSDs), this one is so much more flexible because all the items are full vectors—making them perfect for mockups.
The iOS 9.3 UI kit is free to download, and weighs in at about 29MB in size. The file also comes in SKETCH format. If you have any reason to re-create iOS screen, this is a must-have!
Some (un)slick website design inspiration from people who specialize in print
It won’t be immediately obvious, but just hover your mouse over everything and click. Very un-slick design on top of some clever thinking, if you ask me.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Apple & encryption
The charger Apple should have shipped
Blockhead, fixes something that drives me up the wall about Apple’s iDevice and Macbook chargers—they LITERALLY stick out like a sore thumb. Blockhead ($20 or two for $35, from Ten 1 Design) is the charger/adapter Apple should have designed to begin with.
How to optimize your T-shirt designs
Some great advice for designing T-shirts that people will want to wear! Much like buying a house, it’s all about location, location, location.
12 reasons hiring managers aren’t reading your resume
CareerBuilder recently surveyed 2,298 U.S. hiring managers and human resources professionals and asked what would make them automatically dismiss a candidate from consideration. Some of the biggest resume mistakes they communicated were:
• Resumes that don’t include a list of skills – 30 percent
• Resumes printed on decorative paper – 20 percent
• Resumes that detail more tasks than results for previous positions – 16 percent
• Resumes that include a photo – 13 percent
• Resumes that have large blocks of text with little white space – 13 percent
For graphic designers, those particular mistakes are inexcusable. As someone who has hired designers and production artists, one of my biggest pet-peeves is seeing a resume where the first item below the name/contact info at the top is an “Objective” paragraph. I immediately throw those resumes in the trash bin. I know what your objective is… it’s to GET THE DAMN JOB!