DesignM.ag

If you’re a web designer and you’re NOT using social media to help you in your work, then all I can do is direct you to 2002, because that’s where your workflow lives. Your competitors, co-workers and clients are all using social media, which means if you’re not, you’re getting left behind. Social media isn’t just a time waster, and it’s not just Facebook and Twitter – there are many different ways a designer can use it to advance his or her career. Here are six ways you could be using social media to help your grow your design career.

1)Promote Your Work

– This is probably the way most creative types would think of using social media, whether it’s tweeting about a new client’s page that just went live or sharing a link to the guest post you wrote for your favorite design blog. However, there are also a few designer-specific social media platforms out there that aren’t cluttered with sponsored tweets and e-book offers just yet. Most designers know about the Digg-like sites such as DesignBump.com or WPVote.com, but there’s more out there. There are communities like Coroflot and deviantART where you can share your portfolio and get feedback, but there’s even more still. For instance, Dribble.com is like crowdsourcing site/Twitter for designers – a site where you can share small snapshots of your designs for comment and assessment by your fellow designers. Whatever platform you use, social media has changed the way we share, promote and often improve our work.

Finally, you’ve done it. You’ve successfully persuaded your visitor to close the deal. Now it’s time for the hard close.

We all know how important the layout of your sites homepage is, or the product details page but what about the pricing table? No one ever talks about that, when really it’s such a vital part of a websites sales funnel.

The real tricky part is the strategic thinking behind it. You need to make the entry version bare bones and not give away too much, yet you still need to show your clients the value of the product. It takes clever thinking and also a visually captivating pricing page. I’ve come up with a select few sites that have perfected the art of the pricing table. Use this as inspiration to create that perfect pricing page or update your current one to increase the conversion rate on your site.

They’ve got it nailed down…

Basecamp

A few weeks ago, I had an article published here on DesignM.ag entitled “The Problem with Free Fonts,” in which I basically suggested that one of the potential problems that may emerge from the vast pool for free fonts that are available (in a variety of capacities) across the internet might be found in their obvious over use. I cited Papyrus and Comic Sans as potential examples, and ultimately was quite happy with the response – both in terms of the quantity and quality of the comments.

A couple days later, I came across another article via Twitter. This one was written by the greatly-esteemed Brian Hoff, and published on his Design Cubicle blog. It was aptly and wonderfully titled “With beautiful type comes great responsibility,” and I was first drawn to the title by the awesome Spider-Man allusion. After realizing who the author of the article was, however, I was excited to read it, since Brian’s insights into the typography are always fascinating and helpful.

Imagine my surprise then, when the very first sentence in the article actually referenced and linked to my article. I must confess that I felt a bit of a twinge in my stomach when I read that Brian was “a hint disappointed by the depth of the articles positioning,” but I read on anyways, still interested in what he had to say.

Basically, the article suggests that the problem I outlined is not the only problem with free fonts and goes on to suggest that issues of missing typographical history, a lack of proper weights and styles and just poor craftsmanship are actually much more significant problems when it comes to free fonts. By the time I finished reading, I concluded that it was a marvellous article and a great response to my own piece.

JumpeyeComponents.com has offered to giveaway a free Slideshow Box Premium HTML License to a lucky DesignM.ag reader. The value of this giveaway is $99.

SlideshowBox is an application that allows you to easily create HTML and Flash photo slide show galleries. The Flash component is supported by all Adobe Flash CS versions. The HTML embeddable as SWF objects (they require Flash Player 9+) and some of them as pure JavaScript slide shows. There are 24 different templates you can use to create your slide shows which gives you a lot a of flexibility. See below for some screen shots of their templates or visit their Slideshow Templates page.