by Chinthaka Samaraweera | May 20, 2019 | Become Your Own Boss, Graphic design for Business
Have you ever wonder how to grow your small business by using graphic design service?
Here at MyGraphicSite we frequently talk about Graphic Design for small business. They are an essential part of all business. And we couldn’t stress it more.
I think if you want to improve your business you need to understand the importance of graphic design for small business.
The aim of graphic design is to produce visual information to a target audience. And in business, the information that you give away is the key to promote your business.
But it is more than just conveying a message. It is aesthetic. It should definitely be creative and catchy and it should have the ability to create a long-lasting image in the mind of the people who see that.
And here we will give you details on the importance of graphic design in small business, and the available graphic design packages for small business in the market.
So basically, this is the ultimate article on graphic design for small business owners.
Importance of graphic design in business
So, if you have a small business, you do not plan to keep it on the same scale, are you? What are the strategies you plan to implement, to take your business one step up?
Does any of those including marketing?
Well, effective marketing in that case?
The importance of graphic design in business does not only apply to large scale ones. There are instances where we have to make logos and brochures and websites and at moments as such it is very important that you have the skill and knowledge to make it perfect.
Most of the marketing strategies lie with the graphic design skills you employ.
The designs of your business should be impressive, attractive and memorable. Graphic design is important to create effective communication.
And there is an increasing amount of small businesses entering the market. Graphic design is one major aspect that helps you deal with the competition.
How to find a graphic designer?
Actually look there are plenty of graphic design services for small business in the market today.
Also, there are head-hunters that could help you with finding the best graphic designer for small business. Or you could get one of those graphic design packages for small business.
Before anything here are some tips for you to follow when hiring a graphic designer.
- You should understand your market and your competitors too. To give a better competition you should know what your business will be facing.
- Understand your audience. If your business is aimed for young people, your designs have to specially target them. You cannot expect the younger ones to give their time to boring things. Knowing your audience is the key to success.
- Get a general idea on what you want from the graphic designer. Well, a designer can design whatever you ask him to. But you should know what outputs you need. When you cannot say what you want to accomplish, the designer will have to make it according to his imagination and consequences will be difficult.
- Research about the graphic designers you are going to hire! Better take a look at their previous work and evaluate it. Just to be sure that they know how to do the task you need to get done.
- Pick the flexible ones. The design should be what you expect it to be. And to achieve that the designer should be flexible to handle different design items. Also, when the designer has talent in designing brochures as well as logos, you get all your requirements done!!
Few top-notch freelance graphic design service providers
So, with all that you must be wondering about how to get the perfect graphic design service for your small business. Well, given below are details about a few graphic designing services that are popular in the field.
www.fiverr.com is a freelance service provider in graphic designing. There are a few important reasons that you might need to get your work done with Fiverr. The major reason is that you get work done fast, completely as you wish, and with confidence. The service is completely worth the money. They have a fixed price and assure your satisfaction with the design before paying.
You can get a variety of graphic designing services with them. They design anything from a logo to flyers to books and album covers. They do illustrations and business card design as well. And if you were having trouble setting up your website, worry no more! They will do it for you!
All in a very creative way indeed!
Then If you plan on getting service from Fiverr it is not very hard. You can use the Fiverr search and side filters to find the perfect freelancer. And when you find a service you would like, click on the gig. Fiverr has a section with work samples and feedback for each freelancer. So, a little research will pay off.
Fiverr ranks its sellers in levels and there are badges in the profiles so it doesn’t take much time for you to clarify it. Actually there are three levels; level one, level two and top-rated seller. Level one is the newbie, and the top-rated is the elite members.
There is a different page on the Fiverr website for you to higher pros. The pro profiles are given in this page. You can easily select your pro seller to get your work done in exclusively talented hands.
Pro Seller Service Fiverr.com
For all the services they offer, they have pros to do it too. Only 1% of applicants of the freelancers reach the pro level. With Fiverr pro, you get 24/7 VIP support and 100% quality assurance. The pro team has been with trusted by top-tier brands, and have major professional experience in the field.
With Fiverr, you will be able to give your business the essence of graphic designing. They have been in the business with major business brands. The logos they designed are well-known. I think if you want to give your business a highlighting look Fiverr is all you need.
99design is a global design platform that helps you hire talented professionals. You get to pick your favourite designer in a bunch of highly talented personalities. They have options to get your design done in order to ensure that you get a bigger customer experience.
They have design services for logo designing, website designing, arts, and illustration designing and Business and advertising. Well, almost all the categories are covered by their range of services.
To hire you to get two options you can directly select the seller by looking onto their profiles. Or else, you can invite their community to submit their designs to your project. With that, you get to select the best out of a variety.
The small business logo and identity offers starts from $300 to $599. Their offer for logo and hosted website designing is the best for small businesses. It will roughly cost about $599. And a sole web page design would also take about $599.
99design will not only help you get your designs done. It will be the one that offers your business the uniqueness that it deserves. A unique business design is an exceptional requirement and you are most likely to get it with 99design.
The most important asset in a design is the images and icons that you choose. They are the ones that are going to speak for you. Most of the people pay attention to the images than the words. So, your choice will decide whether you rise or fall.
Understanding this, Templatemonster offers you a massive collection of templates to select with. So, with them, you will be able to pick easily and creatively. You can find all the graphic design template requirements. They have templates for PowerPoint, keynotes, certificates, illustrations, and resumes.
With a site like this, you get to pick the templates that you actually like which mean you select the best for your business. And as the templates are already made you only have to edit it according to your details. It does not require many skills. So, this way you get to save your money and time spent on freelancers.
And Templatemonster offers you 8500+ unlimited downloads best items only $19 for a month. This is like the cheapest of graphic design services you will get ever. And with the fact you get to be your own designer, there is very little to go wrong!
A final word on getting your designers
However if you own a small business you really have to get a professional logo and a webpage. Because a good logo is a must to make people remember you. And people visit your webpage than your business store. People judge your business based on your designs!
Graphic designers should be hired only after doing some research on their work. They should be evaluated according to their past work. And they should be flexible and attentive to the requirements.
Here you can find, The best Upwork Alternatives 2019 12 Other Sites Like Upwork.
In addition, find my other guidelines.The best free online graphic design software for small business & How to find the Best Website Builder for Small Business.
by Chinthaka Samaraweera | Mar 27, 2019 | Become Your Own Boss, Graphic Designer
In day to day life, we want graphic designing skills to do our tasks whether we are students, employees or business owners. If we maintain a Facebook page or a blog, we want to design attractive artworks for it. If we are students or employees, we will want graphic designing skills to create awesome presentations for impressing our professors or bosses. When we share our knowledge over an eLearning course, we want to create some graphics for that.
So if we have the graphic designing skills, then we don’t need to hire a graphic designer for that and we can save a lot of money by doing our own work. We are going to tell you about how to become a good graphic designer in this article.
Actually, Do I Need A Degree To Be A Graphic Designer?
It is not essential to have a degree to be a graphic designer. If you have, then it is good. It will add an extra educational qualification to your CV. But it is not must. If you have the skills you can be a good graphic designer. Skills are the most important thing in this field. If you don’t have the skills yet, we are going to guide you to gain them through this article. So stay with us throughout this article.
So Is Graphic Design Hard?
If you are a beginner with no prior experience, then the graphic design will be an overwhelming job for you. You should not try to become a master in graphic designing within a month. Just try to complete a task at a time. By doing task by task, you will gradually gain the skills to the master level. Therefore don’t be so hurry to achieve everything at once and stay humble in the initial phase.
Read many books and blog posts on design principles as you can. Google as much as possible and gain the knowledge on the things what you don’t know or the things that you have less knowledge about.
Master Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. To master them, start to learn the tools inside each software one by one. Learning the tool one by one will help you to learn the individual concepts in graphic designing.
You can begin your journey as a graphic designer newbie and reach the professional level by following simple and specific steps. The guidelines below will help you to go in the right direction.
1.Inspiration gathering
Try to get inspirations from the masters in the graphic designing field. When you see a creative and unique design put it to your Pinterest board. Then try to recreate and add new things to the design.
You should not copy the designs on your Pinterest board. You can get an idea from that but you have to find out your own style using those. The inspirational designs that you collected will help you to discover your preferences. For example, assume that your collection of inspirational designs mostly consists of infographics. That means you love infographics more than the other design types. Therefore you need to pay full attention to infographics and begin designing your own projects.
You can find many sources of inspiration. dribbble.com or behance.net are great examples for them.
2.Observe and study
Take a considerable amount of time and observe the designs you collected. Observe how are texts, shapes, lines and other components masterfully combined in a design. You will see that all the designs are very simple but powerful.
When you study various designs you can get a better understanding about implementing the tips and theories you read into the real world designs.
Analyze past and present design trends in the world. Find a specific design style and discover the things that they have used. Swiss style is a good graphic design style to begin, because of its grid design system. Try to redesign them. Compare your design to theirs. If there is a difference between them, then do modifications to your design. Repeat this process for many other styles until you gain confidence.
Then take a coupon clipper and redesign the ads in a new style. Do the same process with billboards, advertisements and etc.
Then try to create your own designs. That way you can develop your skills. In this process of developing your skills, you automatically begin to guess the software and tools that professional designers have used to design specific components. Don’t much worry about color theories, negative space and typography at the beginning. You will automatically get the knowledge on them when you continue your work.
Now you have a great portfolio with you. Try to connect with a local business. And then do some free work for them to build your portfolio and to get more work. Or you can join to a graphic design company as an intern. And also you can try freelancing work as a graphic designer. Fiverr.com, 99design.com and Freelancer.com are some examples of freelancing platforms.
3.Take notice of alignment
Symmetry is a very important factor when increasing the attractiveness of your design. Though your design consists of many colors and decorations, to obtain the uniformity, it is important to adjust the alignments.
4. Select the correct font types
When you design, you must pay attention to the clarity of your design. Because clarity is an essential aspect of graphic designing. If you put unreadable text on your design in order to enhance the visual appeal, you will not achieve what you expect from your design. Your design will not be successful. It is not a good idea to use various typefaces in one design though some guides tell to use. Because it is difficult to adjust our eyes to various styles and forms at once. So it is better to use different font sizes of the same font family.
However, you should not use the same font family to all your designs. Because the perfect font family for a project may differ from project to project. It depends on the requirements, expectations, goals, and viewers of a design. So you should research and select the perfect font style before starting a particular project. There are so many font styles, exploration and experimentation will help you to select the best one.
5.The target for color cohesion
Don’t try to implement all the things you have learned in one design. If you do so, then your design will be full of texts, colors, shapes, and all the other components. Another thing is that don’t use red/green, orange/blue or purple/yellow color combinations in your design because a large amount of contrast is not a good factor of designing. Select colors that match each other finely.
Select the colors that match your mood and intentions. For example, deep blue symbolizes spirituality, intrigue or depression while green color symbolizes peace, nature, and freshness. Analyze some inspirational designs that you have collected and identify the color combinations they have used for expressing their mood and achieving their goals. Try to accomplish the same thing, using your own color combination.
You can use the Adobe Color CC tool online for selecting a good palette according to your requirement.
6.Keep consistency of the image quality throughout the design
Meaning of the overall project depends on the images, diagrams, and illustrations you use in your design. Expressing a message, information, feeling or a thought in a clear and attractive way is the general purpose of graphic design.
You have to keep the quality of images you are using, consistent throughout the design. For example, assume that you are going to combine a professional image which you bought from a stock image website with your own photograph, then the viewers will see the shortage of consistency. Therefore the consistency of the style, lighting, framing, proportions, and quality of these components should have remained all over the design.
7.Learn from the feedback you receive from others
The whole purpose of learning graphic designing is to design graphics that are appealing to others. Therefore it is important to get feedback from others. Maybe you are not confident about your design. It does not matter. You should not afraid of feedbacks. You can ask for feedback from professional graphic designers you know.
You can learn from the feedback. Accept the criticism happily and use it to enhance your skills. They help you to be a skillful designer.
8.The target for a clean and readable design
After creating a design, just take a rest for a few hours and then examine it carefully. If it needs some modifications then do it. There should be a right balance between brightness and contrast. Text in the design should be clear and readable. All the other components in the design should accomplish the goals of the design
9.Give importance to the rule of hierarchy
You should strongly pay attention to the hierarchy of your design elements. Let’s assume that you create a design for displaying an important textual message. If you place it over a colorful image, then it will degrade the importance of the textual image. Then you cannot successfully achieve your goals through your design. Therefore prioritization of the design elements is one of the most important factors when designing.
You can successfully accomplish the priority over color, typography, scale, and compositional placement. Though you add many other components to your design, the message you convey through your design must not be degraded.
10.Always do the things you love most
Always try to do something you truly love. Assume that you are a vegetarian and you get an order to design a promotional poster for the KFC chicken. Definitely, you cannot do it with your heart. If you take the order for the sake of money and design the poster, it will not be much successful because you design it with reluctance. Therefore always try to do projects that you are passionate about. Your energetic interest in it will create a great design.
Always sharpen your creativity and innovative ideas. You can gain better results if you continuously practice. The hardest part is to start but when you pass this phase with courage, no one can prevent you from being successful.
I hope you got a clear idea about starting your career as a beginner in graphics designing and how to become a good graphic designer. Good luck for your career and await for more forthcoming articles on graphic designing.
by Chinthaka Samaraweera | Mar 2, 2019 | Become Your Own Boss, Graphic Design, Graphic Design Website
Today, having just a website is not sufficient to attract users to it. A website should be contained with attractive visuals and attention-grabbing unique content for that. Therefore a graphic designer plays an important job role in enhancing the website’s outlook by creating appealing visual contents. To design such contents, you will want computer graphic design software. If you are a beginner in the Graphic Design field, here are some essential best graphic design software list for you. First of all, I should say that Adobe Creative Suite is the industry standard.
10 Best computer graphics software list
Below I have shared 10 reputable computer graphics software list providers, and their recommended you to create your graphic design requirement.
- Adobe Photoshop
- GIMP
- Adobe LightRoom
- Illustrator
- CorelDraw
- Inkscape
- Adobe Indesign
- Topaz Studio
- Adobe XD
- Autodesk 3ds Max
Even though you are a newbie to this field, you can create quality images with Photoshop. Multiple images can be easily combined with this tool. You can also remove unnecessary parts in your image. It also consists of Blemish Removal which can be used to remove any dirt or spot from your image. Photoshop is mainly developed for image manipulation, resizing and touching up. It has basic features such as rotating, cropping, flipping, straightening, channel mixing, clone stamp tool, and perspective correction. Colors of the image can be enhanced by its slide controls. It supports of RAW format. Your edited image can be shared through websites such as Twitter, Revel, Tumblr, Facebook and more.
It can be installed on both Mac and Windows operating systems.Accounting my graphic design software list Photoshop is one of my favorite graphic design software.
There can be found some advantages of Photoshop. They are the capability of smooth video editing, an effective crop tool, and higher performance. No perpetual license, less user-friendly interface and the lack of progress bar visibility for some tools are the disadvantages of Photoshop.
However, it is a good designing tool for newbies.
In addition, I think you need to know the Best Photoshop tutorials channels on YouTube.
GIMP is the best alternative software for Photoshop. This is perfect not only for graphic designers but also for photographers. It has highly improved photo manipulation tool. You can create very clear visual contents using this software. You can customize the interface as you want. Due to its full-screen mode interface, you can do the viewing and editing the image all at once. Though GIMP does not consist of a wide range of features, you can have a great experience with the existing features. It works on OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux and other Operating Systems. Due to its cross-compatibility nature, there is a strong support community for GIMP. It is open source and consists of many customization options as well as third-party plugins.
GIMP is totally free. Apart from that advantage, there can be found some other advantages also. They are ease in use, bright and modern interface and single window usage.
There are a few bugs in GIMP. In the initial phase, users have to face difficulties with Cintiq tablets. They are the disadvantages of GIMP.
If you love photography, then this will the perfect tool for you. This is a cloud-based service. You can edit your photos on your desktop, mobile or the web and share them across desktop, mobile as well as the web. When you edit the image on one device, all the changes you did are applied automatically everywhere else.
The smarter organization is one of the key features of Lightroom. Machine learning ML is used for that. People and other objects in a photo are recognized and then searchable keywords are automatically applied by ML.
Its interface is easy-to-use. You can back up your original and edited photos to the cloud
Illustrator is the best tool for creating logos, icons, sketches, and typography or even complex artworks for mobile or videos, using vector art. You can draw pixel-perfect shapes. Due to this drawing capability, you can design graphics with seamless alignments. Illustrator has inbuilt plugins. Using these plugins you can create an attractive web page. Though some plugins are developed for earlier versions of Adobe Illustrator, new versions consist of a set of new features such as Creative Cloud. Therefore it has become a perfect graphic design software for designers. You can use Ai on Windows as well as on Mac as the result of being part of Creative Cloud.
Amazing touch-type tool and simple free transform tool are some advantages of Illustrator. But its price is high.
Are you a web designer and searching for a graphics editor to create your visual contents for your website? If so, then this will be the ideal vector graphics editor for your tasks. CorelDraw is one of the most famous industry standard editors nowadays. It has several cool useful functions. Other vector editors cannot compete with CorelDraw’s ease of use. You can have full control over the tools. So the results are fast and dynamic. Its X5 and above versions have an inbuilt organizer called “Corel CONNECT”.
You can position objects according to your necessity using the alignment guide. It can efficiently work with big files in Corel Photo-Paint. This feature is a significant feature of CorelDraw. Apps such as Bitstream Font Navigator, Barcode wizard, Duplexing wizard and etc. are supported by CorelDraw.
You can find many helpful training videos on the internet regarding CorelDraw. But it is difficult to learn the tools for beginners. It does not work on Mac.
This software is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. If you love vector arts or use SVG file format, then this will be the perfect professional software for you. It can be installed on Windows, Mac, and Linux also. This is not only ideal for beginners but also for professionals for designing vector images. Inkscape can be easily used for making artworks, coloring, and sketching. It has a Ghostscript extension. Using this extension, .eps files can be easily read.
You can move screen pixels using keys. Apart from that, you can edit the clones on the canvas. Gradients also can be edited. You can fill the Paint-bucket with one click.
Inkscape is free. You can find infinite filters and new effect tools in Inkscape. But it is very slow.
If you want to create layouts for online magazines, printed books or brochures, then this will be the perfect software for your need. You can design layouts for desktop as well as for mobile devices using this tool. You can easily combine text and graphics. Indesign is mainly focused on web and print publishing.
You can easily drag and drop isolated layers and resize images with its great flexibility. A Desktop app for Mac and PC is available. You can access it by being a user of its Creative Cloud. A comparison app called “Comp CC” is also available for tablets and smartphones.
Services like Typekit and Behance are also available for you. Using these services, you can link your workflow among designing, photography, web or app development and videos. All your work can be shared and synchronized between the desktop and your mobile devices with Adobe Creative Sync. Therefore your work will be efficient and productive.
You can receive the latest updates after becoming a member. Indesign is perfect for beginners because of its lower learning curve.
Topaz Studio is an image editor for photographers. It is simple and easy to use but fast, flexible and powerful. You can freely download it and use as a plugin or a host editor. It comes with opacity slider, 10 free adjustments, blending modes and comprehensive masking functionalities. You can install it on Windows or Mac.
Adobe XD is mainly for UX designing and a vector-based tool. You can freely download it. Elements are automatically resized for different screens. You can switch easily from Design mode to Prototype in one click. And then you can create interactive prototypes using your wireframes by dragging them between artboards.
You can see the changes done on the fly, on your phone. Not only that but also you can securely share auto-saved cloud documents with others from anywhere in the world. Offline editing is also available.
Plugins are also available. You can enhance your experience with these plugins. Further Adobe XD can be integrated with other apps such as Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, JIRA, Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Adobe XD works on Windows and Mac.
Best features of Adobe XD are responsive resize, auto-animate, voice prototyping and plugins, and app integration.
Autodesk 3ds Max is formerly known as 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max. You can create 3d animations, images, models and games. Due to its easy, robust modeling, high-end rendering, efficient 3D animation, and flexible interoperability, it is perfect for your 3D designing. Arnold features, fluid simulation, open shading language and Shape Boolean Object are newly available with 3ds Max.
Best free online graphic design software
So would you like to know about the best free graphic design software around to make it as a graphic designer? Here we’ve found the best of the best visual graphic design software list.
It is important to have the knowledge to select the ideal graphic design software for your designing task. I have mentioned my best graphic design software list one by one. Though multiple designing software is found in the current software market, selecting the ideal one is difficult. So I hope that you have gained some basic but better knowledge in choosing a better tool for your need. Wait for more forthcoming articles on Graphic Designing
by Chinthaka Samaraweera | Feb 8, 2019 | Become Your Own Boss, Graphic Designer
When you initially think about earning money through freelancing as a Graphic Designer, where should you actually stops? What is the best freelancing websites for graphic designers? Before step in to freelancing, you should research for the correct answer for the above question.
When I step into this field, I initially searched the internet for the best freelance website for a graphic designer to earn money. There were lot of search results. When I dig in to the sites, I came to know that only a few are genuine. Most of the search results are fake sites. I did have work with both of them and learned a lot.
As you heard so many genuine freelancing sites these days, you have to select the best site for you to work with if you are a fresher. There are fiverr.com, freelance.com, upwork, 99design, people for hours and Toptal and some others. Among these how to select the best freelancer website for a beginner? This should be the main concern for you. Now I am going to expose you the correct selection.
Actually, Fiverr is the best option for a beginner. But you should next come up with the question “why is Fiverr better than the other sites?”
Will try to do a comparison first. Except for fiver, all the other freelancer sites tend you to bid and search for jobs. But in fiverr when you have a considerable number of good and positive reviews, project owners will come to you directly and ask for your help in completing their tasks. That is the basic comparison in between freelancer sites. If you updated your profile well organized with gigs, then your profile become a shopping window in the internet. Now you know the benefit of fiverr.com. You will receive jobs without even bidding or applying.
How to start my Graphic Designer Journey?
You should not try to grab big projects. Start with small tasks like background removing, photo editing or image tracing. These would be better for a beginner to start with. Once you are finalized with good quality, you will get the return by your customers. Those are Ratings and comments. If your profile is rated well, then definitely you will get more customers looking for your service.
I can recommend trying upwork.com and 99design.com if you are a beginner. These two platforms can be recommended if you are really a fresher.
Which is the 10 popular freelance websites
Below I have shared 10 popular freelance websites reputable freelancing websites for graphic designers , and their site recommended you to start your graphic design journey.
- Fiverr
- Upwork
- 99design
- Freelancer
- PeoplePerHour
- Guru
- Toptal
- Ifreelance
- Designhill
- Designcrowd
How to choose a website for freelance graphic designers
Doesn’t matter what the website is. You should come up with a clear professional portfolio with quality sample design pieces to showcase your ability. If you are a beginner, try to focus on small areas like background removing, Photoshop editing or logo design. Then create and set up your portfolio with those example works. There should not be hundreds of sample pieces. Maximum 10 to 15 best pieces would be fine to promote yourself. You can upload your sample projects to dribbble.com or behance.net to show case your name to the seekers. Even though freelancer sites are a great place to start with, high demand for work is currently been penalized by price with a huge freelancer’s availability. Getting a job to your budget is not easy for a beginner. So initially you must market yourself for low prices and try to maintain a good healthy and professional portfolio with good rated comments. Then you could maximize your budgets upon your demand. Now you will think why should we work for a lower cost? But in terms of return in the future, that would be the best option. Do not listen to “Never work for free”. If you want to become a good freelancer, sometimes you might need to work for free initially. Then customers will definitely recommend you for their referrals. This would be a better stream of finding more jobs in the future and get the demand on yourself.
Now we have had a detail conversation about freelancer sites available for beginners. You might have heard some more freelancer websites which are available on the internet. We can share our knowledge and our findings for freelancer websites which will be a help for someone to make their graphic designer journey.
