For some teams, the iterative design process has gotten out of control. Instead of focusing on how to make a product or service better, the process has turned into an approval monster. ZURB hopes to change that with Notable, a web-based app that allows teams to give direct feedback to each other. “Notable was created to solve the feedback problem in companies,” says Dmitry Dragilev, ZURB’s marketing lead. Dragilev says the company created this application to fight the philosophy of getting approval and a move toward helping teams make something better.
The tool allows everyone to provide feedback and stay in the loop with a design’s progress, as well as archiving the design’s history. You can control who can see and leave feedback on each captured design. For example, a project manager could share one page with the copywriter, another with the whole team and yet another with the developers. The feedback occurs multiple ways, instead of one-way. Read the rest of this entry »
Graphic designers are a passionate lot. The few interviewed for this article all had one thing in common: They’ve been interested in graphic design for as long as they can remember. Is graphic design the web working career for you?
Graphic Design Career
It’s important to highlight the distinction between web design and graphic design. Those who do graphic design concentrate mostly on print work. They create designs for annual reports, advertisements, brochures, billboards, logos and design identity packages complete with letterhead, envelopes and business cards. Read the rest of this entry »
Distributed creative teams face the unique challenge of having to collaborate on a product without being able to quickly and easily access files and works in progress via an on-site file server or intranet system. Emailing files to one another can get messy very quickly, and if you’re not careful, you’ll have multiple versions of the same documents in no time.
Fluxiom is a web-based digital asset management system for creative teams that offers a nice, visually rich interface and the ability to scale depending on your needs. It has a number of useful features, and there’s a free version available, so I wanted to see if it could function as a tool for helping people collaborate on a wide variety of media including text, photo, audio and video. Read the rest of this entry »
You wouldn’t be reading this post if it weren’t for web designers. It’s web designers who help make it possible for us to have the best and easiest web experience possible. Web design is a large and growing field; despite the downturn, Dice.com currently lists nearly 1,000 vacancies for web designers. Demand for skilled web designers is only likely to increase in the future.
Could becoming a web designer be a good career move for you? Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a while since I’ve actively participated in the design game, but recently, when I was doing some work for a friend, I took a look around to see if there were any new tools that would work better and more efficiently than the ones I’ve been using for ages. Because of the nature of the project, I went looking in a couple of specific areas: file-sharing and font resources. My old picks for these services were still around, but they haven’t changed much despite the passing of many intervening years, so I wanted to check out the new kids on the block.
File Sharing
Once upon a time, I used Image Shack for most of my design-related file hosting needs. That was before I had my own server space with which to play. But despite still having private server space, sometimes it’s just easier and faster to use an online file-hosting service, especially if that service is incredibly easy to use. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: design, file hosting, font, fonts, imageshack, pimpyourfont, print, sharenload, sharing, tools, web
Wix — founded in New York by ex-venture capitalist, Allon Bloch — offers users the ability to create a free, SEO-friendly, Flash-based web site using only drag-and-drop tools. I’m surprised I hadn’t come across Wix before, as according to the company’s PR, more than 500,000 users are actively using the service, a fifth of whom joined from the UK just last month.
Wix appears to be targeting professionals in various industries who want to set up a glossy site very quickly. The directory of published sites ranges from photographers, stylists, designers and actors to real estate companies, bands and arts sites.
What’s particularly notable about Wix isn’t the Flash-based authoring tools, but the ability to publish “widgetized” versions of your site to MySpace and Facebook, as well as publishing to online marketplaces such as Etsy, Craigslist and eBay. Handily, Paypal and Google Analytics integration is also included. Read the rest of this entry »
Collaborating on design work is notoriously difficult. Deciding what the perfect shade of blue is, how rounded those rounded corners should be, and whether or not to make the logo bigger is all difficult enough when a discussion is happening between people in the same room. Add a virtual environment to the mix, and making clear and actionable design change notes can be nearly impossible.
This is where new web app redmark can help. Currently in limited private beta, the service aims for, and largely achieves, the difficult feat of making and tracking design notes a snap. Check out the nifty demo here.
The first thing to notice is the strikingly slick and clean interface: There are blessedly few tools and features, and the tools and features that are at the user’s disposal are easy to understand and use.
Read the rest of this entry »
You may be a great designer, illustrator, or just a generally creative person, but that doesn’t automatically translate to profitable enterprise, as we’re all probably painfully aware. However, there are a variety of services that provide an avenue to sell your services and make it easier to find customers.
Inkd is one such service provider, aimed at print designers. Like Threadless and Cafepress before it, it offers users the chance to use their own original designs to earn revenue. Indk’s model is slightly different, but will be familiar to people who’ve used either of those older services. People who contribute to stock image libraries like iStockPhoto will also recognize how this system works. Read the rest of this entry »
For some teams, the iterative design process has gotten out of control. Instead of focusing on how to make a product or service better, the process has turned into an approval monster. ZURB hopes to change that with Notable, a web-based app that allows teams to give direct feedback to each other. “Notable was created to solve the feedback problem in companies,” says Dmitry Dragilev, ZURB’s marketing lead. Dragilev says the company created this application to fight the philosophy of getting approval and a move toward helping teams make something better.
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
