Brochure, Poster, Card and T-shirt Design

Here's some designs I created for the local basketball team. I created the sports volunteer t-shirts and ticket pass cards for the games. Also designed a corporate brochure about the different sponsorship options and a poster for advertising the coming games.

Some logos I have designed

Here's a small selection of logos I have designed last year and previously. An important factor of logo design is knowing what the end use will be before you start creating. If it's only for a website, then it could be created in full color and saved as RGB. It is best to create it in vector format though so that it can be scaled to any size with no loss of quality should the client decide they wanr a larger one. Save copies of the vector logo in jpg or gif format for use on websites.

It is best to limit the amount of fonts in a logo, I normally do no more than 2 and they need to look good together. Try to keep the design simple and clean as a busy logo can make it less professional.

If the logo is to be printed on business cards and letterheads in large numbers, then the costs will be more when printing in full color as it would need to be printed on an off-set printer. If that is the case, it is better to design a clean and simple logo using 1 or 2 colors and this is also true if you require it for screen printing.

If the client really wants a full color logo for their website, you could create a 2 color version for larger printing jobs and a full color version for the internet and smaller printing jobs that can be done on a digital printer.  

Powerful Open Source Content Management Systems

For a while now I have been using Joomla and Mambo Content Management Systems which allow the clients to be able to edit their website content without them needing to know html.

Both the above mentioned CM Systems are very similar as most of the developers of Joomla actually worked on Mambo up to version 4.5.2 until moving away and forming their own CMS called Joomla. Most of the older add-ons work with both, but now that they have gone there separate ways the newer versions need the correct add-ons for each CMS.

I now prefer Joomla as it is one of the most powerful Open Source CMS on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple web sites to very large corporate applications. Joomla is fairly easy to install and manage and very reliable. The Joomla community are friendly and helpful, and with all the developers using Joomla, there are a wide range of custom components that can be added to their CMS.

The Joomla website and The Mambo website.

The great thing about content management systems is that each site can run off a 1 page layout template whether your website has 10 or 1,000 pages so that should your website need re-branding, a layout change or new colour scheme, it's only a matter of changing that 1 template and the whole website will be changed.

I hope you have found this article helpful, regards, Ian

Graphic Design Website, Pixelfreeway is now live

Hi everyone.

My business website is now live so feel free to check it out. I have selected some of my designs and they are displayed under the portfolio section.

I have split my porfolio into four sections:

• Web Site Design
• Logo Design
• Graphic Design
• And Advertising

The web site address is www.pixelfreeway.com . Feel free to visit it and let me know your feedback.

Kind regards, Ian

Search engine optimization, web promotion and development articles

I have started a new blog about web development and search engine optimization with some great articles by some great authors that I personally find of good value.

Check it out:
http://seo-web-development.blogspot.com

Some of the articles are:
The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO
Why CSS is good for your Web site
Search Engine Optimisation: One Link is Better than Ten
A Content Management System or Static Website?
Basic Techniques to Generate Traffic from Search Engines
Choosing Domain Names for Your Business
Internet Marketing – What Comes First?