Whenever we enter a grocery mall or a supermarket, we find numerous things that attract us because of their packaging designs. Most of us add those things in our cart even without any urgent requirement, as it looked appealing to your mind. Packaging plays a great role in playing with the customer’s mind and their willingness to make a purchase.
Packaging is a science, also an art to protect the products and help them in distribution, storage, sale and use. Its appealing looks can entice the customers to find more about the product. The designers play an important role in creating different and out of the box designs to complement the products. To make your product patronized by its users, the packaging should be innovative. The colors you choose for packaging should suit the product, fancy fonts do not work every time. Creative yet simple designs can work wonders for your product.

When we talk about designing it has to be creative and unique, but it should have readable font and clear labels to help the customer recognize the product. Use pictures in your packaging design to attract the customers, the pictures could be a cartoon, model, product picture or anything that is relevant. With uniqueness and innovative design, the packaging should be convenient and easy to carry.
Have a look at some of the creative yet simple packaging designs and can get an idea to create a unique design for your product.

Working as a team leader and getting the work done by the freelancers is tough. You need to struggle with the constant push for gratifying the clients with the designing work. Effective communication and organizing the tasks of the designers in advance is the key to create a powerful team of freelance designers. Here are few tips that may help you avoid the rush through deadlines.

1. Fix Date, Time and Venue for the Meetings in Advance

Working together at different places require regular interaction, one of the best things you can do to keep the designers connected is to fix regular meetings in advance, say weekly or on monthly basis. This would allow the designers to congregate their ideas and their plan of action for the work assigned to them. Fix up a meeting point, date and time in advance to make sure that everybody reaches as per the schedule.

2. Difference of Idea

At times, it happens that we tell something and the designers understand something else. This is one of the most common problems we face while dealing with the freelance designers. The reason of this problem is lack of communication. Allowing the designers to talk to each other and work together to achieve the goal.

3. Regular Updation

With numerous free messaging services available with us, there should not be any kind of communication gap. It could be through skype or any other IM. Sharing files is easy too.

4. Quick Discussion Every Day Can Lead to More Productivity

A conference call is easily possible with the instant messengers available on the internet. A quick call of say 20-30 minutes can lead to increased productivity among the designers. Choose the time according to the availability of the designers.

5. No Space for Doubts

Effective communication leaves no space for doubt in the mind of freelance designers. The designers can clear their doubts in the meeting, so that you need not suffer time lack.

6. Segregation of Tasks

The specialized designer can work on their specialized area. It could be designing, HTML or backend coding. The specialized people can finish up the work faster as compared to the other designer. You need to organize everything in advance to avoid rush at the eleventh hour.

7. Following Common practices

This practice helps in assembling all the files and one can easily identify the details of every layer as well as file. The CSS files with confusing name can create a big problem while assembling all files together, these should be organized properly.

8. Creativity at its Best

While working with numerous designers one can come up with interesting and more creative ideas to be used in the project. The team of freelance designers can suggest you fantastic ideas as they may have difference in mentality towards the work.

In the end, I would say that you can definitely move ahead in the race. Freelancing is tough, but interesting and cost-effective at the same time, if the team is organized properly. Nothing is possible without an effective communication, your team can utilize its skills only when you will communicate the same to them.

So you’re caving in and finally creating your business Facebook page. No matter what you are selling nowadays, be it classic Mustang parts or handmade goods, having a presence on Facebook is crucial if you want to stay abreast of the social media marketing world.

Facebook is a great way to market and promote your business. Creating a corporate Facebook page does not have to be a complicated process. Just make sure to take time and familiarize yourself with some of Facebook’s common lingo.

Check out these easy steps and get started on your business Facebook page … why wait?

Set Up your Page and Profile

When you set up a business page on Facebook, you have to choose what industry best represents your business. Do your best to come as close as possible so that your customers can find you as easily as possible. After you select the business classification, make sure to fully complete your profile.

Build your Community

You can go through and search for friends or use the suggest friends link to begin increasing the number of fans for your business. You can send over a request asking individuals to like your business page. The more likes you have the better.

In addition, join various networks. Find networks that are relevant to your business and utilize them to meet new individuals and to possibly drum up new business. For example, a CJ Pony Parts Mustang accessories salesman would want to join networks that deal with older cars, car accessories, etc.

Share Information

You can have all the Facebook friends in the world, but if you don’t provide any content or interact with them, you are wasting your time.

Share links relevant to your industry, sales, new events, new product offerings, and more. The more you share, the more often you will show up in your fans Facebook feed. The more you interact with your followers, the more they will interact with you.

In addition, try adding content that is above and beyond the norm, like YouTube videos and other applications.

Buy Facebook Ads

Purchasing an ad on Facebook is a great way to market your business. Their system runs very similar to Google Ads, which means certain Facebook searches will cause your ad to be displayed in front of millions of users.

Make sure to take the time and choose your wording carefully. You want keywords that are often used when looking for a product or service similar to the one your business offers. Facebook’s process also allows you to target certain members based on characteristics such as age, sex, and where they live.

This post made possible by guest blogger James, a writer with varied interests, including how to use Facebook to expand your business, whether it’s Cj Pony Parts classic Mustang parts or handcrafted keepsakes.

The moment a wanna-be designer completes his designing degree and becomes a graduate, he dreams to be a successful designer or lead a team of designers five years down the line. But this is what he thinks and imagines in his dreams, the reality is far different from the dreams. While studying, they get impressed with the creative review of the designing industry, they do not know that they would have to move from place to place to find work. Although graphic designing is really ‘in’, but it is quite difficult for the fresher at the same time. He needs to struggle hard to get his first elusive job. Although he is a graduate in designing, but he would rather be treated as a fresher in the industry. The designing tricks and techniques that are taught in the designing schools or colleges are quite different from what that are actually used while designing for the clients.

The young designer always look forward for trendy and innovative projects, whereas the mature designer would differentiate himself by showing attractive yet reliable piece of work. He would be ready to challenge the young designer with high-quality work even at fair prices. He has the industry experience that counts a lot. There is never an age criteria, if you are an expert in your job and meet industry standards with ease. Whether you are too old or too young, you just have to be through with the latest designing skills and the industry requirements. If I am asked to choose between the two, I would say that designing is a creative task, but yes, the experienced designer would have stable yet creative ideas while young designer would create out of the box designs.

There are several benefits of getting a graphic design degree, it would expand your art, open doors for your creative mind and technological knowledge is what you get to excel in your career. It is an add-on in your portfolio when you go for an interview; you have an upper hand over the other candidates who do not have. But, if compared with an experienced designers, you would be nowhere in the queue. The designing degree can be taken at any age, the only thing that matters is the technical knowledge and relevant experience in the industry. Once you have expertise in your job, you can carry out further studies in designing at any point of time.
For a fresher, getting the designing course done is easy, but finding an appropriate and stable job is difficult. The designers who dreamt of starting up their own business after completing their degree course in graphic designing have to work harder than those who engage themselves in jobs. In his own business, the designer needs to promote his designing skills on his own to compete with the existing designing companies. He lacks in expertise and experience to get good clients with impressive budgets. He would not like to work for low budgets, as it requires a lot of stress. They do not understand that age is no limit to learn new things. We always get to learn new things with new experiences. Trying low-budget projects would definitely lead to low earning, but would be counted in his experience, which is vital for starters.

The graduate designers who do not find a fixed job can start up with the freelance projects, but again the job providers generally look for the designers with more ratings. And if in case, the fresher designers get some projects to work on, there is no guarantee of workflow on regular basis. At this point of time, the fresher would realize that there is a lot more to learn.

Download Highly-detailed Web Icons for Your Web Design Project Bring a stylish and fresh new look to your website’s interface by downloading web icons. Find an exquisite set of highly-detailed icon package that feature a variety of abstract images that are essential for a diversity of web themes. These icons are made to be used for a variety of purposes so whether you’re building up a website for your business or for personal use, you can find a set of web icons for your project.These icons can be integrated without difficulty on your website to improve the overall aesthetics and to make it easier for your users to navigate the page. Using these small but well-designed images will give your visitors the most efficient user experience possible since it takes it less space than using plain old texts for navigation as it adds more enticement for your site visitors to continue browsing your website.

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If you are ready to take your music and media to the next level and start your own electronic press kit site then you should do it quick. You can go viral if you have a good website laid out, and selling music over the internet is simple while still making you a good profit margin. So here are some themes and plugins that you should use to start designing your WordPress EPK site with.

Genesis Theme for self-hosted WordPress

Genesis is one of the best WordPress themes you can get. Everything is completely customizable from an easy to use interface and you can design it around whatever theme you want with ease. The benefit of using Genesis is the SEO optimization as well. Everything was built with SEO in mind so you will see an increase in your rankings and as a result more gigs and customers purchasing your music.

Bookings – Plugin

Bookings is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add a booking service on your website. When you need people to reserve certain days and times for you to work you have two choices: do it all yourself, or let the computer do it all for you. Bookings lets the computer do all the work for you because customers can reserve certain time frames on your calendar and you can approve or deny it. Then once it’s all locked in you can fetch the data on your phone and check your schedule on the go. It’s the ultimate convenience for managing your gigs.

eShop – $50 one off purchase WP Plugin for eCommerce

Want to sell music on your website as well? Well then eShop is the best plugin for doing so. You can allow customers sign up to your website so their name and other information is saved or allow guest purchases. There are a lot of options available for listing the products in your shop. You can download sales data such as which products are selling the best. Give and receive automatic emails for each download so you can thank your customers and alert you that a sale just went through. Works with all the major payment programs as well, such as: Paypal, Authorize.net, Webtopay and more.

Audio Player

Audio player is a very simple yet highly customizable MP3 player that you can place anywhere on your WordPress site. It comes with volume control and other basic features you would expect. You can use this to upload songs that you want to put inside of posts for your fans to listen to. Or you could even upload demos to attract more sales the choice is yours.

Sociable

Add social media to your website with the sociable plugin. It lets visitors easily share the post that they enjoyed with their friends and family online through social media with a single click. This is completely free exposure and a chance to get even more fans and customers. The best part is that sociable looks great and is customizable to fit the theme of your site.

Podcasting

If you plan on releasing regular podcasts online to give your fans some content that they can enjoy on a regular basis then podcasting is a must have plugin. It allows your readers to subscribe via RSS 2.0 or Atom. They can also use podcast clients such as iTunes, Juice, or even CastPodder where they will automatically download your latest podcasts. All you have to do is make an MP3 or MP4 file and upload it to your blog. Then you make a new post with a link to the file and announce it as a brand new podcast. WordPress will do the rest and syndicate it out to the clients.

EasyVideoPlayer 2.0

If you want to leverage some video marketing on top of your podcasts and music then EasyVideoPlayer is the plugin for you. You can make a video promoting your music and embed a buy now button right into the video. This will increase conversion rates and get people even more interested in your music if you have a small video to go along with it. Do video split testing to see which videos convert better without any work at all. Just upload two videos and select the split test option and you can track all the statistics yourself to see which is better.

All in One SEO Pack

The all in one SEO pack is a must have plugin for any WordPress website. You get Google analytics integration so you can easily track who visits your website and what they do while on it. There are security functions to protect your website from getting its rank stolen by black hat competitors. It helps to avoid duplicate content found in most WordPress websites which could hurt your rankings. It even adds meta tags to your posts and pages and generates them automatically. Meta tags are still used for a lot of search engines out there to find out what your page is about and tell where it should put you in the rankings so having them can only help. The best part it this whole package works out of the box without any customization necessary. So you can change a few settings if you want to, but everything already works once the installation is done.

Media Web Hosting

Juliana is a Webmaster for a Dedicated Host provider serving Media Producers based in Los Angeles @InMotionHosting. You can follow her on Twitter @JulianaPayson

Designing plays a vital role in building the personal brand. Appearance of the personal branding messages determines whether they should or should not be noticed, remembered and read. A good web design firm must keep in mind some of the basic designing tips that are required for personal branding. The prospective employers, clients and readers will make a quick decision regarding paying the attention to your words and moving on.

It is very important to pay attention on the appearance of your messages in order to make the personal brand stand out from the competitors. Given below are 7 key tips that you can use as guidance for designing and formatting each and everything from the business cards to eBooks, blogs, landing pages and the web pages.

Be Open and Invite Image

You can add lot of space to borders, margins and the space that lies in between the graphics and text in your offline and online marketing materials. All the White Space projects are contemporary, open and very easy to read. When the graphics and text are stuffed into screen or page, your messages do project a dull and very hard to read image. This method is very useful for a best website design.

Magnetic Headlines

In order to succeed in attracting the prospects attention and engaging the interest of user, headlines should be made easy to read and locate. The type size and typeface you are using should form a very strong contrast with other text on page. A good starting point should be to combine the headlines set in the faces of sans serif typefaces. Do avoid setting headlines in the upper case type, i-e in the capital letters for making it much harder to read. Do review headlines and make sure that the line breaks should not split the proper nouns and phrases.

Scannable

Designing must make the structure of your message quite obvious at first glance. You can start by chunking and breaking up your message into various topics in order to introduce some new topics. All the readers must be able to glance at subheads and should get the idea of being discussed. Do limit the subhead length to a single line, thereby adding the white space for emphasizing break along with previous topic, and must never underline the subheads.

Easy to Read

Develop your ideas which should be easy to read. Also choose a familiar body copy typeface; it is one which draws attention to itself. Do avoid long lines of various types. You cannot select and choose a type that is not at all small nor is it too large for the length of line. You should adjust the line spacing in a way that there is enough white space for highlighting the character in each line.

Paying Selective Emphasis

You must add a focal point to each screen or page for reinforcing your message. All the Focal points must be photographs, charts and headlines for summarizing some important points.

Using Color with Proper Care

When it comes to color, less becomes more. Try to avoid the use of “rainbow design” by using every color that is available. You can also choose a palette, or a collection of some of the basic colors that you have.

Clutter-Free

It is better to eliminate the distraction and clutter, but be sure to be selective. Do possess the knowledge of what is important by making it the center of attention. For gaining superior results in branding, these are the seven essential points which are extremely helpful while designing an interactive and appealing website design for your personal branding.

About the Author Bio: “Sara Sparker is a Professional Content Writer Working in a Software development Company having Experience of Generation Content Related to Web Designing, iPhone Development, Software Application, Web Design Firm and many more”

Our mates over at ThemeFuse would like to share 3 premium WordPress themes licenses with you – our readers.

If you are using WordPress to run your blog then you are in for a treat. The fortunate winners of today’s giveaway will get access to download one WordPress theme of their selection from ThemeFuse … free of cost.

ThemeFuse is considered the new rising star in the commercial WordPress theme building industry and their theme selection is rather incredible.

We are handing out 3 vouchers, each worth $49. Here’s how you can get one:

Enter the Giveaway

- Add a comment to this post and tell us where you’d like to use the theme if you were one of the winners.
- Spread the word on Twitter: Win a free copy of @ThemeFuse #WordPress Theme from @[your Twitter] (RT to Enter).
- Click the like button on ThemeFuse Facebook page (they will inform the winners there).

Note: We’ll declare the winners one week from now. Stay close.

Good Reason to Participate

ThemeFuse is the genuine premier league when it comes to WordPress theme stores. No matter what sort of website you are setting up you’re sure to get yourself a suitable theme at ThemeFuse.

And what you end up with is not only looks and stylish designs. The themes are cautiously built on the source code side too. To make your life easier they provide easy-to-use configuration interface with a lot of features.

Following are a few examples of themes created and produced by ThemeFuse. Feel free to visit their website for a complete list.

Coffee Lounge – Bar WordPress Theme

A perfect theme for anyone that owns a coffee, bar or bistro and wants he’s or she’s website to make an amazing impression on the visitors.

PhotoArtist – Photography WordPress Theme

If you are a photographer looking to showcase your work in style then let us present you your soon to be portfolio website.

VideoGrid – Video WordPress Theme

Showcase your lifetime work or blog like you never blogged before with this insanely great video WordPress theme.

Sportedge – Sport WordPress Theme

The versatile SportEdge Magazine is the best sport WordPress theme ThemeFuse could have come up with, that’s a given! See for yourself.

Medica – Medical WordPress Theme

Probably the best medical WordPress theme when it comes to Doctor’s websites, Health Clinics, Dentist’s Offices or anything medical related.

Here is a nice plan for the day: Be a part of the giveaway, receive a free premium theme from ThemeFuse, and then put it to use wherever you wish. It is as easy as this.

This giveaway contest is closed now and the lucky winners of this contest are:

1. Sweety
2. Adam
3. David  

Congratulations to all the winners. Soon you all are going to receive your prize details in your mailbox.

Magazine Printing is an art and business which has a great deal of demand with people. There are different types of magazines on various topics to suite everyone’s needs. Here is some information on the same.

Magazine printing is a business which has a great deal of opportunity to grow and expand. There are various different types of magazines on a range of topics from photography to gardening, from DIY magazines to lifestyle magazines. There are different sizes of magazines available from the extremely thin to thick depending upon the amount of information provided. It is the job of the editor to decide the location of text and pictures in a magazine so that the end result is aesthetically pleasing. Magazines contain various different types of information but usually include an editorial, featured stories, headlines, advertisements and forums as well.

What’s in a Magazine?

Magazines can come in different languages containing varied pieces of information on just about any subject matter. While some may contain more pictures and photos, others have more text and information. That depends upon the type of magazine as well. A magazine on fashion may have more pictures while a business magazine would have more text. A DIY magazine or any magazine with instruction would have a combination of both text and pictures. Thus it actually depends upon the content of the magazine. There is also a great deal of difference in paper quality as well and the price of printing varies accordingly. There are some magazines which come with high quality paper, glossy sheets or simple coarse papers. Magazine printing is usually done for professional, business purposes, however there are some companies which also do printing of small quantities for personal use such as to share with friends and relatives. The cost of printing such magazines depends upon the quantity, the number of pieces, quality of paper etc. All of these are determining factors.

Magazines which are printed differ in various factors such as paper, ink, style etc. The most common methods of magazine printing are:

- Digital printing: Here there are a wide variety of choices in colors, paper, ink etc. There are even rough copies created so the client can choose the best alternative, however the services offered are quite expensive.
- Color printing: This method of printing is used with format printing as a combination as you have a wide variety of colors to choose from.
- Offset printing: This is the most traditional method of printing. The pallet and size of the same is limited and this form is usually used for printing brochures and pamphlets.
- Laser printing: Here laser beams assist in the printing process and it is similar to the performance of normal laser jet printers.
- Format based printing: This is usually used in combination with color printing as it allows for a choice from a wide variety of formats for text such as headings, titles, subtitles etc.

Before magazine printing is done on a large scale or in bulk, test pages are given for printing so that the end result can be seen and changes or modification made if necessary. This ensures that the end result is pleasing for the customers and readers of that particular publication.

Humour is a great conversation starter, and it is something that is often used to good effect in the world of TV and print advertising, but when was the last time you saw a social media ad that used humour well?

There have been a few occasions of big companies producing amusing viral videos; such as Fords spokes puppet campaign, or the multiple girlfriend app that was used to advertise AXE body spray, but most social media campaigns are far too serious for their own good.

This is strange when you consider that Twitter and Facebook are full of people posting jokes, funny pictures, and amusing quotes.  Isn’t it about time you used some of that positive social media vibe to promote your company?

Humor is Risky

One reason why an online marketing company might want to avoid humour is the risk of someone taking a joke the wrong way.  You might be able to get away with poking fun at political parties, religions, the opposite gender, or certain medical conditions on your personal Facebook, but people don’t take so kindly to brands doing that.  It takes a special kind of talent to know which jokes are acceptable, which are mildly risqué, and which should be avoided at all times.

There’s a Time for Jokes, and a Time For Work

If you are going to use jokes as part of your marketing campaigns, make sure to use them sparingly. Sometimes they work well, but sometimes there are better ways to get your message across.  When the UK video game store, GAME, went into administration earlier this year (fortunately, the company was saved by a deal with OpCapita), many of their competitors jumped on the chance to attract formerly loyal GAME customers.  There was a rash of ads with cunning and pithy slogans poking fun at an ailing company.  Those ads may have attracted some customers, but they also made the companies look heartless to those who had lost their jobs as a result of the problems at GAME.  It’s not worth trying to look witty or clever at the expense of thousands of people that have just lost their jobs.

Keep it Simple

If you want to look like an approachable, friendly company with a sense of humour, the best thing to do is keep it short and simple.  Work with your social media agency to figure out a policy for your social postings.  You may want to tweet an amusing quote every morning or devote a certain percentage of your tweets to re-tweeting other people’s funny posts.

You could get your online marketing company to put together some amusing infographics or cartoons together, for sharing on your Facebook page.

Try not to force humour, though, and don’t jump on trends.  There’s a good chance that by the time your online marketing company has put together a custom graphic for you, the trend will be over-done and most people will be sick of seeing that type of joke.  A good example of this is the “What I think I do… What my friends think I do… What I really do…” images that were popular a few months ago.

Have Fun With It

Finally, remember to have fun with your marketing, and let your social media agency have fun too. If you’re short on inspiration for amusing topics, don’t be scared to poke fun at yourself and your niche.  Often, such humour will be better received than tired jokes where you pick on the usual easy targets.  Let your imagination run wild.

Written by guest author Amy Fowler of online marketing and social media experts, Boom Online Marketing. To learn more about the Boom team, ‘like’ their Facebook page.